“You were really brave yesterday,” Autumn tries, even as Sasha’s mouth presses into a hard line. “I’m doing a lot better now. You helped me. I just wanted to thank you.” She speaks more softly, putting all the conviction she feels about this into it. “But we can leave the food here, if you want.”

  A shape shivers in the grass, no more a disturbance than a rabbit. And there it is, back from the tracks about twenty feet: the mask, peering at them. Autumn can’t help beaming at the proof that he’s here, thriving in his own way. The kudzu hasn’t swallowed him. “Hi. I brought a friend.”

  Sasha starts to stand, but Autumn catches her wrist and pulls. They’ve got to stay relaxed. She’s lost this boy twice already, and she won’t again.

  The boy wears the same faded shirt and no shoes at all.

  “I don’t think I told you my name last time.” Autumn keeps her tone light. She reaches into the basket and pulls out one of the sausage rolls. She unwraps the foil, lets the smell bloom in the air. The boy inches closer. “I’m Autumn.” She nudges forward, two pairs of eyes tracking her, and lays the gift on the tracks, far enough away that he might feel safe taking it. “This is my friend, Sasha.” The little masked figure lets out a snappish combination of word-sounds he must’ve learned from the trees.

  This time, since she isn’t actively bleeding, it makes Autumn laugh a little. “I know, I know, you told me not to come back,” she says, like they’re speaking the same language. “But I had to. This is one of my favorite foods, and I think you’ll like it too.”

  The smell of good food, the sound of friendly laughter: they’re her most powerful tools.

  And they work. The boy inches forward, close enough to snatch the sausage roll then retreat swiftly. His mask falls to the ground so he can cram half in his mouth. He chomps away, his small face very serious. He has warm, sun-kissed skin and shaggy brown hair, matted and hanging nearly to his shoulders. His baby face is smudged with grime. His eyes are a luminous amber.

  “Where’s the purple?” he says, a baby-lion growl.

  “The…purple?”

  “The—thing—the—” he frowns, lacking the words, bares his teeth. “Purple sweet…blood.”

  “What the hell?” Sasha breathes.

  “Oh, the blueberry pies!” Autumn realizes. “I didn’t have any more blueberries. Sorry. But I brought you some cookies with chocolate. Do you know about chocolate?”

  For a moment, he just looks at her. Then he nods his head slowly.

  “You’ll love these.” She grabs three cookies from the basket, hands one to Sasha, and scoots closer to the boy. He arches a little, a cautious move. But she stops before she’s in reach, and carefully tosses a foil-wrapped cookie his way. He snatches it out of the air.

  She unwraps hers and takes a bite. Oatmeal and chocolate with just a hint of cinnamon: what could be warmer on a cool day?

  “Do you live around here?” she asks. “We do.”

  The little boy chatters like a squirrel, glancing back toward the overgrown darkness of the trees. He plops down in the brush to devour the rest of his sausage roll.

  “So I’m Sasha, this is Autumn…” Sasha repeats, then points to him. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

  He dithers. “Umm—Wyn.”

  “Wyn?” Sasha clarifies, around a bite of her own cookie.

  He shows her his teeth, not quite a grin. Several of his baby teeth are already gone, maybe knocked out. He couldn’t be more than five or six years old.

  Sasha shrugs, then shows him her teeth back. “Nice to meet you,” she says.

  Wyn tucks his foil-wrapped cookie into his pants, then wanders over to investigate the now open baskets, his head nearly shoved inside. Winnie the Pooh in a honeypot. “You know the liberry?” he mumbles.

  “I love the library,” Autumn says. “I went all the time when I was a kid. Do your parents take you?”

  Wyn pokes his head back out. He has found another goodie, which is now in his mouth. He takes it out to peer at her. “What’s a…?” He seems shy to try to say a word he doesn’t know. “Don’t know,” he says instead. “Neel and me—Neel and me, we go to the liberry. Sometimes.”

  Autumn nods, not wanting to startle him. But at least he isn’t alone. He looks like someone must be feeding him, helping him make masks, keeping him alive out here. “Is it just you and Neel?”

  “Used to be Fran and Googoo and umm—” Wyn searches for another name, but gives up with a shrug.

