Down on the Charm

by E L Wilder

  Hazel’s eyelid twitched.

  There it was again.

  She had to bite down on her lip to contain the torrent of words threatening to geyser out of her.

  “What?” asked Juniper, suspicion creeping into her voice.

  Hazel winced. “Nothing,” she said, lying again. If she had won a SAG Award for playing a field nurse in World War II Italy, she could certainly pull off the role of supportive sister. “Being home is so . . . emotional.” God, she wondered if that sounded as hokey as she thought it did.

  Juniper arched an eyebrow and dropped her don’t-even-try-it look. Hazel sighed. She’d been a fool to think she could hide anything from her sister, the girl who had helped raise her and probably knew her better than any other person on the planet, better even than her mother or Charlie. “Aren’t you supposed to be an actress?”

  Oh, that was a low blow.

  “I noticed there are a lot of new faces on the farm,” she said, sharpening her tone to a cutting edge. “Farmhands and construction workers . . .”

  Juniper smiled curtly. She maintained her calm demeanor, but Hazel could see the storm brewing as her blue eyes darkened to thunderhead gray. “Many hands make light work. And there’s a lot of work to be done in the next few weeks.” Her voice had become charged, crackling with static electricity, but she continued to smile. “But I really think we can do this. Make Bennett Farms the best it’s ever been. Bring it back to life.” She had delivered the statement practically as a warning, a distant crack of thunder that said you had better seek shelter.

  But caution had never been Hazel’s strong suit, and she was never any good at backing down from a fight.

  “Juni!” she exclaimed, the dam finally bursting. She knew she should save it for later, when they were sitting in the Cliffside Garden after dinner, sipping a glass of wine, counting meteors and reveling in the cool breeze blowing in from the lake, but she still felt raw from the emotional rollercoaster she’d been on for the last twenty-four hours, and this was just too much.

  “What the hell is going on around here?”

  Juniper drew her mouth in a tight line and glowered at her. “Excuse you?”

  “Grand public opening? In two and a half centuries, Bennett Farms has never been so much as open to suggestion, and suddenly we’re throwing out the welcome mat? Come on in! Bring the wife and kids!”

  “I don’t need the history lesson. Or a lecture. Times have changed.”

  “Have they? Has the Postern fallen down since I left? It still seems to be here, because I’ve only been home for a few hours and I’ve already seen more invasive species than at the San Diego Zoo.”

  Instead of being a conversation between two grownups, this had immediately descended into old and familiar patterns, a well-practiced blowout between sisters.

  “What about the Bennett Family creed?” Hazel demanded. “We have a duty to protect this place from outsiders . . . and to protect outsiders from this place. How can we do that if we have kobolds cavorting through the gardens and tourists eating pastries in the barn?”

  Juniper’s face flushed. “We need the money,” she said.

  “What about the account? The Bennett family reserve?”

  “There is no reserve, Hazel. It’s gone.”

  It was like somebody had socked Hazel in the stomach, knocking the breath out of her.

  Juniper continued. “Maybe the money was managed badly. Maybe the Bennetts’ good fortunes ran out. Or maybe the money was just too old. But whatever the cause, that well has nearly run dry. If I don’t find some way to make this place sustainable, the family promise doesn’t mean anything . . . and we’ll have to make some hard choices.”

  “Hard choices?”

  “Developers have been sniffing around since as long as I’ve been managing the place,” said Juniper, gesturing grandly. Tears wavered at the corners of her eyes, and that more than anything alarmed Hazel. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her sister cry. Maybe the night Hazel had run away—the night Gammy had . . .

  “And the way mom tells it, for longer than that,” said Juniper. “Two thousand acres with a mile of mostly undeveloped lake frontage? It’s a developer’s fantasy come true. And they’ve been getting aggressive. It doesn’t take a psychic to see that Bennett Farms peaked years ago.”

  “I have money,” said Hazel. “Plenty of money.”

  Juniper shook her head fiercely. “No. No handouts. The farm has slid into disrepair because the Bennetts got lazy . . . complacent. The farm needs to be profitable on its own, or maybe it needs to fail.”

  “You can’t mean that,” Hazel pleaded.

