by Willa Reece
Because when he’d leaned close to her Sarah had seen something in Hartwell’s eyes that said he would hurt her even in the middle of town… and no one would care like they should because he was a Morgan and she was just the child of a hippy, a witch, a woman who had never been married to an important man.
“When I run this town, things will be different,” Hartwell shouted after them.
“You’re crazy. Morgan’s Gap will always be exactly the same,” Lu yelled back, but it took several blocks between them and Miss Jessica’s cottage before they were comfortable enough to slow down.
Twenty
I didn’t sleep well. The sun had already risen by the time I had dressed and headed down for breakfast. I was getting used to a caffeine-free lifestyle, but on mornings like this, after fear-fueled dreams, I would have appreciated a cup of coffee.
I settled for the chicory root blend that had been a gift from Lu’s grandmother and stood looking out the window in the back door, toward the wildwood. The yard was empty save for a woodpecker that passed through with a brilliant flash of its scarlet head and a flutter of white-tipped wings.
I’d known Hartwell was bad news two seconds into meeting him. I hadn’t needed Sarah’s memories. They were merely confirmation. Poor Violet. I wished she could run away as easily as Lu and Sarah had run all those years ago.
Charm was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t been in my bedroom and he wasn’t on the kitchen counter or the back of the armchair he preferred so much that I’d placed a chenille throw there for him to use as a nest. Sometimes he disappeared for hours only to reappear with no indication of where he’d been.
The sound of a car in the drive broke the silence and I jerked wide-awake in a flash of trepidation that shamed me. I couldn’t expect danger from every sound and visitor. That was no way to live.
Out the front window, I could see Lu’s four-wheel drive station wagon settling behind the Chevy. Her car was instantly recognizable from all the festival and concert bumper stickers that covered not only the wagon’s bumper but every inch of its backside. Along with the event stickers, there was a “Coexist,” a pagan spiral symbol and a rainbow flag.
Then there was Lu herself. She exited the wagon with purpose and a hardware store bag in her hand. But she still paused and lifted her face to the sun coming over the tops of the trees behind the cabin. She breathed in deeply before slamming the car door and turning toward the porch. The familiar strips of colorful ribbon twisted into her hair, her bright red peasant blouse and her wide-legged jeans more than cheered me. Lu was all that was right with my world when everything else was wrong.
I’d already moved to open the front door and welcome her, all my fears that had lingered from the night before dispelled.
“Jacob called me. Out of the blue. On the shop phone. He said you needed a new dead bolt and that you might not be comfortable with him bringing it to you.” There were questions in her eyes and in her voice, but she didn’t ask them. She held out the bag and I took it. I rummaged through what she’d brought while she stepped inside, carrying with her the scent of morning dew and that hint of wood shavings that always lingered around her. The bag held a new brass bolt much larger and sturdier than the old one that was loose on the door and the screws and screwdriver needed to install it.
“Old Sue is running again,” Lu continued, pointing back at the Chevy in the driveway.
“Jacob took it to the garage in town. They made it roadworthy for me,” I explained.
“Huh. Jacob sure is taking a sudden interest in being neighborly,” Lu noted. “And I’ve never known him to show any interest in anything that isn’t a plant or a tree.”
She arched one eyebrow high and I ignored it along with the quirk of her lips that seemed to be too knowing by far. My life was too confusing to add the complication of a friend’s matchmaking to it.
“When we came back here last night to pick up his Jeep, someone had been in the house,” I said. To bring her up to speed. Not to change the subject from the biologist who had done yet another considerate thing for me. He’d noticed my discomfort. He’d left and then he’d sent Lu with the new lock instead of coming himself where he wasn’t exactly welcome. Had he known Lu was the one person in Morgan’s Gap I completely trusted?
“Did they break in?” Lu asked, looking around to see if there had been any damage to the doors and windows. Her mouth had settled into a firm line and her eyes were no longer crinkled and teasing.