  Sasha gives Autumn an ominous look. Other children were out here, apparently, at least at one time. And what happened to them?

  “Used to be?” Autumn prompts.

  “Train.” Wyn is gnawing contemplatively. “Don’t—you better not touch those vines,” he says finally. Sasha hastily drags her sneaker away from the kudzu edging over the ground.

  “Wyn,” Autumn begins and scoots a little closer to him. He’s glancing over his shoulder. “Do you like living out here? Are you safe—”

  “Get back, Wyn,” someone shouts, fiercely enough that Sasha seizes Autumn’s wrist. Standing a few yards from them, nearer the trees, is another boy, this one maybe ten or so. His hair is a dark mop of unkempt curls. Wyn stares wide-eyed at him. This must be Neel, Wyn’s protector. “Get away from him,” the boy snarls. Worst of all, he is brandishing a shotgun.

  Autumn raises her hands. “It’s okay. We’re friends.” She offers her kindest smile. “Are you Neel?”

  The boy fires his gun straight into the air. “Get,” he yells. He is even scrawnier than Wyn, a body forced to grow on scraps.

  Wyn starts to cry.

  “Now hang on,” Sasha tries, though she is also on her feet and yanking at Autumn. “We’re friendly—”

  Neel reloads. Even at his age, he has the desperate, dead-eyed edge of a person capable of taking a lethal shot.

  Wyn glances between Autumn and Neel, then scurries back to him.

  Autumn lets Sasha pull her up, distantly aware that she’s crying too. “We don’t want to hurt you. We want to help you.” The kudzu vines nearly trip her, and it’s only Sasha’s grip that pulls her clear of them.

  “C’mon,” Sasha murmurs, holding tight to her hand. “We’ll come back.”

  “But he—I can’t leave them here,” Autumn pleads.

  Wyn hovers by Neel now, watching the gun nervously. Tears track down his face.

  “We don’t need your help,” Neel shouts, something wild in his face. “You’ll bring the hungry man.” And he points the shotgun straight at them.

  That’s the last straw for Sasha. “We have to go,” she says firmly. When Autumn hesitates a moment longer, she scoops her up and starts walking, back along the tracks. The baskets stay where they are, where hopefully the boys will still take them.

  Autumn looks back, but the figures are already going, Neel dragging Wyn to the safety of the trees, or whatever he considers safe. Autumn buries her face in Sasha’s shoulder.

  “We’ll come back,” Autumn promises herself more than Sasha. “We’ll think of something else.”

  It’s so easy to get lost there, out by the abandoned orchards that never seem to bear fruit, where something stalks in the shadows.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Early in the morning, while the light is still blue, Lil realizes it’s been three whole days since she tended to the pond and the golden pecans.

  Deep in her subconscious, Mom reproaches her for neglecting her most important duty. So she wraps up in her leather jacket, shoves into her Wellingtons, and hurries out of the house, into the trees. Honeyed light spills between new gaps in the branches as more leaves, more pecans continue their gentle rain. It’s not just the pond she hasn’t cared for; too many ripe husks crack underfoot on her way there. They’re close to ready with the festival—the stands are already going up in the town square—but she’ll need to pause the rampant planning and beg off for a day. Maybe Jason will even join her in the orchard. Like old times.

  Lil pushes aside bare branches and reaches the quiet of the pond and the tree at its banks. There, the sight stops her in her tracks.

  It’s…bad. The shower of gold is everywhere, abundant as leaf fall after an unseasonable snow, and the pond has snuck higher up the banks than usual, slithering against the roots of the tree, shallow tendrils stretching toward the far brambles, hungry for every last morsel it can’t reach.

  “Now, now,” Lil murmurs. “I wasn’t gone that long.” She bends and starts scooping them up, tossing handfuls into the water with heavy plops.

  The last time Lil missed her duty for more than a day came not too long after her trifecta of loss: Mom passing, then Sasha’s move to New York, and Jason’s departure for law school. She barely remembered that whole November; she had lost the meat and bones of it to a raging fever. Her remaining recollections are grim. Crawling up the stairs on hands and knees to collapse, shivering, in bed. Her throat aching so badly she couldn’t sleep, the glass on her bedside table bone dry. Eating only the summer preserves until they made her sick because the cupboards were otherwise bare. Strange-blooded visions of a faceless figure with antlers crouching at the edge of her bed. Being too terrified to close her eyes—it crept closer whenever she did.

