Early in Lil’s senior year of high school, Mom finds the brochure under her bed. Lil doesn’t even know what she was looking for. Maybe she was simply fishing around for a lost sock on laundry day. But Mom waits until Sasha has left the house carrying Autumn by piggyback before sitting down with Lil under one of the trees, where she has chosen to read. She places the brochure on her lap and looks at her.
Lil freezes. On the cover, a shady building surrounded by trees is photographed in black and white tones. THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH, it reads. EST. 1857. Mom’s expression is a little tight with discomfort, but well-meaning. Full of regret. Maybe it’s how other moms looked at their daughters when they find love letters from a beau, or a packet of condoms in a hiding spot.
“Mrs. Stein gave it to me,” Lil says defensively. “I forgot about it.”
Mom isn’t fooled. Her hair is loose under her wide-brimmed hat, a red ribbon stitched around the rim. The sun-worn wrinkles around her eyes and mouth are getting deeper every year. “Honey.”
“I know,” Lil adds, but Mom is going to want to talk about it now, even if Lil would rather yank out her fingernails. She’s trapped in the conversation. It makes her feel wild and violent inside. “I’m not planning to apply.”
Mom doesn’t even try to pretend with her. She just nods, relieved at Lil’s decision. Perhaps relieved she doesn’t have to make a stand. It’s easier to pretend this is a choice if Lil doesn’t force it.
The wind dies around them. This time of year, the fall, it carries the scent of pecans everywhere, and leaf rot. Lil smells it on her clothes at the end of the day. Smells it on her body all the time. The smell wakes her up at night.
“I could get in,” Lil says suddenly, impulsively. “Mrs. Stein says I’m at the top of the class.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Mom hesitates. The silence between them is long.
Mom was young then. But she looked older every year. Carrying the weight of daughters and the interminable burden of the orchard. It’s getting harder every year. Owning land is the ultimate privilege, the promise of security, the stolen inheritance of this country. For Mom, the land is her purpose, her legacy—her yoke.
“One of you has to take over.” Mom is steady, but she fiddles with the grass between them.
“I know.” One of you, Mom says. As if she didn’t pick Lil out for it at five years old. As if she didn’t trap her with the knowledge of the golden pecans and the pond before she knew what it meant.
“I wanted other things at your age too,” Mom says.
Lil feels that rush in her ears. Jason is looking at colleges. Urging her to apply. We could both go, he’d suggested once. She swallowed down the horrible hint of longing and scoffed. Never, she proclaimed. I want the orchard. It’s mine. Her options feel so limited. If she doesn’t yell at him, she might have to cry, and Lil can’t bear that.
“You’re bright, ambitious. And I’m—sorry. But it has to be this way. A Clearwater must be the guardian of this place.”
Sasha’s probably off with Autumn in their tree house, whiling away a whole afternoon. Sasha got to apply to art schools; she sent her applications off last week.
“And Sasha…” Mom sighs. The brochure flutters in the wind like a waving hand. “Sasha needs to leave here more than you do. This place, these people…won’t be good for her. She needs a different life.”
Her words drift and settle heavily over her and it takes Lil a few seconds to grasp her meaning. Lil jerks her gaze up to Mom, shocked. “You…know?” They’ve never talked about it. Sasha and Lil have never even talked about it, even though once upon a time, they talked about everything. Mom, she assumed, was totally unaware. But maybe she’s only feigned ignorance, the way she doesn’t comment when Lil sneaks in past curfew and creeps out again to sleep under the trees. How much can three women in the same house know without speaking about it? How many secrets are cluttering up their spaces, both known and unknown?
But Mom just meets her eyes. She doesn’t explain herself further, though she wears the same deep sadness that’s spreading through Lil like molten lava. “I love you both. It should be her that goes,” is all she says.
It’s the only time they speak about it. And Lil throws out the brochure.
Lil is sprawled on the couch, sweaty after an afternoon working in the orchard when Sasha comes in after dark and pauses just inside the door, an odd stillness in her. It seems like she isn’t sure where she wants to go next: to the kitchen, to scrounge for leftovers? To slump onto the couch? Straight upstairs to bed?
“Good, you’re here,” Lil says from the soft cushions. “We should talk.”
Her sister jumps, eyes catching on her in a momentary spark of shock. “Didn’t see you there,” she manages.
“Jason and I went to the cemetery on the hill and we saw more of those—those fires,” Lil says. “We didn’t imagine it last night.”
Sasha paces past her into the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets. “Well, no shit,” she calls through the doorway. “We weren’t on, like, some group trip last night or anything.” There’s a grouchy pause; then Sasha peers around the frame at her. “You said you saw more of those fires just burning up town? In the middle of the day?”
“Yes, and it was just the same. Burning one second, gone the next.”
“That’s—some end-times bullshit right there.” Sasha’s shoulders are tense. She’s worn emotions lightly all her life, but something is weighing on her now. “I can’t even process that.”
