Lil closes her eyes, full of the urge to curl up in the banner, wrap it around her.

  She feels Jason’s cool hand on her shoulder. “The road is closed,” he allows, tilting his head back and forth. “But—we have the riverboat. The casino’s right there across the river. We can publicize.”

  “I must be losing my touch if you thought of the Pecan Festival before I did.” Lil wipes surreptitiously at her eyes. She stands, bringing the banner with her. “I love it, Jason. It’s perfect.”

  “Amazing.” He hoists one of the boxes with a muffled grunt. “Let’s save the town.”

  ***

  Sasha spends her morning in a shift at the library for Freddie, yawning across the information desk and idly flipping books from cover to blurb as she shelves them. She isn’t much of a reader, honestly—neither sister is. Too busy? Too self-involved, maybe.

  In childhood, Sasha would read aloud to Lil, performances that became increasingly staged, with their stuffed animals recruited into a story time cast with a multitude of voices. Once Mom arrived to shut off the stage lights, they’d retreat under the covers, and Sasha’s whispered dramatics would keep them up well past a reasonable bedtime. This probably led to Sasha’s stint in drama club in high school, where she landed a couple of major roles in unforgettable productions of The Wizard of Oz (the Tin Man) and even As You Like It (Celia). Autumn ran the lights, and they’d sneak smokes with the rest of the crew of misfits after those endless rehearsals.

  Still, Sasha reflects as she checks out a couple of Anne Rice paperbacks to take on the boat with her, her best work was definitely those bedtime one-woman shows she put on for Lil. And, maybe, without her to read to, novels just didn’t have quite the same draw.

  She feels bruised and exposed after that argument. Lil was so shocked, like Sasha had just punched through the parchment paper window of their playhouse. If you can’t see that, then maybe you’re the one with the problem.

  You’re the problem.

  And Theon said, I know you don’t belong here.

  The sky is long blue rows of clouds scorched to fire at their edges as she trudges home, the books under her arm. She’s deep in her own mind, so she doesn’t see her until she’s right on top of her.

  Pale and covered in dirt and smears, Autumn sits on the porch steps, head leaning against the railing. Her ponytail is half-out and there’s—blood. Blood and mud smear her legs, a terrible wound at her ankle oozing.

  She opens her eyes as Sasha approaches and offers a wan almost-smile. “Can I come in?” she asks hoarsely.

  “What—here,” Sasha hurries over to hoist Autumn against her shoulder, half carrying her into the house. She settles her at the kitchen table and starts rummaging in cabinets at random for the first aid kit. It’s in the same old place above the sink, and Sasha carries it over. Before doing anything with it, she pours Autumn a double brandy from the bar and sets it on the table. “What the hell happened?”

  “Long stupid story.” Autumn downs her shot, winces and rests her head on her arms. Her eyes peek out from her curtain of hair. Sasha pulls her leg up into her lap and opens the kit.

  It’s weirdly difficult to breathe as she rolls up Autumn’s jeans, bits of denim sticking in dried blood. For a moment, Autumn hides, shoulders trembling. “I, um—have you checked your answering machine?” her voice is wet and choked. “I left you a message.”

  Sasha listened to that voicemail, but it was this morning, in the midst of rushing off to the library and her post-fight-with-Lil misery spiral. She peeked through the window at the bakery, but the front was dark. She should’ve knocked. She should’ve cared a little more. Sasha grinds her teeth.

  “I’m sorry, Pip.” She works as tenderly as she can, cleaning dirt and dried blood until she can see the wound itself, punctures and a ring of mottled bruising so terrible it’s hard to imagine it’ll ever fade. Clearly it has bled badly. Autumn tells the story in woozy bursts. A loaf of bread. A child. Autumn’s tender, foolish heart leading her into shady, vine-choked woods. Sasha’s own heart pounds.

  How many other traps crouch under the kudzu?

  “There’s something out there,” Autumn murmurs as Sasha winds the bandage over the ragged but clean injury. “I was being watched.”

  Sasha’s voice sounds calmer than she feels. “You mean besides by the terrifying Ewok child?” All the emotions of the past two days are collecting at the pressure point in her sinuses. She’s definitely about to lose it. “What if he hadn’t come around?” Her hands shake as she clatters the first aid kit shut. “How would I have found you?”

