AFTER PATIENCE DIED, spring came to Abrams Valley, but not to the Lovegood farm.
The rain cleared, the days warmed, and blue skies reigned. A soft green blush crept over the land as tender grass sprouted and trees unfurled their first leaves. The last lingering patches of snow sank into the soil, and the air was rich with the scent of damp earth. Bees emerged from wherever they hid during the winter, and with them mosquitoes and flies, ticks and crickets, the incessant insect hum punctuated by the cheerful chatter of birds and the chiming chorus of spring peepers.
The mountains and valleys were returning to life after a long winter, but the Lovegood orchard wasn’t waking with them.
Sorrow stood at the window in Mom’s room, her elbows folded on the wooden sill.
“Grandma’s planting beans today,” she said. “Beans and carrots and peas. She says it’s warm enough.”
In the garden below, Grandma’s pale blue dress and yellow straw hat were the only spots of color. The garden and yard were still brown, and every morning there was a crackle of frost that took far too long to burn off. None of the early flowers had sprouted from their bulbs, and even if they had, the biting chill would have shriveled the petals as soon as they blossomed.
“I hope it’s finally warm enough,” Sorrow said, a little quieter.
She crossed the room to her mother’s bedside. Mom’s eyes were damp and there were dried tear tracks on her cheeks. Sorrow brushed a strand of dark hair back from her face; her skin was warm to the touch.
“Sorrow,” Mom said, her voice as hoarse as sandpaper.
“Mom?” A bright burst of hope flared in Sorrow’s chest.
Mom took in a shaky breath, as if to brace herself. “Are they going to let her come home?”
As quickly as it had sparked, Sorrow’s hope pinched out. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“She’s my little girl,” Mom said. “I want her to come home.”
“I know, Mommy.”
“It’s so cold. We need her home. The orchard needs her.”
“I know.”
It had been two weeks since Patience had died, but they weren’t yet allowed to bury her. Sheriff Moskowitz had explained to Grandma that the police investigation wouldn’t be finished until they were certain the fire had been an accident. Only when that was settled could Patience have a funeral.
Sorrow kissed her mother’s cheek. “We’re going to make chicken and biscuits tonight. It’ll be really good. I know you like that.” She rounded the bed and walked to the door, but before she left she looked back. “It’s a lot nicer today. Maybe you can come out and sit in the sun for a little bit?”
Mom didn’t answer. Sorrow left her alone.
Sorrow wanted to help, but she didn’t know what to do. Mom never wanted to eat, and at night she only slept when she took medicine. She didn’t get dressed in the morning and she hadn’t left the farm in over a week. The last time, when she had taken Sorrow into town for groceries, she had started crying in the middle of the store, big, fat tears rolling down her cheeks while her shoulders shook and her breath shuddered. Sorrow had pulled her arm and pleaded with her to leave, until finally they’d abandoned their cart and walked out empty-handed. The clerks and other customers had gaped and whispered, but nobody had tried to help.
Sometimes Sorrow woke to hear Mom pacing up and down in the hall, from the top of the stairs to the closed door of Patience’s room. She walked back and forth, over and over, the slow rhythm of her steps lulling Sorrow to sleep.
The worst of it was that some days when Sorrow woke, first thing in the morning or in the middle of the night, there was a moment when she forgot. She forgot Patience was dead. Before she opened her eyes, before she felt the sun through the window or heard the rooster crowing to accompany dawn birdsong, there was a moment where her traitorous mind listened for the sound of voices downstairs, the familiar morning chatter of Mom and Patience making breakfast. For Patience’s steps quick on the stairs, for the turn of her bedroom doorknob, for a cheerful voice calling Wake up, sleepyhead, wake up—
Then she would remember, and everything would crash over her like an avalanche.
Sorrow pulled on her bulky green sweater and heavy boots and went out into the orchard. She searched the apple trees for opening buds, but after she checked ten trees in a row and found none, she had to admit nothing had changed since yesterday. Not a single apple tree was sprouting its leaves. The orchard was as grim and gray as it had been in the middle of winter.
Witch weather. That was what Mrs. Roche had called it when she’d stopped by with a casserole the other day. She had sipped the tea Grandma made for her and nodded knowingly toward the kitchen window and she’d said, “This witch weather will break soon, Perseverance. It will break.”
Sorrow stopped looking for spring leaves and began looking for favors instead. In the pocket of her skirt, she was carrying the eyeglasses she had found in the cemetery, as she had carried them every day since Patience had died. Sometimes she took them from her pocket and put them on—carefully, as Patience had shown her—and squinted at a world that was half clear, half fractured, blurred almost beyond recognition.
She didn’t like that they were the last favor she would ever find while walking through the orchard with Patience. It gave her a cold, squirmy feeling in her stomach to remember how she had told Patience she didn’t like them. She could never take that back now.
