On the fourth morning, Pastor Timothy came to the door — not to judge us, as I first feared, but to warn me.

“Callahan,” he said quietly, “nearly every rumor about Vivienne in this town is coming from one single household.

I thought you should know.” I asked him whose.

He lowered his voice.

“Her aunt.

Delilah.” And a cold understanding began to move through me, because Delilah had raised Vivienne since she was fifteen, since her mother died, and had always spoken of her as a beloved daughter — and it was Delilah, the pastor said, who had first told the town that Vivienne meant to sell her late mother’s orchard and run off with a stranger, and Delilah who had begun to whisper that the girl had suffered mental breakdowns since childhood.

“It may all be lies,” Pastor Timothy said gently.