Chapter Eleven

Sins of the Past

There's nothing like somebody suspecting you of murder to keep you up all night.

Oscar's got my nerves all frazzled with talk about me going to jail. And it's spooked Grandmama enough she sent Bone out in the middle of the night to gather bones kissed by moonlight for a protection spell. Probably to ward off Stone's ghost that might come for us.

I get out of bed like usual at the crack of dawn to help Grandmama prepare for our rounds. We sell tinctures for fresh eggs. Trade pies for fruits and vegetables. Rarely do we get actual cash from someone. Eventually, I'm sent on my way to run my errands, delivering herbs to our clients like usual, while Grandmama prepares more jams for the coming weekend's market.

That bone-tooth key itches in my pocket all day.

"Please explain to me again how going back to the scene of the crime will clear your name instead of getting you arrested?" Raelean snap-pops her bubble gum as she side-eyes me. Her brown hair flames around her head as wind rushes through the rolled down windows. Her blue Camaro purrs like a kitten, but the AC is for shit. Nice of her to drive me around, though.

She only questions this because she can't see the whole picture. I can't, either, to be fair. But it's there, I just need to collect all the pieces first.

"The sheriff thinks I might have murdered Stone—which...threatening to kill him publicly at the courthouse like I did, probably wasn't one of my better ideas."

Raelean hums an agreeing sound.

"And Stone didn't leave a suicide note," I go on, "which makes the whole thing extra suspect. Between that and Ellis dying, it looks like I'm picking off the Rutledges one at a time."

"And my question still hasn't been answered." Raelean frowns.

A deputy mans the main road to keep the media and any lookie-loos from corrupting an active crime scene. We can get there from the backside, though, if we sneak across the abandoned pecan orchard. Raelean's car squeaks and grumbles over potholes in the dirt road.

"Adaire said I had to find justice."

"She specifically told you to go to the scene of the crime?" She raises a skeptical brow.

"No." I roll my eyes at her. "But I have to start somewhere. She said I would need to be set free. And now they suspect me of murder."

"She could have been a little more specific," Raelean mumbles.

"I told you, it's not an exact science. There's not a map with a go to X and find the treasure. She's shown snippets of things. They're like puzzle pieces, and you have to interpret what they mean."

"Maybe justice is simply that the bastard is dead." Raelean shrugs like that's good enough for her.

"It doesn't feel like justice," I complain to the window.

Weeds and scrub have reclaimed the field's road. Sticks and branches from the narrowing path threaten to scratch up her paint job so she stops before we can get to the end. We'll have to walk the rest of the way.

"It isn't just about what Adaire saw," I say as we high-step it through the weeds. "It's also what Ellis said. She's here. It makes me wonder if he was talking about Adaire, her spirit. Then he called my name, desperate, like he wanted to give me a message from her?"

"Why, though? Ellis probably didn't know Adaire even existed." Raelean's logic stings. But still, something about it feels off and I want to find out what that is. "Look," Raelean starts in, "even if there's something to it, you can't arrest a dead man. Especially not based on the rambling words of a dying boy or some vague clues from some ominous vision—not that I question Adaire's abilities." She raises an innocent hand. "I'm just saying."

"It can't hurt to look, now can it?" I duck down low behind a tree as we get to the side road. Raelean crouches next to me.

"No, not at all," she whispers. "Why, what's the worst that could happen? Oh, wait, you could get arrested for trespassing on a crime scene!" She bolts her eyes wide with a wild expression to exaggerate her point.

"Well, then you better shush so we don't get caught!" I harshly whisper back.

From the scrub of weeds, we can see Deputy Billy Parnell blocking the end of the road with his vehicle. Billy totters around, attempting to juggle crab apples. He's a dipshit. How he made the force is beyond me. Slim pickings, I'd guess. Raelean and I dart across the road, unseen, into the woods where Mr. Rutledge's body was found.

"Don't you think the cops have collected all the evidence already?" Raelean shuffles double-step to catch up with me. "What exactly are you hoping to find?"

