3

RAVEN

Ellis Abbey was better than Raven had hoped. She didn’t want her at her house. That had been clear enough. But that was okay because Raven didn’t want to be there either.

But she liked the house made of wood, the forest around it, and the huge trees laden with long, swaying hair. She was greatly relieved when the ancient trees stirred the kind of earth kinship she’d known in Mama’s woods. She’d sensed no presence of earth spirits at Jonah’s house or anywhere else since she’d left Washington. She had begun to worry that she’d never feel their presence again. Maybe Mama had been as wrong about the ancient earth arts as she’d been about how Raven had come to her. But the land around Ellis’s house was definitely a place of spirits. Raven had felt them even before she got out of the car.

They followed a flat-stone walkway to a big, open porch. There were two wooden rocking chairs that looked out at the trees.

When Ellis opened the door, a huge dog came out and barked at Raven and her aunt.

“Quiet, Quercus!” Ellis said. “He’s friendly. Are you okay with dogs?”

Raven couldn’t answer. The only dog she’d ever known—or not known—was the werewolf.

The dog licked her hand. “Quercus is a good name for him,” she said.

“You know what it means?” Ellis asked.

“Yes, the genus of oaks.”

Ellis seemed surprised that she knew.

Raven was happy to see the house had wood walls and floors, same as her log home. And the furnishings were simple and few, as Mama liked. The house was smaller, but it felt good. There was even a stone fireplace in the living room.

Ellis showed Raven and her aunt around. There was a guest room, where Ellis put Raven’s suitcase. The patterned quilt and wood bed with posts were beautiful. Aunt Sondra said, “I love the country feel of this house. The antique furniture is a perfect complement.”

“Most of the furniture was more trash than antique when I found it,” Ellis said. “My business partner is a carpenter who can work magic with any junk I haul home.”

Raven loved the screened porch at the back of the house. It looked down a hill at a garden—all native plants, Ellis said—and beyond it were more woods and fields.

“Are those fields out there part of your property?” she asked Ellis.

“Yes. Those are old pastures I’ve seeded with native wildflowers and grasses. And beyond that is bottomland forest with more big oaks and a marsh.”

“How many acres do you own?” Aunt Sondra asked.

“Twenty-eight. About five acres of that is used for the nursery.”

“This place is perfect for you,” Aunt Sondra said to Raven.

Only Mama’s land in Washington could be perfect for her. But the Florida land would be all right until she was allowed to go home.

“Did you live in a rural area in Washington?” Ellis asked.

“We live on ninety acres of woods and fields,” Raven said.

“It’s beautiful,” Aunt Sondra said.

Ellis had a cold look in her eyes. “Isolated, I suppose?”

Aunt Sondra nodded.

“Did she take the baby straight there from New York?”

“I assume so. She bought the acreage around that time. She lived in a trailer on the property while the house was built.”

“Weren’t you at all suspicious that she suddenly had a baby?”

Aunt Sondra said, “Raven, why don’t you go unpack your clothes while I talk to Ellis?”

Raven almost refused to let them talk about Mama behind her back. But she also wanted to know what they’d say. She pretended to leave the screened porch but stayed around the corner, where she could hear them.

“I live in Chicago,” her aunt said. “I didn’t see my sister very often. I assume she’d been visiting our mother’s grave the day she took the baby. That cemetery is very near the woods where you left the baby.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have worded it that way,” Aunt Sondra said.

“Why not? It’s true,” Ellis said stiffly.

“I didn’t find out she had a baby until Raven was about seven months old. Audrey called me in a panic because the baby had a high fever. I flew out with a doctor to help.”

“She was afraid to take the kidnapped baby to a doctor. That should have made you suspicious.”

“No, that fear was typical for her. At a young age, she developed phobias about doctors. Our father sent her to physicians to help her with her mental illness. Those irrational fears became extreme after our mother died. Audrey was very close to her and traumatized by her death. She believed the doctors, medicines, and hospital killed her mother.”

“Didn’t you think it was strange that she had no birth certificate or evidence of a father?”

“Again, that fit Audrey’s life. She was a loner who preferred wilderness to society. One day when we met—she was thirty-two, I think—she told me she was trying to get pregnant. She was suddenly obsessed with having a child.”

“Was she in a relationship?”

“No. From what I could tell, she was randomly meeting men and trying to get pregnant. I was concerned about that, but more so because I didn’t know if she could competently care for a child. When I found out about the baby, she told me the father was a man whose name she didn’t know. She said she’d birthed the baby alone in a forest. That was why there was no birth certificate.”