The May Queen Murders (24 page)

about —”

Mama snapped her hand away from his. Some anger shimmied

her, yet her voice was a whisper I strained to hear. “Say it. Say her

name.”

Papa lowered his head. I crouched on the floor, my lantern’s flame

altering the shadows. Altering the way I saw my father’s face.

“Say her name,” Mama ordered.

I held my breath, waiting, and when Papa final y spoke, his voice

was hoarse.

“Terra.”

The girl Birch Markle kil ed.

Mama retreated from Papa and pointed toward the front door.

“Go. Get out.”

I didn’t know what I had witnessed between my parents. They

bickered from time to time, but this was a vein burrowing deeper

than a mismatching of minds. Something bitter nudged Mama’s

words, and from the resignation in his tone, he sounded as if he

knew he deserved whatever hell she unleashed.

Papa reached for her shoulder, but she swatted at his hand, and

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he left her standing in the hal . A moment later, I heard the back

door latch as he exited. Still not moving from my spying place, I nar-

rowed my eyes while Mama leaned against the wall to cross herself

and slumped on the floor. Her brown hands with their strong joints

gripped her forehead, then her shoulders quaked. My door creaked

on its hinges, and my feet padded along the floor.

“Mama?” I called.

She didn’t move. I scooted in beside her and curled my arms

around her. She was beautiful, even as she cried, even with gray glit-

tering at the front of her forehead. I liked the shape of her wide lips,

the same as mine.

“Where’d Papa go?” I asked.

“His friends,” she answered. Then she scoffed, a sour half laugh.

“They’ve always been
his
friends.”

“What do you mean? They like you.”

Mama’s gaze slid to mine. “Other than your papa, the only person

in this family who ever real y liked me is Mamie. She and Timoteo

taught me the language. She taught me how to do things the Glen

way so I wouldn’t be such an outcast.”

My chest ached hearing Mama’s bluntness. I knew a wall existed

between her and others in the Glen. Heather had loved my mother.

She’d never treated Mama as different, but maybe there were things I

never saw.

I followed Mama to the kitchen, where she drew out a kettle and

filled it with water. I placed it on the wood stove. She chose some

glass jars from a cabinet, a mortar and pestle, and ground herbs for a

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tea. The blend to calm my nightmares, I guessed by the smel . As she

mixed, I noticed my father’s veterinary bag under the table. I slipped

past Mama and sat in a chair, lifting the bag with my foot.

“Do you miss La Pintada?” I asked and eased open the bag.

“Sometimes,” Mama admitted. “The vil age was smal , far from

any cities. I sold fruit, whatever was in season. Your father came with

a church to build houses, and I noticed him because he spoke my

language better than most of his group. I gave him extra fruit.”

I smiled at the thought of my parents being close to the age I was

now.

My fingers dipped inside Papa’s bag, and I raked the bottom in

search of Milo’s ring. The tubing of the stethoscope was sleek, the

glass thermometer cool, and I tripped over packets of needles and

catgut sutures. Then I found a buttoned pocket inside the bag and

pulled open the snap, hoping Mama hadn’t heard the sound.

“Papa said he helped your brother after he was hurt,” I said.

Mama’s back remained to me, and she opened a metal tea ball to

dump the herbs and roots inside, fastening it with a smal , hinged

lock. “He did. I miss my brother.”

I remembered the letter Mama received a few years ago from the

Mexican government, how her hands shook and she screamed in

such horror that Papa came running. A landslide in La Pintada. Ev-

eryone was gone, her parents, her brothers and sister, their children.

Friends she had while growing up. They had all died in the mud, and

no one had told her until after their bodies were buried. Even if she

wanted family outside the Glen, it didn’t exist anymore.

“Do you wish you could visit their graves?” I asked.

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“What good would it do, Ivy? There’s nothing of them there, only

ghosts.”

“Mamá . . .”