There should have been more favors by now. Even if the weather wasn’t warming like it should, even if the trees weren’t budding, there should have been something. If she found a pretty seashell or polished stone, something bright and colorful, she could bring it to Mom and cheer her up. But the orchard didn’t offer so much as a single Indian Head penny.
What she found instead, nestled at the base of an apple tree, were the corpses of two little birds.
Sorrow stared down at them for a long time, a curious hollow ache growing inside her.
They were tiny, no more than a few days hatched. Scattered around them were the remains of frail blue eggshells.
She lived on a farm, in the woods; she had seen dead things before. Last winter during a bad snowstorm a buck with broad antlers had been caught on the fence between the orchard and the nature preserve. Mom hadn’t found it until it was already dead and the meat spoiling. For weeks every eastward turn of the wind had carried a foul, septic stench. Birds had picked at the corpse until it had shrunk down to a saggy sack of fur and bones.
No predator or accident had killed these chicks, only the cold. They had hatched expecting springtime warmth, found bitter clinging winter instead, and died before they had a chance to live.
A burst of song drew Sorrow’s attention upward. There was a nest huddled in the tree, and hopping along the branch beside it was the mother bluebird. She jumped back and forth, back and forth, her wings fluttering anxiously, chirping out a question to anybody who could hear. Each time she reached her nest she looked into it again, as though she might find it not empty that time.
Sorrow shoved a pile of leaf debris over the chicks and hoped the mother bird wouldn’t find them.
She walked north, toward the cider house, an uncomfortable tickle of guilt making her glance over her shoulder every few steps. She wasn’t allowed to go near the ruined building, but she didn’t want to get too close anyway. She only wanted to see, even though she hated the way it looked, so burned and broken. She stopped halfway down the hill. Slid to the ground with her back to an apple tree and hugged her knees to her chest.
The cider house was a smudge of black through the naked trees, a hole where light and color ought to be. Half the roof was caved in, but the building hadn’t collapsed. The meadow was brown and yellow, free of snow but still winter-dormant, and the grass all around had been churned up by fire trucks and police cars. The ambulance had taken Patience away after the firemen put the fire out.
They had known it was her at first by the dress she wore and the barrettes in her hair, later by tests they did in a laboratory.
Sheriff Moskowitz had explained that to Mom and Grandma when Sorrow wasn’t supposed to be listening. He asked if Patience had a boyfriend. He asked if they had seen Patience talking to strangers. He asked if she had ever sneaked out or lied about where she was going. He asked if they had any idea what she would have been doing out in the orchard that night. To every question, Grandma shook her head silently and Mom said, “No, nothing, no,” repeating herself until the words became meaningless sounds.
Nobody asked Sorrow anything. She expected it every day, for the sheriff to return to the house and demand to speak with her, for him to sit her down and look at her with his sad eyes and say that he knew she was lying, he knew everything, and it was time for her to tell him. And when he did, the secrets Sorrow had been holding inside would crack open like a hornet’s nest.
But a week passed, then another, and the sheriff did not ask. He said hello to her when he came to the house, ruffled her hair fondly, but he never looked her in the eye and said he knew she was hiding something.
She watched the Abrams house for a long time. Their car was parked outside, but Sorrow didn’t see anybody. Mrs. Roche had said they would soon be leaving to stay with Mrs. Abrams’s family in Boston, because Julie was so upset from seeing the fire she had been crying and crying for days. The other Mr. Abrams and his family were going to watch the house while they were gone. A blue tarp fluttered over the burned corner of the barn, lifting and falling with every gust of wind like a creature breathing. The Abrams fields were brown near the fence, but farther away their land was greening as the weather warmed. Bushes along the driveway erupted with small white flowers. A pair of jays chased each other across the meadow, dipping and diving, and swept into the woods.
The sight made Sorrow’s insides ache. She didn’t want to look at it anymore, but she didn’t want to go back to the house either, where everything was cold and quiet and wrong. She wanted to run into the mountains and hide and never come back, the way Grace Lovegood had when her mother had killed her sisters and brothers. Run away to crawl into a fox’s burrow, alone and scared until she heard the shouts of townspeople looking for her. Then she must have crawled out of her hiding place and—
Sorrow didn’t know where she went next. She had never heard the rest of the story. She didn’t know who had taken care of Grace after her mother was hanged, if there had been anybody at all.
She could ask Mom. Sorrow stood slowly and brushed dried leaves from her skirt. When she got back to the house, she could ask Mom to tell her the rest of the story. She hadn’t asked for a story since before the fire, but Mom wouldn’t refuse, no matter how sad and tired she was. She never refused a story. Sorrow would bring her a cup of tea sweetened with honey and climb into bed next to her, and Mom would sit up with the pillow bunched behind her, her voice growing less hoarse and less distant the more she talked, and when she was finished they would go downstairs together to help Grandma make chicken and biscuits for dinner.