"Justice," I say dryly.

Raelean grumbles.

An octagon of yellow caution tape ropes off the main area, but nothing here looks any different than the rest of the forest.

"This must be where they found the burned crow." Raelean points to a pile of ash that sits off to the side. The bones gone now, taken into evidence, I assume.

"Don't you think it's odd a man like Stone Rutledge would burn a crow before he hung himself?" I ask.

"Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe it was those punk-ass kids who said they saw you tiptoeing around the forest that morning. Kids are always setting shit on fire," she says, shaking her head. It's possible, but I don't know how likely.

"What if something else was burned here?" Something about it don't sit right with me.

"Like what?

"Evidence, maybe? I don't know."

"Whatever it was, it don't look like much. What did Adaire tell you again? Specifically," Raelean asks.

"That Bone Layer gave Aunt Violet this key." I tug it out of my pocket to show her. I found it again in Adaire's nightstand after her funeral. It felt too important to just leave there. I hang it around my neck for safekeeping. "He told her the truth will set me free." I start from the center of the taped-off area and walk a spiral, searching for clues. Though Raelean is right; it's been picked clean already. "Adaire could barely see anything past that Saturday, the day she died. Then she wrote this." I pass to her the piece of paper.

"‘Find the scales of justice. She holds the truth,'" she reads aloud, then hands it back. "So you'll go to jail and will need to be set free?"

"At the time, I thought Adaire might have been messing with me to teach me a lesson about the situation I'd gotten myself in and how I needed her help to get out of it. But then it consumed her, what the fogginess meant, and no matter how hard she tried, Adaire couldn't see hardly anything past Saturday."

For four days, she scried. At first, it was anything and everything surrounding Dickie and the race. When that came up dry, she started scrying with that bone-tooth key Bone Layer gave Aunt Violet for safekeeping. After that, she was on the trail of something. She refused to tell me what, though, until she knew more. Said I was static interference, whatever that meant. Now I think she only said that to spare me, because whatever she found out, I'm pretty sure it had something to do with her dying.

Raelean squints. "I still feel like she could have meant justice was had with Stone Rutledge dying."

I shake my head. "No, it's more than that. It was urgent for her to tell me this. Almost desperate. When I tried to get her to elaborate the next day, she just said she was looking into it."

"Looking into what?"

I shrug, then stop as a pair of lines outside of the perimeter catch my attention. Fresh tire marks cut a trail through the mud. I follow the path of the rutted ground through the trees to see where it leads.

After a good piece, Raelean asks, "Is that a farmhouse?"

She points a sparkly blue fingernail. A sliver of white siding peeks out past the edge of the woods off in the distance.

Fear spikes inside me. The memory of this house and what happened to the twin babies that night was something I tried to forget. Sharp and cutting, it digs its way back to the surface.

He stepped into a hole, a grave or something.

"This is where the Latham boys found Ellis," I say, a bit mystified, as we approach the farmhouse I thought I'd never see again.

I tried to find it once. But it had been too many years and too far away to relocate it. I'd just turned fourteen, and Grandmama had pissed me off about something. I had a good mind to find the babies' grave and call the police myself, tell them some kind of story that Grandmama was the one who killed them. But roads in the hills are windy and many, and finding that place was like looking for a black cat in a coal cellar. Besides, bike-riding around for hours worked some sense into me. And I realized they'd probably know I was lying.

Or worse, Grandmama would tell them it was me who murdered them, even though that was only half the truth.

In my memory, I can still see Stone Rutledge's low-to-the-ground Corvette bumbling its way over the driveway. The wailing of that woman whispers on the winds even now. From the looks of it, nobody has been here since.

There's something about returning to the scars of your past that reopens the wounds. Raw and festering, seeping with guilt. I can almost feel the hell fires burning my feet.

"Hold up." Raelean gently grabs my elbow and stops me from beelining for the house. She nods toward the north end of the property. Through a break in the trees, I can see the flashing blue lights of Deputy Parnell's car parked off in the distance on the main road.

