Only a Breath Apart

by Katie McGarry

  Necklaces dangle from an iron holder, and I run my fingers along the different-colored stones tied to the leather cords. The black stone beckons me. It’s cool to the touch, smooth, and makes me feel safe.

  “Would you like one?” Dad asks. “I’ll buy the necklace for you.”

  I’ve gone out of my way to avoid situations like this—where Dad has the ability to buy or do something for me. After what’s happened between us, accepting anything from him makes me feel like he’s purchasing tiny portions of my soul that I wasn’t even aware were for sale.

  “It’s obsidian.” Glory Gardner approaches us from the other side of the table. Locks of her curly, long dirty-blond hair fall from the jeweled barrette near the base of her neck. Her gray eyes meet mine. No, not meet—lock with mine and her stare causes an itch near my bones. “Obsidian shields us from psychic, physical and emotional attacks. It’s a very powerful stone.”

  I swallow because the way she said it is like she knows what I’m hiding, and Dad must feel the same way. He shifts beside me and rubs the back of his neck. Dad doesn’t ask if I want the necklace again. He’s probably scared I’ll say yes.

  A customer asks Glory a question, and she wanders to the other side of the booth. Dad stares at the ground before meeting my eyes again. “Scarlett, I know you’re upset with me.”

  My eyes to snap to his, and my heart stalls.

  “I know you’re disappointed, but I don’t feel comfortable with you applying to the University of Kentucky and being so far from home.”

  Yesterday, Dad informed me he’s sending me to the private college in town. Dad and Mom agreed it was perfect. I could live at home and continue my education. My choice of study was up to me, but my choices there are limited.

  I want to become a speech therapist—to help children like how my speech therapist helped me. I haven’t stuttered at school in years, my articulation is fantastic, and I can’t remember the last time anyone teased me over how I spoke. My experience with speech therapy was life altering. I want to save someone like my therapist saved me.

  The closest this college has to my chosen field of study is one class in public speaking.

  “Do you see those girls over there?” Dad motions toward the group in a tight-knit circle. “Each of them are going to graduate from college with huge student loan debt. They would give their right arm to have what I’m offering you. I’m paying for all of your college education. We don’t even have to fill out a single scholarship application form or fill out the FAFSA. In return, all your mom and I ask for is that you stick close to home. Just for four more years.”

  My dad is controlling, and I hate it. But I also understand. His older sister disappeared when she was a freshman in college. He loved her, very much, and one day she went to a party and then no one ever saw her again. My father says that not knowing what happened to her is like having a terrible slashing pain in his muscles he can never reach, even if he digs into his skin with his own fingers.

  I know that must be awful, but what he’s doing to me—it’s smothering. What happened to his sister gnaws away at him like a flesh-eating parasite. But living with my father, with how his emotions can spiral in a blink of an eye … I place a hand on my abdomen as my stomach churns.

  Behind Dad, several booths away, Mom has Isabelle by the hand. With her eyes, Mom begs me to not create problems for her, Isabelle or me. I can almost hear her in my head. Please play along and allow us the good day. It’s been so long, and we deserve it.

  There’s fear in Mom’s eyes, a fear that plays a constant game of hide-and-seek in my psyche. So rooted in me that it’s now part of my DNA.

  “Please tell me you understand our decision,” Dad pushes. “I don’t like you upset.”

  Mom tilts her head in an additional plea, and I hate that somehow my entire family’s happiness depends on me. “I understand.” I don’t, and I’m not sure I ever will.

  Dad’s smile is good-natured, and I should feel like I was just rewarded, but I don’t. I don’t want to live like this for another five years. I don’t want to live like this for another day, but I don’t know how to escape. “Mom’s waiting for you.”

  “Promise you’ll stay near Mrs. Sanchez until Camila is off and then text me when you get to her house,” Dad says, which means he’ll be watching me from a distance until Camila is by my side. “I want to know you reached her house safely.”

  “I will.”

