Queen and I sat alone, the cup abandoned. She laid her cheek on the table. Through her hacked-up hair, I could see her pink scalp. “He told me to do it,” Queen said. “That’s what I just don’t get. Do you think they’re trying to teach me a lesson?” She lifted her head. The wood grain had wrinkled her cheek.

“Get relativity,” I said. The truth was that I didn’t know.

Queen stood. She put her head to the door and glanced out the windows on both sides of the kitchen. Then she poured the tea down the sink. “Maybe I’ll run away,” she whispered. Her breath smelled sweet and spicy, like chai.

She wrapped her arms around me. I did not want to let her go, now or tomorrow or the next week or ever. I did not want to choose between Queen and the family.

That evening, Pear baked sugar-rolled butter cookies as a treat. After we turned out the lights in the barn, Queen gave her cookie to a raccoon. He ran to the night-silver creek and lowered the cookie into the water, to wash off the sugar, Queen said, but he kept washing and washing until it all dissolved and washed away.

* * *

In the morning, we wiped down the long table after breakfast in the green-hued June shade. Everyone else was out, tilling, sowing, weeding, fencing, sweeping the stables, stirring the milk, and sweating the new cheeses. Pear prepared another cup of the tea and passed it to Queen. “Try,” she said.

Queen stood and again listened at the door, again peered out the windows. Then she took her cup, and, staring levelly at Pear, poured its contents down into the sink.

“Queen,” I said.

“Keep your voice down,” Pear said.

I stared at her. “She can’t—”

“Then let it happen,” Pear said, and her voice shook. “But do not get the three of us in trouble.”

Queen set down her cup. “Pear,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“I’ve done nothing,” Pear said. “I’ve seen nothing. I leave you your tea and I go about my business.” She was agitated. “Do you understand?”

But Dice would find out eventually, inevitably. And when the time came for his justice, I could already hear myself explaining I was only a witness. I didn’t yet find it sinister the way my thoughts turned to self-preservation.

Pear said, “Do you understand?”

Queen nodded. She was not going to think about the incoming train until it barreled right into her.

summer

CHAPTER 13