I was relieved. Now he’d know he could trust me, I thought. I’d made up for Queen and Pear and all my smaller transgressions. “Did you sell them already?”

“They were right where you said.” He picked up another bone, studied it. “Your mother was there too, unfortunately.”

My mind heaved in every direction.

“She didn’t want to give us the earrings,” he said. “As you can imagine. Even though we told her it was to support you.”

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” I said. “What if she reports us? Why did you tell her you knew me?” I’d been searching for the right emotion and now I found it: rage, pure hot rage.

“And so there was—how can I put it—some conflict.” He tilted his head. He was perfectly still. “She wouldn’t help us. And she got out a gun, did you know she had one?”

The trees on the ridge were afflicted by a wind that pressed them flat. The wind rushed around the house, around the tree, and everything flowed in its wake. Dice’s tone was lilting.

“We didn’t have a choice, in the end.”

I felt my head flowing off my shoulders like a comet, past the tree, the house, the porch, the snow.

“The fact is, you’re the only one who knew about the earrings. So unfortunately, it looks like you did it. You killed your mother for some cash. Understandable; that’s the problem. That’s what the law will see, an understandable crime.”

“What?” I said. I felt like the chicken head, gawping. “What? What? What?”

“Take out the sheep, Harmony,” said Dice.

My head was a whiteout. Whiteout. “The sheep,” Dice said again. He could tell he shouldn’t leave me alone. He could tell he had been pushing too hard. He said in a voice so gentle he sounded like a young girl: “How about I teach you something instead?” I nodded.

We could hear Maybell and Josiah shouting cheerfully at each other as they milked the cows in the courtyard. From his nightstand, Dice withdrew a few small bottles. He held one up to the light and shook it. “Drink,” he said.

It smelled sterile and went down so strong it scorched my vocal cords. “What is this?” I said, and my voice came out hoarse. Dice let the comment fade, and in the silence, I coughed.

Dice said, “I had a dream about you, Harmony.” He sighed. “Where you were a giant so tall that your head parted the clouds, and you walked out of the mountains and onto the prairies, growing bigger as you went, till you met the ocean and you drank it all up, snapped up the ships and ate them up, and the rain came down around you and jingled like bells . . .”