Page 128 of The Witch’s Orchard

“She’s changed it,” Deena says, still distant but less dreamy. “I already got Lucy to try.”

“Let’s try again,” I say.

Deena tells me the numbers. I punch them in. Nothing happens.

“Christ,” I breathe. And when I breathe, I cough. And when I cough my head throbs. I put my fingers to my skull and feel a gooey wetness. I decide to focus on literally anything else. “So you… what? You’ve got the poppets and… now what?”

“I had them with me one day when I went to the church. I finished my practice and stood and looked out the window. There was Jessica. She was sitting on the swing set, swinging. All by herself. Her mother was asleep in the car. Honestly. It was disgraceful.”

She laughs a little at the memory, and then tears come to her eyes.

“I felt a presence in me,” she says. “It told me that the girl should bemine. Was meant to be mine, all along. I walked outside and I asked her if she would like to come with me. She said yes.”

I think I might vomit again but I fight the urge and work my way around the room, looking for some other way out, some other weapon, anything I can use. I open the chests and look around. There are wooden tops and the disembodied head of a Lovely Lady Lavender doll. Her eyes shine, bright and violet, at me.

Deena goes on. “She said yes. And so I took her and I left the doll behind. I had made a trade. The magic had worked.”

“What about Sheriff Kerridge?” I ask. “Didn’t he search your car?”

She nods, gives a little smile at the memory.

“I was so sure he would take her away from me. Instead, he looked straight at her and shut the door. That’s when I knew the magic had truly worked. That’s when I knew. Later, he came to the house. He told me that Tommy Hoyle had abused his sister and that he’d seen Tommy out with Jessica and the way he’d had his hands on her… he knew. He knew he had to protect her. He knew that I should be her rightful mother. He told me that I should wait a few months, then take Jessica and leave town and never come back.”

“And you agreed?”

“Yes.”

“But that wasn’t enough, was it? You made two dolls to replace your twins.”

“Yes.”

“So, you took Olivia.”

“Yes. She was so beautiful but… she was defective, wasn’t she? All wrong. I’d had no idea. Not until I brought her back here and discovered that she was broken.”

I dig through the chest. I find nothing that could be used as a weapon. Why didn’t people give girls wooden swords? Baseball bats? Golf clubs?

“I had a vision,” Deena continues. “Of sitting at my piano and playing while my little girls sang along.” She laughs. “It’s all I wanted.”

“And Olivia doesn’t sing along,” I say.

“No,” she says. “I thought, perhaps, she was merely highly strung. I learned from the book how to make tea that drops your inhibition. Lets you see and feel things that you normally cannot see or feel.”

“The mountain laurel plant,” I say.

“Yes. But it didn’t do any good. Olivia only cried and screamed. She never spoke or sang. No matter what we tried. Jessica was… especially violent.”

I think about the bruises they’d found on Olivia’s arms and legs when she was returned. I feel sick again, but I get to my feet and continue working through the room. I find gauzy nightgowns and frilly dresses and silky underthings in the drawers; nothing else. There’s a silver tray holding a wooden hairbrush with boar bristles and scented oils of various kinds, all in useless plastic bottles. There’s not even a nail file.

“Sheriff Kerridge came to see me. He knew, of course, that I’d taken her. He said he’d made a terrible mistake. That we both had. That we’d have to tell the truth and face the consequences. I couldn’t have that. Even if Olivia was broken, I would simply have to replace her. And I couldn’t do that if Kerridge told everyone the truth.”

I think about Susan McKinney’s relationship with Kerridge. How she found him dead on his kitchen floor, apparently from a heart attack.

“I went to his house,” Deena says. “I brought cake and said that we should talk about it. I knew he had heart problems. It didn’t take much. He ate. I didn’t. I watched him die and then I left and took the cake with me.”

“And Olivia?”

“I took her back,” Deena says, defensively. As if that made up for everything. “I didn’t think she would ever be able to tell anyone what had happened to her, but… just in case.”