"Truly, bend down a little." He pul ed me near to him, and final y kissed me, shocking me with the tart, lemony taste of his tongue. "You don't know how long I've wanted to do that," he said, smiling, and I beamed back.

"Yes, I do." It was ridiculous, I thought. On the face of things, we were hopelessly mismatched, but somehow we fit together perfectly. I inched my leg back. How could it be, I wondered, that I was standing in a cemetery, gathering the means for the doctor's death, but at the same time felt so alive? A fly buzzed close to my ear, pul ing me back to reality.

I couldn't do this now. No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn't forget about Robert Morgan. After he was gone, Marcus and I would have our chance. I pul ed back from Marcus, sobered. "We should wait,"

I said.

I wanted him to reach for me again and to argue his case, but he didn't, and maybe that was the right thing. After al , I chastised myself, we had lived too long in our smal town for any kind of easy romance to bloom. There were so many people between Marcus and me, for starters. The doctor.

Amelia. Bobbie. I took another step back and Amelia. Bobbie. I took another step back and straightened my dress, one of my hands stil clasped in Marcus's. "What did you tel Bobbie about his father? How much does he know?"

Marcus scuffed a boot on the ground.

"He knows he's dying. He knows it's bad, but he doesn't know how little time he has left." I blushed and cleared my throat uneasily. Marcus peered at me more closely. "Truly, do you know how little time he has?"

I looked away, thinking not of the doctor's remaining days on earth, but of my own. Did I owe it to Marcus to confess my condition? I wondered.

After everything he'd seen and been through during the war, would he real y want to go through the trauma of il ness with me? And what if he found out about what I'd done for Prissy and what I was about to do for the doctor? Tel ing him could ruin the one chance I had with Marcus, I knew, but at the same time, I didn't know how I could keep a secret of that magnitude. Marcus's fingers were tempting and warm around mine, however. They promised that they could forgive anything. They almost made me loosen my tongue, but at the last second, fear tied it up again. More than anything, I didn't want him to let go of my hand.

"Of course not," I final y answered. "How would I know a thing like that?"

Marcus seemed easier. "I don't know. It was just a thought. But you should go see Bobbie.

He's in the cottage now. He doesn't work until later in the afternoon. I'l just be down that hil , doing some weeding. The door's unlocked." He squeezed my hand and let it drop. We stepped apart, and Marcus handed me my basket. "Watch out for those nettles,"

he said, running his thumb along the welts on my skin. "They're nasty things, Truly. They'l flay you alive."

My veins crackled with heat. "Thanks," I whispered, drawing back my hand, "I'l try to be careful." I wanted him to kiss me again. I wanted to say that his touch could cure the rash, could cure everything about me, but there was nothing to do now but wait, I knew. I'd been bitten by a witch's mouth, and I was going to have to let nature run its idle course.

A short walk brought me to the cottage, and as Marcus had promised, I found it unlocked. I'd never been inside it before, and I expected it to be spare, but it was surprisingly warm and comfortable. The main room had a smal kitchen in the back corner, an oversized sofa, a rocking chair, and a fireplace stocked with wel -seasoned wood.

"Hel o?" I cal ed, sticking my head in the door.

"Aunt Truly!" Bobbie bounded across the room. "Final y! I've been wondering how long it would take you to come out here. I've missed you so much."

I staggered a little as he threw his arms around me. I couldn't bear to tel him how much I'd missed him, so I patted his shoulders instead. It was amazing what a difference a few short months had made in his appearance. The lanky, sulking Bobbie that I remembered had been replaced by a glowing young man with light in his eyes. "I wanted to give you time," I lied. "But I've been thinking about you you time," I lied. "But I've been thinking about you every minute of every day." I didn't want to tel him about his father threatening me or about my troubles with Marcus. In some ways, I stil thought of Bobbie as a child. Looking at him now, I wondered if it was time to give that up.

Bobbie sniffled and squeezed me once again. "Come on in." He detached himself and waved a muscled arm, beckoning me forward.

"Okay." I ducked my head going through the door. The ceiling was low, making me feel even bigger and more awkward than I usual y did. I moved slowly, worried I would knock over one of Marcus's stacks of gardening catalogs or sideswipe the cracked pitcher stuffed with cattails and reeds.

