Page 56 of The Witch's Orchard
“I will.”
I slip my jacket on and then pull a rain shell over it.
“Have a good run,” Leo says.
“Sure.”
“And take your gun.”
I tuck the Mongoose into the usual place, slip my phone into an inside shell pocket, check all the locks on the windows, check Honey’s locks and windows, and leave. After my late start, the sun is already up over the far ridge, but hidden behind deep gray clouds and sheets of rain, so it’s still mostly dark.
I step off the porch, walk a few steps, break into a slow trot, and then find my stride.
Even in the rain, even when it’s cold, even when I’m haunted by bizarre dreams of talking appleheads and crows, it feels good to run. It feels good to let my mind slip from the frenzied minutiae of the case and let it flow as I flow, one step at a time, in a thumping, steady rhythm.
It’s no time before I find myself at the stone circle again. I stop outside it. The whole area is cordoned off with police tape. Little flags are stuck in the ground where items of interest were found. A piece of hair maybe, a footprint that’s been washed away in this rain. I can’t help myself: I stare at the ground picturing Molly Andrews’s body, so peacefully laid to rest that she almost looked asleep.
I think about that summer, ten years ago, when first Jessica, then Olivia, then Molly were kidnapped. Think about the desperation in a town whose primary source of employment had just closed. I think about Molly’s long hair and pale skin and subtly abused insides.
“Where were you…” I whisper.
“You standing around out here feeling bad for yourself, or what?”
I snap to attention at the rattly voice and look up to find Susan McKinney, this time in a long black mackintosh and high green rubber boots. Most of her gray hair is hidden under a wide-brimmed hat, but wisps of it stick out, curling like corkscrews in the damp.
“I—”
She jerks her chin back up the trail and says, “Why don’t you come up.”
It’s not a question. And I don’t answer.
I just follow her and watch the clear water stream over her oiled black shoulders and splash onto the muddy trail under my feet.
TWENTY
SUSAN MCKINNEY’S KITCHEN ISsmall and close and it smells like green things. The room is hot and smoky, thanks, in part, to the wood cook stove in a corner of what seems to be a three-room cabin. I’m sitting in the kitchen/living area beside a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. Beyond an open doorway, I can make out the pattern of a quilt on a bed. Another door, painted bright green, leads to what I assume is the washroom, though the lights are off and no outside light illuminates the room. Area rugs of all ages, sizes, and styles cover the hardwood floors.
“How long have you lived here?” I ask.
“All my life.”
She puts a cup of tea in my hands. I look at it dubiously.
“Elderberry,” she says. I take a sip and she adds, “And arsenic.”
I almost spit, and she starts cackling.
“Nah,” she says. “I wouldn’t even give arsenic to a rat. If I wanted to kill you, I’d just shoot you. Grind you up into fertilizer.”
“Good to know,” I say.
She puts a jar of honey on the countertop and hands me a spoon.
“The tea is astringent,” she says. “You might want some of that.”
I add a spoonful of honey to the tea and take a small sip. I haven’t had elderberry anything in years, and my mouth puckers at the forgottentaste. I try another sip and then put the cup down and watch her as she rattles around at the countertop, emptying her basket of greens onto the counter.
“Chickweed,” she says. “Comes in the spring, flowers in the summer, and then disappears. But… usually after some rain, it returns in the fall. Everything in its season, so they say.” She pats the greens dry, then cuts the tops off and discards the lower portions into a wooden bowl on the far side of the counter. “Take that out to the chickens later,” she mutters to herself.
