“I don’t. And you’re the one who sees them, honey. If you really want to know, you could ask them. But there are some things that are better left alone. After all this time, it doesn’t matter. I told you, Avery doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what he did, or what became of the sisters. You may not like the answer you get.”

“Maybe I’ll ask them anyway. I can handle the truth.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Why not?”

“Your mother couldn’t.”

5
Blood Tells

I

Newly fueled with information about long-gone family members, I decided to step up my hunt for information about closer relations. It took me half an afternoon of dedicated searching, but I finally found it. I located the cemetery right away, and you’d think finding an entire road right nearby wouldn’t be so hard. Turns out the two-lane strip springs off the street at an angle that makes you think it’s only a driveway. I must have passed the turnoff a dozen times before I saw the green sign, bent nearly to the ground.

Pine Breeze Dr., it said, plain as day—once I’d pulled up alongside it and craned my neck until my head was horizontal. I turned my small black car, affectionately dubbed the Death Nugget, up the steep road and downshifted.

Both sides of the drive were overgrown with hundreds of years’ worth of vegetation that arched across the sky and made the day feel darker than it should have been. I rolled down my window and hung my head out, craning my neck to scan the sharp, tree-cluttered hills that loomed in close around me.

I drove slowly, but there were no other motorists to grow angry with me. No one came up behind, and no one approached from the other lane. This was the forest primeval, barely outside the city limits. Its dense thoroughness left me disquieted; this was not like the mountain, where the woods are patchy and easy to navigate. These trees were knitted together with infinite nets of kudzu that blocked out any friendly squares of light. This ravenous, parasitical weed spilled down over the grass and extended its needy tendrils to the road, where they were only barely stunted by the occasional traffic.

Yellow flashed sudden and brief, high up to my right.

I hit the brakes and slid to a stop, once again thankful for the solitude. I backed up and set the car’s parking brake, then climbed out and peered up the hill. A bulldozer was parked in place where the green thickness cleared. Then, as I stood longer, a straight line implied itself. Then another. A wall, or a corner. Part of a building lost in the woods. I got back into the car and maneuvered it to the rock-strewn track.