She held up a hand, unwilling to talk more, and went back to

readying tea for when my nightmares rose. I hurried my search

around the pocket until my finger looped through a metal band,

and I buttoned the pocket, returned Papa’s bag to the floor, and held

Milo’s ring inside my palm. The light under the table was scant, but

the hammered silver ring glimmered with an engraved crest: bare

branches surrounding an
M.
It was old, an heirloom probably. He’d

want it back. I’d offer it to him in exchange for information about

Heather and what secrets she kept. What secrets helped kill her.

Mama dumped the tea ball into the kettle on the stove. “I love

your father. I wouldn’t be alive without him, but I didn’t know every-

thing about him when I married him, how complicated it’d be.”

“If you’d known then what you know now, would you have come?”

I asked.

She set those char-black eyes on me. “
Sí.
You don’t stop loving a

person because they have secrets. You make their secrets your own.”

"

I couldn’t think about attending school, though Rook brought me

assignments from the days I missed. How could I walk the hal ways

knowing she wasn’t in another class? All I wanted was to sleep. To go

into the black hollow.

Rook wouldn’t let me.

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One of Heather’s notes was tucked in my pocket. I reached my

hand inside to touch the paper, as if touching it would let me tap into

what Heather had been thinking. Connect me to her once again.

Meet me in the woods,
she’d written.
You know the place.

Milo was in the woods on May Day. They’d planned it that way,

and Heather had made him swear he’d not leave anything behind.

Maybe they had.

Strolling through Potter’s Field, I rested my head against Rook’s

arm. He came over and read books aloud when my head ached.

When I awakened, I found an odd portrait of me in ink in my sketch-

pad. I worked in pencil. Rook stayed even when I slept. He stayed

in the living room with a thin blanket Mama had brought from her

vil age to block the draft.

He stayed because he was Rook.

“Are you sure you’re up to coming out to the woods like this?” he

asked. “The funeral was yesterday, and I’m worried you ain’t thinkin’

right.”

I shrugged. “I have to know, Rook. Milo told her he was gonna

meet her out here. She was gonna run away from the Glen, but why?”

“Does it matter?” Rook asked.

“Yes,” I snapped. Rook jerked at the sharpness of my reply. I took

a steadying breath and closed my eyes.

Rook stepped under the shadow of the trees. “I don’t know, Ivy.

All the shit Heather was hiding, about anything could’ve happened

to her that night.”

The hunting rifle strapped to his back smacked his hip. If we trav-

eled too deep in the woods, if we heard twigs cracking and flocks of

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roosting birds upset the sky, I had a mind to yell into the woods, then

wait for Birch to slink out of his secret spot, all so Rook could put a

bullet between his eyes.

“If we’re found out here, we’re gonna catch hel ,” he said. “God, the

things you drag me into.”

I grinned. “Ain’t like you didn’t come willingly. You’ve only known

me my entire life.”

My
entire
life.

Rook was born six months before me in September, on the proper

side of the fall equinox. There wasn’t a day I breathed that he didn’t

breathe with me. In spite of the chaos, knowing that brought some

comfort.

“After school tomorrow, I can’t stay with you,” he said.

“You’re needed at home with your mama and Raven. I under-

stand.”

His jaw contracted while he checked his rifle. I fought back

the urge to warn him. Gramps didn’t die of brain fever or cancer.

Gramps was cleaning his rifle, and the rifle cleaned off his head. The

bang from the bullet had reverberated to where I was playing outside

with Papa’s shepherd dog, Elsinore. As had Mamie’s screams. It was

months before they stopped picking bone and broken teeth from the

wal s.

“I ain’t needed at home,” Rook said. “Pops has me on watch.”

“What?” I crossed my arms. “You ain’t goin’ out there like bait.”

The idea of Rook standing patrol, even with a rifle, made my gut

tremble as if I’d eaten bad berries and swallowed mustard tea to make

the bad come back up.

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“I’m doin’ this, Ivy.” He replaced his rifle on his shoulder. “I’ll be

sheriff someday, but nobody thinks I can do it. Even my pops says I

got no mettle. What kind of guy knows more about plants than how

to disarm someone?”

