The May Queen Murders (8 page)

I’d be so happy.”

Whoever was with her last night had left her breathless.

Heather was in love.

I didn’t know what that felt like.

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But she did, and I could only guess from the way she behaved that

the feeling was a kind of magic. It must be wonderful. A dream. A

wish. A promise shared. She was blessed if the one she loved felt the

same, which of course, her mystery suitor must. Heather was easy to

love.

“Wh-who did you see last night?” I asked.

She twisted her fingers through a tendril of my hair. “Come out-

side. I don’t want anyone to overhear.”

I shut my window and changed into a brown skirt that I matched

with a gray shawl Mamie didn’t wear anymore. Unease squirmed

through my stomach, a worm wriggling through damp earth. Heath-

er avoided my question, like she had last night. Was it on purpose?

Was she worried how I’d react? If it were the latter, who could she

love that’d upset me —

A boot with a scuffed toe. I’d drawn that boot.

Rook.

Cold started behind my skull and spread along my neck. August

had seen them going off together. I wanted Rook to notice me. Any-

time I saw him, Heather was around, too. I was an idiot, fooling my-

self into thinking maybe he’d noticed me as wel .

But even if Rook didn’t know how I felt, Heather did. How could

she do this to me?

I didn’t want him to pick Heather over me. I loved my cousin, but

right then, I was a fragile stem yanked from the earth, roots stripped

and separated.

My hair slipped from its braid, and I combed the black waves.

Nothing fussy, but it was time enough to steel my face.

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“You okay?” Heather squeezed my shoulder as I met her on the

porch. She wore a handwoven duster so big only the tips of her red

sneakers stuck out, and her hair was pinned up. “You look like you’ve

got the sicks.”

I waved off her comment and sat beside her. “Must be something

I ate.”

She grinned and hugged me close against her. My arms were

heavy, but I managed to rest one around her waist. How could I not

want her to be happy? How could I stop from wanting what she had?

I would listen, smile, and be happy for her no matter the ache inside.

But I could have secrets, too.

“Please don’t be mad,” she murmured into my ear.

I shook my head, unable to find my voice.

I’m furious because you were with
him.

“N-n-not angry,” I replied and stepped out of the hug.
Don’t sound

jealous. Be her friend.
“Why are you sneakin’ around?”

“It’s special, Ivy, and I’m still figuring out what it all means.”

Heather turned her face to the dawning sky, and everything about

her softened — her smile, the pinch around her eyes. “It’s all I want,

but nobody would understand.”

“I might.”

“No, Ivy, I don’t think so.”

“You know I’m here for you.”

“Don’t, please. Don’t guilt-trip me.”

I bristled. “I’m not laying on a guilt trip, but you’ve never held

anything back. So why now?”

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Because she’s in love with the same boy you are, and she doesn’t

know how to tell you that he loves her, not you.

Her cheeks were no longer pink with the bud of first love, but

her nose went red, eyes shining wet. She reached out her hand, and

though I had unanswered questions, we laced fingers.

“You’d tell me if someone kissed you, right?” she asked.

I forced a laugh. “I’d tell you immediately. Hel , you’d probably

know before I did.” After she’d let the pause draw out too long be-

cause we both knew no one kissed me, I said, “Tell me about it.”

Heather had to tell me everything. She
had
to, or I’d never stop

thinking about it.

“It’s like trying a new fruit.” She didn’t look up. “At first, you’re

sorta shy about putting your mouth on another person’s, but all you

feel is softness and warm and wet. You open your lips wider, and

once their tongue first flicks yours, it seems like your heart could

flutter right up your throat and come outta your mouth into theirs,

and they’d have your heart forever.”

I didn’t want to picture her kissing Rook, each of them guessing

what to do, feeling good together.

“And there’s more than that,” she said. “Fingers pull at your shirt,

tickle your waist, then move higher. It’s handful after handful of

sweaty skin, and your mouth hurts from kissing.”

No, no, no, I didn’t want to hear this.

But I would.

I wouldn’t hold it against her. She deserved falling in love. Every-

one did. Including me, someday. So why did my chest expand with

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panic as if a million butterflies were shivering against a screened

window, waiting to burst through?

“Ivy, last night, it started innocent, and the kisses went to my neck,

down my chest, from one side to the other.” She motioned between

her breasts. I closed my eyes and willed myself not to see what she

described, Rook’s dimples as his lips touched her skin. Had he taken

off his glasses so they wouldn’t be in the way? I wanted to stop my

mind, yet the more she talked, the more detail she felt compelled to

give, and I listened because that was what good friends did. “I didn’t

know I could come from touching and kissing, but Ivy, I did.”

The silence between us was so solid, I didn’t know if it’d break.

Not knowing what to say, I asked the obvious, to know and get it

over. “You had sex?”

Heather nodded. “Yeah.”

Her bluntness surprised me. She didn’t hold back even after my

jaw dropped.

“You know how they say it hurts the first time?” she remarked. “It

ain’t like that at al .”

I didn’t want more details. It’d be too much. There were other

things I wanted to know. “So who is it?”

She didn’t answer.

I pressed again. “Is it Rook?”

She let out an exasperated breath. “
That’s
what you ask?”

But she isn’t answering.

Everything hinged on this one admission, and she kept it from

me. Was she that afraid of how I’d act? I wouldn’t slap her. I wouldn’t

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stop talking to her. But maybe she knew that. Maybe she knew me so

well that she expected me not to react until I was alone.

That same bewildered, sick feeling hit me hard again. I didn’t dare

move away or let a muscle in my face twitch. I should be heartened

she’d chosen me to share this with first, and yet I ached to run past

the scarecrows to the fields and flop in a vegetable plot to cry into

my skirt. I hadn’t known we were both racing to the same finish line

until she arrived first.