  Russ was the one who came for her, finally, when calls to her home went unanswered and she missed two deliveries to Su’s Grocery. Her fever broke to the sight of him humming at her stove, warming a pot of his homemade chicken soup.

  When she dragged herself back to health, even the empty house seemed flu-ish, the far papershell trees had scab for the first time in her memory, and the pond was eating ground, lapping at the edges of its solitary glen. So many golden pecans fell, she worked for an hour to clear them.

  The house was so empty that winter.

  Today’s mess isn’t nearly so dire. Lil works in silence. She has spent almost every day with Jason, sunrise to golden hour. He’s just as excited as she is. Just as unable as she is to sit for long; sometimes they’re both up and pacing the living room of Honeysuckle House, racing in contradicting orbits around the coffee table.

  Lil remembers the breadth of his hands and wants to bury herself in between his ribs.

  It still doesn’t feel entirely safe to shine her want in his direction. But she can’t crush the flowering hope that maybe it’s different this time. Jason was passionate about their town once, spent days in the orchard with her once. Is it so wrong to think that just maybe, he’s returning to her?

  Finally, the ground is clear, and Lil cradles one final pecan, warm between her palms. She turns it over in her hands. Lifts it to her nose and her mouth waters, but she doesn’t eat. Her own little ritual.

  Maybe one day. Not today.

  She tosses it into the pond and with a final ripple, order is restored. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you creeping,” she says. “Calm down.”

  But then she feels it. Lil doesn’t even have to see him to know that there’s an intruder at her boundary again. She snaps around so fast her neck flares, and makes for the far fence, where it had to be newly mended, where kudzu has tried and failed to encroach. Of course he comes now, when her day is bright and beautiful. Of course it’s today he chooses to ruin.

  Sure enough, when she breaches the trees, there he is. Recognizable even from afar: a mistake on the canvas, a twisted smile and hungry eyes.

  “Hey,” she shouts.

  Theon is resting his hands on the fence again, caressing it absently, and he looks up when she approaches. When he grins at her, it’s full of mirth. And something—wrong. She can’t place it. A flavor that shouldn’t be there. A sun that casts no shadow.

  “Hi,” Theon says.

  Lil stops a few feet away. “What are you doing here?”

  But Theon doesn’t speak for a moment, only gazes at her, and keeps touching the fence like he’s allowed. Though, of course, to him, someone who’s gobbled up as many family homes and ripe orchards as he has, he probably feels entitled to everything he sees.

  “What are you doing here?” She enunciates slowly when he refuses to back off, refuses to leave or to engage.

  He chuckles. “You’re so prickly in the morning.” Finally, those hands are gone, off her property and stowed in the pockets of those stupid, ratty pants. He wears suits so badly, without care for the fineness of them. What is the point of it? Of biting into a candy bar and throwing the rest away, of buying land and letting it molder? Is the flavor of wastefulness really so sweet?

  “Go away,” she tries next.

  “Nice out here today,” he offers, kicking at the grass, idle and lingering. There’s the note of wrongness again.

  “How many times do I need to chase you off?” Lil snaps at him.

  And in the face of her bite, Theon just smiles. A tiny burgundy stain marks the corner of his mouth. Mud cakes the cuffs of his pants, a new button is missing in his cuff. It’s all wrong. But none of it is the exact wrongness that prickles at her. “You’ve got some dirt. On your cheek,” he says.

  And he reaches for her.

  Lil isn’t even close enough to touch, but she flinches back, shocked, her heart a queasy tempo in her ears. She wants to scream, bite, vomit, run. Theon’s brow furrows with uncertainty, and it hits her: the true nature of the wrongness she senses. He’s treating her like he’s—she casts for a word that won’t drive her to murder—fond.

  No. She cannot do this. She cannot understand this, and will not.

  Lil strides forward, slaps his hand out of the air, and spits, “What are you doing.”

  Theon freezes, a feast of contradiction: confusion, tenderness, intensity, hurt, and then—he rips his gaze away with enough force that he wrenches back a step. When he looks up, he’s blank, and his smile bares his teeth.

