I wanted to tell her to stay silent. Every surface in the dairy was steel or porcelain, and our voices echoed without fading, as though Dice could come by in an hour and put his hand to his ear and listen in. “What has Dice done?” I breathed, but I half-knew—my knife on Rainer’s throat, so we would learn control over life and death. Selflessness in humans never comes from nowhere. But the selflessness, whatever its cause, was why the family was better than everything else.

“Cassie would’ve brought the authorities up here,” Queen said, “but Bay found her first.” She started on a new lump, kneading.

I remembered Dice’s telling me they’d found Cassie’s body. “Dice said she died from a snakebite,” I said. I heard footsteps across the courtyard, but no one appeared.

“Something like that,” Queen said. But I remembered the feeling of Bay’s burning branch on my hand. “Anyway, it was my fault in the end,” Queen said, “because I’m the one who told the family where Cassie went.”

If there was fault, it wasn’t an accident.

The door swung open. I hadn’t been alert. Someone had been spying on us.

“Hello, girls,” Pear said.

“Oh, Pear!” I said. “Our Queen is doing so much better.”

Pear smiled at us. It was a smile of admiration or pity. Gently, she said, “I don’t believe it was a snake, no,” she said.

Pear leaned toward us, her eyes blinking at different intervals. I noticed how tight her mouth looked, her slight mountain-woman moustache. She’d never gotten so close to me before. She dipped a finger into the soft butter.

“More salt,” she said. She left, humming loudly. Humming, I thought, so that we could hear her retreat.

Queen’s face, normally so languid, was twitchy. “Do you think we can trust her?” Queen whispered.

I leaned to Queen’s ear, which was charcoal-black on the inside. “Queen, don’t you remember the pills she gave you?” I whispered back.

“She told me they were homeopathic tablets,” Queen said.

“No,” I said. “She sent me to get you antibiotics.”

Queen drew her head away from me. Her eyes looked round as a pigeon’s.

I was trying to reassure her, because I wanted us all to keep living on the farm together, like we were supposed to. But I realized that Queen was excited, not soothed.

“Something changed her,” Queen said. “She used to be like Sara.” She wrapped the butter in a series of elegant gestures. “I wonder if Pear wants to leave,” Queen said. She shouldered her hair back behind her ears again and it immediately slipped back down around her cheeks. “Would you come with us, if we left?” she said.