Emboldened by her decision, Sorrow ran back to the house. By the time she reached the fallow field, she was breathless with excitement. She knew how to help Mom now. She skipped along the dirt road and up the hill. The day felt a little warmer than it had before, the sun a bit stronger. She knew this was the right thing to do.
Grandma was sitting on the back porch with her quilting frame. The needle was still stuck in the fabric, untouched.
“I’m going to ask Mom for a story,” Sorrow said.
She yanked the screen door open, and Grandma reached out, her knobby fingers beckoning.
“Grandma?”
Grandma gestured her closer. She pulled Sorrow into a hug and pressed a kiss to the side of her head.
Sorrow squirmed away. “I’m going to get her to come down for dinner. You’ll see. I promise.”
She was halfway up the steps before she remembered she wanted to make tea, so she had to go back down, set the water to boiling, and find Mom’s favorite mug, the one she had bought from a potter named Eulalie at the farmers’ market. Patience had always called it the Eulalie Mug, but Sorrow didn’t know if it was okay to call it that anymore. She didn’t know if it would make Mom smile or cry. She decided she wouldn’t call it anything, not until Mom did first.
When the tea was finally ready, she carried it upstairs, wincing when a few hot drops sloshed over the side. She opened the bedroom door with her free hand.
“Mom?”
Mom’s room was dark and stuffy; she must have closed the window and drawn the curtains after Sorrow left. In the faint light from the hallway she could barely make out Mom’s shape in the bed.
“Mom, I brought you tea. With honey.”
Sorrow’s boot crunched on something on the floor. She looked down.
It was a small pill, now ground into white powder. There was another one a couple of steps ahead. A small orange bottle lay on the floor beside the bed. Sorrow set the tea on Mom’s bedside table and picked up the bottle.
“Mom, you dropped your medicine.” She shook the bottle; there was only one pill left inside. “Mom?”
Sorrow reached for her shoulder to shake her awake. Mom groaned softly but didn’t open her eyes.
“Mom? Come on, Mom, wake up.”
Sorrow’s heart began to beat quickly. Her hands were shaking. There was a line of spit trailing from Mom’s mouth, glistening and wet on her jaw.
“Mom? Please wake up. Mom?”
Sorrow shook her again. Mom didn’t even groan this time.
“Grandma!” Sorrow ran into the hallway and shouted from the top of the stairs. “Grandma, Mom won’t wake up! Grandma!”
Downstairs the screen door opened, then snapped shut, and Grandma was hurrying up the stairs. She pushed past Sorrow and perched on the edge of Mom’s bed. Grandma shook her shoulders, patted her cheeks gently.
“I tried that.” Sorrow’s eyes were hot with tears and it was hard to breathe. “I tried that already!”
Grandma picked up the pill bottle and shook it, just as Sorrow had done.
“It was on the floor,” Sorrow said.
Grandma dropped the bottle onto the bed and grabbed the pen and notebook she wore around her neck. She scribbled some words and shoved the page at Sorrow.
Go to Abrams. Tell them to call ambulance.
Sorrow stared at the words on the page. “The Abramses? But—”
Grandma shook the page. When Sorrow still didn’t move, she stuffed the note into Sorrow’s hand and turned her to the door with a shooing motion: Go.
Sorrow ran. Down the steps and out of the house, around the yard to the driveway, and she sprinted through the orchard so fast she felt every jolting step in her bones and her teeth. She knew Mom would hate that she was going to the Abramses, hate that she was inviting them into family business, but she didn’t stop, didn’t even pause, and in a flash she was stumbling down the hill to the cider house meadow. She cut herself twice ducking through the barbed wire fence, and blood blossomed on her hand and wrist as she sprinted through the field on the other side.
Then she was pounding on their door, and Mr. Abrams was answering. His eyes went wide with surprise and his voice was booming and scary, but Sorrow could barely understand the words. He guided her inside, bewilderment etched all over his face. Sorrow had never been in the Abrams house before. Mr. Abrams seemed tall and alien and terrible, looking down at her, waiting for her to explain herself. Sorrow sucked in several breaths before she remembered Grandma’s note. She handed the crumpled paper to Mr. Abrams, and her legs gave way as he read it over. He asked her twice what was going on, but she couldn’t answer. He shouted for Mrs. Abrams and ran to the phone. Sorrow thought, as she wheezed through the taste of iron at the back of her throat, that she needed to tell them Mom was sick, needed to tell them that she had never seen Mom so still and so limp. Mom would hate it. She would hate it more than she hated anything, that Sorrow was here asking the Abramses for help, but Sorrow didn’t care. She didn’t care if Mom hated her forever and ever as long as they helped. She needed to make them understand. She had never seen Grandma so scared.