Chapter 1

Whoever wrote the script for the weather that year must’ve been a Hollywood hack. Winter’s brutally cold followed by a glorious spring. Then—wham!—this mass of cold air from Canada sneaks down across the Adirondacks and over the Catskills like the psycho in a cheesy thriller, waiting for the heroine to put on her nightie before he bursts in for the final assault.

High over New Jersey, the cold front crept forward and collided with a mass of moist air from the Carolinas, dumping six inches of snow on the area surrounding Exit 4 on the Turnpike.

The snow was a surprise and a temptation for eight-year-old Mimi Cohen-McRae. Spiked with energy like her dark, wavy hair, Mimi desperately wanted to play in the snow. This is my chance, she told herself. By the time meeting’s over, it’ll all be gone.

Mimi risked a quick surveillance of the situation. She was in the middle of a pack of 50 or 60 Gardenfield Friends School kids. They were on their way to the historic Quaker meeting house, which was tucked away behind a stand of trees, a five-minute walk from the school building.

Normally, the children would have walked two-by-two in silent contemplation. They knew they were supposed to be getting ready to talk with God. As the youngest kids attending, the third-graders each had a sixth-grade partner to help them maintain proper decorum on the way to and during the weekly meeting for worship.

Today, however, Mimi and her classmates had to tramp through the snow as best they could. Mr. DeKalb, the school janitor, hadn’t made it in to shovel the sidewalks. Everyplace, with the exception of where the students were walking, was covered with a uniform white and pristine blanket of snow.

Mimi eyed the perfect drift that ran parallel to the long, exposed, plain-brick wall of the meeting house. A tempting target. Unfortunately, her meeting partner, Janet Wooten, was precisely positioned to block her assault. Typical. Janet was oafish and humorless. In Mimi’s opinion, she was the meanest kid in the sixth grade.

Mimi saw that her best hope lay in the other direction. The Quaker cemetery looked especially inviting, with its ancient trees and stone monuments draped in white. She eyed the gate that Mr. DeKalb used when he needed to mow the cemetery lawn with his tractor. Once Teacher Grace entered the meeting house, Mimi figured she could somehow nip through and roll down the snowy hillside.

The double line of students advanced steadily toward the meeting house and Mimi got ready to make her move. But then her spirits plummeted. Somehow Teacher Grace had appeared out of nowhere and was now standing at the entrance to the cemetery. She nodded and mouthed the words, “Good morning, Mimi,” without actually saying them out loud.

“Freaky,” Mimi said to herself. “It was like she read my mind and stood there on purpose.” Mimi had no choice but to follow her schoolmates in through the tall double doors with Janet trailing right behind her.

The long wooden benches were covered with thin olive drab cushions running the entire length. Mimi chose a spot with approximately two empty places separating her from the person on her right; Janet positioned herself the same distance away on her left. Then the silent worship began.

Inside Mimi’s head it was anything but silent. She thought about her close call with Teacher Grace and the inexorably melting snow: How long did meeting actually last? Mimi wasn’t sure. It ended when the elders, also seated at safe intervals along the facing benches, would lean over and shake hands and wish each other “good morning.” That was the sign. The children would do the same: “Good morning, Janet.” “Good morning, Mimi.” Other than that, they had to maintain silence while still in the meeting house. But once they crossed the threshold it was officially recess. The building would seem to explode as children poured out, laughing and shouting as they raced toward the playground.

Still distracted, Mimi let her attention drift with the motes of dust visible in the sunshine pouring in through the large windows. She could hear kids shifting in their seats. Coughing and sneezing. Nose blowing. It was frustrating. She wanted everyone to be quiet. She wanted to listen for the sound of snow melting from the roof and splashing against the pavement. Then one of the elders stood up to speak.

It was a white-haired man in a blue suit named Mr. Landis, who was partial to The Book of Job. “How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out? That their calamity comes upon them?” he droned and wheezed.

This could go on forever, Mimi knew. The meetings never had a leader or music or any kind of planned service. Instead, the participants “held silence” and, if anyone experienced “the light within,” they were free to stand up and speak about it. Mostly it was the elders who did this, much to the children’s amazement, for these talks were interminable and quite impossible to follow. Mr. Landis’ affinity for Job was grounded in his belief that children needed to learn about the unfairness of it all at the earliest age possible.

“God stores up their iniquity for their sons,” the old man raved. But Mimi couldn’t take any more of it. She turned to her right to avoid Janet’s gaze, curious to see who was sitting on the other side. Strange. She hadn’t noticed before. The girl was still wearing a coat, hat and scarf. And she wasn’t sitting with a partner. Was one of her classmates absent this morning? Mimi went down the list, but got distracted.

“One dies in full prosperity, being wholly at ease and secure,” Mr. Landis continued, his voice rising. “His body full of fat and the marrow of his bones moist. Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of good …”

Mimi shut him out and studied the girl. Whoever she was, she appeared to have drifted off to sleep. She was slumped to one side, with her head leaning against the corner of the bench at an awkward angle. Mimi decided she’d better wake her before she got in trouble. She stole a glance at Janet, who scowled at Mimi and gestured for her to sit still. Mr. Landis was blinking furiously as he spoke. Mimi felt this was a sign. She had to act right away.

Mimi reached out, but the moment her hand touched the girl’s shoulder she knew something was wrong. Instead of warm, soft flesh, she encountered a hard surface, lifeless and rigid. The awful knowledge struck Mimi like an electric current, as the body tipped clumsily in her direction.

No one ever got to hear the conclusion of Mr. Landis’ recitation that morning. Nor did anyone stop to shake hands or wish a neighborly “good morning.”

Mimi’s scream pierced the silence and pandemonium broke loose. Everyone rushed for the double doors as if their lives depended on it. The teachers tried to stem the flow of shrieking children, but the situation was out of control.

Only Mr. Landis remained immune to the panic. He waited until the exodus was complete, before concluding: “They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them.”