The picture comes. An old picture, faded from years deep in the corner of my heart, of a coffin lid in my very own house. Salt for pride. Mustard seed for white lies. Barley for curses. Crow’s meat with plum. A loaf shaped like a bobbin. And ruby-red grapes.

Fresh grapes, for bearing a bastard.

It was right there in my heart all these years, but I never wanted to see it. And now my heart feels like it’s coming unknit, like a thread’s pulling out all the stitches. I’m a lie.

Two peas in a peasecod.

When I stole the bread, I told myself it was an honest crime. But what was honest about stealing?

When my mother had my uncles destroy the family altar, I took Da’s side, telling myself how, had it been me, I would have stood by our beliefs. But somewhere buried in that memory is a girl secretly glad her mother’s choice spared them the purgers.

And when I ate the deer hearts, I used my mother’s words, You’re nothing if you’re dead. I told myself I needed to be alive to help the Sin Eater, but, really, it was my life, dressed up as hers, that I was saving.

Don’t I know by now that folk see their sins in the way they choose? There’s always a reason as to why selfishness is not really selfish and crimes are honest and waiting safely by while somefolk else is killed is really the more courageous choice. I’ve always had an answer for why I’m a goodly girl despite my sins. I thought I was an Owens. But mayhap I’ve always been a Daffrey.

I say the words to finish Bessie’s Recitation. As I do, her arm that’s not working rolls onto its side. I don’t know if it’s the shake of her illness, but her fingers brush mine. I look long into her eyes, trying to know more, to see myself from her view, but there’s just her look, a little hard and a little soft all at the same time.

Tom is sitting at the kitchen table when I come from Bessie’s room with the list of foods. Lee is turned towards the stove with a hand up to hide me from sight, but she’s peeking through her fingers. When I leave, my feet find the warp by the door one more time.

I walk to the tumbledown cottage. It’s been years, but my feet know the way, like Greta in the fairy story, finding her way home. A dirty boy with tufted black hair and a half-moon cleft in his cheek plays with a stick in the yard. I stand long enough that he runs inside.