“We’ll talk,” Lil promises and lets her go.

  They go their separate ways: Sasha to the river, and Lil to the heart of town. The air smells like cinnamon sugar. It’s the most crowded the town square has been for…ages. Booths line the street, bustling with activity, where tomorrow they will display baked goods and butters, liquors, and beaded jewelry.

  The volunteers have the administration worked out amongst themselves, all stationed wearing their green ASK ME FOR HELP! shirts. Lil stops at their HQ first, taking note of their numbers. Agnes, the treasurer of the Rotary Club, is checking everyone in, confirming their time slots for tomorrow and the days ahead.

  “This is great,” Lil says to her, running her finger down a list of names she knows, the people who fill out her life here. “And Su doesn’t need—”

  “Su says she’ll take two volunteers and no more at her pumpkin stand, because they’ll mess with her system,” Agnes warbles. “Don’t you worry, child. We’ve got this. You go on.”

  So she does.

  Overhead, one of Mom’s banners, printed with a large icon of Saint Dorothy, the town’s patron, whomps in the wind. There’s a traffic jam of flags and banners going up in the square and the Ferris wheel and carousel are already being erected in the empty lot behind Elm Street, ready for tomorrow’s crowds. There, Lil can finally make herself useful as one of the crew, helping assemble the tall mechanical beings of nuts and bolts. They are built like statues against the afternoon sky, icons of a strange god. But as she works, Lil feels the pond recede a little from her mind, because this sight is exactly what she dreamed of. The soul of the town has been brought out for display.

  Things take longer than they should, those last stubborn wrinkles slow to iron out. She has seen Jason, here and there, but doesn’t feel the need to approach him. Their time later, to talk, is coming with the nightfall. For now, they slide around each other, shoring up every chink in the project. The day blurs. Soon dusk is falling around them and it’s a race against night to have it all ready. Occasionally she’ll hear Jason directing people this way and that, many hasty instructions harmonizing with her own.

  By the time everything is done, the sun has long ago set, and everyone goes home. Anticipation scrabbles in Lil like a dog eager to get off the leash.

  “Everybody get some rest,” Jason calls as he makes his way out. “You deserve it! Amazing job, y’all. This is going to be awesome.” Just like at Russ’s funeral, Jason takes time for people. He pauses to share a private word with anyone who stops him, usually makes them laugh, never hesitates to juggle his notepad out to scribble down what they’re saying if they need something done. But his course is true, and Lil is happy to wait. Finally, he jogs up to her, windblown and grinning. “I spied on you all day,” he confides. “You’re a great organizer. Might need you on the campaign trail one day.”

  “Oh please. Like I could ever tell people to vote for you with a straight face,” Lil lies. It’s better than the truth: that a small part of her has always been startlingly ready to be his knight, to carry his banner and his cause. Even when she refused to go with him into the world, she had to wrestle down that loyal corner of her heart. “Didn’t you promise me dinner?”

  They take Lil’s truck the short drive back out to Honeysuckle House. One person is not enough to revive the old place, and when she walks in, the entrance hall feels just a little dank. It hasn’t even been long since she’s been here. Hasn’t it just been days? But the difference is palpable. Or maybe she just wasn’t paying attention—not to the house, at least. The flowers in a glass vase from some well-wisher that seemed fresh last time are withered in their place on the entry table, black and curled on themselves. From the den, there is an oppressive musk, probably from those grand velvet curtains. Lil stops in the doorway, caught on the sight of cobwebs spun over the fireplace, pokers scattered all over the heavy rug like someone’s been tossing them. At some point, he must’ve spilled coffee in a rush and not had time to wipe the dark stain up.

  He rubs his neck self-consciously. Maybe it’s the seasonal turn, but the house feels colder, grimmer than her last visit when they’d gone up to the attic. Emptier, a yawning mouth missing teeth.

  “Letting the place go a bit,” she says lightly. It isn’t like him—but then again, her orchard got desperate for a moment there. It’s pretty clear that he’s been avoiding the work on the house in favor of the festival, and Russ’s death seems to be catching up with the place.

