“Lauren?” My voice is a whisper. “Is that you?” Silence follows. Stupid, I know she isn’t here. “Olivia?” But no, it wouldn’t be.

Mommy’s hand is cool on my neck, her voice soft in my ear. You have to move them, she says. Don’t let anyone find out what you are.

“I don’t want to,” I say to her. Even to myself I sound whiny like Lauren. “It makes me scared and sad. Don’t make me.”

Mommy’s skirts rustle, her perfume fades. She is not gone, though—never that. Maybe she is spending a while in one of the memories that lie around the house, in drifts as deep as snow. Maybe she is curled up in the cupboard beneath the sink, where we keep the gallon jug of vinegar. I hate it when I find her there, grinning in the dark, blue organza floating around her face.

The fresh can is so cold it almost sticks to my palm. The hiss and crack as it opens is loud, comforting in the silent house. I keep scrolling down, down, through women’s faces but Mommy’s voice is singing through my head and it’s no good. I go to find the shovel. It’s time to go to the glade.

I’m back. Recording this, in case I forget how I hurt my arm. Sometimes I can’t remember stuff and then I get scared.

I woke up to a hum. There was something walking on my lips. The morning was filled with clouds of flies, fresh-hatched. It was like a dream but I was awake. Early summer sun shone in the webs of orb spiders stretched between the trees. It made me think of that poem. “‘Come into my web,’ said the spider to the fly.” You are supposed to sympathize with the fly, I think. But no one likes flies, really.

My arm was twisted at a bad angle. I think I fell. There was iron on my tongue. I must have bit down hard on it while I was out. I spat out the blood at the foot of a mountain ash. An offering to the birds, who were calling in the trees overhead. Blood for blood. They won’t come to the garden since the murder. Birds tell one another about those things.

I got back home somehow. It was so good to hear the locks clicking into place. Safety.