“No. And that’s part of the problem. Either I forgot to lock the back door or they had a key,” I said. “They had been through the closets and left a box of photographs on the counter. I won’t feel comfortable sleeping unless I use the dead bolt and the one on the front door needs to be replaced.”
“You stayed here after that?” Lu asked. She’d put her hands on her hips and I suddenly wondered if she’d pull me away from the cabin in the same way she’d pulled Sarah away from Jessica Morgan’s cottage.
“This is my home, for now, Lu. I’m not going to be frightened away,” I replied. My home. There. I’d said it. I held my breath for a few seconds, but the universe didn’t dissolve and take it all away.
“You’re nervous for good reason, but too stubborn to leave,” Lu said. “And nothing I say is going to change your mind.” She lowered her hands from her hips and let out a long-suffering sigh. Her exasperation comforted me. I felt a smile relax my lips. I hadn’t really known her that long, but Sarah’s memories made it seem longer. Not sure why she acted like she felt the same, but I suspected it had something to do with the same reason the trio could finish each other’s sentences.
“You’re not wrong. I am stubborn. Sometimes it comes in handy,” I confessed. My smile must have been contagious. Lu’s mouth tried to curve softly at the edges, but the expression wavered as she looked around.
“This is the first time I’ve been to the cabin since the murder. I’ve missed every Gathering since then,” Lu admitted.
“Oh, Lu…” I began. I didn’t know exactly what Lu believed about the wildwood or the wisewomen who practically worshipped it. I only knew she’d brought the bee balm to the park based on a compulsion without batting an eye. “Granny says she brewed me here. And I’ve been dreaming. Lucid, vivid dreams that aren’t actually dreams at all. Somehow Sarah’s memories are alive in me. I… I feel like I’ve known you forever,” I whispered. Sharing all my secrets with her left me feeling shaken and vulnerable, but wasn’t that what connection was? Lowering your defenses. Being brave. Accepting the risks along with the benefits. My hands were shaking, but I immediately felt lighter. Especially when Lu’s smile firmed and widened.
“I loved her, you know. When she was sent away, a part of me left with her. And when I started to tour and perform I looked for her face in every crowd,” Lu said. Tears filled her warm brown eyes and I had to blink away the sting of answering tears in mine. I’d loved Sarah in a different way, but we had both lost her. I hadn’t stopped to consider how horrible it was that Lu had lost her twice.
“There are photographs. And some of her artwork from school is still on her bedroom walls upstairs,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to box them up. It seems sadder to leave them there, somehow. I’ve been waiting for the right time. You should look and see if there’s anything you’d like to take.”
Lu nodded, then stooped to look closely at the photographs on the sofa table. She and Sarah were laughing at the camera and Sarah’s arm was tossed around Lu’s neck. Sarah had barely mentioned Lu to me, but I knew now it was because losing Lu must have been too painful for her to talk about on top of everything else.
Sarah hadn’t dated much, but when she did, she dated women. Lu had been her first love. I’d felt the beginning of that love when I’d dreamed. Who knows what lifelong relationship they could have had if the murderer hadn’t interrupted?
“I need to ask you something.” I suddenly remembered the photograph of the Sect woman and baby the intruder had left out for me t
o find. The one that had been in front as if it was more important than the rest. I went over to the hall closet and pulled out the box. I’d left that photograph on top, subconsciously intending to look at it again.
“This was set up on the counter when I came home last night. Do you recognize the woman?” I asked. Lu had been here often as a young girl. She must have seen some of the Sect women come and go. The photograph didn’t fully show the woman’s face, but maybe there would be something about her that jogged Lu’s memory.
She straightened and came over to take the framed photo from my hands.