  Autumn’s eyes fall on her like she must be seeing through the eggshell holding Sasha together. “I don’t know,” she admits. “It’s bad out there. Worse than I remember. How long has it been like this?”

  “I mean, it’s been going down for years. West of town was rough even when our parents were young,” Sasha says, tearing medical tape with her teeth.

  Autumn catches her arm. “No, Sasha, how long—” she breaks off, lips pressed together in a thin line. Sasha waits, heart running. “Never mind,” she relents after a moment, hand sliding away from Sasha’s. But something guarded lingers in her eyes.

  Sasha waits, just in case she changes her mind. But Autumn’s had a hard day; she doesn’t have to talk if she doesn’t want to. Not tonight. “You’ll have to check all over for ticks whenever you shower.” Sasha hovers, unsure where to turn next. “Want some aspirin? Another drink?”

  “I’ll take another drink.” A tremulous fraction of that Autumn cheeriness is returning. “You fixed me up great. Thanks, doc.” She taps her empty glass on the table, gaze skating away. “Can I stay with you tonight?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Sasha grabs a second glass from the dish rack and collapses into the chair beside her, pulling a sardonic smile onto her face with effort. “Did you actually think I was going to let you leave?”

  Autumn snickers a little. “My hero. My knight in shining flannel.” She nudges her glass to Sasha. “Go on then. Pour me another.”

  Sasha pours. She’ll empty this bottle, turn on every light in the house, play the stereo as loud as it’ll go—anything to chase the dark away tonight.

  Chapter Twelve

  Once, Sasha and Lil shared the room with the low slanting ceiling and the view over the back acres. There was a single vanity for both of them, with their plastic jewelry and a big mirror, a communal bookcase, two sides of one closet, and two twin beds with matching flowering quilts. A macrame tapestry. A watercolor of hot-air balloons.

  Lil moved out when they were teenagers. She was a cheetah in those days, scratching at the walls, trying to get enough space to stretch out. Jason, who was at least half the cause, helped her haul her mattress up the stairs and into the attic.

  Lil took nothing else from their old room. She still sleeps a floor up in that huge not-quite-a-bedroom. It is still her domain, window ledges full of her houseplants, clothes in a big wardrobe. The master remains Mom’s, even now.

  And Sasha?

  The childhood bedroom is hers. It’s had a couple of updates. The macrame tapestry was taken down. There are more photographs now from her darkroom, ones Sasha liked enough to look at every day. One of them is from her show in New York, and someone had offered her a lot of money for it, which she’d turned down. It’s of Linda, taken on a day trip to Philadelphia. They’d wandered down South Street and spied this guy tiling an alley. What he’d done looked like a shattered rainbow: wineglass bottoms, bits of broken porcelain, hand-painted ceramics. Sasha had photographed Linda there, her face captured in a mirror reduced to shards and then mosaiced there in that alley, so she could see fragments of her face at half a dozen angles. Reflected there, she was a Demoiselle D’Avignon, a woman in pieces: a cheekbone, a quizzical chin, one mahogany eye, keen and bright and on Sasha through the lens.

  Sasha had hung it here and then immediately wished she’d sold it back in New York.

  She’d also pushed the two twin beds together, and they fit naturally into one bigger bed. Just put king-size sheets on. It’s always a slumber party in here these days.

  That’s where Autumn sits now in one of Sasha’s softest flannels, her leg resting on a pillow to keep it elevated, another double of brandy on the windowsill next to her. The lamplight infuses russet flyaways all over her head and glows on her knobbly knees. She’s watching the moonrise over the canopies when she stiffens.

  “Look,” Autumn murmurs. “On the hill.”

  Sasha follows her gaze. Up there, on the halo of hills that bound their town, something glimmers. A ghost light. No. Another house fire. It startles her, but almost immediately the fire snuffs out.

  “It’s just like the one we fought,” Autumn says. “On and off again. What do you make of that?”

  Sasha squints out into the darkness. With the fire gone as soon as it appeared, there’s no way they’d find it now, driving around out in the night. “Just jot it down in our notepad of mysteries, Pip. I don’t know.”