Lil follows her. “What’s wrong?” Which means, What else is wrong besides the erratic there-then-gone fires? It seems they’re shelving that bizarre revelation for the moment.
Sasha glares at the ceiling. “Jason’s back for less than a week, and suddenly you’re thick as thieves again,” she says. “I’ve been here I don’t even know how long now, and you barely say a handful of words to me a day.”
Lil’s cheeks heat. “I—excuse me?”
Sasha’s nostrils flare. “While you were off playing Hardy Boys with him, Theon was being a total creep to me out on the river.”
Even when she doesn’t see him, Theon ruins everything. Rage lances through her at the thought of him accosting Sasha in one of her safe places. “What did he say to you?” Lil demands.
“He was just trying to get to me.” Sasha’s arms are tucked around her gut. “I took care of it.”
“Well. Good. But it isn’t my fault.” Lil mirrors her.
When Sasha doesn’t speak but doesn’t leave, just glares, Lil gingerly picks up the argument. Tries to put the pin back in the hand grenade. “I would love to play Hardy Boys with you, Sasha. But you’re out of here most days before lunch hits.”
“How would you know?” Sasha retorts. “You’re always out of the house at the crack of dawn!” She’s standing by the coffeepot, which Lil always makes sure to leave on in the mornings for her, a mug waiting beside it so that even if they never really sit down to have a cup together, she knows Sasha will come down to it.
“Yes, because there’s work to do, and no one’s helping me do it,” Lil spits out like her tongue is on fire, words she’d never meant to say. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a whole orchard to run, and you can’t be bothered to lift a finger.”
“You don’t want me there.” Sasha’s voice is ragged, rising—and her voice never rises. She’s always the picture of cool, always lounging, always smirking like she has some secret expertise no one can share. “You’ve never wanted me there!”
“That’s all I want. But you keep leaving. You leave every day, Sasha.” Lil swallows, her throat dry and painful. It isn’t like fighting with others. This—with Sasha—is like clawing skin off her own back.
Sasha shakes her head, stubborn. “Mom didn’t want me there either. That was your place together, without me.” She holds out her hands, laughing harshly. “I wouldn’t even know how to help you. Because I know nothing about the orchard. And—no. Don’t say anything. You know it’s true.” She grabs a box of cereal from the cabinet, along with a bowl and spoon. The refrigerator door slams.
Lil finds her voice as Sasha is stomping upstairs, milk jug dangling from her hand. “All I know is that I try to reach out to you,” she says to her retreating back. “If you can’t see that, maybe you’re the one with the problem.”
She holds herself together as best she can and storms back out of the house. She rages through the trees to the wild heart of the property, into the brush and roots where the pond glimmers under the shade of its single tree. Her breath is coming out hot and hard as she flings herself down at the banks, shoves off her shoes, and plunges her feet in arctic water.
All at once, the anger soothes out of her. Leaves shift and sigh above her. Silent ripples move across the dark surface. It’s cold, but too silky to bite, as if her and the pond are the same thing. One creature, existing at the center of a heartbeat. Far off, through Sasha’s back window on the second floor, she can just barely catch a snatch of a Bangles song on her stereo.
It’s not easy to admit. But here, her thoughts are clearer. Maybe Sasha isn’t wrong. Everyone has their altars. Autumn worships at the feet of her ovens with baked offerings. Sasha gives reverence to the river. The churchgoers have Sunday prayers and after-service country club meetings. But this is Lil’s place of prayer, where she is stripped to nothing but her barest self. She can always feel it with her no matter where she is, cold pleasure, a dip in icy water that keeps with her even on the hottest days of the year. The pond is Lil’s. She is its, and it always reaches back if she reaches for it.
It is hard to be twins, a life halved and shared. Everything is split, and Lil tries not to be selfish. She never begrudges Sasha full shares over any sense of longing and connection to their father; Lil quiets that part of her heart, turns inward, and seeks the imprint of their mother. Sasha wanted the freedom to strike out into the world; and in exchange, Lil became the Clearwater meant by the Clearwater orchard. At least that’s how Lil sees it. There’s no telling how it seems to Sasha, what secret sacrifices Sasha has made for love. But they walk on set paths, and Lil can’t go back now. Not even for Sasha. She doesn’t want to.
The water shivers and pulls. Lil slips in up to her knees and abruptly catches herself on the cool mossy shore, clings to the grass and roots. Its love is greedy.
“No one eats as many pecans as that pond,” Mom whispers in the air, in Lil’s mind. “And it’s still hungry.”
“No,” Lil says firmly. After a long moment, the pressure releases. She pulls herself free of its clasp, tucks her legs under her on the bank. Water laps harmlessly at the shore. A pecan falls close to her, skitters to a stop in the dirt like an apology, or a plea—who knows?
As always, she completes her end of the ritual, picking the husk up and feeding it to the water.
When Autumn calls Sasha’s phone, she gets that fuzzy voicemail message again, her voice just the right side of brisk—Leave a message, and I’ll call you back later if I like you.
