Request #285 From Bonnie

I’ve been trying to find this one for so long I’m starting to think I made it up. I read it in school and have even reached out to friends who were in my class to try to figure it out, but no one remembers it. Here’s what I remember… The cover: In my memory the paperback cover had a light yellow background with black or grey silhouette-type images of a fence, a person, maybe a dog, and some kind of tree (dogwood? Willow? I thought the type of tree was part of the title, like “under the something tree,“ but years of Googles and library searches makes me think probably no).  The story: The protagonist was a boy. He and his mom (who was a murderer? or mentally ill?) lived at a farm-like-institution. I think his mom wasn’t always there, or she was put in solitary or something.  He helped out the lady in charge with the other residents (possibly all adult women) of the farmstitution. One of the residents closest to his age he killed accidentally or almost killed while playing and splashing because she didn’t have a nose or ears, just slits. Either way she got super sick afterward with pneumonia or something and he felt guilty and was sad he had no one to play with.