One of the stained-glass lamps is lit inside, so Sasha pushes open the door. Nothing smells better than Lou’s shop, rich with age, old paper, and forgotten treasures. There’s no surface wasted, no corner or shelf, nook, or cranny, that doesn’t hold something that’s special. Special to somebody, anyway. Cookie jars, wedding china, copper wire, comic books, playing cards, cigar cases, and cradles and clocks. A violin. A porcelain-faced doll. Safes from banks that went under in the Depression, their thick sides and ancient cranks and combination locks so old-fashioned they’d probably survived a hundred years before that. A narrow display beyond the glass showcases a constellation of engagement rings. They twinkle coquettishly, like a line of wandering eyes, forgetful brides far from home.

  Over the years, Lou has repaired every kind of appliance and sold them again, helping a lot of folks who couldn’t afford something new. He’d repaired Mom’s old landline from the house at least twice. He’s tinkered with Sasha’s digital watch before, and she curses that she didn’t remember to bring it for him to look at this time, since it’s been flashing zeros at her for ages. He has a better archive than their library basement, organized so minutely, and so personally, that he can help anybody find anything they wanted to know, and probably a lot more that they didn’t.

  “Lou?” she calls through the dusty darkness.

  “Hey,” Lou answers from deep within the labyrinth, his rusty voice faint from the comfortable old armchair he keeps behind the cramped desk. He lifts a tumbler with an inch of amber liquid inside. “Just pouring one out for Russ, you know.”

  “Hey, Lou.” Sasha feels a pang of guilt that she hasn’t come in to check on Lou since the funeral. It has to be really tough on him, to lose his best friend. Had Jason been in? Lou might want some of Russ’s things from all the decades of debris in Honeysuckle House…if Jason is even cleaning the place out anymore. Could he actually be considering staying? Ruefully, she commits to suggesting that Jason let Lou take a look the next time she sees him around. “Thought I’d bring Autumn by to see the trains. Did you know she was back?”

  Lou’s face lights up like she just told him his birthday came early this year. “My little Pippi Longstocking is home, and she hasn’t even brought me any pecan clusters yet?” He rises and starts the complex journey through the shop for a hug.

  Autumn beams, darting over to wrap herself around his ribs. He really is getting thinner. “Hi, Loulou.” She’s probably the only one in town who could get away with a nickname like that. But it isn’t just Sasha who’d let Autumn get away with anything. “I missed you.”

  “Well, now. I missed you too. I thought you were gone for good.” He lays a hand flat on top of her head, as if he’s checking for any last-minute growth spurts. “Are you getting along all right out there in the world?”

  Autumn smiles at Sasha, keeping her close in orbit. “Homesickness aside, sure.” She softens. “I was sorry to hear about Russ. I wish I’d been back in time for the funeral.”

  “Oh, it’s okay,” Lou soothes, reaching up to one of the shelves for two more slightly dusty tumblers like his own. “These things seem to happen more and more often these days.” He pours whiskey for them. “Let’s just have another little memorial now.” One of the trains toots from its overhead track, winding around just below the crown molding.

  Autumn picks up the tumblers and hands one to Sasha. They drink in reverent silence. Autumn and Sasha’s tooling around town used to bring them here. Sometimes, just to poke around or look for birthday gifts for the people—Lil—that were criminally difficult to shop for. Autumn liked to sit on the counter and ask about anything new that caught her eye. A Wonder Woman lunch box, the painted tin only a little dented. A string of antique freshwater pearls from some tiny Arkansas lake town. Lou saved her the best kitchen appliances: a beautiful retro blue stand mixer Autumn swore by, stainless steel tongs, even a marble mortar and pestle, because Autumn usually turned her nose up at spices that came to her already powdered.

  “Come see the trains.” Lou offers. They walk back to the second display room, many of the objects here not for sale. This is where Lou keeps most of his trains. They chug on at all levels, cruising along the walls, like a miniaturized subway system. In the center is a romanticized model of town, hemmed in by the rails. They hover over it, Autumn noting the new details, such as the hand-painted earth mover and construction workers toiling on the wrecked highway west of town. There’s even a little ferry on the river.

