“We don’t want cookies, Grandma,” Noah said, his voice clipped.
I stepped closer, tapping my index finger against my right knee. “We were just at the library. We read the newspaper from October of nineteen ninety-eight.”
Grandma Ruth’s hand went to her collar, but she wasn’t wearing a coat with a high neck, so her fingers just hovered near her throat. She looked at the shears in her hand, then down at the pile of dead rose branches on the grass.
“The paper said Elena died in an accident on State Road Nine,” I said. “It said she died on October sixteenth.”
She adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses again, her fingers shaking so much the metal frames clicked against her temple. A tear tracked through the garden dust on her cheek, leaving a clean, pale line down to her chin.
“She didn’t run away from us, did she?” Noah asked.