Quietly, we slip around the edge of the woods until we are safely on the south side of the house, blocked from his view. It's not until we're walking in the thick of the overgrown weeds of the yard that the decrepit house comes into full view. Dingy white clapboard siding droops like aged skin. The rusty red metal roof peels back, exposing its ribs of dried-up wood bones. It's a rotting corpse, wasting away in a forest of summer green.

A shadowy presence inhabits the house and the land. Eyes from the woods watch us. Something darker knows we're here.

"I'm not sure about this," Raelean says, low and quiet.

"Stay here, then." I push aside the prickling of my sixth sense and walk to the spot where Bone Layer parked our truck once before.

Behind the house, deeper in the woods, I can just make out another area of yellow police tape. I assume it blocks off the section of trees around where Ellis was found; it's about where the grave of the babies would have been. Black ferns devour the small space, crawl up the pine trees like parasites. A stain, rotting the earth. I turn away, unable to shake the weight of my contribution all those years ago.

Raelean wiggles the doorknob, but it's locked. A laundry room window facing the carport has a cracked pane. I manage to slip my hand through, without cutting myself on the jagged glass, and unlock it. The window is just plain stubborn, but I work it high enough to shimmy in.

A frail wooden drying rack collapses under my weight. The crashing sticks sound thin, snapping in the emptiness of the room—my entry as graceful as sneaking into Adaire's room.

"You alright?" Raelean cups her eyes as she peers through the windowpane.

"Grown-ass woman floundering on the floor like a damn toddler," I mumble to myself. "Yep. All good." I thumbs-up and then crawl off the broken rack—leaving my dignity behind—and unlock the back door to let her in.

"Have you been here before?" Raelean's voice falls flat against the hollow of the room. Her eyes search mine, trying to read what I'm not saying.

"I came here once as a kid." I leave it at that.

The air is dry and stale like clothes stored in a musty wooden chest stuck up in the attic. There's a loneliness that accompanies a home that's been unlived in for years, a sadness for the life not being lived under its roof.

One step from the laundry room to the kitchen and every detail comes rushing back. Even where Stone and the rich panicked lady stood on the linoleum checkerboard floor.

"What do you hope to find here?" Raelean pokes her head into one of the rooms down the hall.

Answers, I think to myself. To which questions, I'm not sure. All of them, really.

I find the only room that sticks heavy in my memory, where death took those babies.

The furniture no longer a burden to the room. It doesn't stop my mind from seeing it there, ghosting on the floor. The long gauzy curtains—tattered at the ends—barely sway in the breeze. I'm taken back in time to when that wooden potato box slid out into the hallway. Guilt seeps in. Sorrow lingers heavy in my chest for the wrong I wish I could undo.

Solemnly, I turn to Raelean. "I'm not sure what I hope to find. But you know how sometimes there are things that tumble into your life? Random coincidences you shrug off to just that?"

"Yeah?" She stretches the word, unsure where I'm going with this.

I quirk my head at the garish wallpaper covering the hallway. Large roses on a dreadful dark—almost black—hunter green. I trail my hand along the thorny vines of rose stems, curling their way down the hall, until I end up in a living room at the front of the house.

"But then sometimes there's that niggling feeling in your gut that says maybe these aren't coincidences at all. Instead, they're just an intricate web of unknowns. Each thread you discover tells you a piece of the story. Until, eventually, it all makes sense."

"I guess." Raelean scrunches her nose at the horrid wallpaper, same as in the photo the sheriff showed me of my mother. The regal chair she sat in is long gone, but this is where she reigned. Then it hits me.

"We're looking for a box," I say, suddenly realizing it was here on this floor where it sat. "My mother had this key. It goes to an old wooden box that's about yea big." I illustrate the size with my hands.