  “It’s better in the kitchen,” he says, reaching for her hand. “I got a candle.”

  With a chai-scented candle from Big Bub lit, they get to work on dinner. He ducks out to the back patio to light the charcoal. His steaks have been marinating all day. He lets Lil handle potatoes and broccoli and opens a bottle of wine. It’s dusty, one of the faded labels from his parents, and in the crystal decanter, it’s a brick brown.

  They’ve worked together before in this kitchen, cutting vegetables elbow to elbow. Jason was a fastidious sous chef; she left the chopping, prepping, and dishes to him, traditionally. He didn’t grill back then, and it’s hard not to dwell on who taught him how out there, who accomplished more with his culinary skills than she ever did. Lil isn’t jealous—a surprise even to herself—but she is hungry for this knowledge of him. How he’s grown. If he’s changed. What he’s learned, what he thinks. She wants to catalog the new ranges and valleys of him, compare notes with the Jason she remembers.

  So she asks, “How’d you learn how to grill, anyway?”

  “When you become a lawyer, you mystically acquire all douchebag skills,” he deadpans. “Ask about my golf game. I dare you.”

  Chuckling, she pushes at him with her wrist, knife blade turned away. “Bet you have opinions on wine now. And turn to the finance section first. I bet—oh no, I bet you belong to a country club, don’t you?”

  “I’m disinclined to make a comment at this time.” He passes her with the meat, heading for the grill beyond the screen door.

  Soon they’re sitting down in the breakfast room (the dining room is all packed up, and the doors are closed). He tops up their wine. “To working our asses off to save the damn town,” he laughs, offering his glass across the table. “And to…stealing a little more time with you.”

  In a haze, she tilts the belly of her glass against his, more of a brush than a clink. “To stealing time,” she murmurs. The wine warms her throat even as it leaves her aching. She cuts into the steak and it’s a perfect, tender red.

  “It’s good,” she admits, letting the compliment seem dragged out of her, grudging but earned.

  “Not as bad as those scrambled eggs?” he teases, spearing broccoli.

  They’re both absolutely famished after the hectic day, and there isn’t enough first-date energy to stop them scarfing down most of their dinners in reverential silence. As they’re picking the carrion, he swirls the dregs of his wine, thoughtful. “This is honestly not a night I expected to be in,” he confesses. “I’ve been gone from here for a long time now.”

  Lil could have sworn she stopped pining for Jason sometime after the first year of heartbreak, but her heart is pumping like it never stopped. “I know,” she says. “And I know you can’t—you probably can’t stay. I understand.” She’ll try to, anyway, when he eventually goes. The hopeful part of her whispers that this time is different, this time he’ll stay, but she’s not a child anymore, and she won’t count on hope.

  Still, she reaches for him across the table. “You’ve got to know what it means to me that you’re here now.” Words Lil thought she was too proud to share are rising inside her now. Her cup, running over. “Not just because I needed the help. I could get help. Hell, I could do it myself.” I’ll do it all myself, if I have to, she told herself like a prayer for so many days when she faced the gauntlet of the orchard alone. “But it’s you. I’m so glad it’s you.”

  He’s watching her, rapt, consuming her words, dark eyes taking her in like a black hole absorbing light. “I’ve been out in the world,” he murmurs. “It feels like a myriad of experiences. But, Lilith, there’s nothing for me like you. You’ve always been what I couldn’t forgive myself for losing.” He catches her hand, his grip rough.

  “I haven’t really forgiven you for that either,” she admits and hides her smile behind the curve of the wineglass. “You know me. Better than almost anyone. So that’s probably not a surprise.” Blood is starting to race, in her throat, in her stomach, in her ears. “Maybe we both need to let that one go though. There’s no one for me like you either.”

  There’s a single shared breath between them. A tendon pulls taut in his jaw. At the same time, they move. She pushes into his space and he pulls, dragging her elbow along the table—a wineglass teeters, and they meet halfway, his mouth a firm wine-dark press. It’s not a first kiss; there’s no gentle exploration. This is his hands immediately grasping in her hair, pressing against the back of her skull like he wants to crack her open.