  “That notepad must be getting really full.” Autumn watches for another tense moment, but the flicker is gone, and slowly, tension releases its grip on her. “Can’t remember the last time I had this kind of sleepover,” she tells the moon, the stars, the lost beetle tapping on the outside of the window.

  Sasha hops onto the bed beside her. “Want me to braid your hair?” It sounds ironic, but it’s not: Sasha actually learned to braid so she had an excuse to touch this hair, this hair that looked like fall and smelled like Christmas.

  “Like old times.” Autumn’s hair is a little damp from the shower she’s taken, blood and dirt and leaves all washed down the drain. She shifts enough to turn Sasha’s way. Downstairs, Lil has come in for the night, her steps creaking around the kitchen. “Braiding hair, telling secrets.”

  Sasha stretches for the brush sitting on top of her dresser, then gathers Autumn’s hair in her hands, dividing it into fragrant sections. “So. Tell me a secret.” It’s the kind of thing you ask without totally wanting to know; if you don’t pry, then things are just as they were. But it’s in those stories, those life experiences missed when the paths diverge, where the alienation lies between friends. Sasha has plenty of her own stories that, safely tucked away, can’t distance her from those she longs to pull closer. She listens to the kettle singing in the kitchen, and her heart tugs.

  “Glad you asked. I’ve traveled the world, dabbled in espionage, the trading of illegal baked goods…some real femme fatale behavior.” The top of Autumn’s head brushes Sasha’s chin. One of her fingernails is broken. But she’s smiling now, brandy-loose and relaxed. “I’m sure you remember the power of my…secret-ingredient brownies.”

  Sasha gets her gist immediately, remembering that one night in the tree house. The night. “I thought we didn’t talk about that,” she says, giving that hair a playful tug. She steadies her breath.

  Autumn waves a hand, putting on a deep, dramatic voice. “What happens in the tree house…”

  Stays in the tree house. All of the hours they passed there. It’s a precious relic from those teenage years, one of the few secret places Sasha never shared with Lil, but kept for her and Autumn alone. They’d discovered it together, built in an oak beside a creek. It wasn’t much of a house, just a floor and an approximation of a wall. It should have been condemned because of the sloped angle it held over the water. They were always one misplaced elbow from death.

  They’d had so many times out there, Sasha digging her fingers into Autumn’s ribs to make her laugh, or else listening to the radio, Autumn’s head resting on her chest like it belonged there. Then there was that night. The last night, right before Sasha left for SCAD.

  “What do you even remember about that?” Sasha laughs, tangling the strands between the fingers of one hand as she stretches for a scrunchie on the bedside table. She is careful. The laugh is a cover, because truthfully, even the mention of that night hurts her. “Those brownies were…”

  They’d huddled out there, night damp, tickling their fingertips over candle flames to keep warm as they waited for something to happen. The tree house had creaked ominously in the wind, filling the night with a feeling of presence, like little feet in the brush below, or something sinister between the trees. And then, in several hot-air balloon lifts, something kicked in, and they were suddenly weightless, the tree house shot into orbit. No one could stop laughing, and thoughtlessly, Sasha had reached to touch the fanned flame of Autumn’s hair.

  “What do I remember?” Autumn muses. “I remember…skipping school because baking was more important. And I remember you”—she pokes Sasha’s side, right where it’s a little squashy—“trying to recite your lines from Midsummer Night’s Dream to me. You were really into it, lady bard. I think you made yourself cry.”

  “Ha.” No. Sasha had not cried then, but she’d cried the next morning after she limped home, a late, hungover huddle under her covers. She’d been so filled with bravado that night, with joy and youth and their perfect knowing of each other. And at dawn, covered in shivering dew, head pounding, Autumn had ducked out. Even this time, when Pip is bringing it up herself, she acts like she doesn’t remember the most important strokes of that night. Maybe she really doesn’t remember. And that makes Sasha not only an idiot—the unloved, gay weirdo—it also means that maybe everything that happened up there was inappropriate. Manipulative.

  Sasha sniffs theatrically and jerks herself out of that memory. Because Pip doesn’t remember, and so when Sasha visits that place in her mind, she feels entirely alone. “The life of a fairy queen is a heavy burden.” She finishes her shining plait. “There you go. I’ve outdone myself.”

