Page 54 of The Witch's Orchard
“Sounds like police work,” he says.
“It’s more hyper-focused,” I say. “I spend all my time on one thing. Don’t have to pause what I’m doing to direct traffic or respond to a 911 call. And I set my own hours.”
“Speaking of which…” AJ says, glancing at his watch. “I’d better head out. Early start tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I say. “Thank you, AJ.”
We both grow quiet, pondering, I guess, everything we’ve put together so far—which is, admittedly, not very much. Some mild evidence of abuse, a regional history of poverty and desperation, a possible connection to a local church.
“It’s possible that Jessica’s still out there,” I mutter, closing my eyes. “I realize that Molly was the last girl taken and that maybe Jessica was dead before Olivia was ever nabbed at the church picnic but… I can’t stop now. I need to find out what happened. If Molly was alive this whole time, then maybe Jessica’s still out there and…”
“Yeah,” AJ says, his voice soft and deep. “We’ll find her.”
I feel his warm palm against the back of my free hand.
The air in the room feels too hot, suddenly. AJ is exactly the kind of man I could seek comfort with. More than comfort. But not tonight. Tonight, I need to lie awake while the crows scream outside and remind me that, until sometime early this morning, Molly Andrews was still alive.
And that now she is lying on a slab in the morgue, her beautiful hair wound into a coil beside her.
“I need some sleep,” I say, finally.
He nods, squeezes my hand, lets go.
“I’ll round up the old case files,” he says. “Bring ’em by tomorrow. Soon as I can.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Thanks, AJ. Thanks, again.”
“Just doing the right thing,” he says. “Night, Annie.”
“Good night.”
I watch as he goes out the door. As the headlights on his cruiser shine through the curtains. As he pulls away.
NINETEEN
IAM STANDING ON MYgranny’s porch.
It’s raining and the raindrops splatter and drum on the tin roof overhead. My skin is cold and wet and my hair drips.
My granny is beside me, but I can’t turn my head. I only know that she’s there.
She’s peeling an apple. I hear thescrape scrape scrapeof her knife, sliding under the skin, separating shiny peel from tender sweet flesh.
The rain splatters and drums.
She has potted plants all over the porch. There is no gutter and the rain slides off the corrugated tin and into the pots. The plants glisten and their leaves bounce and the heavy heads of the flowers bow under the pressure of the steady, relentless, cold, thrumming rain.
“Here,” my granny says beside me. I still don’t see her but I hear the chair creak as she gets up. She puts the peeled apple in my hand and I feel its mealy flesh against my palm.
I hold it up.
There is a face in the apple: two black eyes and a carved-out mouth.
The rain splatters and drums and the eyes in front of me blink and the mouth twists into movement. It says, “Annie. You killed her.”
I throw the apple into the rain and a crow sweeps down from a scraggly, twisted apple tree and catches the apple by the stem. The crowmakes a circle and perches on the porch railing and drops the apple, and the face goes rolling off the edge of the porch and into the sodden ground below.
“Annie,” the crow says. “Annie, will you kill the other one too?”
