“Fire!” someone yelled not three minutes later. And in an instant, the place was alive with panic, all the women scrambling, surging toward the doors. Jane wasn’t worried. The foreman’s office was on the far end of the cavernous space—they all had plenty of time to make it to the doors and out before the whole wretched place went up in flames. Still, she shrieked and ran as the others did, grabbed Maggie Bianco’s hand as she passed when she saw Maggie standing frozen, looking around in confusion, and urged her on—“Let’s go, Mags! You’ll be all right, but we’ve got to go!”

But something was wrong.

Instead of following the other workers out of the mill into the fresh air, she and Maggie ran smack into a throng of women pushing, shoving forward, crying out, “For God’s sake, move!”

The doors wouldn’t open.

“They’ve bolted them from the outside!” someone yelled.

The women, they pounded and screamed and wept. Jane lost hold of Maggie. She felt the press of bodies behind her, crushing her.

There was another scream, too. A different one.

Tom Chancy was screaming. Jane could turn her head just enough to see the walls of his office fully engulfed.

At least there was that.

CHAPTER 21

Olive

AUGUST 5, 2015

As soon as Olive saw Daddy’s truck leave the driveway, headed to work, she was out the door, making a beeline for the old maple at the edge of the yard.

He’d taken yesterday off so they could make some progress on the house together, and honestly, she couldn’t wait for him to leave and go back to work. She wanted some alone time. Time to go over everything she’d seen and heard at Dicky’s and time to do some serious detective work.

She got to the maple at the edge of the yard and looked around, making sure no one was watching—silly, really, because there wasn’t anyone out in those woods, ever, except for Mike sometimes. He hadn’t shown his face or called since he’d ditched her at the hotel the other day.

There was a hollow spot about four feet up in the old tree, a place where a branch used to grow. Now there was the perfect little cavity tucked into the trunk, about four inches high and two inches across. She and Mama used to leave each other secret messages and gifts there: chocolate coins, acorns, pennies flattened out on railroad tracks. When Olive was very little, Mama told her the gifts were from the fairies.