  Autumn is usually the last one talking, the last one laughing, when evening turns to night. But not today. Sasha is the first to break their comfortable reunion. “So, Lou. We had something we wanted to talk to you about.”

  He takes a seat, nodding to a set of barstools clearly placed for ideal train viewing. They rumble around them in predictable circuits as they talk. “What do you want to know?”

  Sasha lets the whiskey burn soothe her nerves. Even these small trains fill her with some strange dread. “Do you remember when we were on the ferry that day and you mentioned those—children? Out in the fallow orchards?”

  Lou fixes her with a keen look. “I remember, honey.”

  Sasha pauses, thinking through her next words carefully. “You know I’ve been doing some surveying for Dale? So we were out there…”

  Autumn takes over the story the moment Wyn enters it, brushing her fingers along Sasha’s wrist as if they’re passing a baton back and forth. Like she can’t bear not to talk about Wyn, like it’ll conjure his little spirit. “They’re too young and they don’t seem to have anyone. He didn’t even seem to know what a parent was. Do you know anything more? Have you seen anything lately?”

  “Lately?” At some point during their tale, Lou’s eyes have strayed to the little town on the table. He looks very weary as his trains circle like sharks. “Less and less nowadays. Used to. The town watched out for them, found homes for them when they were real little. But a lot of those folks who knew how to help died or had to move away. Russ and I did all we could, but his health… I hardly ever see any kids around here now.” He goes to a dusty, unpainted shelf. On it is what looks like a hodgepodge nest fashioned out of sticks, decorated with tufts of feather and dirty string. “Cajun bird trap,” he says, passing it to Sasha. Something in her doesn’t want to reach out and take it, but she does anyway.

  “What’s it for?” Sasha asks, turning it over. Lou only shrugs. “I don’t know. But I used to find a lot of things like that out there in those woods.” He hunches down to clasp another. This one seems to be elaborated with hunks of hair.

  “We saw one of these,” Autumn says. They could have been beautiful if they weren’t so like insects, skeletal and crouching. Built with intentions and expectations beyond their understanding. “On the railroad tracks. But it was more—gruesome than this.” There was an echo of Wyn’s mask in the craftsmanship too: the thread that bound teeth to the bark, the strangeness of the creative vision it must have taken to bring it to life.

  Lou lays the bird trap down again, draining his glass. He levels a gaze on Sasha. “Helping those kids has been one of my life’s callings. For so long, no one’s cared a twig about it, just looked the other way.” He lays a weathered hand over Autumn’s. “You do one thing for me next time, huh?

  “What is it?” Sasha has finished her own drink too, faster than she meant to. Something about holding those things—they left her gut knotted. Her hands tingle. They feel dirty, caked with dust or something more. And the sense of having left something undone, of an alarm screaming at the back of her mind, makes her ears ring.

  But Lou’s looking only at Autumn when he answers. “Don’t walk on those railroad tracks, honey.” His own trains rocket along in their dollhouse world, swerving through miniature landscapes where no one lives. Autumn takes a sharp breath and nods.

  Sasha shivers. “Why not?” She asks the question, but the answer isn’t one she needs. She knows it in her bones.

  Lou’s eyes are on the trains, mouth a grim line. “There’s dangerous folk out there.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It’s time to think, which would normally call for focaccia. But there’s a new bite to the air, like fall is really settling around them now. Leaves hang in bright reds and golds, the shades of ripening apples, and Autumn can almost feel the trees taking the last long gasp before frost, their veins tightening, sap dribbling down into the safe vaults of the roots. She feels in herself the same need: the need to shelter and brace for a long, heavy, oncoming snow. She needs to ponder with baking, but this time, it just has to be pumpkin bread.

  Lou’s words whisper in her mind as her electric mixer whirs. I hardly ever see any kids around here now. The image of those strange offerings he has collected over the years. Wyn and Neel’s faces.

