Page 30 of The Queen's Box

His eyes lit up when he saw the shop woman.

“Hey, Mama,” he said weakly.

“Teddy boy,” the woman murmured, kneeling beside him and brushing his hair from his damp forehead. Her eyes went to Willow. “He’s sick and getting sicker. Keeps losing weight. Says his tummy hurts. Isn’t that right, Teddy?”

Teddy’s hand drifted to his belly. “It’s not so bad, Mama. Not right this second.”

“People said Wrenna could touch a person and know the wrongness of them. Know the cure.” The woman beckoned Willow closer. “I want you to touch my Teddy.”

Willow’s insides tightened. She couldn’t do anything for this little boy. He needed a doctor, not a nineteen-year-old wastrel who not only had no plans for the future but had no plan to make a plan.

No. Stop. She was here, wasn’t she?

She’d made a plan. This—right here, right now—was her following through on that plan. If this woman, who was watching her with such naked desperation, wanted her to lay her hands upon her sick son, then that was exactly what she’d do. She’d play along. She was good at pretending.

She knelt beside Teddy. “Hey, I’m Willow.”

“I’m Teddy,” he said shyly.

She smiled. He was a darling little boy, sweaty and pale though he was. “Hi, Teddy.”

She took his hand—and the world lurched in that lurching, sickening way she was growing all too familiar with. Why? What was going on? What strange unfolding of herself had she initiated by choosing to come to Hemridge... and could she stop it?

Did she want to?

Too late to consider such questions now.

Willow, caught in the drift of time, saw Teddy, even weaker. She saw a man cradling his limp, wasted body. She saw a small white casket being lowered into the cold, dark ground.

And everywhere, everywhere, the yeasty scent of bread.

Willow jerked her hand from Teddy’s.

“What did you see?” his mother exclaimed. “Tell me!”

Willow’s mouth was dry. “He’s starving.”

Teddy’s mother blinked. “Starving?No. He eats. He eats plenty.”

“He’s allergic to bread,” Willow said. She felt woozy, but this was important. She needed to make Teddy’s mother understand. “It’s killing him.”

“That’s not a thing,” she said.

“The wheat that’s in the bread—his body can’t process it. If you stop giving it to him, he’ll get better.”

The woman frowned. “Richard won’t like that.”

“Who’s Richard?”

“My husband. He’s a good man, but... our boy, allergic tobread? It’s the body of Christ.”

Willow laughed uncomfortably. “Well, sure, I suppose. Symbolically.”

“Notsymbolically,” the woman said sharply. “Bread is communion. You don’t take the body, you don’t get the blood. You don’t get the blood, you don’t get the blessing. No blessing, no healing. That’s what Pastor Jim says, and Pastor Jim, he would know, wouldn’t he?”

Willow swallowed hard, her mind flashing on Wrenna, young and defiant, cornered by a different pastor.Mighty hot today, Wrenna. C’mon, I’ll give you a lift.

“‘He that eateth of my flesh, and drinketh of my blood, hath eternal life,’” Teddy’s mother went on. “What kind of parents would we be if we stole that promise from our baby?”

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