“I think this photograph is older than I would remember, Mel. See how the color has faded around the edges. My baby pictures look like this in my mother’s albums. The ones she took with a camera instead of a phone.” She opened the frame the way I had to check the back for writing, but then she lifted the photo from the frame. She tilted it toward the light and then showed me the pale imprint of a date and time stamp on the development paper that had been used. I was too used to digital prints. I hadn’t thought to check. I had no baby photographs of myself for reference.
“Yeah. As old as I am. If I ever met the woman or the baby, I wouldn’t recognize them from this photograph,” Lu said.
I was the same age. If Sarah’s mother had helped this woman, she had helped her the same year I was born.
“I’m not much of a detective. I didn’t even notice that date.” I put the photograph back in the frame and then put it back in the box. On top. In case I wanted to look at it again. I was drawn to it. Probably because it had revealed a part of Melody Ross’s secret life to me. Living out here by the wildwood. Helping the Sect women who couldn’t go to anyone else for help.
“It was nighttime and you were upset,” Lu said. She squeezed my shoulder before pushing the box back into the closet and shutting the door. When she turned back to face me, her serious expression had been replaced by a smile. “Plus Jacob Walker was in the room being all neighborly and helpful.”
“At that point I thought he might have been the one to break in,” I said, although her teasing had hit a little too close to home.
“He was ahead of me in school, but I remember him as a good guy. A quiet guy, not rowdy like some of the others. And his father was a friend of Granny’s before he died. Not sure about his mother. They moved away from the mountain,” Lu said.
“Was his mother a wisewoman too?” I asked. My pulse quickened at the thought. It would explain so much—Jacob’s comfort in the forest and his obvious connection to it. “I’m surprised she left.”
“She was an organist at the Episcopal church. But she came to Gathering every year I can remember before she left town. That much I know,” Lu said. “If she was, would that help you to consider Jacob a friend?”
I could easily imagine Jacob learning about nature at his mother’s heels. He’d probably grown up in the woods. No wonder he loved the forest and knew so much about it. But, why had his mother moved away?
Friendship was too soft, too easy to describe what I felt for Jacob. So I didn’t answer. “I can never figure out if Granny disapproves of Jacob going away to school or of his coming back,” I said.
Lu laughed. Like her singing voice, her laugh was rich and ringing, filling the room and a person’s heart at the same time. “Granny thinks everything we need to know is left in the bottom of a teacup after we drink.”
I thought about the three of us planting the bee balm together. Three. Three. Three. Granny placed such importance on the number and I’d seen that emphasis in the remedy book as well. Sexual attraction aside, if I trusted Jacob, would the pull between us feel more like the pull I felt to Lu?
“Things are complicated right now. Too complicated for me to fall into a ‘friendship’ with Jacob Walker,” I said. “And I might not be far from digging into my tea leaves for answers.”
“I was raised in the wildwood, Mel. I never went away. The idea that Sarah would somehow share her memories with you doesn’t shock me. I always believed she would come back. And she has. Through you and with you,” Lu said. “I’m not a wisewoman. Not like Granny. But I’ve lived side by side with the old ways my whole life. You felt like a sister to me from the moment you walked into my shop.”
We both stepped into the hug at the same time and Sarah’s spirit was there with us. Kept alive because we would always love her, but also because we were in her wildwood, a part of it as much as she had been. Lu might not share Granny’s exact beliefs, but she worked with wood from the forest every day. She inhaled the sawdust and brought the walnut’s song to life with her own two hands. In her own way, she was as much a part of the wildwood as Jacob. Like Granny, her craft was as much mystical as practical.
“I’ll go upstairs,” Lu said into my hair. “There’s a painting I remember. Of fairies flying around the blackberry bushes. Sarah was always chasing fairies. With Sarah you could never tell where a game ended and real life began.” Lu stepped back, but her hands gripped my upper arms and it was that warm, firm hold that punctuated her next words. “My mother used to say she was a changeling. Left here by the fae. And she really was. Special in a way I won’t forget,” Lu said.
