“Argus won’t hurt you. He’s ancient,” Stella assured Hap. “He’s a pussycat.”

“Uh huh.” Hap carefully petted Argus’s head. The wolfhound was as big as a lion, though his eyes, true enough, were cloudy, and his teeth worn to nubs.

Standing in the front hall of Cake House, Stella and Hap kicked off their muddy boots and wet socks. Hap took note of the woodwork and the threadbare carpets that felt like silk under his bare feet.

“I hear your grandmother doesn’t like visitors,” Hap said when Stella suggested they go fix themselves something in the kitchen. Actually, he had heard trespassers often found onions riddled with pins nailed to their doors, a curse on both the present and the future.

“Oh, don’t be silly. Come on.”

Stella went to the kitchen, and Hap had little choice but to follow; he didn’t take his eyes off Stella’s pale hair, which reminded him of the snowdrops that appeared in the woods so early in spring they were easily mistaken for snow.

Argus padded after them, then situated himself beside the table, where he waited politely for crusts from their peanut butter and peach preserves sandwiches. After lunch, they searched and found the perfect place to store their water samples, in the scullery where potatoes and onions were kept. As they sorted the bottles, their hands touched accidentally. Of course, they acted as though nothing had happened, but afterward Stella wondered if Hap might be something more than a friend. Shouldn’t her hand have burned at his touch? Shouldn’t she feel her heart in her chest when she was with him? Shouldn’t she know for sure?

Last night Stella had sneaked down to the parlor at a little after midnight to call Juliet Aronson. She didn’t realize she was talking nonstop about Hap until Juliet had asked if she thought she might be Hap’s one true love.

“How would I know?” Stella had laughed, embarrassed.

“Ask him who he would want to have with him on a desert island and see what he says.”

“That’s hardly conclusive evidence.”

“Just try it.” Juliet had sounded so wise and so sad, she’d sounded as if she’d done everything there was to do in this world and had been disappointed each and every time.

Now, in the kitchen, Stella wondered what Juliet would make of Hap Stewart. He was feeding Argus a spoon of chunky peanut butter.

“Look at this guy,” Hap said cheerfully. “He loves this stuff. It’s full of protein, so it can’t be bad for him.”

It was when she’d spoken to that nasty Jimmy Elliot in the school cafeteria that her heart had been pounding. That couldn’t be love, could it? That couldn’t be destiny. Not possibly. Not ever. A reaction like that had to be some sort of illness, heartburn at worst, spring fever at best. For spring was everywhere in this corner of Massachusetts. The alewives were running in brooks, as they always did at this time of year, and the toads had begun to sing, that sorrowful, deep song that speaks of water and starry nights and mud. Out in the garden, Elinor Sparrow’s hands were bleeding as she worked at her early spring cleanup. She was pruning, cutting back old growth, never a pleasant task, particularly when it came to roses with their sneaky thorns, some so tiny they were impossible to avoid, invisible until they pricked through the skin. Still, she’d heard the blood of a gardener always made for an early blooming season. The blood of a murdered woman, on the other hand, killed everything in its path, as it had when Rebecca walked to the lake on the day she was drowned, so that nothing remained but clods of earth and black stones the size of a human heart.

April was quickly approaching. Elinor could smell it in the musk of the wild ginger in the woods; she could tell by the regularity of the rain that had begun to fall in the late afternoons. Before long, there would be sheets of green rain of various different consistencies: fish rain, rose rain, daffodil rain, glorious rain, red clover rain, boot polish rain, swamp rain, the fearsome stone rain, all of it washing through the woods, feeding local streams and ponds. This was the time of year when Elinor usually began grafting floribundas with Chinas and damasks as she searched for her true blue rose. She knew it was foolish, an all but impossible task, and yet she had continued. No wonder they talked about her at gardening clubs all up and down the Commonwealth, as far away as Stockbridge, as nearby as North Arthur. Didn’t Elinor Sparrow know that genetic tinkering was the only way to make something brand-new, the single possible method of ever forcing a blue rose into being? Didn’t she know that fools such as herself had been trying to devise a blue rose for centuries, always failing, always facing disappointment?