The McCauley homestead is tucked into a dark holler between two birch-thick hills. Jefferson half cleared one of the hillsides and planted corn, now brown and shriveled with winter. But the rest of the land is so wild and dense that most of the ground never sees the sun. It’s a dank, dark place made for hiding things like moonshine and heartbreak.

Peony and I splash across the frost-edged creek, passing a rotting, abandoned sluice. I pull her up at the house—a small log cabin with a sod roof. Smoke curls from the chimney, and wind whistles against the cracked glass of the single window.

“Jefferson!” I swing a leg over and slide off. I sprint through dead weeds to the stoop, where I leap to avoid the sagging steps, and pound on the door. “Jefferson!”

Their dog, Nugget, barks from inside the house. Booted footsteps hurry toward me. The door swings wide, revealing Jefferson’s da, a small man with wild gray hair, rumpled clothes, and a bright red nose.

He shrugs on his right suspender strap, blinking against the gloomy day, which is downright perky compared to the murk of the cabin. “Miss Lee,” he slurs.

The air wafting out the door is warm and sour, like rising bread gone bad. “I need to see Jefferson,” I say.

“Dunno where that boy run off to.” Nugget pokes her yellow head out beside his legs, floppy ears perked forward.

“Where do you think he might’ve—”

“I said I dunno.”

“Did he come home after school?”

“Mebbe.”

Something snaps inside me. “Think for one lousy minute, will you? I’m in a heap of hurt, and I need to talk to your boy.”

Mr. McCauley recoils. “Watch your swearing tongue, girl.”

My fists clench with the need to bust his bright red nose. It’s a testament to my fine character that I turn tail and jog away. I’ll find Jefferson myself.

The door slams behind me, so I’m surprised to feel Nugget’s damp nose in my palm as I head toward the outhouse.

I pause at the door. It’s powerful improper for me to bang on it with Jefferson inside. No help for it. I raise my fist to knock when the crack of an ax rents the air.

Relieved, I lift my petticoats and run toward the ramshackle building that was intended to be a barn but never got finished and became a woodshed instead.

Jefferson is behind it, sleeves rolled up past his elbows and ax in hand, splitting firewood on one of the larger stumps. The moment he sees me, he frowns and drops his ax. “Lee?”

And suddenly I’m clutch-hugging myself, and my words are jumbling all over one another, and I hardly know what I’m saying except that the word “dead” hangs in the air, sharper and more final than the crack of an ax on a chopping block.