  “Obviously it’s not what I want! But what’s left for the next generation—for their creed—if they can’t pay the bills and keep the land?”

  Hazel had come home to find solace in the one place that had hardly changed for generations, but since returning she had found nothing but change. How was she supposed to get her legs back beneath her if nothing would hold still long enough for her to find her center of gravity? Perhaps she had been naïve, and a lifetime of playing make-believe had left her ill-equipped to navigate the subtleties of adulting, but she was hardly going to take this laying down.

  “I don’t even recognize this place,” she whispered. “There’s some Viking named Eric Moore verbally flogging everyone out there and walking around like he owns this place!”

  Juniper pursed her lips. “It’s nothing. Just a lot of strong personalities up against some tight deadlines. It’s safe, Hazel.”

  “For how long?” asked Hazel. “The Bennetts have a duty!” Why wouldn’t her sister just accept her money? Surely a quick couple million would buy the farm a significant amount of time—at least long enough to figure out a way to make it profitable without turning it into a petting zoo.

  “Yes, we do have an obligation,” replied her sister. “One that we can’t run from.”

  Juniper’s words pierced Hazel like a dagger, and when Hazel opened her mouth to retort, she could only gasp. But Juniper went on. “The farm has been without a resident witch since Gammy died. We mundane plebs have been managing the best we can.”

  A funerary silence settled over the tractor garage, and it suddenly seemed less like a museum and more like a graveyard. Regret over the way she’d talked to her sister so presumptuously—arrogantly—came fast and cold, sluicing into Hazel’s chest like a mountain stream, shocking her into a moment of clarity. Was her sister right? The farm had been decaying and rusting even when they’d been kids. Maybe they needed to usher it into a new era so they could save everything that they held dear. So they could continue their stewardship. And it was true Hazel hadn’t been there the last ten years to do her part.

  Juniper kicked the tractor’s tire. “I need to get back to work. This thing isn’t going to fix itself, and I’d like to be home in time for dinner for one night. I’m sure mom is already preparing a feast to welcome home her golden child.”

  * * *

  Hazel stepped back into the courtyard, squinting in the bright afternoon sun.

  She had arrived just in time for another display of vocal fireworks from Eric Moore. Now he was arguing not only with Ruby Northinger but also with a new sparring partner, a woman with platinum hair and a black Ladle Creek Construction T-shirt. The trio was shouting over each other, and worse, they were headed in Hazel’s direction.

  Eric Moore caught sight of Hazel. “You!” he snapped, pointing at her and stopping well inside of her personal bubble. If she’d still been in LA, this would have been the moment where her bodyguard, Carl, would have intervened. Too bad Carl would have never fit in her carry-on.

  “Where is your sister?” Eric demanded, blowing a miasma of coffee-and-cigarette breath in her face.

  “Excuse me?” Hazel responded dumbly. Good one.

  “Your. Sister,” he repeated, flinging each word like a dart. “Aren’t you that Bennett celebutante?”

  “Well that was rude and comp
letely unnecessary,” she said. Eric had caught her off guard, but now she had her mitts up.

  “So sorry,” he responded, not at all sorry. “Didn’t mean to offend your delicate Hollywood sensibilities, snowflake.” This guy was getting crossed right off her Christmas card list.

  “Excuse me?” she said again. You showed him that time, Hazel.

  “Never mind,” he spat, waving his hand at her like she was a mosquito in need of swatting. “Probably playing with that hunk of scrap metal again.” He brushed past her and disappeared inside the tractor garage, the two women tailing him, but not before they cast withering looks her way.

  Hazel considered following—her sisterly instincts were kicking hard—but something made her stop. This was not her fight, this was not her farm, and stepping in now would only come across as meddling, both to Juniper, who was a grown woman and could handle herself, and to Cro-Magnon Man, whom she suspected might use her celebutante status as fuel for his fire.

  She took a deep, cleansing breath and scanned the courtyard, wondering where to head next. She saw Ronnie’s old pickup roll past the arched entrance. Great, she thought, another person likely looking to give Juniper an earful. Hazel was starting to feel guilty about having been the keynote speaker at the Roast of Juniper Bennett.

