The Devouring Gray(22)

When Violet biked home that afternoon, she found Daria sitting on the front porch, knitting. Daria was always at her calmest in her ancient rocking chair, her crystal needles flashing away as she slowly unwound a ball of crimson yarn, usually with Orpheus the cat wrapping himself around her ankles. But this time, Juniper was sitting next to her in a chair dragged out from the kitchen, brandishing knitting needles of her own.

Violet paused for a moment at the base of the porch, just trying to take it in.

“Are you…learning to knit?” The words came out a little stilted. Violet hadn’t really spoken to her mother since finding out about Stephen Saunders.

“Well, I’m trying to teach her,” said Daria reproachfully. “She can’t relax long enough to get any stitches in.”

Juniper gave Daria the same frown Violet had always given Rosie when her sister was bossing her around. The expression looked wrong on her mother’s face, too juvenile, too unpolished. “You always told me I never knew how to be patient.” Juniper was still wearing heels and dress slacks, like she would have back in Ossining, but her blouse was wrinkled, her hair tucked carelessly behind her ears.

“You never learned how to wait, June,” said Daria, although the words were more affectionate than biting. “There’s still time, though. The stones haven’t come for you just yet.”

She patted her on the shoulder as Juniper stared hopelessly at the tangled mess of red yarn wound between her needles.

“Stones, coming for me. Whatever you say.” She turned her gaze to Violet. “Can you keep an eye on her for a second? I need to shoot off a few e-mails.”

Violet nodded. A moment later, Juniper was gone, the knotted yarn left in her place.

Daria eyed her. “Can you knit?”

Violet leaned her bike against the railing. “No.”

“A pity,” said Daria. “You have clever hands.”

Violet flexed her fingers. “Piano.”

“Yes. You remind me of Stephen.” The ghost of a smile flitted across her face. “He was a musician, too.”

Violet decided to try to push her luck, despite what Juniper had said about upsetting Daria. The stairs creaked beneath her boots as she climbed onto the porch. “You said he was a musician? What did he play?”

“The piano,” Daria said immediately. “It was why Juniper and Marcus wanted you to play. To honor him.”

Marcus Caulfield. Her father.

She hadn’t heard his name said aloud in a long time, and the words conjured up a sudden flash of memory—dark hair and a loud, raucous laugh, muscular arms lifting her up from the ground and wrapping her in a hug.

It flickered through her mind in the space of a heartbeat, leaving her aching for both halves of her family. She had never felt further from the dad she’d never really gotten the chance to know—and even though they were now in her mother’s hometown, she had never felt further from Juniper, either.

“I never knew that was why they enrolled me in piano lessons,” Violet said quietly.

Daria shrugged. “June’s never been good at explaining herself. But she wanted something of Stephen to live on, I think.”

“What happened to Stephen?” Violet asked. “Did it have anything to do with the Gray?”

Daria froze mid-stitch. “Come here,” she said, her voice creaking. Violet approached, slowly, her heart beating faster than was probably strictly necessary. Daria clasped her hand in hers. “Oh, Violet. You’re going to die with a hat on.”

Violet sighed, even as unease prickled in the back of her skull. She should’ve known the lucidity would only last for a moment—there were clearly no real answers here. “Well, then, I’ll just avoid headgear at all costs.”

Daria tugged her hand away. “You’ll forget one day. Everyone in Four Paths does.”

Violet stared darkly at her palm. A sudden breeze washed over them, a lovely break from the early September heat.

“Have you tried looking in the woods, little bone?” Daria’s voice was barely audible. “That’s the only part of this town that really matters.”

Violet jerked her head back toward her. “What?”

But the door was swinging open now, and Juniper was back, phone in hand. “It’s horrible out here.”

Violet barely heard her.

Have you tried looking in the woods, little bone?

Violet turned toward the trees.

She thought of the way Harper had talked about the forest that morning. The pain on her face.

There was so much here that she was only beginning to understand. But pretending it wasn’t happening would do nothing to help her figure it out.

“I’ll be out back.” Violet hurried back down the stairs and rounded the corner of the house to the backyard.

She pushed back thoughts of Rosie’s ghost and Deputy Anders’s corpse as she headed into the trees, the towering trunks the only witnesses to her meager act of bravery.

Everything looked utterly mundane: the chestnut trunks of the oak trees winding toward one another like old friends conversing, the birds chirping in the branches above them, the green-tinged sunlight. But unease still pulsed through Violet’s stomach.

Daylight didn’t mean bad things couldn’t happen.

She heard the insects buzzing before she saw them, a droning, heavy noise, like a whirring propeller. They hung in the air like a mushroom cloud over something limp and furry at the base of a tree, an unlucky raccoon or opossum.