  Autumn feels for the braid with her fingers, and makes a small approving sound. “Please, continue pampering me.” She flops back against Sasha’s chest like she’s an armchair. “It’s been such a day.”

  “You’ve been through hell. You’re probably in shock,” Sasha hears herself say. She’s right here, so close after so long apart, collapsing time into touch—and it’s like they’re back in that last night before they parted ways and everything was never quite the same again. Sasha reaches awkwardly, just grasping the corner of her quilt with her fingertips, and pulls it up over them, tucking Autumn in. “I bet you’re exhausted.”

  “What does shock feel like, do you think?” Autumn plays with the end of her new braid as Sasha cuts the light. They are left in the night-light glow.

  “How should I know? Like this?” It feels dark and charged in here now, yet Sasha gives her a swift tickle anyway. Autumn shrieks, half laugh, half pain, wrenching hard enough that Sasha apologizes quickly. “Sorry, sorry! That wasn’t nice.” Sasha hugs her tighter. Her own heart is pounding too, with Autumn right against her like this. Maybe teenagers can wrap up in a tangle of limbs and pretend it’s platonic, but at some point, Sasha graduated out of this ability. Still, that’s not fair; it isn’t good to snuggle your probably-straight friend under false pretenses. She tries to stifle the heat pooling inside her. “You’re still freezing.”

  Autumn wraps a hand around Sasha’s elbow, a quiet bid for comfort. “I’m still scared,” she admits.

  A cool breeze drifts in the window, carrying with it the sweet scent of the pecans, of damp bark and fallen leaves. They’re far from danger here. “‘Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms,’” Sasha murmurs, dredging Titania up from her deep memory. She searches for the next piece. “‘So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle gently entwist; the female ivy so…enrings the barky fingers of the elm.’”

  Autumn sighs against her, just in time with the rustle of leaves from the orchard. If there are any fires burning out there in the night, they are beyond their view.

  ***

  Lil knows better than anyone that if she’s waiting for Sasha to resolve a conflict like an adult, she’s going to be waiting in tree rings rather than days. They move through and around each other like specters, and for once, Lil doesn’t have the energy to build the bridge.

  Someone clearly spent the night, probably Autumn, but Lil is already out of the house by the time anyone from the childhood bedroom stirs the next morning. It gnaws, having to be the mature one when sometimes all Lil wants to do is burn.

  Jason waits for her on the porch of Honeysuckle House, and he’s killing time by pulling vines off the bone-white columns. Perched on one of the wicker outdoor chairs is a checklist and clipboard. Ah, yes. Student Council President Finch is ready to run the agenda, as usual. He has the toe of one beat-up old sneaker wedged into the balustrade as he hoists himself precariously up to snatch one of the higher tendrils of ivy from the capitol—which is how Lil manages to sneak up on him.

  She shades her eyes against the light, which falls like a golden veil over the scene, smiling despite herself. “Your fly’s down.”

  Jason jumps, then wobbles on his perch, threatening to tumble over on top of her. Then he rights himself and joins her, the vine trailing behind him like a party streamer. “No it’s not,” he says, giving her a swift kiss on the cheek. It could be friendly, but it leaves a scorch of heat behind. The heat Jason gives off is never more than thinly concealed, and she sees it now, a simmer in the eyes. “Morning. Ready to win everybody over?”

  “No wonder you’re in politics,” Lil replies, scooping up his notes, a thorough checklist of all the people they’ll need on their side, all the roles they’ll have to fill to put on the festival. “Let’s go. I’ll read on the way.”

  She flips through Jason’s near-impeccable initial plans as they walk, poking a couple of good-natured holes in it—his handwriting, the color of the pen—just to stir him up. They squabble. It’s friendlier than they’ve been since the law school debacle, their old patterns reanimated. Bickering to feel alive, because they both loved a battle of wits, feeding off each other’s energy. She can’t help it. As gentle as Lil feels in the presence of her trees and her family, she had missed the unbridled freedom that came from Jason’s adoration of the whole of her, even her sharpest edge. He was the only one who seemed to want the sheer volume of her love, her passion, her loyalty. Having him here, with her and on her side, was arnica to the bruise of heartbreak.