"Come and sit down," Bobbie insisted, patting the sofa cushions and giving me an opportunity to study him more closely. He looked older, I thought. His hair had grown long enough for him to pul it into a smal ponytail, and it gave his face new and interesting angles. I sat down gingerly, waiting to see how much the cushions would sag.

Surprisingly, they held me wel .

"You look good," I said.

Bobbie blushed. "Thanks. I guess you know I've been working at a bar over in Hansen.

Garth's, it's cal ed." He shifted and twiddled his thumbs. There was a beat of silence. "I guess you've also heard what kind of bar it is."

It was my turn to blush. "Bobbie, honey," I said, "it's fine with me. However things are, they're fine."

"I guess you heard about Salvatore, too, then." Bobbie stared down at his hands and blushed.

I didn't know quite what to say. It seemed so strange to be discussing love with a boy who was stil eight in my heart. I cleared my throat. "Wel , the way I see it, honey, love's love, whatever shape it comes in."

Bobbie half smiled, relieved. "Does Dad know?"

I nodded. "Yes." He sat back against the cushions, solemn. I couldn't tel if the expression on his face was relief or regret. Maybe a little of both, I thought. I cleared my throat. "He surprised me, you know. He was more okay with it than I thought he would be. He wanted to know if Salvatore was good to you."

Amazement swam into Bobbie's eyes.

"And what did you tel him?"

"I said he was." I was silent for a moment and then leaned forward, hoping what I'd just told Bobbie would influence him. "Listen, your dad's real sick now. I think you should come by and see him.

He's-wel , he's not going to be here much longer." I didn't go into how I knew that with such certainty.

Bobbie shook his head. Stubbornness reclaimed his face. "I'm sorry."

"Just come by and hold his hand. You don't have to explain anything to him."

Bobbie pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Truly. I don't think I could go back.

Besides, it's not like he made any effort to come and see me."

"You know what that would take out of him. And lately, he hasn't even been able."

"Stil ."

I turned so I was facing Bobbie square. I put a hand on his shoulder. "Your father's dying. You understand that, don't you? You won't ever be able to ask him anything or tel him anything after this. Are you sure that's what you want?"

Bobbie's eyes glistened. "Maybe." He turned his face away from me and mumbled, "I just want it to be over."

"It wil be. Soon. But you'l be alone then.

Are you ready for that?"

Bobbie put his arms around me again and laid his head on my shoulder. He stil smel ed the way he had in boyhood, like Ivory soap and gra.s.s. "I won't be total y alone. I have Marcus. And Salvatore, and you. I'l always have you, right?"

I smoothed the yel ow strands of his hair, so like his mother's. It's about time, I thought, that we start to hold on to one another better in this family. I was tired of losing people. I squeezed Bobbie back, hard. "Of course. You'l always have me." But that was a lie. In spite of everything the doctor had tried, I was stil getting bigger. I wondered which part of me would bust first. My heart, as Robert Morgan had predicted? Or my stomach? Or would everything go together? I pul ed back from Bobbie and examined him again, pleased to see that his father's glare was gone from his eyes. In the end, his mother's spirit seemed to be winning.

"Don't worry," I rea.s.sured him, patting his "Don't worry," I rea.s.sured him, patting his hand. "No matter what happens, I'l always be around you somehow."

I didn't tel Robert Morgan about my visit with Bobbie, but it wasn't out of any sympathy or innate goodness on my part. I just figured there's no point in snapping kindling that's already cut. Over the next few weeks, I made two more trips to get the right amount of herbs. "Start with the nightshade," he said, "then add the foxglove. Did you know it's stil used in heart medicine today?"

"So if it doesn't kil you, it wil make you stronger?" I said.

He wiped a trail of saliva from his chin.

"Maybe."

"I guess we'l see."

He grimaced. "I guess we wil ."

Robert Morgan didn't go as easily as Priscil a Sparrow. He clearly wanted to stick around and give orders. It was as if after years of bossing and tormenting me, he couldn't just give it up. He lost his voice completely, but he took to constantly ringing the bel I'd left by his bedside. I'd no sooner fetch him a fresh gla.s.s of water than he'd want a mint to suck on, and when he had that, he'd want me to give him the newspaper, trying to pretend that the print wasn't swimming and bobbing before his eyes.

