The figure whips its head in our direction, just as the moon finally peers out from behind the clouds, and for a second before the figure turns and runs, I see a face.

I gasp in recognition.

It is not Professor Swann.

It’s the Apple Lady.

36

“So tell me again,” Fina says, sitting up in my bed with two pillows propped behind her. “Who is this lady? What do we know about her?”

Even though we didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, Fina and I both woke up bright and early today.

“The Apple Lady,” I reply. “I’ve only ever seen her when she’s going to church or walking in the morning. She comes out to pick fruit. Blackberries or apples or whatever’s in season. She always wears headphones and she doesn’t ever speak.”

“What’s her real name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where does she live?”

I shake my head.

“Did your gram know her?”

“She must have,” I say. Well enough for the Apple Lady to write that Gram was her “best friend” in her inscription. Except that I remember this one time Gram and I had passed her picking blackberries on our way to the Spinney. She’d looked up only for a second before turning back to the bramble. I could hear the tinny sound of music coming from her headphones.

“Why doesn’t she ever talk to anyone?” I had asked Gram.

“Some people just keep themselves to themselves,” was all she’d said. “And we have to respect that.”

I had asked Gram a question about the Apple Lady. So why didn’t Gram tell me that she knew her? That they had apparently once been best friends?

Because she was hiding something, says a voice in my head.

I suddenly remember the look Gram used to get sometimes when she was telling me her fairy tales. Like she was somewhere far away from me. Someplace I wasn’t allowed to see.

And I remember the day she told us that she had breast cancer, and explained that she’d known for a while but didn’t want to tell anyone until she knew she was dying.

I always thought that Gram was my best friend in the world. But suddenly she feels like an illusion. Like a character from one of her own stories made of ink and paper instead of flesh and blood.

“That’s not a lot to go on,” Fina says, tapping her mouth. “It feels like instead of solving a mystery, we’ve just opened a whole new one.”

A little trickle of cold air floats in from a gap between the window and the sill. I pull the covers up over my shoulders.

Fina’s right. I want to know what Gram was hiding and why. And fortunately, I think I know where we can get some answers.