Page 24 of The Witch’s Orchard

NINETEEN

I AM STANDING ON MY granny’s porch.

It’s raining and the raindrops splatter and drum on the tin roof overhead. My skin is cold and wet and my hair drips.

My granny is beside me, but I can’t turn my head. I only know that she’s there.

She’s peeling an apple. I hear the scrape scrape scrape of her knife, sliding under the skin, separating shiny peel from tender sweet flesh.

The rain splatters and drums.

She has potted plants all over the porch. There is no gutter and the rain slides off the corrugated tin and into the pots. The plants glisten and their leaves bounce and the heavy heads of the flowers bow under the pressure of the steady, relentless, cold, thrumming rain.

“Here,” my granny says beside me. I still don’t see her but I hear the chair creak as she gets up. She puts the peeled apple in my hand and I feel its mealy flesh against my palm.

I hold it up.

There is a face in the apple: two black eyes and a carved-out mouth.

The rain splatters and drums and the eyes in front of me blink and the mouth twists into movement. It says, “Annie. You killed her.”

I throw the apple into the rain and a crow sweeps down from a scraggly, twisted apple tree and catches the apple by the stem. The crow makes a circle and perches on the porch railing and drops the apple, and the face goes rolling off the edge of the porch and into the sodden ground below.

“Annie,” the crow says. “Annie, will you kill the other one too?”

And then the crow opens its mouth and a hard buzzing comes out. Like a thousand bees, it vibrates through my teeth and into my brain and, finally, I open my eyes.

“Dream,” I whisper, groggy. “Just a dream.”

And yet the buzzing continues. I look to my left.

My phone is vibrating, wiggling itself to the edge of the nightstand.

I pick up, answer, put it on speaker.

“Annie,” Leo says. “You okay? I’ve been calling you the last twenty minutes.”

“It’s…” I look at the window.

It’s already past dawn. I rub my eyes and sit up in bed and say, “I was dreaming. I… I guess I was dreaming.”

“You gotta get out of that hick-ass town, Annie. That shit is crazy. I saw they found your girl.”

“Yeah,” I say. I don’t remember telling him the name of the town I was in but I’m not surprised he knows, not surprised he checked the news. “I found her yesterday morning.”

I sit up and discover that I’m wobbly, still tired, still half in the dream. Outside, it’s raining. It’s a cold, foggy, pelting rain. I yank on my tennis shoes regardless.

“You okay?” Leo asks again. The worry in his voice startles me, and I realize I must sound as bad as I feel.

“Yeah,” I say. Carrying my phone, I stumble into the bathroom, where I splash my face, pee, wash my hands, hold my mouth under the spigot. “Yeah. I’m okay. But… Leo, that girl was probably here the whole time.”

“Yeah,” Leo says. “Or else someone went to a whole lot of trouble to bring her out there just for someone to find.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Me.”

I pull on my leggings and try to focus on the feel of the fabric against my skin, the tight laces of my shoes, the too-bright light of the phone.

“Are you still in… wherever you are?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Leo says. “Just about done. We’ve got some loose ends to tie up—I’ve got to track down some stuff, get things…”

“Tied up,” I say. My eyes are closed.

I sit on the edge of the bed and listen to the rustle of the breath in my chest and think about how much I just want to crawl back under the covers and how much I have to get up and get moving.

“Tell me what you ate for breakfast,” I say.

It’s an old trick. Something Leo started and neither of us ever put into words.

It was, like so many things between us, simply understood.

A place to steer a conversation when you want to admit you’re a raw nerve but not in a place—either physical or emotional—that you can have a soul-bearing discussion.

Translation: I am in a bad way, but there’s nothing I can do about it and I need to hear the sound of your voice.

“I had these chicken coconut noodles,” Leo answers, no hesitation.

“They came in this yellow fish sauce. I think turmeric, probably. Lots of garlic. Two boiled eggs in there, nice and soft. They were small eggs, too. Not like you get back in the States. Velvety.” There’s a pause and then, “Hey, you ever had Velveeta?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“I should think it’s nasty but I don’t,” Leo says. “Always have a special place in my heart for Velveeta.”

My mouth breaks into a smile. In the end, it’s the sound of Leo’s voice that brings me back to reality, brings me back to myself. I pad into the kitchen, get a glass of water, take a few sips.

“Hey, listen,” Leo says. “I’ve got a guy looking into your Bob Ziegler.”

“Okay.”

“Should know something later.”

“All right. Let me know.”

“I will.”

I slip my jacket on and then pull a rain shell over it.

“Have a good run,” Leo says.

“Sure.”

“And take your gun.”

I tuck the Mongoose into the usual place, slip my phone into an inside shell pocket, check all the locks on the windows, check Honey’s locks and windows, and leave.

After my late start, the sun is already up over the far ridge, but hidden behind deep gray clouds and sheets of rain, so it’s still mostly dark.

I step off the porch, walk a few steps, break into a slow trot, and then find my stride.

Even in the rain, even when it’s cold, even when I’m haunted by bizarre dreams of talking appleheads and crows, it feels good to run. It feels good to let my mind slip from the frenzied minutiae of the case and let it flow as I flow, one step at a time, in a thumping, steady rhythm.

It’s no time before I find myself at the stone circle again.

I stop outside it. The whole area is cordoned off with police tape.

Little flags are stuck in the ground where items of interest were found.

A piece of hair maybe, a footprint that’s been washed away in this rain.

I can’t help myself: I stare at the ground picturing Molly Andrews’s body, so peacefully laid to rest that she almost looked asleep.

I think about that summer, ten years ago, when first Jessica, then Olivia, then Molly were kidnapped. Think about the desperation in a town whose primary source of employment had just closed. I think about Molly’s long hair and pale skin and subtly abused insides.

“Where were you…” I whisper.

“You standing around out here feeling bad for yourself, or what?”

I snap to attention at the rattly voice and look up to find Susan McKinney, this time in a long black mackintosh and high green rubber boots. Most of her gray hair is hidden under a wide-brimmed hat, but wisps of it stick out, curling like corkscrews in the damp.

“I—”

She jerks her chin back up the trail and says, “Why don’t you come up.”

It’s not a question. And I don’t answer.

I just follow her and watch the clear water stream over her oiled black shoulders and splash onto the muddy trail under my feet.