“Hey, Sasha.” She packs chocolate chip cookies first, golden brown to perfection, soft in the middle, just the way she likes them. “Just checking in. I guess you’re still out on the boat.” Then biscuits with bacon and cheese, still warm in aluminum wrappers. “Call me if you get a chance. I’m going back out to some of those old properties, and wanted to see if you’d come.” Her cell phone didn’t have service out here, so she’s stuck using that old corded phone.
Autumn pauses, all wrapped up in the phone cord. “Bye,” she tacks on and hangs up. Oh, she’s an idiot. It’s just Sasha. There’s no reason that talking to her should be hard; they drank their first beers together; they used to talk about crushes, giggling the whole time, even if Sasha never seemed to have many crushes. There’s no reason Autumn should be babbling worse than she did when a woman with a shaved head slipped her number into her back pocket at Starbucks.
No time to dwell on it. The basket is as full as she can make it. Autumn hooks it over her elbow and slips out the back door. The air is chilly this afternoon, the sky a pinched gray above her as she crosses the greenbelt.
It’s been a few days since she saw the little boy. But she knows what hunger looks like. When she returned to the bakery a day after she left him a loaf of bread, it was gone. And based on the direction he ran, she suspects where he could have been going. He was headed away, toward the railroad. She walked those lands with Sasha just the other day, with rusty car parts and abandoned houses.
It was in those fallow fields where she used to find playmates, children whose parents she never knew.
By the time she reaches the railroad, the basket, packed with so much optimism, feels heavier on her arm. She walks along the tracks, looking for what remains of those worn footpaths, or for some sign of life.
She’s walked for a while before she comes upon a huddled old estate, unkempt with neglect, vines climbing up the toothless porch. It’s the old Winston house, once the town’s most glamorous, well-to-do family. They had a Tiffany chandelier in the front hall.
She steps off the railroad, pushing through the overgrowth for a better look at a once stately dowager reduced to a sorry state. How long had it been abandoned? Autumn vaguely remembered there being life inside it in her childhood.
She walks forward.
It happens so quickly, Autumn registers it all at once. Her next step falls on something hard, without the give of soil—the rustle of force bursting through leaves—a red flare of pain, a beast clawing open her leg—metal scything through air.
Snap.
Autumn’s vision returns in a haze of black dots. She’s on her side. A distant moan hums in her marrow.
Bottle-blue sky beams above her, leaf rot clogging her nose. And pain, her body locked tight and screaming.
The sound, the moan—it’s coming from her, and she cuts off, gasping for breath that won’t stay, can’t make it into her chest. She can’t seem to hold it, inhaling dust and moss.
She can’t figure—
What’s wrong?
She tries to move, forces herself to sit up—her leg yanks, red and hot—and she twists enough to see—
She is caught in the jaws of a vicious metal beast. It’s chained to the ground, ancient and strong. Red slicks the sides of its iron teeth and stains her jeans.
Oh god. Oh god.
She’s caught in a trap.
Autumn screams. Her body flinches, a stupid, agonizing tug, waste of blood, of life, of time. She forces herself to still, forces her teeth to clamp shut.
That’s all you get, she tells herself viciously. Her eyes threaten to film over, her stomach heaves. No one knows you’re here. It is up to you. It’s just pain. It’s just pain.
She swallows against her panic, every shake tearing into her skin. Unyielding metal digs into her like she’s meat, without give, without mercy. When she’s ready, when the worst has passed, she inches closer to it. It’s nimble, not a bear trap, which could have killed her. It was made for something smaller. That’s good.
Her leg isn’t crooked. It may not be broken. That’s good too. Blearily, Autumn tries to sit up, her head pounding, stretching until she can reach the trap and see the mechanism. Was it left to catch some big cat? Did anyone still hunt in these ruined trees?
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” she breathes. “It’s fine.”
It is gruesome. One look—vile—Autumn scrabbles at the teeth and heaves, trying to leverage the jaws apart. But they won’t budge. She isn’t strong enough. She pulls, but her fingers slip and slip and slip.
“Fuck”—she curses and just like that she can’t hold back the wave of panic—“Help”—and it’s overtaking her and she’s screaming again—“Help! Help, somebody!”
But no one answers. Instead, there’s a flutter, a burst of birds fleeing somewhere in the trees, a skitter of animals dashing. And then it’s quiet. Even the wind stills.
In the complete silence, her breathing is very loud.
Forests are full of sound, rustling leaves and the chatter of birds, squirrel songs and the velvet footsteps of deer. Trees are like cities, full of life, always stirring. Wind and creaking branches. There’s never a still, quiet moment.
Only now, nothing moves. It’s as if every living thing has scurried away or frozen in place, hiding in hopes of remaining invisible. She knows what it means. It’s the vanished tide before the tidal wave.
It’s the doomed quiet before a predator stalks through.
Trapped on the ground, pinned in place, Autumn watches the tree line. She always wondered, before, why a mouse caught in glue would chew off its own limb just to get free.
She can’t see it, can’t hear it. But she knows she isn’t alone.