And they would tell me everything about the ghosts and the farm. Offer answers to all the questions I didn’t know how to ask. They’d know what was going on inside of me. They’d tell me about Lee, and the field. And I would be strong enough to hear the truth, as much as it might hurt me. Once they had been completely honest, I would trust them forever.

“Why did Samantha run away?” I asked.

I thought of the walk Julia and I had taken on my first afternoon at the farm. People need to know where they fit in in the world, she’d said. I wanted to know why I was here.

Julia closed her eyes, rubbed the space between her brows with her long, graceful fingers. Her nails were short, dark around the edges with dirt that never washed away. Terry turned his gaze up from the floor, looked straight into my eyes.

“Everyone who joins our family has suffered. Suffered terribly. Some are more resilient than others. We try to choose wisely, but some won’t ever find peace here.” He ran his hands over his head, dropped them in his lap. “Maybe the farm makes it worse for those people. That possibility weighs on me.”

I nodded. I understood something of what he was saying, but I didn’t know which type of person I was. I didn’t know if my fate was decided. Was the farm cradling me and showing me the way, or was it bringing it all back just to haunt me? I saw the good and the breathtaking and the bad and the rotten. I saw all of it. But a voice, even then, was whispering that it was one. No parsing to be done. Revelation and obscurity, terror and power, beauty and revulsion, joy and shame—all of it together in its tangle. Horrible and lovely. Mine always to keep.

I stood. “I’m going to bed.”

“Mila,” Terry said. “Wait. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the other night. I don’t always know how to do this. I don’t always get it right.”

I was listening to him, but I was also looking out the window, toward my cabin. I was ready to go.

“Mila,” he said again. “Will you look at me?”

I did, and I saw more in his face than I ever had. I saw how he could be gentle and he could be stern. I saw that he was not only one kind of man. Warmth rushed into his eyes. Why? I wondered. And then I realized that the warmth was for me.