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.It was completely different from New York.She guessed there were people in Sugar Hill who weren’t even aware of what her dad did for a living.If anyone there made a big deal about vegetarianism and animal rights, it was likely to be her.Either she would be trying to torment Grandmother for force-feeding her cousin sausages or she would be turning up her nose with great drama at something that was cooking on the long barbecues at the club.Even the night of the bonfire, she’d made a point of telling one of the older girls what really went into a hot dog.And that garden.Those gardens.Her father’s gardens.The day of the accident when she’d wandered alone into the cutting garden: That hadn’t been the first time.Did she go there as Spencer McCullough’s daughter or as Charlotte? She’d actually spent more time amid those flowers in the weeks before all the parents had arrived than either her cousin or her grandmother.Yes, she hated weeding.But didn’t everybody? Weeding, after all, was a chore.But flowers weren’t all work.They weren’t even mostly work.And alone in July she had meandered among the rows of loosestrife, astilbe, and phlox; she’d knelt before the daisies and lilies and savored the rich aromas that rose up to her from the flowers.Especially those purple ones.Now she breathed in Dr.Warwick’s perfume and closed her eyes, recalling those days before she had shot her father.Shot.Her.Father.Oh, to be back in the garden on an afternoon smack in the middle of the summer, your parents on the porch on the other side of the house, everything the way it had always been and forever would be.If only she could go back.If only.She was aware that she was crying now, the tears creating small, shallow runnels along the sides of her nose.When she opened her eyes, she saw that the therapist was handing her a box of tissues.She took one, and then she took the box.She thought she had finished crying back in New Hampshire.Apparently, she was wrong.Apparently, she was a complete mess.She remembered she was supposed to answer a question that had something to do with her father, but she was no longer sure what it was.And so she just shook her head and blew her nose and let the psychiatrist sit there and watch since—as she’d noticed before—the woman really did seem happy enough when her patients didn’t say a word.WILLOW KNEW it was exactly 289 miles from the end of her family’s driveway to the garage on Ninety-second Street in Manhattan where they parked the car when they visited Grandmother.She’d been picked up at school today which added another two miles since they had to double back past their house, and so when she looked over the headrest at the odometer she saw they were still a few miles short of the point at which they would be precisely two-thirds of the way there.But they’d been on the Taconic for easily forty-five minutes now, and she felt clearly as if they were in the home stretch.Even though they had stopped twice in the first half of the trip so they could have lunch and then change her baby brother’s diaper, they would still be in the city by seven.Beside her Patrick blinked in his sleep in his car seat, and he scrunched up his face as if he’d just eaten a lemon.She knew he’d probably wake up pretty soon.He’d given her almost two hours of peace in the car while he’d napped, and that was about all she could expect.And so she leaned over and reached for the bottle with the breast milk Mom had pumped before leaving her office.Willow guessed that the first thing her mother would do when they arrived at Grandmother’s apartment was get Patrick latched onto her chest: She could tell by the way her mother was fidgeting in the front seat that her tanks were getting pretty full and it was time to start dumping fuel.Her parents were listening to the news out of Manhattan now that they were in range of the New York City AM stations.Her dad loved it.News Radio 88, 1010 WINS.You give us twenty minutes, and we’ll give you the world.It was one of those signals, her mom said, that thrilled Dad because it meant he was almost back to his childhood home.She gazed out the window at the trees along the highway which, this far south, hadn’t even begun to change color, and she kept her eyes open for deer.She almost always saw a few on the Taconic, usually in groups of three or four, one of whom would be staring at the cars as they sped by on the highway while the others browsed contentedly among the trees and shrubs at the edge of the forest for food.She thought it was interesting that in the last two months she’d never felt any anger toward the deer.She knew this whole disaster was not their fault, but she also knew from her mom that anger very often wasn’t rational.The closest she guessed she’d ever come to feeling any animosity toward the animals had actually occurred well before her cousin had shot Uncle Spencer.She remembered she had felt a twinge of resentment toward them when her parents had first learned that the baby in Mom’s tummy was going to be a boy, and her father suddenly announced his interest in hunting.She’d wondered why it hadn’t crossed his mind that hunting might be something he could share with her.After all, there were girls in their village who hunted with their fathers.Yes, it was mostly boys with their dads.But last year their neighbors Carolyn Patterson and Jocelyn Adams had both gotten animals during the state’s Youth Deer Hunting Weekend.The truth was that she had absolutely no interest in the sport, and there was no way in the world she would ever have gone with her dad into the woods in search of a buck they could kill.Her dad probably understood this.She wasn’t exactly the type to shoot an animal and then pull out its guts.And she wasn’t known for being real happy in the cold.Still, it would have been nice if her dad had asked.She was looking forward to the Cloisters tomorrow more than she had expected.When she’d told her art teacher they were going, Ms.Seeley had brought her brochures and a National Geographic magazine article with breathtaking color photographs, and given her all sorts of suggestions of what to look for.She’d reminded her to keep her eye out for the jugglers at the festival at the park beside the museum, and to give the guys doing the Gregorian chants half a chance.Mostly, however, Willow was anticipating her conversation with Charlotte.She wasn’t looking forward to it in the same way she was excited about the Cloisters, for the simple reason that she and her cousin might very well end up fighting.And she hated fighting.But she had to see if she could change her cousin’s mind.See if they could come to some sort of agreement about what they should say at the depositions.She understood her cousin’s point that they didn’t want to get Gwen in trouble and that it was in Uncle Spencer’s best interests for them to lie at the deposition: Complete honesty might undermine both the lawsuit and FERAL’s antihunting campaign.But that didn’t make lying right.And while the truth might make things more complicated for Uncle Spencer, she sensed it would make things easier for her own dad.At least she thought it would.Though it would also make things worse for Charlotte.And that, Willow had concluded, was the big problem.If they told the lawyers they’d been smoking pot and drinking beer that night, then Charlotte would seem far from innocent.This had to be at least part of the reason why her cousin was continuing to insist that they lie at the deposition.When she brought their whole story up with Charlotte, the older girl would be defensive.Obstinate.Even a little melodramatic.But she reminded herself that she could be stubborn, too.Besides, she had the high ground on her side.She was the one advocating that they reveal everything they had done that night
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