“I doubt you’ll need that anytime soon,” Aunt Sondra said from the doorway. “It’s already summer here.”
“I guess so,” she said.
“Raven, I need to leave,” her aunt said, coming into the room. “You have my number, and Ellis has a phone. Call if you need anything.”
Raven stayed silent. Because she and Jonah were withholding everything she needed.
“We’ll work out what you want sent from the house later. First we should see how things go here.”
Raven looked out at the trees to stop herself from crying again.
“It will get better.”
It wouldn’t until she went home. She wanted Jackie so badly her chest hurt.
Her aunt hugged her. Raven returned the embrace, though she was angry.
“I feel better about you being here than with your father,” Sondra said. “Your grandmother is mean-spirited, and Jonah has completely lost control of River. That wouldn’t be a favorable environment for healing.”
Ellis came to the door.
“I’m going to buy a ticket and drive back to Orlando,” Aunt Sondra said.
“You’re leaving already?”
“I have to. There’s a situation that’s come up at my company.”
Ellis glanced at Raven. Raven sensed she felt the same way she did. She didn’t want to be left alone with her.
Aunt Sondra booked a flight and left in a hurry.
Raven closed herself in the guest bedroom, unpacked the rest of her clothes, and slid the suitcase under the bed. She held the rock with an R in her palm. Today was the anniversary of Jackie’s father’s death. And she wasn’t there to help him. Even worse, Raven’s absence made the anniversary more troubling for him.
She squeezed the rock into her palm and curled around it on the bed. She felt like she had no heart inside her but that cold little stone Jackie had given her.
When she woke, the room was gray with twilight. The house was dark except for the glow of one lamp in the living room.
Ellis wasn’t inside. Raven looked out the front windows and saw her sitting in one of the rocking chairs, staring out at the trees. Quercus was sprawled at her feet. Beyond the trees, the sky was pink, red, and orange.
Ellis didn’t say anything when Raven sat in the chair next to her. Raven liked that Ellis knew how to be quiet. Like Mama. And Jackie.
The sky turned lavender, then a sad and indescribable color that ended the day.
“That man who was here . . . ,” Raven said.
“His name is Keith Gephardt.”
“Will he come back?”
After a few seconds, Ellis said, “I don’t know.”
Because of Raven, he had left. And because Raven had once belonged to Ellis, she was far from Jackie. They were even.
As all traces of daylight vanished, lamp glow emanating through the windows took over.
“The mosquitoes are getting bad,” Ellis said. “We’d better go inside.”
She turned on a porch light as they went into the house. For Keith probably.
“I made dinner,” Ellis said. “It’s warm on the stove.”
Raven followed her into the kitchen.
Though Raven hadn’t asked for food, Ellis dished out two plates and set them on the table. It was some kind of casserole with greens and a bean salad.
“I’m vegan,” Ellis said. “I hope that’s okay for you.”
“A friend of mine is vegan,” Raven said. She sat down and ate, thinking about Jackie. He would be happy she was in a vegan house.
Raven had little appetite, but she ate most of the food and told Ellis it was good. She helped wash and dry the dishes. Ellis had a dishwasher but washed the few dishes by hand. That was what Mama usually did, too.
After the last dish was put away, Ellis leaned against a counter and faced Raven. “So . . . I have a problem we need to talk about,” she said.
“What problem?”
“Your name.”
Raven prepared for battle.
Ellis looked into her eyes. “I know. It’s the only name you’ve known. But I can’t call you that.”
“Why not? I call you Ellis.”
“The day you were abducted . . .” Ellis paused and looked out the dark window for a few seconds. Maybe to stop herself from crying. She looked at Raven. “When something traumatic happens, you remember all these weird little details. And those details become bad associations—forever, as it turns out in my case. And one of the bad associations I have from that day is a raven. There was one calling over and over when I left you in the forest.”
A shock seemed to zing all over Raven’s body.
“I almost felt like . . . this will sound crazy, but later I felt like the raven had distracted me with all that noise. I blamed it a little bit for what happened.” After a pause, she said, “I guess it was some kind of self-preservation. I was sick with guilt, and I needed to put some of the blame on someone or something other than myself.”
Mama had told the truth about a raven giving a baby to her! The raven spirit had known Ellis and Jonah weren’t the right parents for the baby they called Viola. It had distracted Ellis and given her to Mama. Raven wanted to cry with relief.
“I still hate the sound of ravens,” Ellis said. “But I don’t have to hear them now. Ravens don’t live in Florida.”
Too bad. Raven would miss them. Especially now that she knew a raven spirit truly had given her to Mama. Mama had thought the baby was born of the spirit world, but of course she would think that when a raven called and showed her a baby all alone in the forest. Raven could still think of the raven spirit as her father.
“Do you understand the problem?” Ellis asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you think of a solution?”
“You mean call me something else?”
“You could let me call you Viola. If you knew Quercus is the oak genus, maybe you know that Viola is the genus of—”
“Violets. I knew that since I was a little girl. My mother and I