  Autumn closes her eyes, bracing her palms on the familiar steel counter. She tries, briefly, to conjure Dad, a whiff of his Irish spring soap, the steadiness of his hands. Or Mom’s easy-like-a-Sunday-morning voice, her noodling on the banjo she loved but couldn’t really play. Even as an adult, she can’t totally shake the childish notion that Dad and Mom would know what to do, any more than she can shake the burn of resentment for the fact that they aren’t here now, when she needs them. Maybe they would be able to explain why this place where Autumn grew up feels so different. So changed.

  Maybe she’ll go see Lou again, without Sasha this time. There are things she must say, and saying them in front of Sasha still feels impossible. But maybe she can try with Lou. They can talk over a slice of this pumpkin bread. It’ll taste great with his bourbon. There is so much more she needs to say, and more she needs to ask.

  By now, the children’s basket of food—assuming they even went back for it—will be wearing thin. They’ll be all out of sausage rolls. Autumn considers sneaking back to the tracks to try to find them again, but there’s the distinct possibility that if she goes, she’ll find the wrong end of Neel’s shotgun instead. We have to make a plan, Sasha had said. We have to go prepared. It sounded very adult, very mature for Sasha, who usually liked to play fast and loose with life. Or at least pretend she did.

  So far, their ideas are pretty scant.

  Autumn leaves the front door open, for the breeze. It’s quiet today, unlike when Sasha manned the front and the town filled her doors. Down the street, empty stalls wait to be filled with pecans and goods. A banner swings from between two streetlights. But the air feels dead, no cars at the meters, not a single neighbor walking their dog.

  Then comes a sudden gust of wind from the west, as if someone has switched on a box fan. The door flies in and knocks against one of her display shelves. There’s a sound of scuttling, a thunk as one of her bags of premade brownie mix hits the floor. Noisy rummaging. Autumn is frozen, listening to this bizarre, invisible burglary. There is a moment of quiet, as if the intruder has gone.

  And then:

  “Otto?” calls a tremulous, familiar voice, the best approximation of her name he can manage. He’s only heard it once.

  Her heart on a kite string, Autumn doesn’t bother dusting the flour off her hands, leaves her batter half-whipped and pushes through the double doors. “Wyn?”

  “Here.” He pokes his head around the counter, hair and face dusty from the road. Her basket is by the door, much the worse for wear. “Neel—Neel’s actually nice,” he explains, peeping at her. It looks like his knees are scraped, maybe from tripping somewhere along the long walk into town.

  Autumn kneels down. If he were another child, one with a kinder life, she’d wrap him up in her arms, she’d wipe dirt off his face and clean his cuts. Only even a gentle touch could scare him. He hasn’t had a gentle life.

  “I believe you,” she says. “I think he was scared. I’m glad to see you again.”

  The one amber eye she can see watches her for a moment. Then Wyn sniffs several times. Curiously, he wanders from his hiding place past her toward the kitchen. He still has no shoes on, which means he walked miles on bare feet to reach her. He even returned her basket.

  Autumn picks up the basket and follows him. “Hungry?” she asks, and he’s nodding furiously before the word is even out of her mouth. So she sets him up at the table and makes him enough oatmeal for a family of four. She puts in cardamom and cinnamon, maple syrup, chopped apples, and, of course, toasted pecans from Lil. Wyn looks curious when she sets the large bowl in front of him but doesn’t wait to ask questions about what it is. He gobbles it down, probably burning his tongue on the first piping hot spoonful.

  That’s when she realizes how much he actually trusts her.

  “I’m making pumpkin bread today. I bet you’ll like it,” she tells him, when he’s chasing individual oats at the bottom of his bowl. This feels like holding a baby bird, trying not to startle it into flight. “You want to help?”

  But he is already clambering up onto a chair to peer down into the various bowls. “I will…help,” he decides, looking very serious.

  “Good. It’s been a while since I had a helper.” She brings over a little whisk for him. Up on the chair, she can see the grit and blood caked on his knees more clearly. “You whisk what’s in the bowl together, and I’ll—can I fix up your knees for you?”

  Wyn glances down at his legs, then shrugs. He’s much more interested in his new project. He prods the eggs and sugars in the bowl a few times with the whisk. Autumn digs out the first aid kit she keeps near the cash register, then dabs Neosporin gently on the scrapes. Wyn flinches at little, but doesn’t complain. “Like this?” he asks, gouging at the eggs.

