Page 32 of The Witch's Orchard
“May I see some identification?” she says.
I take my wallet from my back pocket, pass her the cards. She reads the IDs carefully, one at a time, then hands them back. Again, she gives me a long look, as if deciding whether to talk to me.
“A’right,” she says finally. “You’ll have to come around back, I’m very nearly finished and I want to get these bulbs in before dark.”
I follow her around the house to a sprawling flower garden. Seasonal blooms of pansies and mums fill the space nearest the house, paths of white gravel running between them. The space beyond the house is filled with rosebushes, likely numbering more than a hundred. Most of their blossoms have dropped but I spot several still-vibrant red, orange, yellow, and pink blooms among the rows. Beyond them, the whole mountaintop is bordered by evergreen mountain laurel bushes, their pale pink and white flowers already dropped but their waxy leaves unmistakable.
“Wow,” I breathe, staring at the garden. “This is beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Deena says.
I’ve always been envious of the green-thumbed. My granny was one of those people who could make anything grow, and clearly this woman has the same talent.
She leads me to one of the nearest beds and kneels beside it, where a bag of bulbs waits next to churned-up black soil.
“So,” she says. “The Andrews boy has hired you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s been a while,” she says. She digs in the soil with a spade and drops a tulip bulb in, covers it over.
“Yes,” I say. “Ten years. I wanted to talk to you because—”
“Because I was there that day. The day Molly was taken.”
“Yes.”
She nods. “Unfortunately, I doubt I’ll remember anything more about it now than I did then. But I’m happy to tell you what I know.”
“Okay. You were Max’s piano teacher. Let’s start there.”
“Yes. Max had just started lessons a few months before. It was his mother’s idea, I believe.”
“Was he good?”
“He wasn’t a prodigy, if that’s what you’re asking. But more patient than the average little boy, I’d say. Less wiggly.”
“And Molly?”
“Goodness, I barely saw her. She was a pretty little girl.”
“Tell me what you remember. About Molly, the family, that day.”
“It was the end of summer,” Deena says. “Unbearably hot. And they had no air-conditioning. They lived in an old farmhouse, you know. Lots of small rooms. It was like a maze. Their piano was in an old dining room at the back of the house, and I believe Molly had been playing in the front of the house, the living room.”
“And their father was at school,” I say.
She digs another hole, plants another bulb.
“As I learned later, yes.”
“And their mother was working in the garden, to the side of the house.”
“Yes.”
“So what happened?” I ask. “When Max came out and found his sister gone.”
“Well, that’s the thing, actually. I’d already left by then,” Deena says. She takes one gardening glove off and pulls a wisp of silvery blond hairback behind her ear. Her fingers are long and elegant and her manicured nails are the color of the inside of a conch shell. “I’d gone out the kitchen door, which was on the side of the house. My car was parked around the side, in their driveway, so it just made the most sense. I always came and went that way. As far as I know, everyone did. Anyway, Max finished his practice and I left. I felt very guilty about it later.”
