When Tori got to school, she headed straight to the library to avoid bumping into Magda or Drew. Jesse and Bobby weren’t there. Relieved, she sank into an empty carrel and checked her phone.

Where were you this morning? Magda had texted.

Tori put her phone away. For the rest of the day, she tried to focus on her schoolwork, but Will Slaughter’s name peppered every conversation in the halls. Missing-person flyers were still hung on bulletin boards, stuck to restroom doors, as though taking them down was some kind of taboo. Jack Slaughter’s election stickers were slapped on textbook covers and the insides of lockers all over campus, even though they weren’t supposed to be. None of the Slaughters were in school, and yet she felt them everywhere.

When she got off the bus, police cars lined the short section of Slaughter Road where her property abutted Alistair’s, closest to the point where she’d found Will’s body. Fresh tracks cut through the field, and yellow tape draped along the trees to keep people out of the woods. Tori went straight home, resisting the urge to go looking for Nathaniel. Too many other people might be looking for him too. Instead, she spent her evening watching the smokeless sky over the barn from her bedroom window, wondering if he was cold or hungry, and hoping he was okay.

The next day was exactly the same. Tori woke up early and took the bus to school, turned the ringer off on her phone, and went out of her way to avoid running into Magda and Drew. The mood in school was unusually somber. Jesse’s friends cut Tori sideways looks in the hall between classes. Kim didn’t once kick Tori’s seat, but Tori could feel her eyes boring into her back. Tori glanced back once at Lisa during third period and saw her scribbling in the margins of her notebook. At the end of class, she brushed past Tori’s shoulder, dropping a piece of paper on Tori’s desk that said He’s dead because of you.

Will’s death had been ruled an accident by the medical examiner and the police. But as far as everyone else was concerned, Tori’s family had come to Chaptico and ruined his life, and that’s what killed him.

In fourth period, Tori got another text from Magda: I’m sorry.

Tori didn’t answer. True, they hadn’t known each other long, but she’d thought Magda was a friend. She should have told Tori her dad was representing Jesse’s family. That the Slaughters were trying to have Tori kicked out of her home. Instead, Magda had ridden with Tori to school every day, pretending not to know.

At least let me explain. Can we please talk?

Tori’s fingers hovered over the screen. Her teacher turned from the whiteboard, looking over the rims of his glasses at the phone in her lap, and Tori tucked it away without answering.

That afternoon, she got off the bus at the end of Slaughter Road carrying a battered plastic violin case she’d borrowed from the music department at school, feeling lonelier than she had in a long time as Kyle’s short legs ate up the winding dirt road ahead of her. She paused in front of Mrs. Rice’s mailbox where her name had been scraped off, staring at the singed FOR SALE sign in the yard, her mind haunted by all the questions she never asked.

The lot looked so empty. All that remained was the pile of blackened cinder blocks that used to be the foundation of Matilda’s house, and the burned stump of the old walnut tree. Al Senior had told Will that the answers were under the oldest branch of a tree. Tori could see straight through it now, to the charred earth that used to be Slaughter’s soybean fields behind it, and she kicked herself for not talking to the woman. For not believing Matilda while she’d had the chance.

If there had been any answers here, there sure weren’t any left.

She’s been talkin’ to you, even if you ain’t been listenin’.

Tori wouldn’t make that mistake again. She was listening now.

When she got home one afternoon, the yellow police tape was gone. The field was speckled with blackbirds, and the road alongside it was empty of cars. Tori cut through it to the cemetery. The budding leaves she’d seen dotting the oak just days ago had opened, green and shivering in the late afternoon sun, and she wondered what it meant.

She set the violin down beside the trunk and peeled off her sweater, letting cool lines of sweat trickle down the neck of her shirt. It had been too many days since she’d last seen Nathaniel. Enough time for Will’s funeral. Enough time for Drew and Magda to stop coming to pick her up in the morning and to ease her brother’s mind that Nathaniel wasn’t coming back. Now, with the threat of a restraining order and a police report filed against Alistair, Tori hoped it might finally be safe to find Nathaniel. The cemetery was empty. As empty as it had been before Nathaniel had shown up here. And for the first time, that emptiness didn’t feel like a reprieve.

She leaned against the tree and rested her head against the trunk, touching the bark Nathaniel had cut. Over the squawk of birds, she could just make out a rhythmic sound.

A dull echo through the trees.