"So now we're looking for a box?" Raelean raises a questioning eyebrow, her face as flat as her voice. Those blue eyes of hers scan me pitifully. It makes me feel like a lost child who can't find her mommy in the grocery store. "Look, sweetie, I know you miss Adaire," she says softly. "But it's like we're on a wild-goose chase. Whatever this is—" she circles a finger in the air, referring to us in this house "—it isn't going to bring her back. Whatever you think you'll find, they will never implicate Stone Rutledge, not now that he's dead, anyway. And none of this helps clear your name."

Her words sour my mood. I hear what she's saying, I do. She thinks I'm desperately grasping at straws, searching for answers as to why Adaire is dead when I should be saving myself. But for some reason, I can't let it go.

"You're wrong," I say, rather sure of myself, despite having no evidence to back me up. "And yes, we're looking for a box. Adaire gave me this key." I tug at the brass chain hanging around my neck, then tuck it back into my shirt. "Sheriff Johns showed me a picture of my mom in this house with this box. I don't know what the hell any of it means, but if Adaire told it to me, then it means something. If you don't want to help me, fine. You can leave. But if you think there's even a tiny chance Adaire was trying to tell me something important before she died, then I'd appreciate it if you could help me search the house."

Raelean stares at me for a long scrutinizing moment without budging a lick. Her hot pink lips pucker tight as she tries to decide if she's going to ditch me or help. "Fine." She turns on her heels. "But hurry it up," she says over her shoulder, "because, if we get arrested, it'll be your ass I throw under the bus. I'll check the bedrooms, you check the kitchen." Raelean marches her short self down the hall into the first of the rooms.

I close my eyes and breathe a sigh of relief.

Then a solid thunk hits the kitchen window. A familiar sound. I bolt my eyes open and catch a glimpse of a dazed bird flying away. To the right, something flickers inside the dark recess of the kitchen pantry.

Curious, I step inside and close the door behind me. The darkness drinks me in, except for the thin line of light peeking between the knotty pine boards. A breeze drifts through the fine crack. I feel around for a handle or a knob, finding none, but the wall wobbles as I fondle it. With both hands pressed against the wall, I lean into it and push.

The wall depresses inward slightly. When I release the pressure, it pops open with a spring, revealing a now-present door. Its seams hidden between the tongue and groove of the wood. I stick my finger in a knot with a rotted center and pull open the door.

A hole opens into the ground. Three dirt steps disappear into a narrow cinderblock hallway. A hint of light promised at the end of the hall.

There's a crash from deeper in the house. "I'm alright!" Raelean hollers. Followed by a few choice words.

I shake my head, smiling, then descend into the root cellar.

The natural cold of the earth chills the air. Something grazes the top of my head—I duck. An errant cobweb from the ceiling clings to my hair.

The dank smell of earth brings forth a faint memory of déjà vu, my mama's promises of an ocean I've never seen. Down the hall, the light grows, seeping through the cracks of a slatted door. Hinges groan as I push in.

The skinny rectangular window along the ceiling streams sunlight through the broken filmy glass. It struggles to stretch across the room. A skeletal shelf cowers in a corner, tincture jars and wares stacked between its thin bones. No box. A braided rag rug covers the floor, it wobbles when I step on it. Pressed against the far wall, a homemade worktable. Papers scattered on top. Collections of old Appalachian folk magic and medical herbs, similar to the ones Grandmama and I use. Tucked like a bookmark inside a textbook, a pamphlet for pregnant teens. Scrawled in the corner, an appointment reminder for a free women's clinic. Whether it was for a health checkup or for alternate plans, I'm not sure.

I flip through a few spiral notebooks, one filled with math equations, the other chemistry notes. Aunt Violet told me my mama was smart but didn't go to college on account of getting pregnant. Maybe she would have done something with herself, if not for me.

Below hangs a ratty curtain, I pull it back—nothing but dust and rags and a milk crate full of old records.

