Page 84 of The Witch’s Orchard

“Was she a grandma? Did she have grandkids?”

“Huh,” Shiloh says, loading the cakes into the van. “You know what? No, I don’t think so. I don’t think her and Brother Bob ever had kids.” She puts the last cake in and then shuts the door and looks at me with her head tilted, her hands on her hips. “Do you think they had something to do with the kidnappings?”

I take a deep breath, the story about the witch and the birds still spinning in my mind. “This whole thing feels very ritualistic,” I say, and realize I’m echoing an old coot who intentionally makes people wait for his plumbing services. Maybe I’m grasping at straws, but I don’t think so. All he’d done was give voice to a feeling I’d already had and been afraid to say.

“The dolls, the velvet dress, the stone circle, the crows…”

“Which is why you’re asking about the witch,” Shiloh says.

“Yeah.”

“And you’re wondering who, among the old women of Quartz Creek, might be a witch.”

“Do I sound crazy?”

She laughs.

“No,” she says. “You’re just starting to sound like someone from around here. When I was a kid, it was practically common knowledge that the Witch of Quartz Creek took those girls. I remember it made Max’s dad furious.”

“Why?”

“Because I guess… in his mind, you’ll never find the truth if you go around trying to catch someone who doesn’t exist.”

I open my mouth and then close it, but an uneasy feeling flutters around my heart.

Are you so sure the witch doesn’t exist?

She climbs into the van, starts it up, and opens the window. “You coming to this shindig tonight?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I want to talk to Bob and Rebecca. I’ll be around.”

“Okay,” she says. “See you there.”

I watch as she pulls out and drives away, and I think about the mother who traded her little girls for all the apples she could carry.

TWENTY-SEVEN

THE PARKING LOT OFFirst Baptist is so full, I have to circle twice before I find a spot. The doors to the church are open and a few adults linger there, talking. But the festival proper is going full swing in the big side yard. The field is interspersed with tall, old oaks, and between them children run from booth to booth in costume.

“Wow,” I say as a kid scoots past me in a squishy-muscled Batman suit. Far across the crowd, I spot Brother Bob standing beside the grab bag table talking to a group of older adults all wrapped up in sweaters and nice coats like this is just another church service.

“Hey!” Shiloh shouts, waving me over from the cakewalk booth. Reluctantly, I push my way through a throng of families and kids with buckets and pillowcases full of candy and make my way to her booth.

“Hey,” I say. “I didn’t realize you were actually working this thing too. I thought you were just baking cakes.”

She rolls her eyes, hands on her hips, “Yeah, I know. But Betsy Hopewell’s kid got into the candy early. She’s been hurling Reese’s cups into the bushes for the last half hour so my mom took over Betsy’s booth. I wouldn’t trade her. It’s a DIY candied apple booth. God, so many apples are going to be stuck in so much hair tomorrow.”

I laugh, and she hands me a cupcake and I feel like this is her superpower—handing people delicious baked goods that seem to appearfrom nowhere. I eat the magic cupcake and ask, around a mouthful of rich chocolate cake and caramel buttercream, “You haven’t seen Rebecca, have you?”

Shiloh squints out at the crowd and says, “Well, I thought she was here but… gosh, I don’t see her.”

“Oh well,” I say. “It’s Bob I really need to talk to anyway.”

I turn and push through the crowd to the grab bag table and approach Bob.

“Good evening,” Bob says, breaking away from his parishioners to face me.

A kid approaches with his mom and they both take a grab bag from a nearby table, wave at Bob, and walk away.