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at her temples collecting water from her eyes. This was what she knew best. As long as she could still do this, still work the farm as best she could, maybe she would be okay after all.
    “Are there still problems?” she finally asked, glad for the change of subject.
    Maya shrugged. Her pace was uneven; they were too near the creek and the heels of her boots kept sinking into the softer ground. Ruining them, surely. “I honestly just . . . I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
    “I was surprised to see him here.”
    “He refused to stay home alone with the kids. That’s his new thing. There it is.” Maya pointed to an old oak set a few trees back into the woods. Stuck to the side of it was the third feeder, looking as good as new. They walked over and began filling it, both of them taking turns with the fistfuls of seed. “I made this one,” Maya said. “Dad yelled at me for wasting nails.” She gave another of those sardonic snort-laughs, and Elise wondered if this, too, was part of Maya’s Chicago Perfection Persona—the guttural, dysthymic chuckle. “He could be such an asshole. Is it a sin to say that?”
    Elise blinked. “Your father? Or Bradley?”
    And this time Maya really did laugh out loud, the laugh Elise remembered from her childhood—not that snorty laugh that sounded as if she were poking fun at a servant. “Both, I suppose.”
    There were just a few handfuls of seed left in the bucket now. They took turns sprinkling it along the ground, until finally the bucket was empty.
    “Anyway, he refuses to stay home alone with the kids,” Maya continued as they headed back toward the house. “Says he ‘didn’t go to graduate school to be a goddamn babysitter.’” She made air quotes with her fingers while she talked, her voice going low and taking on a buffoonish quality. “As if they aren’t even his kids. I keep telling him it’s not babysitting if they’re your own children, but he doesn’t listen. He’s too self-absorbed to listen to anyone but himself. So he wouldn’t stay with them, and I’ve been . . . under the weather, I guess . . . so I didn’t want to travel all the way here with them by myself.”
    “You’ve been sick?”
    “It’s nothing. I’m taking care of it.” Maya flicked her hand, then tucked it into her armpit. To Elise, she looked as if she were hugging herself, protecting herself, her dismissal flat and not believable. But before Elise could follow up, Maya continued. “And . . . so . . . Bradley is here. With . . .”
    “With his family, where he belongs. It is Christmas.”
    “No, I was going to say ‘with Claire.’”
    Elise stopped walking. Of course she’d known this was going to come up, sooner rather than later. “Have you talked to her?”
    Maya shook her head, her iron-straightened hair whipping around her face like filament. Elise noticed that despite the long day her daughter still had makeup in place.
My God, how exhausting that must be,
she thought. “She was still in her room. Though . . . you never know. Maybe he’s seen her. Maybe he’s in there with her right now.”
    “Oh, Maya,” Elise said softly. “You don’t still think . . .”
    “Of course I do. I’ve never had any reason not to.”
    Elise grabbed her daughter’s hand and began walking toward the house again. “She said it never happened. She swore to you. She’s your sister. That’s a reason not to, don’t you think?”
    “But he never denied it. And Claire has sworn a lot of lies over the years.”
    Elise nodded patiently. “Always little lies. Nothing this big. Besides, even if she did, it’s been so many years.” She stepped over a large limb that had fallen off the plum tree during the last snow. It would make good firewood, but that had always been Robert’s job. Elise wasn’t even sure she’d be able to lift it by herself. But fortunately that was not something she needed to worry about right now. “You forgave Bradley.”
    This