I drag the crate out from underneath. Layers of dust cake the tops of the now-brittle albums. I thumb through and unearth greats like Jessie Mae Hemphill and Etta James. Bluesy, soulful tunes that push me back in time to those fuzzy childhood memories with Adaire. Incredible how a song can sink you into your past so vividly. I pick up a forty-five single by Patsy Cline. A smile spreads across my face as the memory bubbles to the surface. I press the small record to my chest, letting my mind drift.

The music taps like a heartbeat against my chest.

A slow, powerful thu-thump.

Thu-thump.

Thu-thump.

The sound pushes through an old Victrola as a warbly voice croons a lonely Mississippi song. The smell of rosewater perfume, old-fashioned yet timeless, tickles my nose—something Adaire stole from the old lady who babysat us. My skin grows sticky thinking about the sweltering summer heat when she and I listened to those stolen records in that cave. My mind wanders on as I breathe in the memories.

"I remember those," a heavy voice eases from the doorway. I smile at its familiarity, remembering all the nights he whispered to me in my dreams. Slowly, I open my eyes to find Rook leaning against the door frame. He saunters barefoot into the room. Shoes don't shift when he goes from man to crow. It was something he explained after I caught him barefoot at a carnival once, where I couldn't save a man who had choked on a chicken bone. The rooty smell of earth and pine trail in with him. His cool black eyes hold a steady gaze on me. I can't tell if he's deciding whether or not he should trust me, or if he's just taking me in now that he's a man again.

"How did you find me?" I pull at the bottom of my shirt, suddenly feeling exposed in my cropped gray T-shirt. Self-conscious, I run my fingers through my hair, knowing it's probably windblown from the ride here. I hope like hell Raelean didn't hear him come down here.

His face lights up. "I can always find you." He's right. Like somehow my mourning heart summons him. Maybe it does.

He flicks through the stack of 45 singles. A soft chuckle tumbles out of him. "You and your cousin." He shakes his head. "You two would belt out the lyrics from that cave. Loud enough to scare the trees."

I hide behind my palm, wrestling back a laugh.

"Do you remember that place? In the woods?" he asks, big grin on his face.

There's a small scuffing sound from the floor above us, Raelean rummaging around.

We both wait quietly, and after nothing further, I whisper, "Remember? Of course. That was our secret escape. And those trees, I'll have you know, they were our captivated audience." I pretend to be offended, knowing good and well we sounded like wild chickens.

I love the ease of my playfulness with him, like no time has passed since we were together last, despite the years.

"There wasn't a tree we didn't climb or a song we didn't sing. Summers were our time. We loved those woods."

Reality rolls back in like a bowling ball to pins, and it smacks me in the face.

"I'll never see her again." My words crack as my heart reminds me she's gone.

"Hey." Rook steps up, tilting his head so I will look up at him. "She's always with you." He holds out an open palm, offering it to me. It's a gesture that lingers a moment until I realize what he's doing.

This hand that's carried many souls over.

The gravity of what this might mean pushes deep into my chest. Did he walk Adaire over?

I lean forward, tempting a curious touch. Here's the boy I've loved since we were children, now a man, the flesh of him alone enlivening. And now he's offering me a chance to connect with her again.

Cautiously, I trace two fingers across his palm, longing to feel some tiny shimmer of her.

"Did she suffer?" I swirl the tips of my fingers in a circle, as if in doing so I could conjure a piece of Adaire and it keep it for myself.

"She was at peace," he says, not completely answering the question, but it's enough. "Go ahead." He nods at his outstretched hand.

Unsure and a little bit afraid, I slip my hand into his. The flesh of his against mine...something I've dreamed of, longed for. There's a tingle between them. My body tuning into the energy of those who crossed over with him. They flicker by, as if he's sorting through to find the one.

Then I feel her, or I think I do. Her presence lingers there between our touch. Not the whole of it, but a soft echo. Like the lingering scent of someone's perfume after they've already left the room. It makes me long for her even more. To bring my cousin back, even if it's only so I can say goodbye.

"Did she say anything? Before she..." I ask, yearning for a crumb.

