“Get her up there,” another voice called, and a group of men grabbed hold of her, and then somehow her feet were on the stool. She had no choice but to stand up straight. The three men holding the end of the rope pulled back the slack, kept it taut.

The stool wobbled beneath her. Her arms were bound behind her back; the rope was already tight around her neck. She looked out across the bog, out at her cabin, saw that it was in flames. She had built it herself when she was all alone, just after the family house burned. After her mother was killed. Jane was born in that cabin, had had twelve birthdays there with cake and candles.

She thought of Jane, over where the old family house once stood, tucked quietly into the root cellar, like a forgotten jar of string beans. She’d be safe there. No one knew about the root cellar. No one knew there was anything left out there in the wreckage and ashes of the old family home.

What people don’t understand, they destroy.

“Wait,” someone called. It was Robert Crayson from the general store. He came forward, looked up at her. For a split second, she wondered if he would stop this madness, bring them to their senses. “Before justice is done—any last words? Do you want to beg forgiveness of these people? Of God?”

Hattie said nothing, just gazed out at the bog, her beautiful bog. Dragonflies soared over the surface, wings and bodies shimmering in the sunlight.

“Maybe you’d like to tell us where the money is?” Crayson went on. “Financial restitution for your crimes? We could give it to the families of the children you killed. Never bring ’em back, but might go a little way.”

“I killed no one,” she repeated.

“Where’d you hide it, witch?” someone yelled. “What happened to all your father’s money?”

“Richest family in town,” another man spat. “And look where it led them.”

“Please,” Crayson asked, his voice pleading now. “Put your family’s wealth to good use. Don’t let it die with you. Let your one last act be charitable. Tell us where you hid the money.”

She smiled down at him, at all of them gathered below her, faces bright with hope. She smiled the smile of someone who has a secret she knows she’ll never tell.

The rope tightened around her neck as the men behind her pulled. Up above, the branch it was looped over creaked. A squirrel chattered. A nuthatch flew by.

“You can kill me, but you can’t be rid of me,” she told them. “I’ll always be here. Don’t you see—me and this place, we’re one.”

Hattie took in a breath and waited.

She had climbed this tree as a child. Climbed it with Candace. They had dropped their flower-head dolls down, watching them flutter softly to the ground.