  But she’d just about had her fill of tough conversations and curmudgeons for the day. Maybe she could get out of here before Ronnie came sauntering through. She just needed to find a peaceful place to sit and think for a bit.

  She hurried forward, nearly running into Tyler as he stepped from between a few nearby trucks, paintbrush hanging limp in his hands.

  “Son of a bucket,” he said. “It is you.”

  “Son of a what?” She snorted in laughter, tried to cover the sound with a cough and succeeded only in nearly choking herself.

  Tyler looked, bemused. “You going to make it?” he asked.

  “I’ll manage,” she rasped.

  He laughed as he stepped closer. She was somehow surprised and sad to see that he didn’t look like the boy from her memories, the bean pole with a bad haircut and baggy clothes. He had filled out, and his Ladle Creek Construction T-shirt hinted that there were muscles in them there hills.

  She started talking again under the misguided notion that if something were to come out of her mouth, it would be better if it were words and not another cry for CPR. “You’ve been working out,” she said.

  He raised his eyebrows and laughed again.

  “I mean, you look good,” she corrected.

  He cast a glance around the courtyard. “What, no adoring fans? Paparazzi?”

  “You’re probably being framed in a telephoto lens as we speak.”

  “How does my hair look?”

  A slideshow of descriptors flipped through her head—catalog-worthy, stylish, flaxen, handsome—before she blurted, “Luscious.”

  “Luscious!” he crowed. “Think I have a future in hair modeling? Is that even a thing?”

  She hoped yet again that her Knack might manifest itself. Forget invisibility though. Only instant self-immolation would suffice at the moment.

  Tyler cocked his head to the side, assuming a look of deep bewilderment, though his eyes danced playfully. “I thought you spoke for a living.”

  “I memorize my lines well,” she replied. “I don’t improv . . .”

  “Still?” It was his first mention of the past, and she held her breath, waiting for the hit she was certain was coming. But she was surprised to see there wasn’t a scrap of malice in his face. After all these years, and after how she had left, he would have been justified in stockpiling ammunition. She certainly would have. But he just smiled politely and said, “You look good too—for the record.” He chuckled again and then mercifully changed subjects. “I can’t believe the great Helena Rose has graced our little town with her presence.”

  “Hey now,” she said. “Don’t you start too. I need at least one place I can show up where I’m just Hazel Bennett.”

  He started to respond, but at that moment a deep boom reverberated through the barnyard and the ground shook violently. Then the world fell silent and held its breath, leaving an empty stage for the screams that spilled from the tractor garage.

  Tyler bolted past her and toward the open door. Her discomfort forgotten, she followed. They raced through the rows of tractors, following the shouts.

  The steam tractor that Juniper had been working on had crashed into the wall. Juniper herself sat in the cab, throwing levers and practically yanking the steering wheel off, though the tractor remained inert.

  The other two women stood nearby, shouting and yelling, eyes wide. Hazel wondered for a minute where Eric was and why the women were so worked up over an antique tractor having a dust-up with an old stone wall and why the hell Juniper was pretending to drive it like a madwoman.

  The scene failed to compute in the logical part of Hazel’s brain, as if she were witnessing a bizarre dream sequence. But then Tyler swore and stepped back. Hazel followed his gaze and saw what the commotion was—the limp arm and leg of somebody pinned between the front of the tractor and the stone wall.

  No, not somebody. Eric Moore.

  Reality hit her again like a hammer blow.

  Others started arriving then, but Hazel was only vaguely aware of their presence. Everything swirled around her, and she stood, rooted in place, watching Juniper struggle with the tractor. It was only when Juniper turned to the growing crowd, searching wild-eyed, and finally locked gazes with Hazel, that Hazel’s sisterly instinct finally kicked in and she leaped forward, clambering onto the tractor. She pried loose Juniper’s death grip on the controls and led her, like a toddler, from the machine. People had crowded around the tractor and worked together to push it back far enough to free Eric Moore. But it was obvious from the gasps that it was too late.

  The hours that followed were something of a blur. At some point, the Green Mountain State Police arrived, and a detective that seemed vaguely familiar questioned people on the scene.