  “Don’t stay out late. There are too many people on the road late at night who drink. I want you at her house by eight, and you should be home by ten.”

  “Okay,” I say, and I’m willing him to end this lingering goodbye.

  “I might call her parents to check on you.”

  I’m aware.

  Dad acts like he has something else he wants to say, but instead shoves his hands in his front pockets. Maybe he’s thinking of how I used to voluntarily hug him when we’d say goodbye. Maybe he’s thinking how I used to laugh and joke with him before I would hit him up for money. Maybe he’s thinking of the few times I used to ask him to explore the festival with me. Maybe he’s not, but I am, and that makes the ache in my chest turn into a piercing sting.

  “Be safe,” Dad says.

  “I will.”

  “I love you.” His declaration sends a shock wave of hurt through my body because loving him back is torture. I inhale deeply, as the only way to survive is to never feel.

  He finally leaves, and the breath I release is so audible that Glory raises an eyebrow from down the table. I ignore her because I can’t deal with anyone else.

  “Would you like me to read your palm?” Glory asks as she walks toward me.

  Unlike most of the girls in my senior class, I’ve never had my palm read by Glory Gardner. There’s a part of me that’s curious if the “spirits” and “cards” in question can possibly have more insight into my life than I do. If this, in theory, other realm can wade through the meddled mess of emotions that causes me to be unclear on very clear questions: Is it possible to love someone who hurts you? Is it possible for the person who hurts you to love you? When the person in question asks for forgiveness, is forgiveness possible?

  Then there’s the most important question: Does he mean it this time?

  Each time I think it’s impossible for my heart to hurt any more than it already does, it finds another painfully imaginative way to twist.

  Glory’s forehead furrows, and her eyes slide around my body as if she sees something I don’t. “Yes, you need your cards read.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “No money.”

  I have money, but that’s to grab a bite to eat later, and even if I did have extra, I wouldn’t waste it on something as frivolous as someone who thinks they can hear dead people.

  She does another sweep of me with her gaze and purses her lips. “You definitely need your cards read. I’m assuming you remember where I live?”

  Um … “Yes.” Jesse used to take me to her house when we were kids, and it’s awkward she remembers.

  “Come to my place tonight at nine. I’ll read your cards for free. Your aura is indicating you’re ready for a change.”

  That wasn’t intuitive. We live in a small town. Desiring change is a way of life. But I have never heard of Glory doing anything for free and this suddenly seems dangerous. Dangerous as in a person in an unmarked white van asking if you want to pet the puppy.

  “Hey.” Camila bounces up beside me. “What are we talking about?”

  Mental whiplash. “I thought you were working.”

  “I was, but now I’m not.”

  “We were discussing how Miss Copeland is going to stop by my home at nine this evening to receive a free reading,” Glory says.

  “I’m sorry.” Camila raises her hand to cup her ear. “Did you say free?”

  “And for you as well as long as you bring Miss Copeland with you.”

  “Oh, we are so there,” Camila says, and before I can intervene to explain that I do
n’t think this is an amazing idea, Glory is called away by two women in mom jeans.

  “How did you convince her to do a free reading?” Camila asks, but I don’t bother answering because she has started talking about their family trip to visit her mother’s family in Mexico over fall break, and she’s terrified she’ll be tragically injured by a shark bite.

  I raise an eyebrow at her in a boo-hoo. I’ll take shark bites, exotic beaches and her grandmother’s mouthwatering cooking any day over my family. In fact, I’d willingly give a kidney if her family adopted me.

  “Have you heard from Evangeline?” Camila asks, and the hint of sadness in her voice is unlike her. Camila and Evangeline have been best friends since kindergarten, but they argue constantly. Unfortunately, this summer, they’re fighting over a boy.

  I’ve been part of group texts where Evangeline described her trip with her family to China, and I can tell by the way Camila holds herself she hasn’t heard a thing.

  “She’s asked about you.” It’s not a lie. Evangeline misses Camila, too.

