“Why would I go to the cornfield?” Addison asked. “Anyway, my healing magic doesn’t work the same way as the other Haywoods’. They can take pain. I can take… whatever I want. Does your family have magic, too?” She turned to Sylvia.

“Only what the dark-corn mash has given our bourbon. Perhaps…” Sylvia paused, tilting her head to one side. “Have you considered testing what you did with River on the garden itself? Maybe it’s not starving at all. Maybe there’s something in the soil that’s causing all of this. If you can pull out whatever that is, ask the garden to offer up its own pain the way one might offer up a memory, you might be able to ease its suffering.”

Addison’s mind went back to the rot on the sunflowers. She hadn’t seen it anywhere else, but maybe she hadn’t been looking closely enough. “It’s worth a try,” she said.

“I thought the garden needed the pain,” Quinn said.

“It needs the pain we feed it,” Addison said. “But it has its own pain now, too.”

“What about the cornfield?” Quinn asked.

“What about it?” Addison said.

Quinn narrowed her eyes, glanced from Addison to Sylvia. “Your vision?”

Addison shook her head, unsure what Quinn was going on about.

Sylvia leaned forward, and the oleander Addison had seen in her aura was back in full bloom. She reached across the table and rested a hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “I meant that we should all forget about the cornfield for now. Probably best you forget about that vintage bottle of Bonner’s, too, just for now. We have more important things to deal with.”

“Okay…” Quinn looked down at the drink in her hands, brow furrowed. She reached for the pitcher, but it was empty. “I’d love some more of this.”

“Maybe another glass and then we can head over to the shadow garden together?” Sylvia said.

Chapter 36

Quinn

Out of everyone in the family, Quinn had internalized Maura’s suspicions about the Bonners the most, but on the drive over, she’d put all that aside for a chance at the truth. If Sylvia had been somehow responsible for her father’s death, she’d reasoned, then she wouldn’t let Quinn anywhere near a bottle of bourbon that might hold the answers she sought.

Now, she wasn’t so sure.

She dropped her bag behind the couch, then followed Addison and Sylvia as they started up the stairs, trying to think past the pounding in her head. One minute she’d been sitting there with that familiar warm-soil feel of Addison and the uncomfortable but not unbearable prickling sensation the Bonner family gave her; the next it was as though Sylvia had taken a gardening fork and shoved it right between her eyes.