“Nothing’s changed, Ivy. Not between us,” Heather swore.

Everything
had changed.

She’d left me behind, and she felt it as wel , or she wouldn’t have

said anything. She reached over, our pinkie fingers twined around

each other, and she watched me, an expectant look on her face. I

needed to come up with something.

“Is it worth all the secrets and sneaking around?” I wondered.

Heather sat on the step with her knees drawn to her chest. “You

know, Ivy, I think it is.”

"

When Heather and I stopped outside her house, she tugged me into

a hug. The abruptness of it, the tightness, startled me.

“Thank you,” she whispered, “thank you so much.”

I took her weight of secrecy. It became mine. My silence. My sad-

ness. So she’d be happy.

My hand twitched, the red threads on our wrists side by side, an

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infinity loop. Heather broke away with a wave and disappeared in-

side. School was a good two hours off, and the night only began to

dissolve into daybreak. The first violet ray of dawn crept over the

horizon, and smoky blue drenched the Glen. My feet tromped the

ground, and though I was aware of houses and farms, I was blind.

The rustle of leaves and stomp of boots caught my ear. Ahead of

me lay the Meriweathers’ vegetable plots. The soil was tilled black.

For now, the seedlings took refuge inside Rook’s greenhouse built

from windows and glass doors reclaimed from the hollow’s demol-

ished buildings. He and Sheriff retrieved the discards from the road-

side and fastened parts together until they had a curious building of

pieces unwanted by others. Through dusty glass, I spied two shapes

moving about the greenhouse, one burly and the other leaner and

athletic. The second silhouette appeared in my sketchbook dozens of

times. The sight of him caused a cold sweat to break out on my chest.

How could I speak to him now? How could I not feel something

rip in me?

I lifted my skirt’s hem to run, but I hadn’t made it more than five

feet before he called.

“Ivy!”

Don’t face him.
Despite my brain’s begging, my heart demanded I

stay.

Rook waited outside the greenhouse. His brown shirt and trou-

sers were dingy, and his hands, protected by gloves, held a snarl of

branches dotted with dried black berries. Bel adonna. He weeded it

from the fields each year, and some must’ve taken root in the green-

house last fal .

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“Why are you over this way so early?” he asked.

“I went for a w-walk.” I fumbled the words.

“Alone?” He threw down the bel adonna, stripped off his gloves,

and moved toward me. His gait was an easy jog, and the redness in

his pale cheeks a combination of working and the brisk morning.

Behind him, the second shadow exited the greenhouse. August re-

mained in the background, knee-deep in bel adonna. “Rook, what’s

goin’ on?”

He ignored August, his focus intent on me. A day ago, I would’ve

craved his determined gaze. “Ivy, I told you what my pops said ’bout

not going out alone.”

“I was with Heather.”

So were you.

I bit back the venom of my wounded feelings. He’d made his pick,

and I wasn’t it. If Heather had found anyone else, I’d have danced

with her in dizzy circles. Because it was Rook, a tremendous guilt

filled my bel y for wishing it wasn’t.

He crossed his arms and looked every bit a self-appointed big

brother. Maybe he never had seen me as more than a sister. “You

should be more careful. I don’t think you get how serious Pops was

when he said not to go off on your own. I mean it — if you’re gonna

be wandering ’round, take me with you.”

Something in my head snapped. It cleaved open the last bit of will

holding back my hurt. He was a hypocrite, telling me to watch my

back and be safe while he and Heather snuck around. All the sore-

ness clamping my heart, the anger and sourness, rose from me.

“Screw you, Rook! I ain’t the one runnin’ around half the night!”

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He staggered back into a horse fence. “Ivy, what the hell?”

My mouth fell open, and I tried to come up with more to yel . My

thoughts were colors, shades of red, alarming and enraged.

He peeled himself off the fence and reapproached me. “I have no

idea —”

“Don’t give me that bul shit,” I growled. “You treat me like I’m a

kid! I’m
older
than Heather! You pull this on her?”

“You think she’d listen if I tried? No! She’d laugh in my face.” He

jammed his fingers through his dark hair. “Heather’ll take care of

herself, but you depend on her for every —”

My hands slapped against his abdomen and knocked him back-

wards, but he regained his balance. It made me want to throw my

weight into him again. I lunged for him. He caught my wrists, and

we twisted together, me trying to strike him and him deflecting me

no matter how rabid I was.

“Stop!” he ordered. “You’re gonna get hurt!”

“I’m already hurt!”

His hands tightened around my wrists, and he stared so intently I

wondered if he was trying to crush me. I wanted to be dust.

“Rook, let her go!” August grabbed his friend to separate us. “Je-

sus, she’s crying! You see that?”

I lifted the corner of Mamie’s shawl to wipe my eyes as I bolted

toward home. Behind me, Rook and August yelled back and forth,

but I didn’t hear what they said. My breath rushed out too hard. Yet

within a few paces, fingers snagged at my shoulder.

“Wait!” Rook called.

I wanted to leave. I wanted to make-believe everything, beginning

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the minute I’d found Heather in the stable to her secret, was nothing

more than a fever dream.

“For God’s sake, girl, stop runnin’ from me!”

The driving force to flee emptied from my legs. But I wouldn’t

face him. I didn’t want him to see me looking like a mess from snivel-

ing and my hair ragged. He stood so near that his body heat reached

out to me. With a deft gentleness hard to imagine from someone

who worked in fields — let alone someone who had every right to

be angry with me — his hand grazed my shoulder to slip down the

length of my arm.

“Ivy, what’d I do?”

I sniffed back a sob, but the noise was half strangled. Rook circled

in front of me. He was over six feet tal , and the top of my head didn’t

even reach his shoulder. Though I tried not to look at him, it was too