“She was. Even after her mother was killed, she was singular. Different. I saw the possibility of another world in her eyes. One I’d never known. One with more sunlight,” I said, remembering. Lu had a faraway look in her eyes. For a moment, we were both seeing Sarah and maybe striving to feel whatever mystical gift she might have tried to bequeath to us.
But, in the end, we were left slightly sheepish with only ordinary dust motes settling around us. No fairies at all.
Lu went upstairs. She was gone for a long time. I waited patiently. I’d said my goodbyes to Sarah. I continued to say them every day. When the other woman came back downstairs, she held a watercolor painting in her hands. I hadn’t looked very closely at the artwork on Sarah’s walls, but this one had been created with a little more time and skill than the others I’d seen. She must have painted it just before she left the mountain.
“I’d like to keep this one, if it’s okay,” Lu said. She handed me the painting so I could see what I was giving away.
“Of course. I’m sure she would have wanted you to have it.”
The blackberry bushes had been painted in enthusiastic splashes of purplish-black and green. The fairies were holding hands and hovering above the thorns. They looked out of the painting as if mischievously waiting to be chased by two girls who were out of frame.
“It’s time for me to go to the garden again. I need to visit her there, alone, if you don’t mind,” Lu said over my shoulder. I placed the painting on the counter for her to take with her when she left.
“I’ll stay here and fix the bolt on the door and then we’ll have some lunch,” I said.
I understood why Lu needed to say goodbye, but I also suspected she needed to reconnect with the garden and the forest in ways she hadn’t been able to accomplish at a distance or through her music.
It was almost time for Gathering. All the wisewomen would come together for the baking and the breaking of the bread. It wouldn’t be only a few old women like Granny who would come. There would be women like Lu and like me. There would be children. And maybe it would mean more to some than others, but I was responsible for treating the process with the respect and even reverence it deserved.
Because of Sarah, but also for myself. I’d been a survivor my whole life, but I hadn’t stopped to figure out what I was surviving for until Sarah had died. I’d experienced a deep and peaceful satisfaction in following the recipes in the Ross Remedy Book. I didn’t know if it was the careful processes that took me away from the pain or if it was the connection to the past and the wildwood and the women that had come before me when I’d never had any connection at all.
What I did know now that I had found Granny, the trio and Lu was that the pain I carried wasn’t only the pain of losing Sarah. It was pain at the injustice that had left me alon
e, targeted and hurt as a child, and as an adult, by hate and ignorance and corruption.
It felt as if I was fighting that injustice. Which was crazy. I was making jam and bread. And yet, the truth of the fight pounded in my heart when I realized that jam and bread from the wildwood was life, the simple power of life itself. By sharing what I made, I was sharing the ongoing cycle of life with others.
The pagan symbol on Lu’s station wagon was a spiral. Ongoing. Eternal. And what was survival really but the desire to go on?
The old bolt came off the front door easily. But it took me a while to replace it. The wood was still solid enough that I had to wrestle the screws into it. When I was finally finished, my stomach was already protesting the single cup of hot chicory brew I’d had for breakfast.
On the back porch, there was an ancient metal furniture set painted a pale green. I carried a platter of grilled cheese finger sandwiches and a covered pitcher of lemonade outside and sat on the glider. I gently pushed it to rock forward and backward while I watched the path for Lu to return.
“We used to sit there and break beans for Melody,” Lu said. She’d stopped at the end of the path to look at me before she’d come forward into the yard. My hair was untied. It curled all around my face. Maybe I’d reminded her too much of Sarah for a second. Curly hair was a mountain thing. I saw it often in Morgan’s Gap. Ross blood, Granny said, showing up in people generations after it had been sown.
“Sarah used to buy fresh green beans at the market in Richmond. She taught me how to break them. They really are better fresh than they are frozen or canned,” I said.
Lu came over and sat down on the other end of the glider. I passed her the platter of grilled cheese and she took a sandwich. Then, I returned the platter to the table and poured her a glass of lemonade.