Page 1 of Her Wicker Guardian

Prologue

One Year Earlier

Rachel

The arch is standing.

That shouldn’t feel like an accomplishment worthy of alcohol, but four weeks ago five women who barely knew one another were handed a stack of willow, a photograph of something graceful and rustic, and the assurance that it shouldn’t be too difficult. Since then, we’ve discovered at least twelve ways to split a branch, six ways to attach the wrong piece to the wrong place, and one way to make Blair Turner use language I’m reasonably certain she doesn’t use in court.

Now the finished arch stands beneath the covered work pavilion behind the Hollis Springs Parks and Recreation building, waiting to be moved to the Harvest Festival entrance tomorrow morning. It leans very slightly to the left if you look at it too long, so none of us are looking at it too long.

Shannon raises her plastic cup of wine. “Ladies, I would like to point out that it is upright.”

“That was the minimum requirement,” Blair says.

“Were you here last Saturday?” Shannon’s eyes narrow in question.

“I was.”

“Then you know that for a few hours, the minimum requirement was in serious doubt.”

Laura laughs into her cup. Even after an afternoon wrestling willow, she looks more put together than the rest of us. Her dark slacks have somehow escaped most of the dirt, and her hair is still pinned where she put it this morning. I learned during our second work session that she handles human resources at the hospital, which makes sense. Laura has the calm expression of a woman who has heard every possible version of this situation was not my fault and knows at least half of them are lies.

Beside her, Blair steps back and examines the arch with her arms folded. Her sleek bob still looks almost as precise as it did three hours ago, although there’s a streak of dirt across one cheek.

“It’s structurally sound,” Blair says.

Shannon snorts. “That sounds like lawyer for ugly but unlikely to collapse.”

“I’m a divorce attorney. I work with worse.”

“You could still say something nice about the arch.”

Blair studies it. “It has excellent legal representation.”

Janet laughs quietly from where she’s packing up the collection of things she brought with her this morning. Work gloves, sunscreen, bug spray, bandages, wet wipes, two kinds of pain reliever, and enough snacks to keep us alive through a small natural disaster. She has wavy brown hair that keeps escaping its clip and a canvas tote I’ve begun to suspect contains a portal to a much larger storage facility.

“You’re all going to be grateful for this bag someday,” she says when she catches me eyeing it.

“I’m already grateful for the ibuprofen.”

She holds the bottle toward me. “Want another?”

“I’m good.”

Shannon starts gathering empty cups before anyone has finished drinking from them. She’s in her early forties, short sandy-brown hair coming loose around her face, and she approaches cleanup the same way she’s approached every stage of this project, as if the rest of us have been waiting our entire lives for someone to assign us jobs. She works in the office at Hollis Springs High, which also makes sense. I imagine teenagers taking one look at her and deciding it’s easier to confess than try to lie.

Blair watches her for a second. “You know nobody actually put you in charge.”

“That’s never stopped me before.”

Maybe we’re all tired, maybe the wine is stronger than I thought, or maybe I’ve spent enough Saturdays with these women that I know Blair is going to provoke Shannon whenever she gets the chance, Laura will wait until exactly the right moment to make it worse, and Janet will quietly produce whatever the rest of us forgot to bring.

Four weeks ago, we were names on a volunteer list.

We’d all volunteered for the Harvest Festival, and the people in charge had assigned the five of us to the crew building a willow arch for the entrance. We knew one another the way people in Hollis Springs know one another. A face from the Piggly Wiggly. A name somebody else had mentioned. Someone you’d nodded to at the Blue Plate Diner without ever having a reason to sit down together.

Now I know Shannon can’t sit still when there’s something left to organize, Blair can turn almost anything into a legal argument, Laura has a dry answer for almost everything, and Janet checks her phone every couple of hours because her mother sometimes forgets whether she’s eaten.