The May Queen Murders (18 page)

out for our neighbor, and our neighbor’s more than who lives next

door, Rook.”

Rook bowed his head, mumbling, “Yes, Dr. Timothy.”

Papa opened the gate in the Meriweathers’ fence and stepped out

to the road. Milo followed behind him, and I looked on for a bit as

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they headed off toward the clinic. As a veterinarian, Papa interacted

with folks outside the Glen more than most. When I was at the clinic,

I shied away from outsiders, focusing on the animals they brought

for care. Listening to Milo, watching his pain and anger and resigna-

tion, I couldn’t help but feel that tug in my chest, wondering why

Heather was drawn to him, why she took such risks for him.

The black sky went on forever. Sounds in the distance of the May

Day celebration chimed across the fields. Rook ventured over to his

greenhouse that harbored fragile seedlings. A burn pile of bel adon-

na was drying on the ground. It seemed no matter how it was torn,

the weed was too resilient to die.

“We shouldn’t stay out here long,” Rook said and dragged over a

crate. I sat. I wished to smother away the sadness and pretend he and

I were outside on the first night of May with no other fears than the

strange shapes the fire cast across our faces.

The wind blew the tattered clothes of the scarecrows, shaking the

bel s strewn along the fences. The berm of forest rose in the distance.

Something squeaked as it flapped overhead, a bat circling, once,

twice, a third time.

Bats flyin’ a circle thrice brings luck that ain’t nice,
Mamie once

said.

We weren’t alone. Others ran toward us.

“Rook?” I pointed. Closer and closer, a girl and a boy ran. I recog-

nized Violet’s blond hair and her purple dress. She was whimpering.

“Vi!” Rook climbed over the fence to hit the road on the other side.

Violet’s crying stilted with her every footfal . I ran at her, grabbed her

wrists to pull her close, and held her.

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August’s and Rook’s faces spiraled tighter, and in the center, my

body pressed against Violet’s shivering frame. She gripped a tattered

crown of dried flowers. Heather flowers.

“P-please, Vi,” I begged. “Where’s Heather?”

“We don’t know,” she answered with a sniff. “No one can find her.”

I reached for the crown. The pink blooms were all wrong, flat-

tened and sparse, even for ones dried and used by the granny-

women. Strands of red hair clung to the crown.

As if ripped from Heather’s head.

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Chapter Eleven

It wasn’t until the mornin’ after the May Day festival

that folks noticed Terra ain’t come home.

The hounds’ baying was constant. They were the dogs we tried so

hard to keep safe, sent now to track and hunt. Aunt Rue needed a se-

dating tea brewed of chamomile, gingerroot, and herbs that wouldn’t

bring on the baby a month too soon. My duty was to select items

belonging to Heather to give the dogs her scent.

I’d have told the dogs my cousin smelled of lavender soap and

she dabbed basil oil behind her ears. Dogs didn’t understand those

things. Their noses knew body chemistry, every miniature galaxy

within our cel s. They knew when someone was dead or alive.

“Choose cloth,” Sheriff had instructed. “It holds the body’s oils,

and the dogs’ll get the best of her smel . Hair’s good, too.”

Heather’s broomstick skirts were twisted around wooden dow-

els and arranged in a rainbow. Her blouses and vests, each echoing

some memory of her, were ordered in the closet. As I picked through

the fabric, something fluttered to the floor, a paper from a crafter in

the Glen. The family made stationery and journals for the farmer’s

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market. The note was velvety, as if unfolded and refolded numerous

times, and I read the date heading the page, January 4, this year:

Dear M,

I’ll never betray you. Don’t you trust me? You can tell me your

secrets. You know how I feel, how I think you are brave, strong,

and so much more than where you live. Where you’re from.

I’m not only a Glen girl. I’m your girl.

Why can’t you believe me? Do you know what I do when

I’m all alone? I think about you. I think about that cigarette on

your lips I want to kiss. I think about your messy hair and your

lean body. I remember the taste of you, wanting more, and I

wish what I give myself was as much as what you give me.

You can trust me. I trust you.

Is it crazy to say I love you?

— H

A few lines down, a different handwriting replied:

My H,

I trust you. I trust you more than I trust anyone. I’ve never

been closer to anyone. I can’t say why. But when we’re together, I

want to tell you everything. It’s right there. I want to give in. I’m

learning to give. To you.

— M

I refolded Heather’s love letter.

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She’d been seeing Milo far longer than either of them let on. But

was that all they hid? How deep did their secrets run?

My thoughts were unsure of too much, and I numbed myself to

find something to bring to Sheriff. I fingered through her drawer

and selected her black gauze shirt and the red curls knotted in her

bone comb, but the note remained tucked inside my camisole, hid-

den beside my heart. I left the door to her bedroom open, sunrise

poking through the patchwork curtains. She’d be back. She
had
to

come back.

I stood on the bank all day while the dogs snuffled the river water,

their paws splashing. They ran across fields and snooped around the

stable. Promise Bridge continued to swing even after the dogs criss-

crossed it and barreled over to Potter’s Field. They tracked her smell

to the woods, to the place where Birch had made his home of girl

skirts and old spoons, but then her scent was gone. They searched

for blood and came up with nothing. Heather had vanished.

