The May Queen Murders by Sarah Jude

Author:Sarah Jude
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Chapter Twelve

Oh, they searched for Terra. Everybody knew it was a right shame. Then she was found on the riverbed, half sunken in mud, the swamp grass ready to take her.

The next few days were a haze, that silvery part of the mind plunging me underwater. It felt like hours before surfacing. My skin was heavy, my clothes weights that made it impossible to lift my arms or move my legs. Since Heather had abandoned me in Potter’s Field, I’d only remembered to breathe. I hadn’t yet climbed out. Without her, I couldn’t.

A metal pail hung from a willow near Milo’s trailer, clattering against the tree in the wind. It didn’t bang with a hollow noise. Something was inside. Probably so Milo could leave out weed and get paid. Beside the trailer was a carport housing an old truck and a chicken run. A half dozen hens pecked bits of corn, and some fluffy chicks waddled among their mothers. I reached for a chick, coddling it in my hands to enjoy its downiness.

“What the hell are you doin’?”

Milo stretched on the steps and dumped what looked like needles into the BIOHAZARD bin by the door. On his hand without a cast, he wore a latex glove, which he snapped off and placed in the bin.

“Pettin’ a chick,” I said.

He half smiled. “Ivy, hey. Thought you were this hippie broad who tries to free our chickens, tells them to ‘Fly away, pretty birds,’ and I’m like, ‘They don’t fly!’”

He withdrew a tin of lip oil from his pocket, one of the products Aunt Rue sold in the market.

“Heather gave that to you,” I remarked.

He nodded. “She said this’d help. People ain’t usually so nice to us.”

I set down the chick, shamed. Judgments came so fast. I lived that, yet had made assumptions about him.

Milo held up his arm with the cast, which had grown dingy over the past few days. “Your daddy’s the vet who patched up my arm. He’s got my ring, which I’d like back. Your family’s got good folks.”

“We try.”

Milo drew a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket, and put one to his lips. With his good hand, he lit it, taking a long draw. Something was off about him. His body didn’t hang with his usual jingle-jangle, and his face was drawn, more so with the fading bruises on his cheek.

I set the chick into its run and unclipped Heather’s necklace. “You know what this is. Some charms are gone. Where are they?”

He reached for the necklace, but I yanked it back before he grabbed hold. His fingers brushed mine and he laughed. “You’re adorable.”

I looked over my shoulder at the gate in the fencing surrounding the trailer park. Rook waited there, plucking at some green vines.

“Touch me again, and you’ll learn whether what you’ve heard about the Glen is true,” I said.

Milo hoisted up his jeans to his waist instead of letting them fall so low that any farther would’ve been indecent. “All right. Let’s have ourselves a talk.

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