  Camila takes my hand, and we start toward the food trucks. She tells me how we’re meeting some guys from school, and if she notices me cringing, she ignores it. Dating isn’t on my radar and neither is her two thousandth attempt to fix me up. She specifically mentions Stewart Mitchell and Bryan Langston, and I wonder which one she wants to date.

  As we walk away, I look to the right and find my father staring at me from a distance. Goose pimples rise over my flesh and I quickly glance away, over my shoulder, and find Glory watching me as well. A good portion of me wonders if accepting Glory’s offer is a good idea, but telling Camila no would cause greater issues. Though, I do have to admit, when it comes to Glory, I am curious.

  JESSE

  The sky bleeds red as the last light of the roasting day fades into night. I walk out of the tree line made up mostly of towering maples and willows and into the circle of cut grass that surrounds Glory’s home.

  The cottage is the original homestead built hundreds of years ago when a Lachlin made it over the Appalachians. Gran let Glory live here rent free because she said Glory was family. Family in the eighteenth-cousin-twice-removed type of way, but still family. Blood meant everything to Gran; so did this land. That’s the reason why I have my grandmother’s maiden name.

  The place isn’t much—a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. There’s a staircase that leads to an attic that’s fit for boxes and spiders. The original stone fireplace works, but I wouldn’t light a match in it without fear of the place going up in flames.

  Only way here is by foot or to take U.S. Highway 25 to the narrow, broken road that leads to the winding dirt path that ends at Glory’s. Moral to the story—you have to want to find the place. For someone who runs a con business that requires people locating her, her choice of residence is irrational. But that’s Glory to the core—strange.

  I didn’t drive, I walked. Since the funeral, I haven’t been able to take a lungful of air, but by walking on my land the strangling sensation has been downgraded to a minor choke. When I can’t breathe, the land breathes for me. And Marshall wonders why I don’t want to give it up.

  Two cars are parked off to the side. One is Glory’s blue Beetle. The other a shiny black Escalade with out-of-county license plates. People come from all over the state, some across the country, to meet with Glory. They’ll pay good money, too. What a waste.

  The door that needs to be stripped of the peeling, blue paint is closed, and the porch light is on. All nonverbals Glory is knee-deep in a session and knocking would disturb the “spirits.”

  I climb the wooden stairs and cross the porch for the swing. Faint light pushes through the layers of white sheer curtains of the window, and beyond that I can barely make out two silhouettes settled at the round wooden table Glory claims was made out of some tree that helps with psychic energy. Odds are she picked it up from the Salvation Army when she was twenty.

  I adjust the cap on my head, stretch out my booted feet and lay an arm along the swing. The shadows behind the curtains move then the front door opens with an ominous squeak.

  Out walks a thin woman in her sixties who wears a pantsuit and oversize sunglasses. She and Glory say goodbyes in hushed tones. The older woman dabs the corner of her eye behind her glasses with a handkerchief and then lightly runs it along her nose. Glory offers her a comforting hug and then the lady ambles down the steps.

  The two of us stay silent as we watch the woman start her car and pull away with the slowness of one who has no idea which way to go—even when there’s only one way out.

  “She lose someone?” I say.

  Glory leans her shoulder against the beam of the porch. “Her son died several years ago.”

  “Do you ever feel guilty about what you do?”

  “Are you referring to the serenity I gave her by letting her know that her son is at peace?”

  “How much did peace cost? One hundred dollars for an hour? Two hundred for two?”

  Glory examines me—head to toe. Hat, Guns N’ Roses T-shirt, jeans, work boots. She gets that faraway look in her eye—the I-tout-lies stare—and I raise a hand in the air. “Mention you’re sensing Gran’s spirit, and I’ll convince Marshall to evict you by the end of next week.”

  “It’s too early to see Suzanne. Souls need time to build up energy before I can sense them.”

  I click my tongue in admonishment. “There’s a flaw in your perfect gift after all.”

  “We all have flaws. Some of us don’t mind admitting them. Your gran asked me to read your palm after her death so I could help guide you. Would you mind giving me your hand?”

