Page 107 of The Witch’s Orchard

“It’s okay,” Nicole says to her sister again. “You’re safe now.”

But there’s nothing for it. Olivia can’t stop sobbing now that she’s started. Can’t stop howling with terror, like it’s all happening again.

Because it is.

“I think it’s time to go,” Nicole says. “You want to go, Olivia?”

Olivia waves. Her tears are slowing. Her screams are quieting. But her face is still an angry red, her lip still quivering.

“Thank you,” I say, getting to my knees in front of her. “Thank you for coming here, Olivia. For helping me.”

“Come on, Liv,” Nicole says softly. She stands and Olivia stands with her. They move toward their coats. Nicole helps Olivia into hers and then hands Olivia a tissue.

When they’re both bundled up, Nicole faces me and says, “What’s happening? Who is taking these little girls? Who would do something so awful? Is there really a witch?”

All I can do is shake my head and tell her the truth.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

THIRTY-FIVE

I’M SITTING ON MYgranny’s porch. It is autumn and the air smells like sweet rot.

“Did you see her?” my granny’s voice asks.

I am dreaming.

“Who?” I ask. I’m still looking straight ahead. Sitting on the porch, I’m waiting. For my father? My mother? Someone. My face is propped on the heels of my hands and my elbows dig into my thighs. I am small. Bony. Everyone has always thought I am younger than I am. Little.

“The woman,” my granny says. “The witch.”

“I saw a witch,” I tell her.

There is a flapping sound and a crow lands in the dirt in front of my feet. I hold out my hand to it. It drops an apple core into my palm. The flesh is wet and brown. What’s left of the skin is a green so bright it hurts my eyes.

“Those seeds are toxic,” my granny says.

I pull the apple closer to my face, close enough now that I can smell the way rot is taking it, the way it takes us all. Inside the core, there are two black seeds.

“Every apple—” my granny says. And her voice is a crow’s voice. It rustles through the air behind me, and I shiver to hear it.

“Every apple has a little poison in it.”

I wake up.

Groggy, I glance at the window. Dawn is breaking.

I scrunch the sheets in my fists, anxious to feel something tactile and real. Something to tell me that, finally, I am awake. Alive. Present.

I breathe, and my breathing comes in grating rasps, and I try, briefly, to deny to myself that I’m sick, but I feel feverish. Chilled and hot. Shaky.

I sit up and the file full of papers slides off my chest and tumbles onto the floor. I’d fallen asleep reading ten-year-old witness statements, and now I blink at what seems impossibly small text.

“God,” I mutter. “What day is it?”

I look at the phone on the nightstand, find myself wishing it would buzz. Wishing to hear Leo’s familiar deep voice while he laughs and drinks and exists—so easily—in the world in which I struggle.

When the phone does vibrate, my heart lurches. But it isn’t Leo. Tina’s picture and number show up on the screen instead.