The May Queen Murders (22 page)

metal dangled over my heart.

“What are you thinking?” Rook asked.

“Not much. I’m drugged. I can’t believe she’s making me do this.”

Rook opened the gated fence, allowing me to go before him. We

took a few steps down the road, and he shoved his hands into his

pockets, pausing at a scarecrow. Its head was a pumpkin from last

autumn, only now soured with rot and slime.

“She’s just trying to help out your aunt,” Rook said, nudging the

picnic basket with his knee. “Your mama’s a good person.”

“She says she still feels like she don’t fit in here,” I replied. “I mean,

look at us. There ain’t any other Mexicans in the Glen, and the ones

at school — I don’t relate to them ’cause I’ve always lived here.”

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“I think you’re beautiful.” I blushed but Rook turned my chin. “I

like how sometimes you speak and there’s some of your mama’s ac-

cent in there. You don’t gotta be anyone but you, Ivy.”

“Heather said I was tryin’ to be her. If we weren’t fightin’, I’d have

been with her. She wouldn’t have died.”

He shook his head. “Or you’d both be dead. What happened to her

. . . nothing like this has happened since —”

He crossed his arms and leaned into the fence.

“Birch Markle,” I finished. “We’re back to the old stories.”

We walked down the path under the sun. Sweat beaded along my

hairline, and wide cracks mapped the ground where the earth split

from drought. All the grass, even the oat grass so tolerant of Ozark

heat, bleached white. We needed rain, and soon, if there was to be

any hope for a decent crop.

As we passed the posts, I noticed some new signs tacked to the

wood, decrees from Sheriff.

Don’t go outside alone.

Stay on known roads.

Hillfolk took posts along the trails, shotguns in hand and eyes

narrowed in the unforgiving sun. Watching.

When we reached Heather’s home, her bed sheets were hanging

on a line in front of the house. Laundry usual y sun-dried behind a

house, but when a family was in mourning, they put their loved one’s

sheets in front to announce a passing.

Other hillfolk had visited my aunt’s house, evidenced by baskets

of fresh bread, eggs, and even a wheel of the Lemays’ best cheese on

the porch. Rook helped me gather the food. I turned the doorknob

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to let us inside. When I found it locked, I lifted the doormat to look

for the spare key, but it was gone.

Because now it was
after.

I slipped off Heather’s necklace and pieced through the bits of

rusted history until I came to a time-darkened skeleton key. On a

hunch, I slipped it into the lock and listened to the pop of the lock

yielding.

“Lucky,” Rook muttered.

We walked through the living room. A white veil was draped

over the mirror above the fireplace. Our footfal s fell hollow on the

warped floor. I sped up my step as unease slithered up my spine and

knotted around my shoulders, strangling me. A house in mourn-

ing, a house that had no life in it. We went into the kitchen, where I

showed Rook how my aunt liked her necessities packed in the icebox.

“Aunt Rue, I’m in the kitchen,” I called out. My voice returned

with a tinny echo. “Mama sent over food.”

No thumps of movement, no murmured voices. Rook shrugged.

“Maybe they went for a walk.”

A family in mourning didn’t go for walks. I wasn’t sure where

Marsh was, probably at Papa’s clinic if he couldn’t bear to be home. I

instructed Rook to tidy up the kitchen and living room, giving him

a bucket of hot water and oil soap. I bumped against a Mason jar on

the counter. Initial y, I thought the jar was filled with coffee beans,

but these were larger.

“Pawpaw seeds,” I remarked. “When I was little, some townie

showed up when Heather and I were outside playin’ ring-around-

the-rosie. This woman was grieving hard, and she asked for Mamie.

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She gave Mamie money and begged her to bring pawpaw seeds to

town for a burial, said they needed them thrown on a casket to find

out who killed this woman’s father.”

“Did Mamie go?”

“She did.”

“Did they find out who killed the man?” he asked.

I didn’t know and drew my fingers back from the Mason jar.

“They’re gonna throw them on Heather’s grave tomorrow.”

Rook lifted the bucket of soapy water and then took the rag to

wash down the floor. Too much heat in the past couple days, too

much dust blowing through open windows, and I was sure they left

the windows open as much as possible to make sure Heather’s spirit

wasn’t trapped.

While Rook cleaned, I sneaked down the hal , past my aunt and

Marsh’s bedroom. Aunt Rue lay asleep, her strawberry-blond hair

haloed on her pillow. Sunlight poured in and glinted off the sharp-

ened blade of the ax under the bed. Mamie had put it there to ease

the labor pains once the baby came.

The door to Heather’s room was open as I left it. Pieces of quartz

dangled from the ceiling to catch light, and I glanced to her dresser.

Heather decorated the top with a jewelry box and another collection

of found things too large to string on her chain — glass bottles with

labels for things like “gargling oil” and “viper drops,” animal bones

she’d washed and bleached in sunlight. Everything was a treasure to

Heather. She’d been a treasure to me.

My throat closed, my heart rising because it wanted to fall out

among her things.

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I smelled her.

I
smel ed
her in this room.

I expected to turn around and find her behind me with her tilted

grin. She wouldn’t be there. She was in a barn over ice. By law, for any

death unattended by the Glen’s doctor, Sheriff had to call the county

police to send their medical examiner. They went to Papa’s clinic,

the most sterile site on the Glen’s land, and pulled open the dead,

dug around their insides for clues to what killed them, and stitched

them up. All of it recorded with notes and cameras. There was no

affection in their cuts and examination. It was science. A crime in

Heather’s case. The Glen’s granny-women would’ve stood by to make

sure traditions were kept and wrapped her in rags soaked in wahoo

tea before placing her in a pine box so we could say farewell with

Pastor Galloway reading Scripture and . . .