  My gran believed in Glory, but I don’t. “I have no interest in knowing my future.”

  “That sounds like you believe I have the gift, and you’re scared of what I’ll tell you.”

  “I believe you’re a hustler who makes a buck off people who are easy reads.”

  “Nothing about you is easy. In fact, everything about you is very difficult.”

  “Let me guess, I’m a tortured soul, and next week I’m going to see a bluebird and that bluebird’s going to represent a dead family member of mine who is there to tell me to be at peace with my soul.”

  The ends of Glory’s mouth edge up—sarcastic and dry. “It’ll be a blackbird, actually, and the bird will not bring peace to your soul. The sight of it will trouble you.”

  Another keen observation based on things every person in town already knows—my soul is always troubled.

  “You believe you are cursed. Is it so hard to stretch your belief in the Lachlin curse to thinking there are those of us who possess a supernatural gift?”

  “I’m cursed because I have to listen to you spew lies about spirits beyond the grave.”

  Glory has the balls to smirk at me. “I know what you really believe, and I know how you think you can break the curse.”

  She doesn’t know anything, and I’m ready for this conversation to be done. “Gran told you about the tribunal.”

  “Yes, and I also know you can’t evict me so your threats are hollow.”

  True story. I read the entire file Marshall left behind, and Glory can stay on the land for now. “But I can evict you when I inherit the land.”

  “If you inherit the land,” she corrects. “Come inside, and I’ll warm up some leftovers.”

  The mention of food causes my stomach to grumble, but pride keeps me full. “I’m good. Tell me who’s on the tribunal.”

  “We used to be close. It seems like yesterday when you and Scarlett Copeland were playing in my garden and smuggling cookies out of my pantry. You’re grieving, I’m grieving. Let’s eat and remember Suzanne together.”

  Anger tightens my muscles. I don’t want to remember Scarlett or Gran. “The tribunal.”

  Glory sighs heavily. “Your grandmother didn’t want you to know who the two other members of the tribunal are.”

  “Then why am I here?”

&nbs
p; “Because I spent last night searching your future.”

  I roll my neck as my shoulders cramp. “Gran may have believed in your fake gifts, but you don’t have to play with me. I know you’re a con.”

  “There are too many variables to predict your future,” she continues as if I hadn’t spoken, “but the odds of you keeping the land improve if you know who is in the tribunal. If Suzanne knew this before she passed, she would have told you the truth.”

  Those words—the truth—are a hook to the head and a front kick to the gut.

  “I’ll tell you who the two other members of the tribunal are, but I have two conditions.”

  I’m sure she does. Glory’s all about payment. “What do you want?” Because if it’s money, she’ll be a sad, sad psychic.

  “First, if you inherit the land—”

  “When I inherit the land.”

  “If,” she emphasizes. “Because your future is still very unclear…”

  “You’re a nutcase.”

  “If you keep the land, then you’ll let me remain in the cottage, rent free, and you will leave the surrounding acreage alone. I need the privacy and the energy the woods provide.”

  For the first time since Gran passed, I find clarity. Negotiating, manipulating situations to my favor—this is my world. “Fine. Number two.”

  “Before I get to my last request, you should know that one of the members has no idea the tribunal exists. They’re to be told a few days before the vote. Your grandmother and uncle felt it would be unfair to this person to have such a decision weighing on them for so long.”

  Whatever. “What’s your last condition?”

  “That for the next hour you do absolutely everything I ask of you. Even in the moments you’d rather set yourself on fire, you are to stay and do everything I tell you to do.”

  She wants to have dinner, we’ll have dinner. “Fine, but you tell me the names first and which one knows and which one doesn’t.”

  A breeze drifts over the trees, and wind chimes of varying sizes hanging from the roof clink together and create a tinkling symphony. The scent of lavender fills the air and the smell reminds me of the times Gran dragged me to Glory’s to plant, weed and help harvest her garden.