But now these fighting boys had come and ruined everything. They had broken much more than the glass jar. Raven had felt it as soon as she saw them, everything in her life coming apart again, and she didn’t think she could handle more breakage.

She heard thumping cabinet doors, River asking if there was anything stronger than beer. Ellis saying beer was all she had. She asked them to go in the living room while she cooked.

Jasper asked Raven if she was okay as he entered the room with his brother.

“It’s nothing,” she said. She lifted her cut foot off the pillow and sat up.

“Nothing?” River said, looking at her bandaged foot. “That’s amazing. I guess you’ve already fixed it with your earth-spirit superpowers.”

In her mind, Raven jumped off the couch and punched him much harder than Jasper had. In reality, she tried not to show any reaction. The person who deserved to be punched was her bigmouthed aunt.

River saw she was upset. “Yeah, we know,” he said. “Our father told us about your kook religion.”

“Shut up,” Jasper said.

“I can say what I want, dickhead. What exactly can those earth spirits do?” he asked Raven.

“Nothing a person as lost as you could understand,” she said.

“Good answer,” Jasper said.

River was clearly angry that his brother had sided with her. He downed the rest of his beer and opened a new bottle.

“Have you figured out that the woman who stole you was insane?” he asked. “They tried to lock her up more than once, you know.”

“You’re the one who should be locked up.”

“Maybe I should,” he said. “And you’ll be in the padded room right next to mine. And why is that? Because of that piece of shit who stole you. She wrecked a lot of lives! And for you to act like she was this great person really pisses off everyone in this family! You need to get with reality! She was a total wacko!”

Raven sprang up and shoved him in the chest. “Don’t talk about her like that!”

Ellis pulled Raven away as Jasper grabbed River’s arm. The boys were about to get into another fistfight.

“Stop this!” Ellis shouted. “All of you, stop!”

“All of us?” Jasper said. “It’s River!”

“Go sit in that chair, River!” Ellis shouted.

“Oh my god,” he said with a laugh. “I’m in time-out? Have you forgotten I’m not four?”

“I said sit!” she screamed. Her eyes were the same as Mama’s when the storms thundered, her hand shaking as she pointed at the chair.

River complied.

“Why are you doing this?” Ellis asked, looking at each of them. “Why are you tearing each other apart instead of supporting each other?”

“It’s River,” Jasper said. “That’s what he does.”

“Yeah, it’s what I do,” River said. “And guess who taught me, Mom?”

“I never behaved like you do!”

“But you did a great job of tearing the family apart.”

Ellis looked away from him, stared at the dark front windows.

Raven saw what she wanted. She wanted to be out there in the woods. She looked like a trapped animal. Raven knew how she felt. She supposed Ellis would leave the house.

But Ellis turned back to River. “Okay, let’s talk about it. Is that what you want?”

“Yeah, let’s talk about it,” River mocked.

“What do you want to know?”

“You know what! Why did you leave two little kids who were already traumatized by their baby sister’s abduction?”

His voice, the look in his eyes. And in Ellis’s and Jasper’s eyes. Raven saw some of what Mama had done to them. She felt even sicker than she had in the kitchen. She sank onto the couch.

“I was . . . I thought I was doing you more damage by staying,” Ellis said. “At first your father had to make me take the pills. For the depression and guilt. Every second I was awake, I blamed myself for leaving my baby in the woods. What I’d done was broadcast on the news. All my friends and neighbors knew. Your grandmother never let me forget. Your father was angry with me . . .”

She wiped her fingers under her eyes. “Within a few weeks, I started drinking because the pills weren’t enough. Then I added the pain medications they’d given me for my back. I couldn’t stop. The more I took, the more I needed. I thought I was going to be like my mother. I thought I would be an addict for the rest of my life—and there was no way I’d put you through what I went through when I was little.”

“I didn’t know your mother was an addict,” Jasper said.

Ellis was astonished Mary Carol and Jonah II hadn’t told them. Possibly Jonah had finally drawn a line with them.

“What did she use?” River asked.

“Anything, but she got really bad when she started using heroin.”

“Whoa,” River said.

“What was your father like?” Jasper asked.

“I never knew who he was, and my mother refused to tell me.”

“No stepdad or anything?”

“For a while, there was a man. Zane Waycott. He was like my dad. He was a chef at some of the same restaurants where my mother worked. He and I were really close—at least I thought we were. Then one day he just disappeared.”