  She shoves out of her chair, his hand clamps on her wrist—as if she’ll leave—and she rushes around the table to crash into his lap, lock her knees around his hips, bringing herself near those dark eyes. Stroking his golden hair back, she can’t help but laugh at the look on his face, full of desperate hunger, a perfect reflection of what she feels.

  “Shut up,” he breathes, hands shoving against her, begging for purchase under her clothes. “You’re so—”

  She doesn’t want his words; they aren’t what she needs. Lil bears down on him again and bites the swell of his lower lip. Her back hits the edge of the table—he swipes urgently to clear a path. Plates smash, food goes flying, and he lays her across the bared space, covers her, nosing against her neck. Greedy, he always has been the only one who ever matched her. Heat in her veins, Lil breathes out, shuts her eyes, draws her hands hard and slow along his back. She kisses him again, and he shudders.

  This has always been their story. Her and him, explorers discovering the highs of life under her sheets; her and him, wrapped up together on nights when storms turn the air to a live current. Following his voice into the house from the orchard on the long days, kicking broken shells off her shoes on the way there. His smile when he sees her. The life she thought they’d have forever.

  “Lilith. Lilith,” he breathes like steam against her skin and she guides him out of his clothes. He tears at hers like they’re a challenge.

  The air carries a faint scent of flame, like the fire she’s always felt burning away inside him. He runs the pads of his thumbs over her bare stomach. She holds his head against her neck, too close for their eyes to meet, taking great lungfuls of air but unable to breathe as deeply as she needs.

  He crowds closer. “What do you want?”

  Something in the corner of her eye flickers, foxtail quick and orange. “You know,” she says against his mouth. “Come on.”

  The room is warm, though it’s warmest in his arms, and she wraps herself around him. She wants to be a vine to cover him, hold her sway, to never let him go. He braces a hand under her, the other on the table. Some dish behind them shatters; distantly, water hisses, becomes steam. He picks her up and carries her into the living room. It’s warm here too, when they lay each other out on the rug. Sweat pools on her back as she braces herself over him and they press together there on the floor of Honeysuckle House until their edges blur, his eyes boring into her. He’s glowing in a flickering phantom light, orange catching highlights in his hair, on his skin. He bites at her breast, canines grazing, teasing her. Somewhere overhead there is a rumble, maybe from the house itself, but she can’t bring herself to care, physically can’t make herself look away from him. If this is a trap, she’s willing to let it keep her. She wants to snap at his mouth until they both bleed and break, until they can curl together, their softest selves, sated and still. She wants to cry.

  “Do you even know how I’ve missed you?” she tells him through the rush and roar in her ears. A blond cowlick is tickling her inner thigh.

  He looks up at her from there, slowly. “Show me.”

  Something glinting flutters from above, burns when it brushes against her, and even the pain she cannot quite pay attention to—he’s on his back again, pulling her down, hands on her face.

  “Show me everything, Lilith.” His mouth is hot against her temple, scorching her ear. Ash flutters around them like snowfall. “Give me everything.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Smoke rises somewhere close, another phantom fire in the night. Sasha sits in Autumn’s window seat, peering at the sky. She wraps her arms around her knees.

  How long has the road been closed?

  The darkness feels loaded, some faint tinge of gunpowder on the breeze. A sharp hiss swiftly becomes a shriek—but it’s only Autumn’s kettle. Sasha tries to force herself to relax, but that’s not the kind of thing that can be bullied.

  It feels like she’s just killing time tonight. And some hysteria in her sticks on that phrase. “Killing time.” Like “stealing time.” Why is time a victim of all these crimes?

  How about “make time”?

  Break time.

  Autumn’s apartment above the bakery hasn’t changed at all since Sasha was last here. She fingers a flap of peeling wallpaper, navy blue, shimmering with weathered amber birds and rusty blooms. In the bathroom, there’s a stained-glass window of a dahlia. Autumn filled this place with squashy secondhand furniture and lined the kitchen counter with old diner stools, where Sasha would perch as she baked. And here, nestled into the sloped gable, a window seat where the two of them used to sit in the evenings.