“One who’ll help his people through a bad winter,” I said.

“One who can’t stop a murderer.”

I gave a snort. “Your daddy ain’t stopped Birch either. Papa said

Dale Crenshaw’s wine came up clean. So we still got a murderer run-

nin’ ’round.”

Rook scowled. I’d pushed too far. He didn’t have to prove himself.

Not to me.

His nostrils flared with frustration. “We got people comin’ to our

house asking when the Glen will be safe. Birch Markle is a curse on

my family. When Grandpa Jackdaw died, he begged Pops to find that

bastard. I don’t want Pops beggin’ the same of me.”

He took a few steps and gave a bitter laugh while I held still be-

hind him. “I’m awful at hunting. The sight of blood makes me yel-

low-bellied. But if Birch comes for you, I’ll drop that monster dead.”

I joined Rook’s side and maneuvered my arm around his. How I

wished we were on a simple walk in spring. Nothing was so simple.

I was tied up in unraveling the strings my cousin had loomed. She’d

walked along those threads, hoping not to fall between the gaps. She

fel , and the strings were left behind. It was my fault I’d gotten tan-

gled in them.

Ahead, I recognized the fabric remnants forming a tent among

the trees. So many colors, like woven rainbows. Sunlight pierced the

seams to catch on the dangling prisms of quartz and spoons.

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We weren’t the only ones there.

Milo and Emmie were there, him perched on a rock with his head

bowed and hand against his forehead while she fingered a gauzy

scarf draped over a branch. My eyes darted around the dreamlike

place, and everywhere I looked, I realized now — in daylight instead

of the drunken light of Star’s and Elm’s lanterns — these weren’t Birch

Markle’s totems. Everything spoke of Heather, discarded velvet pil-

lows hidden under ferns, bottles made into charms only she’d use as

a decoration. On a tree trunk, the bark peeled to reveal cuttings of

initials. H + M.

I should’ve known before . . . but she’d denied it. She’d lied to my

face. To protect Milo.

“Why are you here?” Rook asked.

“Just saying goodbye. Since we weren’t welcome at the funeral, we

came here.” Milo’s sister gave a bitter smile. “It’s a Glen rule, ain’t it?

Bury the dead after three days, or at least three days after a body’s

found?”

I narrowed my eyes. Glen kind didn’t talk about our ways with

outsiders, not the intimate traditions. We might sell our goods, help

out with a secret charm bag or two for a price, but we didn’t share our

lore.

“How do you so much about Glen folk?” I asked.

Milo wistful y looked into treetops. “Even after you’ve left Row-

an’s Glen, it stays in your soul.”

My mouth fell open. “What?”

“Our mama was Glen born,” he admitted.

Was this what Emmie had warned him not to tell us? It could be

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only the beginning of secrets the Entwhistles carried in their hearts.

I moved along the boundary, stopping to study each tree. My chest

felt caved in, a rumble that began with my heart fracturing, grief

renewed.

Emmie added, “Mama left after the last May Queen, Terra MacA-

voy, was killed. You can’t stay after evil’s touched your blood.”

Your blood.

My blood.

How much were they like me, like Heather and Rook? Did they

knew how to make firefly lanterns or predict a bad winter by when

the sycamore shed its bark? Maybe their mama tried to breed it out

of them by giving her children an outsider daddy. She could’ve gone

anywhere, and yet she raised them close to the Glen.

“Mama always said not to go back ’cause all you’d find in Rowan’s

Glen were lies and death. Not far off, was she?” Emmie remarked.

“So you heard of Birch Markle?” I asked.

Milo nodded. “Our mama told us the story. But someone like

Heather comes ’round maybe once or twice in your life. You don’t

turn that away, no matter if you’re scared.”

Heather had mentioned being scared. Not of Milo. Of something

in the Glen? He was her sanctuary. They’d even built a haven in the