Trees swayed as Saint parted the cover of a willow to roots rising like hands reaching up, preaching caution at each step.
She moved past the quake of aspens, white trunks thin and strong and pocked dark. An old metal sign rusted through, the letters too faint. The grove thickened. She smelled dust and Christmas. Sometimes when it rained she and Patch walked to the confluence three miles up to sail paper boats into the waters’ fold.
Trees took the light as a low hill leveled out, her mind on her friend, on how he smiled too much for a kid with such a draw, on how his mother once told him of pirates because that made his difference more than affliction.
Her breath crowned in her ears.
She moved quick past fallen trees that bookended the clearing. Head up, she scouted, but it wasn’t till she met the foot of the valley that she saw the spot.
The T-shirt.
The blood.