Tori gathered up her sweater and the violin case, and followed it through the woods to the barn, toward the steady thunk of a hammer. She set the violin down just outside and cracked the door. Nathaniel perched high in the rafters, barefoot and shirtless on a makeshift ladder, securing a board across a hole in the roof.

Tori plugged her ears with her fingers and watched as he nailed the board in place, his teeth gritted around a handful of nails, and his hair tied loosely back. His pants were low on his waist, and she could see the outline of his ribs. A line of sweat trailed down his abdomen where the saw had split him open. Not so much as a scratch marked the smooth, hard skin there, even though his back was riddled with scars.

“Nathaniel?” Tori called out.

He swung the hammer down hard on his thumb, swearing loudly as he tipped off balance. With a terrible thud, he crashed to the floor.

“Nathaniel?” Tori knelt over him but didn’t touch him, remembering how he had teased her after the incident at the tree. Aside from the dark rings under his eyes, he didn’t appear too worse for the wear. And yet…his body was slow to rouse. Something felt off, and Tori couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

His eyes fluttered open, a pale gray-green, his pupils swelling and shrinking as they came in and out of focus. “I should have known it was you,” he said, turning his face away and pushing himself slowly to his feet.

“What were you doing up there anyway?”

“Mending the roof.” He took a moment to steady himself before shaking out his fingers and inspecting his thumb.

“You should be more careful.”

He looked shaken as he crossed the barn. Rolling his shoulder, he said, “I’ve suffered worse.”

“I was talking about the noise. Someone might hear you.”

Nathaniel shot her a resentful look and bent to retrieve the nails from the floor. Tori took in the scattered bed of straw, the dusty blanket tossed carelessly on top, and the mound of cold ashes in the fire ring. Beside it rested a small animal trap fashioned from washed-up fishing line and woven branches, the floor littered with shells and scraps of dandelion weeds and nuts, cracked oyster shells, and what looked like roasted animals, picked clean to the bones. Tori swallowed back guilt. She’d left him alone here for days with next to nothing.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said pulling away with a jerk when she came up behind him and prodded a wound. His shoulder must have caught the edge of the beam when he fell. “I heal well enough on my own.” The cut was as raw and as hot as his temper. They had agreed that she should stay away from the barn until things settled, but maybe more time had passed than Nathaniel had expected. With a pang, she realized the cut wasn’t the only wound that would be slow to heal.

Nathaniel craned his neck to see it for himself, and his already pale face blanched even more. He snatched his shirt from the floor and drew it sharply over his head. “It will mend.” He looked tired. Weary. From the work or because of her, she couldn’t be sure. He rotated his shoulder, grimacing as he moved through the barn, his brow still furrowed and angry as he studied the underside of the slatted roof.

A pink stain began to seep through the fabric of his shirt. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s nothing that can’t be fixed,” he said roughly. But Tori wasn’t so sure.

“No.” Tori took Nathaniel’s hand, surprising him. She turned it over to inspect his injured thumb. A pale purple bruise bloomed under the nail. “I mean you’re really bleeding.”

He twisted his hand from hers. “I said I know!”

The hammer lay beside a stack of salvaged boards. The saw rested beside it, and the sight of it made her queasy. Nathaniel’s jaw tightened and he slapped a plank across the sawhorse. She caught the wince in his eyes—the stiff movement of his shoulder—when he drew the saw across it.

“Don’t you think we should talk about this?” Tori said over the noise as he worked. She leaned around him when he didn’t answer, trying to see his face and getting in his way. He dropped the saw on the table, refusing to look at her. “Don’t you think we should talk about the tree? What it means? Don’t you think we should—”

“I should have the roof patched by nightfall…” he said coldly. He shoved a handful of nails into his pocket and hefted the board to the ladder. “…in the absence of further insufferable distractions.” His foot rested on the bottom rung, as if waiting for her to go.

Insufferable? Tori’s face burned to the tips of her ears. She itched to watch him climb the ladder just so she could kick it out from under him. Insufferable? He’d spent the last three hundred years in a hole in the dirt. So she’d left him alone for a few days. Why should she feel guilty for offering him her barn to sleep in and putting her father’s shoes on his feet?

“Insufferable? How about ungrateful! You can sleep in the river for all I care!” She grabbed her sweater and stormed out the door. Nathaniel dropped the board as he called after her, but Tori was already running through the trees. It was only after she climbed her porch steps that she realized she’d left the violin behind.