"I wish I could give you more, but the dead usually don't talk to me. I only see brief glimpses of their joys. The kindness in their heart. The sadness for those they must say goodbye to." It's the depth with which he says this that surprises me, earnest in his attempt to convey the weight of what he is. He pulls us closer together, wrapping me into that soft scent of pine.

"It's a beautiful, emotion-filled light," he says. "Like a warm summer day that kisses your face." The backs of his knuckles grazes my cheek.

I close my eyes, vividly recalling one of the many times Adaire and I sunbathed on the rock by the quarry pond. It's as if Adaire is passing me one of her favorite memories.

How sad, or rather bittersweet, it must be for Rook, to feel love and sorrowed goodbyes. I am only experiencing this tiny moment, and it's almost too much. I cannot imagine how that must weigh on him. His gift a price he paid when I talked the death out of him and brought him back to life—if you call his split time as a crow a life. Both of us hold a shared burden for the miracles we can do.

"It's like an embodiment of their essence," he says. "You get a sense of who they truly were in life. Adaire was lovely."

I huff a small laugh. Lovely is not how I would expect Adaire to be described. Ornery. Grouchy. Surly. Not lovely. But I like the idea that all that gruffness she projected in life covered up her true self. The side of her Davis must have fallen in love with.

"Thank you for that." I pull my hand from his.

"Do you remember this place? When you first came here?" he says out of nowhere, his eyes leveling.

"Yeah...why are you asking me that?" From down the hallway, I hear the loud clomping of Raelean's heels on the stairs. An urgency kicks in my chest as our time together is slipping through my fingers like sand.

Rook turns and steps backward toward the sliver of broken window at the top of the root cellar. A panicked desperation floods me, causes me to step forward. I don't want him to go. His eyes clip to the door, then back to me. "Adaire wants you to remember," he says. Rook drops back into the dark as Raelean walks in.

"Girl, you've gotta see this." Raelean's voice injects itself into the room, just as Rook's form fades to black and feathers unfold. "Holy shit!" Raelean ducks as the crow flaps and flutters over our heads, then out the cracked window. She stumbles against the worktable, scattering its contents. The tin canister she's carrying gets knocked from her hands and rolls across the floor. "What the hell was that?" She eyes the window Rook just escaped through.

"I—I think it was a crow." Worried, I watch her face, trying to see if she saw more than a bird. "Its nest must have been in the window."

"That scared the bejesus out of me." She rights herself, a hand pressed against her bosom like she's recovering from a heart attack. "Good lord, girl, do you always chat it up with wildlife?"

"What? I wasn't..." I squat down to pick up the notebooks she knocked over, trying to avoid the curiosity in her eyes. A stingy, desperate need to keep him a secret—my secret—riles up inside me. It's one thing for people to believe you can talk the death out of the dying, but start telling them you know a man who is sometimes a crow...that's too big a leap. It was for Adaire.

"I heard you talking to someone—unless you were talking to yourself?" She pops a questioning brow, like maybe she's misjudged my sanity.

"Don't be ridiculous. I was just reading aloud." I flap one of the notebooks I retrieve from the floor. Scraps of paper fall from between the pages and flutter to the ground. A photo lands face up. I tilt it toward the light. It's a picture of my mom. She's younger, maybe early teens. She stands next to a little girl, holding her hand. They wear shapeless shift dresses with a drop waist. My mother's is navy with a white collar and sleeve trim. Reminds me of the clothes they wore on old episodes of Laugh-In. But it's the protective way my mother clutches the Bible to her chest that feels so weird to see. My mother looks so...wholesome, compared to the woman I grew up knowing—the handful of times she bothered to be my mother. The little girl has an unsettling gaze, in contrast with the smile on her face. She's not someone I know.

I flip it over to the back. "‘CFI Baptist Conference, me and Gabby Newsome,'" I read what my mother wrote on the back.

"Holy shit." Raelean snatches the picture from me. "Is that crazy Gabby?" She leans in to get a better look.

