“Sure, Lee. I bet all the weirdo grocery store people are all just sweethearts.”

“Why wouldn’t they be?”

“Because nobody is ever that nice to you unless they want something in return,” she said. “Trust me, I know.”

What did that mean? My sister did have a secret life back home, sneaking out every night, and I’d always had questions, I’d always wondered. But Murphy didn’t say anything else, and I wasn’t sure how to ask her about it.

Eventually I fell asleep.

Chapter 23

Murphy shook me awake.

“Lee, get up. She’s at it again. Grandma’s out in the yard.”

I yawned, trying to blink the sleep out of my eyes.

“What time is it?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “There aren’t any clocks in this house, remember? Only that one in the kitchen.”

I was so tired I can’t even tell you. I would have done anything to stay in bed.

“You’re not sleeping through this,” Murphy said. “We got to find out what she’s up to.”

I pulled on a clean pair of overalls and slid into my shoes. Murphy was downstairs and to the back door by the time I caught up with her.

“Hurry it up,” she whispered. “She’s moving pretty fast tonight. Stay low and stay back.”

Out the window I saw Grandma’s swaying lantern cutting through the darkness of the field. Murphy and I snuck out the back door, and we made our way quiet through the yard. The clouds ran wild through the night above us, the sky lit alive by the yellow cat’s-eye of a moon, all the stars up there like whispered secrets. We walked at a far distance, our feet soundless on the fresh-mown grass, the light like a will-o’-the-wisp guiding us somewhere, past the Hummingbird Grove, past the shuttered barn, down the narrow path toward the trees, into the deep mystery of the forest.

“Holy shit,” whispered Murphy. “Look.”

An owl was perched on the top of the barn, and it spread its wings wide, like the cross on a church’s steeple. I realized I had seen that owl before. It was from my vision, the one I’d had the night Mom died. The owl stayed still like that a moment, as if it were posing in the moonlight. Then it sailed into the wind and night and stars, off hunting, gone from us forever.

I knew it meant something that I’d seen that owl, same as in my vision, like I was supposed to see it, like it was fate. I knew that what was coming next would change me forever and I would not come back from these woods the same.