Free Pumpkin Roll by Josi S. Kilpack

okay?”
     
    Sadie was glad to have struck such an easy friendship with Pete’s daughter-in-law from the very first phone call, and she caught Heather up on the antics of her three sons since they’d last spoken yesterday morning. Heather mentioned that they’d found a nice complex closer to the hospital—and the urban area around it—than they’d originally planned. It had a playground and a swimming pool that the young parents hoped would make up for the fact that they wouldn’t have their own yard—something they had considered essential when looking for a place in Boston that had eventually led them to the Jamaica Plain rental. Heather also commented on the weather, though it was hard for Sadie to believe the temperatures were in the eighties in Texas when she was wearing her warmest, thickest, fuzziest socks.
     
    “I bet you won’t miss another New England winter,” Sadie said.
     
    “Not one bit,” Heather said with emphasis. “I grew up in Arizona, and if you ask me, snow shovels are medieval torture devices.”
     
    They both laughed and talked a little more about when Jared would actually start his residency and how the family would facilitate the cross-country move. During a brief lull in the conversation, Sadie asked about Mrs. Wapple as casually as possible.
     
    “Why? What’s the Witch of Browden Street done now?”
     
    “The Witch of Browden Street?” Sadie repeated.
     
    “Well, that’s what the neighbors called her, and it kinda stuck—she’s that weird—and Salem’s only half an hour away, you know.” She laughed. “So you must have seen her. What did she do?”
     
    “Oh, nothing really,” Sadie said, perhaps too quickly. “I’m just wondering what you know about her.”
     
    “Not much,” Heather said. “She’s only lived there a few months and mostly keeps to herself, but now and then she comes out and hollers at people or starts chanting and stuff. Someone told me that she steals other people’s mail, but Jared and I have a PO Box.”
     
    “Have you ever talked to her?”
     
    “No,” Heather said. “I don’t think anyone talks to her. There are a few knotholes in her fence that she looks out of. Sometimes she yells at people when they pass by her house. Creepy. Why do you ask?”
     
    “Well, I talked to her last night.”
     
    “You did!” Heather said with a laugh. “What happened? What did you talk about?”
     
    Sadie kept the details scarce, focusing only on the Mrs. Wapple that the boys seemed to know and the woman in pain she’d given potatoes to. She hadn’t figured out how the woman she’d given the cookies to factored in, so she left her out of it.
     
    “Wow,” Heather said, her voice soft and humble. “I’ve never seen her act like she’s hurt or anything.”
     
    “Does anyone else live with her?”
     
    “No, she’s alone.”
     
    “Does she have a caretaker of any kind? Family? Church connection?” Maybe the woman she’d given the cookies to was a family member—a sister perhaps.
     
    “Not that I know of,” Heather said. “I suppose someone could enter through the alley—I wouldn’t see them if they did—but I’ve never seen anyone visit other than some Mormon missionaries who got an earful over the fence a few weeks after she moved in. She’s not interested in religion, in case you were wondering.”
     
    Sadie struggled with how to move to the next subject and finally used Kalan to introduce it. “Kalan said she cast a spell on someone’s dog and it got hit by a car.”
     
    “Oh,” Heather said, sounding embarrassed. “I didn’t know he’d heard Jared and me talking about that.”
     
    “What happened to the dog?”
     
    Heather was quiet for a few seconds. “Mr. Forsberk’s dog pooped in her yard, and she came out from behind the fence, screaming. He started yelling back and she told him his dog would die within a week and did this weird waving thing in the air with her hand—the boys and I saw the whole