"You know her?" I stand and take the photo back.

"I've heard of her. How have you not? She's the sister that lives on the third floor of the Rutledge mansion. I've seen her up in the window before, standing there like a damn ghost. They say she's got more than a few screws loose."

"Stone Rutledge has a sister?" I ask, confused.

She waves a dismissive hand. "No, his wife's younger sister. You know Becky, out at the Watering Hole? Last year, she worked at the big house—and damn, if they don't get paid a fortune to keep quiet about what goes on there." Raelean picks up the tin that rolled across the floor. "They brought Gabby home after she'd been ‘abroad' for a few years—I think she was locked up in a looney hospital. Becky says Gabby is always running away. A few months back she went streaking, buck naked down the hill into Clementine's."

"That was her? I heard about that, but someone said it was one of the bus tourists."

"A lie the family used to cover it up. It's impossible for the staff to keep tabs on her. They aren't even allowed in her private quarters. They don't want anyone to know anything about her. Rumor has it she offed her pet canary at Christmas dinner last winter. Fine china, big-ass candelabra kind of feast." Raelean fans her hands wide. "Ripped its head right off. The rest of the family politely smiled and continued to eat their Christmas ham, like decapitating pets was an ordinary thing."

"Jesus." I study the picture again. They look happy, standing formally next to each other in front of a group of kids. What made my mom go from a church mouse on the honor roll to an absentee parent with an insatiable wanderlust that I've always known? It's like I was born and a switch inside her flipped.

"Maybe. Look what I found upstairs." Raelean sets down a faded brown button tin with an Easter lily on the front. "It was hidden in the top of a closet. Don't ask me how I managed to get it down, almost broke my neck. Get a load of this..." She peels off the tin lid, and inside is a single piece of paper. I recognize Adaire's chicken-scrawled handwriting immediately.

If you find this, then I was right.

The riddled tongue will guide you to see.

Ask her about the droplet of rain.

"It's Adaire's handwriting," I say as I pick up the piece of paper.

"Oh, wow. Really?" Raelean leans on the workbench, getting a better look. "Why couldn't she just say ‘here's everything you need to know, now go clear this whole mess up?'"

"Because there was nothing to see yet. Hell, she couldn't see clearly around her own death. I don't think she knew Stone would die, or Ellis for that matter, or if she did, she didn't tell me. She just said I'd need to be ‘set free.' And it seems she learned something about why."

"Huh." Raelean works a piece of gum between her jaws, sifting through the items on the table like leftovers at a garage sale.

"I don't know. Maybe Adaire was scared to tell me what she found out," I say absentmindedly. Remember this place. Remember when you first came here. That's what Rook said. "But whatever she figured out has something to do with my mother, the first time I came here was with her. Something about this house—and this little girl—" I flap the picture "—led Adaire here. This Gabby knew my mother, maybe knows more."

"Hey, look at this," Raelean says. "It fits." She holds the faded button tin over a spot devoid of dust on the workbench. "It matches up exactly." She sets the tin down to show me, then picks it up. Down again, up again. "What do you think it means?"

"It was moved." I state the obvious. "Adaire moved it on purpose." A thought occurs to me. "Where did you say you found this tin again?"

"The bedroom with those paper-thin curtains. Freaking room has a creepy vibe if you ask me."

It's the room where the woman gave birth—misbirth—to those twin babies. Adaire is the only one I've ever told about that horrible night. What if those babies' deaths are what gets me in trouble?

"Why did she move it?" Raelean knocks the dust off her fingers.

"The better question... What was in it before? Whatever was here, Adaire thought it important for me to find."

Raelean studies the lone note in the empty tin. "You think whatever it was will clear your name?"

"Maybe. I hope so. What do you think she means by this—the riddled tongue will guide you to see?" I swirl the phrase around in my mind: riddled tongue, riddled, tongue. "What if she's talking about her?" I point to the picture.

Raelean quirks her head. "Gabby?"

