He said, “Even if you get the truth, it won’t bring the girl back.”
“That’s not the point,” she said. “Figure out what happened, stop it from happening again.”
“Still gotta eat.”
“Yeah.” The nut porridge was good; she finished it all.
“Come, there’s sage brewing at the fire.” He gestured toward the shelter, and she hauled her stiff body upright and followed him over.
The sage was dried sagebrush and mint steeped in hot water. Hot and astringent—it woke her up. Cleared her sinuses enough to make her eyes water.
He said to her, “Another question, since you seem chatty enough.”
“I’ve been completely open with you all.”
He nodded in acknowledgment. “Why do you keep asking about the knife she had?” So he really had been watching her.
“I think it might have been used to kill her.”
“It wasn’t.” Declarative. He was very sure.
“How do you know that?”
He held up a finger. “Wait.”
He went up the path a ways to his cabin and returned with an object in hand. Long, narrow. A knife in a leather sheath. He offered it to her. Enid took it carefully, like it was precious and fragile, and drew the knife partway out of the sheath. It was exactly what Kellan and Hawk had both described. A polished, cared-for blade, a stained leather grip, a carved flower at the end. It was personalized, distinctive. No mistaking it at all.
And if it was here, had been here the whole time, it probably hadn’t been used to kill her. Enid grit her teeth in frustration.
El Juez said, “She gave this to me because she said she could get another. Said we had more need of it here than she did, where she was going. Though now I can’t bring myself to use it.”
Enid handed the knife back to him, and he took it gently. Cradled it before him, very like how one would hold a newborn, cupped in both hands, gazing on it with love. This knife was all he had left of her. With a clenched heart, Enid thought of Olive and Serenity. She so wanted to be there now, but was so far away.
She arranged her words carefully and said, “Last House said they invited her to live with them.”
“I guess she was going to do it.”
“I thought if we found the knife, we’d find the murderer.”
“It was one of you, I’m sure of it,” he said.
This put her right back at the start, with no evidence but what people told her. She glanced around the camp, where women were working with fires and minding children. The middle-aged ones old enough to have grown children.
“What’s Ella’s mother say about it all? Is she here?”
He cocked his hea
d, confused, and she wondered what mistake she’d made. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
El Juez said, “Her mother is Neeve.”
Chapter Eighteen • the WILD
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Bannerless Child