Trey’s grandparents’ house wasn’t the only abandoned house around Willow. Like the others, the old Svensson house had quickly become the kind of place where college kids partied when they were home on breaks, and occasional transients passing through town made it their temporary home. Its front windows had been smashed and then haphazardly covered from the inside with cardboard boxes. The front door hung loosely on its hinges, unlocked and water-damaged, slightly ajar to welcome curious creatures of all species.

The house in front of which we stood could not have been more different from the Simmons mansion. Even when it had been in great shape, it was still miniscule in comparison. Humble in its design. It wasn’t so different from the one-story ranch-style houses on Martha Road, like the ones in which Trey and I had grown up.

“I guess we should both start cutting, and then dig after we clear the branches?” I suggested. Trey agreed, and we each pulled on a pair of gloves to begin.

As I carefully cut, twisted, and pulled off the tenacious branches of the rosebush, I was reminded of the words of the spell that I’d found in Trey’s mother’s old journal.

As the plant grows, so will your revenge

Nourished by bitterness

With each cycle of the moon, year by year

As your plant blooms, your enemies will suffer.

Destroying the rosebush took us the better part of the morning. The sun was beating down on us by early afternoon, when Trey had started digging up the bush’s roots so that we could destroy them, too. Watching Trey handle the shovel made my heart swell with love because it reminded me of when he’d helped me bury my dog Moxie in our yard. Although our project probably would have seemed ridiculous to anyone else, working alongside Trey outdoors reminded me fondly of all of our adventures as kids, when we’d race up and down our street on bikes and build forts every summer break.

I’d been listening for Jennie constantly on my radio app, scanning the AM and FM dials for her voice. But so far, I hadn’t been able to connect directly with her again. Instead, she seemed to be reaching me without the radio, placing abstract words and phrases in my head in a familiar chorus of voices. Tree, tree, tree, I heard the voices in my mind chanting. Yes, when we were kids, Jennie and I had loved climbing trees with Trey. I wasn’t surprised that she remembered that. I could only hope that in time, I’d get better at hearing her, and would be able to communicate with her inside my head just as easily as I’d been able to with the radio.

When Trey and I had cut down the entire bush, branch by branch, and had done our best to dig up its long, sinewy, dry roots, a pretty large hole remained in the ground where the bush had stood for the last nearly eighteen years. I wrapped my arms around Trey and kissed him tenderly.