"Yeah, I think maybe it could be." The idea of this feeling more right as I consider it. "She has to be the riddled tongue Adaire's referring to. Don't you think?" I look to Raelean for confirmation that I'm on the right track.

"Maybe." Raelean shrugs. "If she's as crazy as they say she is, I bet she's full of nonsense. My nana had dementia and she was always talking in circles. A riddled tongue, so to speak."

"Stop calling her crazy, we don't even know her."

Raelean sighs, nodding in agreement.

"What if Gabby Newsome knows something? But do we think Adaire even knew who Gabby Newsome was?" I ask. I'd never heard a peep about some unwell woman who lived at the old sugar plantation; just goes to show the family did a good job keeping a lid on that little secret. But still.

"Her mom worked at the Watering Hole, right? And well, Becky worked there, too. Hush money or not, a few rumors about the Rutledge mansion still got out."

It did make sense, sort of. Assuming Raelean was right and Gabby was a real person who lived in the mansion, all locked up and hidden away.

"Well then, what about the droplet of rain? She can't mean that literally."

"She said to ask her—you'll just have to go and see for yourself."

There's a sudden pop-crackle of tires rolling over gravel, and we both duck out of the window's view. A car door closes, and a static garbled voice mumbles over a walkie-talkie.

"Copy that." We hear Deputy Billy Parnell's voice from the driveway. "Ma'am, if you could just wait a minute." I peer through the cracked window to see who he's talking to.

Someone steps across the lawn into view. And it's not Billy.

Lorelei Rutledge walks with purpose out toward the woods, telling the deputy she would appreciate him respecting her right to mourn in private. She slows about halfway, her eyes seemingly lost to the ground, searching. Like maybe she's mustering her feelings before approaching where the Latham boys found her brother? Of course, it's not but fifty yards out farther from where her father hung himself. This place's meaning forever changed to her now.

"I can't see," Raelean whispers, tipping high on her toes, trying to peer out the window with me. I press a finger to my mouth for her to hush.

Deputy Parnell speaks frantically over the radio, trying to get orders on what to do. "She's insistent," he says through gritted teeth to the person on the other end.

Lorelei turns around, as if maybe she's changed her mind—a batch of flowers fisted in her hand. With her back-and-forth struggle, she almost seems tortured by whether or not she wants to pay her respects. Lorelei's knees give way just as the deputy comes up behind her to inform her she's not allowed to be there.

"What is she doing?" Raelean asks once she finds a box to stand on. But the film and grime cloud her view. I'm wondering the same thing as Lorelei runs her hand over the dirt.

"Let me see." Raelean presses her cheek right next to mine as the deputy hefts Lorelei to her feet. She shoves a fistful of dirt in her pocket. Her memorial flowers scatter to the ground.

We drop below the window's view like skittish mice as the deputy escorts Lorelei by the elbow off the property.

"Did you see that?" I ask Raelean after we hear the deputy's car leave.

"No, because somebody's fat head was taking up all the viewing space." Raelean claps the cobwebs and dirt off her hands. "See what?"

"She took the dirt."

Raelean pauses in her grooming. "What?" She looks at me like I'm an idiot.

"She grabbed a handful of dirt and shoved it in her pocket." I gather up the tin with Adaire's note and the picture of my mother and Gabby.

"Is that, like, some hillbilly curse or something?" Raelean asks. At my eye roll she adds, "Jesus. Sorry. I don't know what you backwoods folks do around here," she adds playfully as she punches my arm.

"No, she must have picked something up with it."

"What?"

I shake my head. "I don't know, but I doubt she came all the way out here for just a handful of dirt."

We sneak out of the root cellar, once the coast is clear, and hightail it out of there like thieves, across the lawn and back through the woods to Raelean's car. The rumble of the Camaro's engine sounds extra loud, seeing how we almost got caught.

I drop my mother's picture inside the button tin with Adaire's note.

"Raelean," I say, "you think Becky still has connections at the Rutledge mansion?"