He paused. “She would have done it, too. She was very determined, very tough-minded, your grandmother.” He scratched his mossy beard. “Anyway, the demon was convinced. He backed down from her. He hated her for that afterward. Hated himself, too. By the time she was finished with him, he didn’t want anything to do with her anymore.”
Nest tried to imagine Gran confronting the demon, threatening to kill him if he refused to leave her alone. Frail, weary old Gran.
“Now, that’s all I’m saying on the subject,” Pick interjected heatedly. “If you want to know anything more, ask your grandmother. But I’d think twice about it, if I were you. Just my opinion. Some things are better left alone, and this is one of them. Take my word for it. Let it be.”
“The Beatles, 1969?”
“What?”
“Never mind.” Nest was sick of the whole subject. Nothing she had heard was making her feel any better. Pick was just irritating her with his refusal to talk about it, but she guessed that he was right, that it should come from Gran. Maybe it was time to ask about her father, too. Maybe it was time to insist on an answer. There were too many secrets in her family, and some of them needed revealing. Didn’t she have a right to know?
“I have to be going,” Pick announced, rising to his knees on her shoulder. She stopped and looked at his narrow face. His fierce eyes stared back at her. “Just make sure you bring John Ross to the maentwrog’s tree so he can have a look for himself at what’s happening.”
Nest nodded. “I’ll bring him up after the picnic.”
She lowered Pick to the ground, and he disappeared without a word, vanishing into the grass as if he were an ant. “ ‘Bye,” she murmured at the space he left behind.
She walked on across the grass into the parking lot that fronted the toboggan slide, kicking at rocks and staring at the ground as it passed beneath her feet. Her skin was hot and sticky already. She brushed at her curly damp hair, moving it off her forehead and away from her eyes. She felt awkward and stupid. She hated who she was. She wondered what she could do to change things.
Someone yelled at her from the ball field, and she glanced over. A group of boys was standing by home plate looking at her; she thought it was one of them who had called to her. Worse, she thought it was Danny Abbott. She looked away and kept on walking.
She crossed the parking lot to the toboggan slide and saw Cass and the others grouped at a picnic table under one of the big oaks. Behind them, down the hill, the river flowed with sluggish indifference beyond the levy. A few boats bobbed gently on its surface, their occupants hunched over fishing poles and cans of bait. She strolled over to her friends, trying to appear casual, trying to make herself believe that nothing was different. They were all there-Cass, Brianna, Robert, and Jared. They looked up as she approached, and she had the feeling they had been talking about her.
“Hey,” she said.
“Pete and Repeat are out walking,” said Robert, straight-faced. “Pete goes home. Who’s left?”
“Elvis?” she asked, squeezing in between Cass and Brianna.
“Nice try. Two guys walk into a bar. One’s got a Doberman, the other a terrier. Bartender says …”
“Robert!” snapped Brianna, cutting him short. “Geez!”
“Enough with the jokes,” Cass agreed. “They weren’t funny the first time, back when Washington was president.”
“Oh, big yuck.” Robert looked annoyed. “All right, so what are we going to do, then? And don’t tell me we’re going to spend the day trying to heal any more sick trees.” He gave Nest a pointed look. “Especially since we didn’t do so well with the last one.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean, it looks terrible.” He pushed up his glasses on his nose and brushed back his blond hair. “We walked by it on the way over, and it looks like it’s a goner. Whatever we did, it didn’t help.”