"Robert Morgan, you should just rest. Let me handle this," I told him, but he wasn't having any of that. He made me sit on the quilt next to him while he pointed at al the different plants, double-checking what I put in the drink.

Final y, on the last night of July, I helped him to one of the lawn chairs in the garden and covered him with Tabitha's quilt. He'd chosen nighttime, I knew, because he wanted the stars to be the last thing he looked at. "Ready?" I asked. In my hands, the jar of green liquid sloshed and rippled like a dangerous emerald sea. I uncapped it and released the mossy aroma. The doctor was so weak that he could almost not lift his own arms. He merely nodded and gazed at me with sunken eyes. I took one of his stringy hands and wrapped his fingers tight around the jar. "Hold on," I told him. "You don't want to spil any. Here-" I pul ed out a napkin. "For under your chin."

It was a perfect twilight-the kind that tickles you with the promise of autumn lurking right around the corner, when the crickets are alive and yakking and the day's heat lingers in the flowers and trees, scenting the air. It could have been an evening for almost anything-eloping, birthing a child, a simple, good rest-but instead, here I was kil ing a man, and not just any man, either, but Robert Morgan, who'd housed me for the past ten years, doctored me, riled me, and who, nevertheless, I'd strangely come to love a little bit lately.

I tipped my head back, gazed at the spangled sky, and wondered if people's souls ended up there or stayed sunk down in the earth with their bones. I squinted, and the stars blurred until they looked almost calcified. Maybe the heavens were a kind of celestial grave, I thought, the way the earth is a repository for our flesh, and when we stared at the stars, we were real y beholding a mil ion lives twinkling back at us, asking us not to forget. I sat forward and cleared my throat.

"Is there anything you want me to remember, in particular?" I asked. I tried to think about the things I carried around with me from my mother, my father, August, and my sister. My name, I decided. Certainly the genes that made me bigger than everyone else. From August I could say I'd gotten the ability to spot the losing horse at the racetrack and a winning hand of cards, and Serena Jane had entrusted me with Bobbie. I wondered what the doctor's legacy would be, then reflected that maybe he'd already given it to me. He'd told me the truth, after al , about why I was so big and what it meant for my existence, and he'd shared the secret of Tabitha's quilt with me. It sounds funny now, but in a nutshel , I guess you could say he'd granted me the secret of death and, by extension, life.

The half-empty jar in Robert Morgan's hand quivered, and I reached out and steadied it.

"Don't worry, I'm right here," I said. There was a weak moon overhead, and it cast enough of a glow that I could just make out Robert Morgan's profile.

Even sideways, you could tel how much weight had fal en off him. Now, al the angles and lines of his body were even clearer than before, as if the Maker body were even clearer than before, as if the Maker had wanted to whittle him down to his absolute essence before He let him into the afterlife.

Something strange happened then. At the time, I thought it was just delirium. Men have been known to do al kinds of bizarre things before they pa.s.s to the other side, and it's a busy fool who would sit around trying to unknit them. But the doctor wasn't mad, and he wasn't desperate, either. He was confessing.

"California," he wheezed.

I patted his shoulder. "No one's going to California," I a.s.sured him. "Everyone's right here where they've always been." Even Bobbie, I wanted to add, but I held my tongue. A dying man should be able to spout off whatever nonsense he wants.

"No..." He lifted his head off the chair and half rol ed toward me. "California."

"Hush." I pushed him back down, and with that, he seemed to give up. I can't say exactly how much longer we sat together-half an hour or half the night-but it seemed more like the latter.

Every now and then, the doctor's head would lol , and he would murmur a name: my sister's, Bobbie's, once or twice even mine. For my part, I didn't say much. I figured anything I did would come out sounding either petty or dumb. Instead, I just sat there and let the stars do al the talking for me until they, too, started to fade, and the red fingers of dawn started crawling across the sky, and I realized that the night real y had gone for good and taken Robert Morgan with it.

Chapter Twenty-eight.

Two deaths under similar circ.u.mstances, and then two funerals in the same town, and yet Priscil a Sparrow had had exactly zero attendees at hers, while the doctor's was oversubscribed. I can't explain the dearth of mourners at Priscil a Sparrow's grave, only perhaps to suggest that habitual bitterness reaps emptiness in this life. Of course, the doctor had his own emotional issues, but he stil had plenty of folks flocking around his grave at the end.