I wasn’t here for this.

Every drawer went opened in search of something. Mindful of

Aunt Rue’s sleep, I rapped quietly on floorboards, wondering if a

loose one would spring up and uncover some mystery. Tapping in

her closet, even with her dresses brushing against my face like her

fingers pushing back a wild tangle of my hair. I pulled out a chair and

picked around her ceiling where I sneezed away cobwebs.

All that was left on her stripped bed were bare pillows, the mat-

tress, and frame. I poked around in hopes of finding something she’d

hidden. Down on my hands and knees, I scooted underneath the

bed. Heather was too good at hiding things.

There was nothing for me to find, and I reluctantly pulled myself

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up before giving Heather’s room a last look. I spun on my heels, in-

tending to help Rook with cleaning, but I pivoted right into Mamie.

“Oof!”

My grandmother held my face. Her mouth twitched, yet all I re-

ceived was the comfort of her hands, so worn that her fingerprints

seemed eroded by age. Her hands dropped to Heather’s necklace

peeking out from my col ar. She inched across the charms and pen-

dants, lingering on the gaps of the missing ones.

“I know, Mamie,” I said. “I w-wish I could find them. I want them

back. I want her back.”

Can’t have her back, girl,
her eyes seemed to say.
Don’t mess with

tryin’ to conjure the dead to talk after they’re gone. Nothing good comes

of raisin’ a tormented soul.

If Heather’s soul was in torment because of the mystery of how

she died, I had to uncover every truth about her, even the ones she

wanted me to never know. Was it going against her wishes? I didn’t

know. I wanted — no, needed — her to rest in peace.

I needed to find peace in her death.

But how could I live without her?

Mamie shuffled past me in the doorway to enter Heather’s room.

Like me, she traced her fingers along the dresser and bed frame,

old pil bottles and animal bones, before letting them rest on the

jewelry box on the dresser. I knew the hinged top, the carving of

budded plants easy to mistake for wheat. It was heather. I supposed

this was where Heather stored her necklace at night. If I were to

take it, I’d have one more of Heather’s belongings to claim as my

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own. Except I didn’t want it. Having her things wasn’t the same as

having her.

“I don’t want it, Mamie,” I said.

My grandmother looked over her shoulder at me with her keen

eye. She drummed on the box’s lid before pressing it into my hands.

Her thumbs over mine, she made me trace the box’s corners.

Ivy, look.

Okay, Mamie, I’ll look.

My breath held tight, I flipped open the silver hinge on the front.

The odor of cedar oil to keep away moths whiffed out, and then

Heather’s soapy, lavender smel . It was empty.

I almost expected something to be inside.

“Why, Mamie?” I asked in a hoarse whisper.

She touched the red thread bracelet on my wrist, then backed out

of the room.

Alone, I knelt on Heather’s floor with her box in my lap and

smacked the lid.
Damn it, Heather, there should be something here,

something to tell who you real y were.

Whap!
I hit the box again, then again.

My hand throbbed with the blows to the front, the top. I didn’t

care. I hurt.

Another hit.
Thud!

I cocked my head. That sounded different. Hollow.

Tapping along the box, I searched for the empty spot. It rattled.

I bit my lip and tugged. A false bottom fell away, revealing a gap,

and scrap after scrap of folded paper fluttered into my lap. All in the

same stationery as Heather’s note.

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M,

I don’t want to hide anymore, but I can’t tell anyone about

us. They wouldn’t understand. Especial y not Ivy. She keeps ask-

ing questions. She knows too much, and she’s obsessed. What

am I supposed to tell her? Nothing is what she thinks it is. Birch

Markle isn’t all there is to be afraid of. I’m ready to leave it all

behind. Even her.

— H

H,

Soon, I promise.

Soon you’ll be free. Just hang on.

— M

M,

Meet me in the woods.

You know the place. We can’t leave anything behind.

— H

I crushed the notes and shoved them in my skirt’s pockets. I

couldn’t read them right now. My thoughts were too scattered yet

intent on one thing.

Ivy is obsessed.

obsessed.

I stood and left Heather’s room. Rook’s
scritch-scratch
while he

scrubbed echoed from the kitchen. In the hall outside Aunt Rue’s

room, the air was stifling. She needed a breeze, and I crept around

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the bed to open the window in hope the humidity would dissipate

outside. I turned to my aunt to whisper goodbye, but the word with-

ered.

Aunt Rue sat up in bed.

Her legs dangled over the edge. Spidery veins crossed her calves,

which were milky, as was her face. The purplish cast under her eyes

revealed she mustn’t have slept much. The bloodshot whites rim-

ming her irises were visible.

“You gotta rest, Auntie,” I said.

She stared blankly. The wind fluffed the curtains and her mussed

hair. Her toes didn’t reach the floor from the bed, but between her

feet, the ax head was visible.

“He comes for girls with secrets, you know,” she said in a brittle

rasp, and the sound raised every hair on my arms. “Terra MacAvoy

had them. My girl did too. And you.”

“Wh-what about me?” I asked.

She didn’t blink. Her arm lifted as if raised by invisible mario-

nette’s strings. Her index finger pointed at me.

“Nothing can stop him.”

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