  Hazel sat in silence on the broad-plank floor next to Juniper, holding her hand. Juniper sat, catatonic, occasionally whispering things like, “I tried to get it off him,” and, “It’s impossible.” When at last the detective turned his attention to Juniper, she explained as best she could. Yes, there had been a fight. Yes, she had been there the whole time. No, she couldn’t explain how Eric had ended up pinned between the wall and the tractor. No, she wouldn’t mind coming down to the station for further questioning. Yes, she thought she might like a lawyer present.

  And like that, Juniper was loaded into a squad car and taken away, and the police set to work cordoning off the tractor garage with crime scene tape.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was nearly dark by the time Hazel returned to Bennett Manor. She stumbled up to her room and found Odysseus, the white kitten, curled up on her small metal-framed bed, nearly invisible in the marshmallow-white comforter. But Hazel found little in sitting, scratching the cat behind the ears. She only felt nauseated by the too-cute tchotchke of her childhood—a blast of rainbows and unicorns and dream-board collages. It was more than she could stand then, so she stormed to the kitchen for some bags and set to work trashing everything until the room was bare and Odysseus had fled in terror.

  Still, she felt no better. A restlessness burned inside her, and she had to do something, anything, to extinguish it. She considered turning on her phone and losing herself in the firestorm of texts and tweets that had been building in the twenty-four hours she had gone dark. At that moment she would almost welcome the toxic tsunami of public opinion. Heck, she craved it. Maybe she would find something so horrible, a headline or a tweet so stinging, that it would eclipse the sludge of feeling swirling away inside of her.

  Finally she got back up and crept to the one closed door in the hallway and rested her hand on the latch.

  She half-expected that if she pushed the door open, she would find Gammy still lying in the bed, her
bone-white hair fanned out on the pillow, a sheen of sweat on her forehead, the family surrounding her as she drew her dying breathes. Just as Hazel had left her all those years ago. That had been the summer after Hazel had graduated from high school, when she’d been all set to ship off to NYU to pursue her dream of acting on Broadway. But Gammy’s impending death had shattered that dream. In an instant, all of Hazel’s plans had seemed so pointless. So while the family attended Gammy’s bedside, Hazel had fled the room, packed a bag, placed a call to Charlie saying she needed to be picked up at the gatehouse, and slipped out the front door. Never to return, until now.

  Hazel took a deep breath, steeling herself, and quietly slipped inside.

  Much like Hazel’s own room, nothing had changed here. Though that’s where the comparison ended. Hazel’s room was cramped—the former quarters of a domestic servant. But Gammy had demanded space, the only thing apart from a bottle of Jim Beam Bonded that she said she needed to get on in this world. Yet, despite its size and Gammy’s claim, the room was cramped by an excess of old dark-wood furniture: a wardrobe likely containing lions and/or witches; a palatial vanity that looked more like a cathedral altar than a place to apply makeup; steamer trunks and hope chests; a dressing screen; enough chairs to seat a theater audience; and a four-poster bed, the kind Ebeneezer Scrooge would have slept in.

  The bed was, of course, empty.

  Hazel ran her finger over the dark wood, noting that it had been dusted and polished. She finally settled at the vanity, easing herself onto the floral-patterned stool with the same regal grace with which Gammy had seated herself. How many times had Hazel sat here as a girl, pretending to get ready for some grand ball or to greet a prince in waiting, only to be scolded by her mother for primping and preening? But Gammy had never minded. In fact, she usually just picked out the best earrings to go with Hazel’s garish makeup job.

  The vanity seemed different now, less mystical and more practical—a curated collection of wood and jade containers: a jewelry chest, an antique French makeup organizer, a cadre of perfume bottles, and a host of tins and canisters of creams and lotions and powders. Then there was the plastic tumbler filled with spare change; it seemed out of place with the rest, but it had always been there—her Bingo buy-in, as Gammy had always called it. Hazel picked up an ornate picture frame with a black-and-white of Gammy as a young woman. They really did look alike, she and her Gammy. Both beautiful, both cursed in love. And in other things. Hazel slipped her hand under her hair and rubbed the nape of her neck, where her mark rested.