Somehow, he managed to have it al the way he wanted, exerting influence from the grave. I guess death changes less about a body than you'd imagine.

One thing it didn't change was Robert Morgan's relationship with Bobbie. The whole time the town was muttering its prayers and dabbing its eyes, I was searching and searching for a sign of Bobbie, but in the end, I had to concede that he wasn't coming.

"He knows Robert Morgan pa.s.sed away, doesn't he?" I asked Amelia.

doesn't he?" I asked Amelia.

She scowled, and I corrected myself. "Of course he knows. Marcus wouldn't keep something like that from him. Besides"-I jutted my chin toward the grave-"I think it's pretty obvious." I fel silent. The air between us had been chil y ever since our fal ing-out on her last cleaning day, and I shifted, uncomfortable and unsure about how to clear it.

"The doctor said some mighty odd things the night he died," I final y mused, at a loss for what else to talk about.

Next to me, Amelia stiffened and stretched her neck.

"Something about California,"

I.

continued. "You think he could know anyone in California?" Amelia looked white. I waited to see if she would answer, but she didn't, so I shook my head. "I didn't think you would. I guess some things about Robert Morgan wil always stay a mystery."

I moved up to the gaping hole that contained Robert Morgan, Amelia staying by my side, and we stood silently for a moment, sunk in our own private thoughts. Amelia took a deep breath and almost started to say something, then closed her mouth.

"Were you going to ask if I'm going to the wake?" I fil ed in for her. It was as though we were back to our early days together, I thought, where I carried al the conversational burden. "Because the answer is no." It was going to be at Sal Dunfry's house-my old childhood home-but the thought of crushing together with the whole town in those familiar rooms was too much. Besides, I had some other, unfinished business to which I wanted to attend. Amelia suddenly grabbed my elbow, however, her words fal ing out pel -mel , her tongue so thick, I had trouble understanding her.

"Truly, I'm sorry for what I did. I let years go by when I should have said something."

I wrinkled my forehead. "Why, Amelia, whatever are you talking about?"

Amelia was about to continue, but Vi Vickers's loud voice interrupted her. "At least we don't need to worry about her fal ing in," Vi was snickering to Sal.

Sal giggled and rol ed her eyes toward me. "She'd get stuck halfway down."

Amelia sucked in her gut, and for the first time in her life, she looked prepared to make a mess instead of clean one up. "I wouldn't talk like that, Vi," she said loudly and distinctly. "I know some ugly things about you, too."

Vi gasped when she heard Amelia speak and then blushed about a hundred different shades of red, but before I could thank Amelia, she disappeared into the trees. Having her stick up for me like that was so against her nature that it melted something in me. I realized how constant Amelia had been in my life, from the first day she'd s.n.a.t.c.hed the dol leg from me in Brenda's kitchen, to al the times she'd tagged home from school behind Marcus and me, to our coffee-fueled chats in the doctor's kitchen.

I'll catch her later, I thought. I'll tell her everything, from what the doctor said would happen to me to what I did for him and Priscilla. We had a whole summer's worth of talking to do, me and Amelia.

First, though, I wanted to pay my respects to Priscil a Sparrow. In the years since her death, I had resisted visiting her grave, figuring what was over was over, but the doctor's dying had brought Prissy back up in my memory again strong, and I knew that it was time to lay her down to rest in my own mind, along with the doctor.

Her grave was on the opposite end of the cemetery from Robert Morgan's, but you had to know where to look. There wasn't even a headstone -just a painted wooden cross-and I wasn't sure if that was because stone had cost too much or because she had no one to do those things for her. I plucked a clutch of Queen Anne's lace-a weedy flower, true, but also prim and mannered as Miss Sparrow had been-and laid it on top of the gra.s.s under the cross. I crossed my hands and bowed my head, and then, because I was pretty sure no one else had said it, I started whispering the Lord's Prayer.

"It's a little late for that." Marcus's voice floated through the air to me. I opened my eyes.

"Marcus. You scared me."

"Seems your natural reaction to me these days." He grinned, but his eyes remained sad.