  She finds Autumn when the sun is going down, her clothes smelling of that riverbed mud after running the ferry all day, and Autumn pulls her upstairs with a sad twist in her smile.

  “There’s always something special about your first apartment, isn’t there?” she says. “After all these years, I almost forgot what it looked like. I was so young here…” She sits Sasha down at the breakfast counter and makes sandwiches on a loaf of fresh sourdough. Autumn always has odds and ends around from experimenting with baking mix-ins: tomato slices, fresh basil pesto, and mozzarella.

  Sasha shifts uneasily. The day began with a revelation, and it seems like it’s going to end with one too. Too bad she isn’t ready for any more. It feels like she’s about to be broken up with, and that reminds her of Linda, her similar sad, ironic smile that last day before they parted and all Sasha had left of three years was a photograph of a shattered mirror and a faded face.

  Autumn has a purpose here. Whatever thoughts she has been distilling over the past days are done. She is ready to share. So Sasha waits.

  Autumn sets Sasha’s mug on the windowsill and settles across from her with the other one balanced on her knee. “I don’t know how to say it,” she says finally. The moonlight through windowpanes fragment her into segments. Her ear. A blue eye turned slate gray with the nighttime. It isn’t just moonlight that gathers in her skin, the side of her face, the hollow of her collarbone. There’s some inner fire there too, blood and blush, maybe. “I’ve been thinking about it for so long. Longer than you know.” She taps one finger on the mug. Traces around the rim. “I came back for a reason. But at first, just being here shook me up. It disoriented me. My friend Matt calls it the Homecoming Effect…” She trails off. “But I’ve remembered now. What I want to say, even if I don’t know how.”

  They gaze at one another. Sasha’s tea is far too hot to drink, but she hovers her fingertips over it anyway, bathing them in the steam. “Just start anywhere,” she bursts out at that. “First page. Last page. I don’t care. Spit it out, Pip.” She wants to nudge her feet against Autumn’s, just to feel her, but the room is too still.

  Autumn’s expression is brimming with sadness, and no small amount of fear. “I’ve missed you. Even after how long it’s been, I never stopped thinking of you. But I didn’t think you’d be here. I really didn’t—” She cuts herself off. “This isn’t going to make sense,” she says, more to herself than Sasha. “I don’t know how to make it make sense—Wyn.” She tries desperately. “I’ve been looking for him. And we talked to Lou, about the pecan children? I haven’t been able to tell you, really tell you, why it mattered so much to me—” She pauses again. Swallows. “No. That’s not right either, is it? That still won’t make sense.”

  Sasha is reminded, suddenly, of her own stumbling attempts to tell Lil she loved women and not men, all the avenues into the topic that ended up being dead ends, all the convoluted stories she’s told herself so long to excuse it. It was hard to find her way out. And, as Lil waited, patient for once, for Sasha to get to the point, it became obvious to them both that she’d known all along anyway. They’d been keeping that secret together. Sasha waits, putting the mask of Lil’s patience over her own face, and lets Autumn untangle herself from her stories.

  Autumn has turned inward, taking several deep breaths. “I’m spitting it out, I promise. Because really, the thing I have to tell you—the hardest thing—is this.” And then, she reaches out, catches Sasha’s fingers over the steam. She holds her gaze with rare intensity. “Sasha, there is something wrong. Here. With this place. This town. And it’s been wrong for a very long time.”

  “Of course there is,” Sasha says slowly, feeling dumb. “Same thing that’s wrong with all of small-town America. Reaganomics, pressure on the small-time farmers to sell to corporations, no infrastructure, no opportunities…” She trails off, because something desperate is sparking in Autumn’s eyes. It’s a flicker of gold, and it shivers there like the gilded pecans in the tree, the tree that is an arm, reaching, offering something.

  Something with a cost that is too high.

  “Sasha, how long has it been since you last saw me?” Autumn asks.

  “A year, maybe. The birthday before last.” The day is a haze in Sasha’s head, a memory so well-worn it’s starting to have holes. “Why are you asking? You were there.”