They all tried to keep the details of what happened to David after he ran out of the garden that night from Bay, but she would hide behind doors or put her ear to the furnace grates to secretly listen when they talked about it. Her father had been arrested just outside Lexington, Kentucky. He wrecked his SUV during a police chase. When they hauled him out of the wreckage unhurt, he begged them not to take him in. He couldn’t go to prison. He couldn’t. He begged them to kill him first. That night he tried to hang himself in the county jail. Something bad was going to happen to him in prison, and he knew it. That had to be what he saw when he ate the apple, the reason he ran, the reason he didn’t want to get caught.

When Bay thought about him, she felt sad. Her father had never belonged anywhere. It was hard not to feel sorry for a life that had no purpose of its own. He was the son of faceless parents who died many years ago. He was the friend of many who were too scared not to be. His only purpose, it seemed, was to come into her mother’s life in order to send her home.

For that, Bay decided, she would be grateful.

For the rest, though, she wondered if she would ever be able to forgive him. She hoped she wouldn’t remember him long enough to find out.

It had been so scary, seeing her father here. She’d almost forgotten him, what he looked like, how angry he could get. She’d been lulled into happiness before he showed up, and she wanted to be lulled again. It was already starting; just lying in the garden made things better. It was going to take her mother a little longer, but Sydney was being lulled again too. Sometimes Bay would sit at the bottom of the staircase inside the house while Henry and her mother were on the porch, and she would hear Henry sing to her mother, not in song, but in promises. Bay wanted Henry in their lives in a way she couldn’t fully explain. It was like the way you wanted sunshine on Saturdays, or pancakes for breakfast. They just made you feel good. Her father never did that. Even when her father would laugh, it made everyone around him cringe with the anticipation of that good humor ending. And it always ended.

But she wasn’t going to think of that.

“These must be for you,” Sydney said, handing the seed packet to Claire. “Baby’s breath is for a bride, right? You and Tyler have a wedding date.”

“No, they’re for you,” Claire said, trying to hand them back. “You and Henry are going to elope if he has anything to say about it.”