Page 129 of The Witch’s Orchard

“You drugged her.”

“Yes. And I told her that if she ever said who took her that the Witch of Quartz Creek would come to her house and kill every single person inside it.”

“She was only five years old,” I say.

She shrugs, lets out a tired breath. She’s coming to the end of her story, and she seems tired in the telling. Ready to go wherever it is that she is going next.

“And Molly?” I say, moving into the bathroom.

“Molly was so beautiful,” Deena says. “Such a good little girl, so eager to please.”

I listen as I unscrew the shower head from its pipe. I lay the shower head down on the toilet tank, then start unscrewing the shower head’s riser pipe from the wall. The pipe makes a grating sound as I turn it and, unsure of what Jessica may be able to hear from wherever she is, I go slowly. Very slowly.

“I brought a cookie for Molly the day I took her,” Deena says. “And she went right to sleep. I put her in the car and then I started back toward the house to tell Janice goodbye and I saw that man.”

“Dwight Hoyle,” I say.

“Yes. The plumber. We exchanged pleasantries and he said he was moving his truck and I left, feeling relieved that he hadn’t looked in the backseat of my car. But, later that night, he called me. He said he knew what I’d done. He wanted money.”

I think about all the stuff in the Hoyle household. The new TV, laptop. The new truck. The fact that they’d not worked real jobs the last ten years and lived, better than they should have been able to, on Dwight’s disability.

“I agreed, of course. On the condition that he make a phone call for me.”

“Susan McKinney,” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “He made the anonymous phone call. The police spent time investigating Susan instead of me. And then I started paying him. What choice did I have? At first, it was five hundred a month. Then a thousand. It was all I could afford. I tried to explain to him that most of the money was gone. That my family cut me off when I married Harvey instead of the man they’d picked for me. That Harvey’s factory had been dying and that he’d put everything he had into it. Harvey’s pension leftme with a thousand a month. I went through what was left of the savings, sold my jewelry, my furs. I tried to sell the house, but it was tied up in a land trust. Harvey had been such a conservationist. He’d wanted the home and land to be preserved as hunting grounds, turned into a park of some kind once both of us were gone.”

Her voice is wistful, with a tinge of annoyance. I think about the house, the car, the furniture, and the appliances. None of it less than ten years old. I’d seen this kind of thing before in old-money houses where no new money is coming in. The walls crumbling around them as they await the inevitable.

“What about the scarecrow?” I ask Deena.

“The what?”

“The scarecrow that you saw, on the day you took Molly. Why did you make that up?”

“I didn’t,” Deena says. “That was true. I really was startled by a figure in the distance. A scarecrow in a black cloak.”

“Ooof,” I say as the pipe finally comes free in my hand.

Lucy wanders into the bathroom and sits on the toilet seat and watches me.

“You’re Max’s friend,” she says.

“That’s right,” I say. “I’m here to help you.”

She nods.

“When the blond lady comes back,” I whisper to Lucy, “I want you to go into that linen closet right there, understand? Squeeze really small and hide. Can you do that?”

I point to the tiny cupboard that holds perfect white towels and washcloths on cedar shelves. Lucy nods.

“I’m hungry,” she says.

“I know,” I say. “We’ll get you something good to eat soon. I saw your mama today.”

Lucy’s eyes light up at the mention of her mother. It breaks my heart. I have to get us out of this.

“She said she made you a cake,” I say. “Lemon raspberry.”