Sol appears in the open attic doorway. I’ve been so distracted that I didn’t even hear his feet on the wooden stairs. He smiles at us, blue eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Hey, girls,” he says. “I was just coming up to find Rose. Haven’t seen her all day, and I wanted to remind her she has a Growth Session after dinner tonight.”
I feel a jolt of panic. I don’t know what will happen if Sol findsout Rose went into town. He might even make her leave.
If she comes back at all.
“Have you seen her, Iris?” he says. “You two seem like peas in a pod most days.” Something in the way he says it feels like an accusation. “Any idea where she’s gone off to?”
“I, um, I think she went for a walk,” I say.
“Where to?” Sol asks.
“Just … just around the hollow,” I say. I frantically scramble for some sort of story, something that could reasonably explain her absence. “She was curious. About the damage the storm did to the woods. She went to look around.”
I can hear Rose’s teasing voice in the back of my mind, telling me I’m a bad liar. Sol has always been able to see through me. See through my defenses, the walls I used to put up around him. He knows me. He knows me so well. Too well. He’ll know this is a lie. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if he can look at my face and immediately know I saw her sneaking out of his room somehow.
But if he does, Sol doesn’t show it. He just nods, still smiling. “Well, I hope she gets back soon. But if she’s not, Poppy, I’ll help you with dinner tonight.”
Poppy looks surprised. Sol almost never helps with thecooking. He’s got so many other things to do, and that’s on our rotating list of chores. “Really?” she asks.
“Absolutely,” Sol says. “It’ll be fun. Just you and me, teaming up.”
Poppy beams at him. Because we all love spending time with Sol.
All of us except Rose, I guess.
“I’ll see you downstairs, chef,” Sol says, winking at Poppy. Then he looks to me. “When Rose is back, remind her of the Growth Session. I think we might need to have a talk about not slacking on responsibilities when others are relying on her.”
Ifshe comes back.
“Yeah. I will.”
He gives me a thumbs-up before heading downstairs.
I turn to the window again. The all-too-familiar feeling of guilt coils in my chest again. I’ve never lied to Sol before. Not beyond trying to say I’m fine when he asks how I’m feeling, and every time I’ve tried that, he’s always called me out. Always caught that small deception.
But this is bigger than that. It’s a real lie. A lie to the man who saved my life. Who gave me a home. A man I oweeverythingto.
And I did it for Rose.
IRIS
Rosedoes come back. She walks through the front door while the rest of us are eating dinner, with her jeans caked in mud halfway to her knees.
“There she is!” Sol exclaims, lifting his fork of mashed potatoes in the air in greeting. “How was your walk, Rose?”
She pauses, her eyes turning to him. There’s that same feeling again—like waiting for thunder—as Rose looks at Sol and says nothing. Until, finally, she lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “It was fine.”
“You were supposed to help Poppy with dinner,” Violet says.
“Oh. Right. I’m sorry, Poppy.”
“It’s all right,” Poppy says, adding a bit of pepper to her potatoes. “Sol helped me instead.”
“Why don’t you do the dishes after, to make up for it,” Sol suggests. “We’ll do our Growth Session after that.”
Rosewinces at the mention of a Growth Session, but she nods. “Yeah. Sure.”