I clutched the shawl around my shoulders. I watched from my

vantage point on the shore, until northern winds brought a chill and

the earth sparkled with mist. By dusk, an owl roosted somewhere in

the trees and sang its darkening elegy.

Hoo . . . Hoo . . .

Who . . . Who . . .

“I brought you coffee,” Rook said and held out a thermos. “I added

cream and honey, the way you like it.”

He uncapped the thermos and poured me a steaming cup. The

heat soothed the stiffness in my joints from standing in one place

for so long.

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“Did you tell my pops about Heather sneaking around?” he asked.

“She’s already so furious that I betrayed her,” I said, setting down

the coffee. “If I do it again —”

“Ivy, it don’t matter if it gets her found.”

“She’ll never speak to me again.”

Who . . . Who . . .
The owl wondered of the clouds.
Her . . . Her . . .

Rook pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. His fingers

nudged mine, and I loosened my hand so ours could twine together.

He said softly, “She’ll forgive you.”

One of the hounds barked and barreled back into the river, the

Sheriff’s hillman barely able to hold the tether and falling face first

in the water.

“P-please, Rook,” I pleaded. “Don’t tell Sheriff Heather’s secrets.”

“I can’t lie to him,” he protested and set down the thermos.

I grabbed his other hand and brought both of them to my cheeks

so that his forefingers traced my lips. His thumbs drew a heart be-

ginning with the crescents under my eyes and ran down to my chin.

“Help me,” I pleaded.

“How?”

“Help me find her. I need to make things right. I didn’t have that

chance before she disappeared, and . . .”

My knees gave. Rook dropped his hands to my shoulders and

tugged me against him. Keeping me from falling.

She was gone.

I’m not letting you be my shadow anymore.

She could’ve run away.

Get a life.

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The crown was hers. She could’ve pulled it off.

You can’t have mine.

Heather had once trusted me with everything. I didn’t know why

that had changed, what changed in her, in me. She kept so much to

herself and scattered crumbs of half-truths.

Rook embraced me, his lips against my forehead, his nose touch-

ing the part in my hair. My fingers treaded his suspenders, along the

planes of his back muscles. His shirt buttons embossed my skin. The

fabric was wet where my tears had pooled between my cheek and his

chest, but he held me tight, no matter how long the cries shuddered

my back.

“I’ll do anything to help,” he promised.

I lifted my face. “Even keeping some things from your dad?”

A slow nod. “Yeah, but if we don’t get anywhere, I gotta tell him.”

I wasn’t alone.

Knowing Rook would help, even with Heather missing and the

chasm her absence created, made the hollow not seem so bottomless.

It was dark and cold, but Rook was down there as wel .

His lips skimmed across mine, only for a heartbeat.

A group of hillfolk, including August, were searching the field

with a hound. August wore a stony expression and raised his hand

in a wave. I shooed Rook over to his friend while I reached for the

thermos and poured myself more coffee. The moment I unscrewed

the lid, the clouds shifted, allowing the scarlet haze of sunset to bleed

across the desolate land. Something metal glinted near the river.

Rook and August didn’t notice how I inched down the shore to

the twinging spark. The hound up near August’s group howled, some

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odor on the wind tickling his nose. He lurched hard to the left and

started down the embankment. I had only a minute to seek out the

metal winking against the spoke of light before the group lumbered

my way.

“What is it?” someone yelled as the dog scratched at a dirt patch

fifteen yards up from me.

“Can’t tel ,” the hound’s handler called. “Get Sheriff. We got some-

thing. Boomer’s digging hard.”

My fingers sifted through clods of dirt and grass until I unearthed

a metal chain with a rusted nut. Folks must’ve trampled it into the

ground.

The dog barked and whined as his claws exhumed some se-

cret. The hillmen stood around, anticipating Boomer’s find. Rook

claimed a position at the base of the group, vacil ating between the

search and where I unstrung the chain from the mud.

“Boomer, move,” August said and eased aside the hound. He knelt

and used his thick fingers to push aside the dirt and long grass before

holding up a thick string. A piece of red thread. “This is Heather’s!

I’ve seen her wear it!”

I bit back a slug of bile. Mama and the red threads our family

wore. They were supposed to keep us safe.

I thrust the thoughts from my mind and picked harder at the

earth. Rook knelt by me now and helped me wipe away dirt. Link

by link, I scraped off the soil and bits of grass until I uncovered a

necklace with charms and treasures made from relics people had

discarded or lost. The chain was ugly and enchanting as I slipped it

through my fingers. Heather’s necklace.

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A lump swelled in my throat, and I held up the necklace. “You see

what I have?”

Rook’s lips tucked together, his glance flicking to August. My fin-

gers wound the chain, looping around each nut, each tarnished pen-

dant that Heather adored. I’d counted them, was with her when she

took things from the earth and made them special. Some charms

were missing, mostly rocks she’d turned into jewelry, the green glass

circle with her birthday. The weight was off without it. My hands

quaked, the links trembling against each other with a soft jingle.
She

never took it off.

“It must’ve fallen by accident,” I suggest.

Even as I spoke, I feared it was a lie.

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