  “So touchy,” he scoffs. “No point then, in me asking if you’re going to sell.”

  “Is that seriously—? Is that why you’re—” Lil tries. “No. Of course I’m not going to sell.” The morning was so beautiful. Lil searches for the kindness she’d only just bathed in, for the light through trees, the sense of Jason’s care, the warmth of Mom’s pride—but she can’t feel it now. She’s worlds away. Trapped in a standoff.

  Theon’s jaw is clenched hard. The tiny rusty stain at the corner of his mouth repels her. “The Pecan Festival won’t save you.”

  She shivers once. But doesn’t shake apart. “Leave.”

  “No one will come. No one cares.”

  “Leave.” She dares break eye contact, desperate for some answer, some help. For Sasha flying down the driveway. For anything. There, against the tree abandoned last time she worked. There’s help. Lil backs up.

  Theon leans forward, gripping the fence again. His voice chases her. Coming at her harsh and fast. “It’s going to fail and they’re going to leave.” Her fingers grasp blindly. She finds the slender shape of the pole that shakes loose what wants to cling in the canopies. “You’ll wish you gave it all to me because you’ll be alone, working here until you die here and you rot here—”

  Lil swings the pole as hard as she can, and it cracks across his knuckles and breaks into two.

  Shocked, Theon looks down. Even though it should have shattered a finger, he makes no sound, no shocked cry of pain. Slowly, he raises his eyes to Lil again, gaze roaming over her face.

  “Leave,” she breathes.

  One by one, Theon peels his fingers away from the fence. He makes a small derisive sound. “Bitch,” he whispers. It isn’t loaded with righteous fury, but something worse: promise. But he goes. Slipping his hands back in his pockets, easy as you please, he begins to amble down the road.

  Lil stays until he strolls the far curve of the dusty, pockmarked pavement into town. But just when he’s out of sight, when she begins to relax, Theon starts to whistle. Lil doesn’t move. Her hand burns, her legs tremble. The wind carries Theon’s song back to her as he departs.

  ***

  Sasha swore to Autumn that they wouldn’t leave those kids out there in the woods, and she meant it. But it takes a few days to figure out their next step. For once, no one is leaving her requests to cover shifts around town. Everyone is around, doing their own jobs. Sasha and Autumn spend most of that time together, either at the bakery or on the ferry, where Autumn is awarded the title of skipper. Sasha is cozy in a white cable-knit. She always lets Autumn wear her sailor’s cap when they’re both aboard. Autumn is quiet, gnawing a thumbnail as she watches the water illuminated by the riverboat’s big light. Her ankle is healing, but she is quiet, her expression wistful. Sasha can see that there’s a windstorm of thoughts behind those big-sky eyes, but she doesn’t press.

  It’s on the last ferry of the night that she remembers something crucial. They’ve only got two or three passengers tucked away on the boat, little more than denser patches of darkness in the evening chill. “I thought of someone who might know something about Wyn and Neel,” Sasha says, spinning the wheel to dock.

  It’s like lightning, how Autumn reacts, turning to look at her with eyes full of hope. As if with just a few words, Sasha has fixed everything.

  It’s after eight and dark by the time they make the walk back to the center of town, but people are still milling around down there, chatting on park benches, eating ice cream from the general store. A Bible study has just let out at First Methodist, and some of the women are still congregated outside in easy conversation. It seems the evening is in no rush to turn to night out here. It’s a good sign; maybe he’ll still be open.

  As they walk, Autumn gently bullies her way under Sasha’s arm. You belong there, Sasha thinks to her, and it feels so true that it billows up in her chest, a fullness and a pain.

  The junk shop is squeezed into a narrow and decrepit building just off the square, one of the historic storefronts. The post office and the shoe store loom on either side, both much larger and more freshly painted than this place. Hand-painted lettering curls jauntily across the front window: LOU’S GOODS: PURVEYOR OF DREAMS, EST. 1950. Lou had opened this place and the scrapyard out back with his GI Bill funds, and the shop has scraped along all this time. As a Black man, even getting his GI benefits was a heaven-born miracle, he liked to say, so there was no way that either hell or high water would wash this place away.