“Are they on drugs?” Kitty asked.

“No one out here’s on drugs as far as I know,” Mrs. Greene said. “Unless you count brown liquor or a little bit of rabbit tobacco.”

Patricia felt like it was important to change the subject.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“They gave me pills,” Mrs. Greene said. “But I don’t like the way they make me do, so I stick with Tylenol.”

“We are so grateful that you were there, and I know—and Dr. Campbell knows—that no one could have done more,” Patricia said. “We feel responsible for leaving those windows open in the first place, so we wanted you to have this.”

She put a check, folded in half, on the arm of Mrs. Greene’s La-Z-Boy. Mrs. Greene picked up the check and opened it. Patricia was proud of the amount. It was almost twice what Carter had wanted to write. She felt disappointed when Mrs. Greene’s expression didn’t change. Instead she folded the check back up and tucked it into her breast pocket.

“Mrs. Campbell,” she said, “I don’t need charity from you. I need work.”

Patricia saw the situation in a flash. With Mrs. Greene unable to do anything physical she had probably lost her other clients. Suddenly the amount of the check seemed woefully small.

“But you’ll still work for us,” Patricia said. “As soon as you’re feeling better.”

“I can’t do much for another week,” Mrs. Greene said.

“That’s what the check is supposed to cover,” Patricia said, happy to suddenly have a plan. “But after that I can use your help getting the house back together, and maybe cooking supper, too.”

Mrs. Greene nodded once and closed her eyes, head leaned back against the chair.

“God provides for those who believe,” she said.

“He does,” Patricia said.

They sat silently in the glow of the Christmas tree lights, the colors changing quietly against the walls until Jesse entered the living room, walking slowly, holding a pressed-tin NFL tray in front of him bearing two glasses of iced tea. The ice chimed against the glasses as he walked across the room and lowered the tray to the coffee table.

“Go on, useless,” Mrs. Greene said, and the boy looked at her.

She smiled at him; he smiled back and slipped out of the room.

Mrs. Greene watched Patricia and Kitty sip their iced tea. When she spoke again, her voice was low.

“I need to make that money fast,” she said. “I’m sending my boys up to live with my sister in Irmo for the summer.”

“On vacation?” Patricia asked.

“To keep them alive,” Mrs. Greene said. “You heard those Nancy girls chanting out there. There’s something in the wood’s been taking our babies.”

CHAPTER 14

“We really should get going,” Kitty said, putting her iced tea back on the coffee table.

“Just a minute,” Patricia said. “What’s happening to the children?”

Kitty twisted around on the sofa and cracked the curtains, letting a slash of harsh sunlight into the living room.

“That boy is still hanging around your car,” she informed Patricia, letting go of the curtains.

“It’s nothing you ought to trouble yourself about,” Mrs. Greene said. “I would just feel a whole lot safer with my babies away.”

For two months, ever since she’d been bitten, Patricia had felt useless and scared. The Old Village she’d lived in for six years had always been someplace safe, where children left their bicycles in their front yards, and only a few people ever locked their front doors, and no one ever locked their back doors. It didn’t feel safe now. She needed an explanation, something she could solve that would make everything go back to the way it was.

The check had been poorly judged and not nearly enough. She’d come out here to help and gotten into trouble with those boys and Mrs. Greene had had to help her out instead. But if there was some trouble with her children, she could maybe do something about that. Here was something tangible. Patricia felt victory at hand.

“Mrs. Greene,” Patricia said. “Tell me what’s wrong with Jesse and Aaron. I want to help.”

“Nothing’s wrong with them,” Mrs. Greene said, pulling herself to the edge of her recliner, as close as she could get to Patricia so she could talk low. “But I don’t want to have happen to them what happened to the Reed boy, or the others.”

“What happened to them?” Patricia asked.

“Since May,” Mrs. Greene said, “we’ve had two little boys turn up dead and Francine has gone missing.”

The room stayed silent as the Christmas tree lights cycled through their colors.

“I haven’t read anything about it in the newspaper,” Kitty said.

“I’m a liar?” Mrs. Greene asked, and Patricia saw her eyes get hard.

“No one says you’re lying,” Patricia reassured her.

“She just did,” Mrs. Greene said. “Came right out and said it.”

“I read the paper every day,” Kitty shrugged. “I just haven’t heard anything about children going missing or getting killed.”

“Then I guess I made up a story,” Mrs. Greene said. “I guess those little girls you heard singing out there made up their rhymes, too. They call him the Boo Daddy because that’s what they say’s in the woods. That’s why those boys were so nervous about strangers. We all know someone’s out here sniffing after the children.”

“What about Francine?” Patricia asked.

“She’s gone,” Mrs. Greene said. “No one’s seen her car since May fifteen or so. The police say she’s run off with a man, but I know she wouldn’t leave without her cat.”

“She left her cat?” Patricia asked.

“Had to get someone from the church to sneak open her window and get it out before it starved,” Mrs. Greene said.

Next to her, Patricia felt Kitty turn and look through the curtains again, and she wanted to tell her to stop squirming but she didn’t want to break Mrs. Greene’s concentration.

“And what about the children?” Patricia asked.

“The little Reed boy,” Mrs. Greene said. “He killed himself. Eight years old.”

Kitty stopped wiggling.

“That’s not possible,” she said. “Eight-year-old children don’t commit suicide.”

“This one did,” Mrs. Greene said. “Got hit by a tow truck while he was waiting for the school bus. The police say he was fooling around and stumbled in the road, but the other children in line with him say different. They say Orville Reed stepped right out in front of that truck deliberate. It knocked him clean out of his shoes, threw him fifty feet down the street. When they had his funeral he looked like he was just sleeping there in his coffin. Only thing different was a little tiny bruise on the side of his face.”

“But if the police think it was an accident…,” Patricia began.

“The police think all kind of things,” Mrs. Greene said. “Doesn’t necessarily make them true.”

“I haven’t seen anything in the paper,” Kitty protested.

“The paper doesn’t talk about what happens in Six Mile,” Mrs. Greene said. “We’re not quite Mt. Pleasant, not quite Awendaw, not quite anyplace. Certainly not the Old Village. Besides, one little boy has an accident, an old lady runs away with some man, the police figure it’s just colored people being colored. It’d be like reporting on a fish for being wet. The only one that looks unnatural is what happened to that other boy, Orville Reed’s cousin, Sean.”

Patricia felt caught up in a particularly lurid and unstoppable bedtime story and now it was her turn to prompt the teller.

“What happened to Sean?” she asked.

“Before he died, Orville’s mother and auntie say he got real moody,” Mrs. Greene said. “They say he was irritable and sleepy all the time. His mother says he took long walks out in the woods every day when the sun started to go down, and came back giggling, and then the next day he’d be sick and unhappy again. He wouldn’t take food, would hardly drink water, he’d just stare at the television, whether it was cartoons or commercials, and it was like he was asleep while he was awake. He limped when he walked and cried when she asked him what the matter was. And she couldn’t keep him out of those woods.”

“What was he doing out there?” Kitty asked, leaning forward.