  Autumn sticks a colorful Band-Aid on each knee, then straightens up. “Good,” she says. “Now just give it a big stir! Stir, stir, stir! You can go fast.” She holds the bowl for him as Wyn whisks enthusiastically. “We add that to this bowl of spices and flour, and then it’ll be batter.”

  Wyn is a quick learner. “I sneaked away,” he tells her, as he scrapes determinedly for every last drop of mixture. “Neel was hunting.”

  “Now we mix all that together.” She gives him a wooden spoon. “I’d love to meet Neel again when he’s not feeling so scared. You said he’s nice to you?” God, it was hard to know how to ask a child things in the right way. She’s a baker, not Mister Rogers.

  Wyn nods hard, his mane of overgrown hair tickling the shoulders of his dirty T-shirt. “He takes care of… We look after each other.”

  “My friend Sasha, who you met, is like that for me.” If only Sasha were here, actually. It’s easier to improv with a scene partner. She leans on the counter, chin propped in her hands. “You know what, Wyn?”

  He is busy with combining the gloppy orange batter. “Huh?”

  “Plain pumpkin bread isn’t enough now that you’re here.” She grins at him. “I think this calls for chocolate chips.”

  “Chocolate?” He matches her grin with a gappy one of his own.

  Autumn scavenges through the pantry for her chocolate supply and goes for the massive dark chocolate chunks. “You told me you and Neel had other friends?” she asks over her shoulder.

  “Uhh—yeah.” Wyn mashes gamely at his batter, which is really coming together. “Trees.”

  She sets the enormous bag of chocolate on the counter, and he cackles at the sight. “Other kids, though. Didn’t you have other friends that…went away?” she asks, frowning. There’s no point in asking about any adults; it’s obvious there are no parents in the picture.

  “There were,” Wyn says, reaching for the bag of chocolate, so far he nearly topples from his perch. She hands him a chocolate chunk.

  “Ready?” she asks, picking up the chocolate to dump into his batter. He lifts the spoon out to make space, watching eagerly as more than enough chunks of chocolate pile onto the batter. Then he sets to work mixing again. This kid is a natural.

  He pokes the chocolate in until she quickly shows him how to fold it. “Now, though, um—now it’s just me and Neel and trees and nobody else,” he finishes.

  She stares at her hands as she says, “What about the hungry man?”

  Wyn’s spoon clatters to the ground, and when her head whips up, his face is the gray-white of unfired clay.

  “Wyn?” Autumn’s stomach knots at the look on his face. She shouldn’t have said it. She wants to reel the words back in, replace them with warm spices and melting chocolate. But it won’t be long before Wyn wants to return to the woods, and she has to know. “Is he what happened to your other friends?”

  But he’s petrified, and when he does finally try to answer, it’s only in the chittering language of the forest.

  “It’s okay, it’s going to be okay.” Slowly, she gets him a new spoon. “Let’s put our batter in the baking tin. Ready?”

  By the time their pumpkin bread is in the oven and Autumn has sat Wyn down with a cup of warm milk, he seems a little more himself. She sits down with him, the scent of cozy fall slowly filling the room. “Wyn,” she says gently. “Do you think Neel might ever want to come here too? Maybe…” she hesitates. “Come to stay in town?”

  “Umm…” Wyn’s face scrunches up. He can only shrug, swinging his feet under the table.

  “I really think you should stay here with me until we figure some things out,” she tries again. The thought of sending him back there, with traps under the kudzu, missing children, and some man is intolerable.

  Immediately something in Wyn’s face hardens, his eyes sharp. “I gotta—I gotta go back,” he insists. “Neel.”

  “Right,” Autumn agrees hurriedly. What the hell can she do? She gets up, maybe a little too fast. “Let me go call my friend, and she can drive us out there in her truck, okay? Then you won’t have to walk so far again.” He’s watching her closely as she goes into the front to make the call.

  For once in her life, Sasha actually answers the phone. “Hello?”