The Catalain Book of Secrets

by Jessica Lourey

  The girl nodded back.

  “Dean is a trucker. You probably forgot that. Anyhow, he’s only home until tomorrow morning, and we can’t stay very long.” Jasmine’s words rushed out, little chunks of emotions getting trampled by her false syllables. “We stopped in to say hi. I’ll leave the pie on the counter.”

  “You can stay and eat some with us,” Ursula called from beside the fire. Her words were neutral, threading the thrumming tension.

  Unable to stand the distance a moment longer, Katrine stepped forward, her arms outstretched. Her need to be held by her sister left her breathless. This is what she had come home for.

  Jasmine rejected the embrace, shoving the cold and heavy pie plate into Katrine’s open hands. Confused, Katrine reached out mentally to make that connection to her sister. Jasmine was closed off.

  “You can at least have a piece of pie, Jazzy,” Katrine said. She was surprised to hear she was pleading. Come on, let’s do the chicken drop together. Please. I feel safe when you’re with me. Let me in. The words bounced back at her unheard, tinkling to the ground like broken glass.

  “Please, Mom.” Tara tugged at Jasmine’s hand, but couldn’t drag her eyes from Katrine.

  Jasmine pursed her lips and turned her back to the family, striding to the house. “Fine. But we can’t stay long,” she said over her shoulder.

  They all followed except Ursula, who murmured about needing to tend the fire. Helena’s jittery energy was palpable, and Xenia put out a hand to calm her sister.

  “What kind of pie is it?” Xenia asked, striding ahead of the group to grab clean plates and silverware.

  “Cherry,” Tara offered. “Right, Mom?”

  Katrine accepted a plate, the first food she’d eaten since arriving. She found herself salivating, remembering the amazing food her sister had cooked throughout her school years. Jasmine’s roasted garlic soup brought neighbors over to see what smelled like heaven, her fresh bread was so soft it invited naps, and her casseroles were gone before most potlucks began. Her food didn’t just taste good; it healed.

  Katrine dug into the sweet wedge, perfect round balls of cherry oozing out the sides. As she lifted the fork to her mouth, one blood-red circle broke loose and rolled across her plate, leaving a viscous pink trail. She chewed, her eyes widening in surprise. The words passed her lips before she could weigh them. “This tastes like shit.”

  Katrine noticed Helena step toward Jasmine and then stop, halted by the grim light of satisfaction in Jasmine’s eyes.

  “I know someone at the newspaper,” Jasmine said, not responding to Katrine’s comment. “I could help you get a job. Call me if you need me.” And she took Tara’s hand and pulled her daughter out of the Queen Anne.

  Chapter 12

  Katrine

  Ursula had always provided house and food for her sisters. In return, Xenia sewed all the clothes for the five females and Helena cooked all the food until Jasmine was old enough to take over. For spending money to go the movies or buy books, Helena sold homemade candy out of the Queen Anne kitchen and Xenia tailored clothes in a small room off the kitchen that she had converted into a sewing space. Until she was five and started kindergarten, Katrine was convinced that all kids were allowed to eat their fill of decadent candies and play dress-up in the most glorious dresses.

  After Jasmine and Tara had left the party, Katrine was reeling. Seeing her distress, Xenia and Helena distracted her with the history of their store. They had rented the space for Seven Daughters’ Candy and Clothes two weeks after Katrine moved away to Chicago to pursue her English degree. They built a burgeoning clientele on word of mouth, and it hadn’t taken much convincing for them to make it official once the girls moved out. Seven Daughters was launched. The store was small, a renovated restaurant two blocks off downtown River Street. Helena revamped the kitchen, outfitting it for candy-making and retained the old-fashioned dessert coolers that had housed cinnamon rolls and pies for many years, instead filling them with tantalizing truffles, her specialty.

  Helena bragged about Xenia, describing her chocolates as delicate affairs, each no larger than a wild plum, shaped like sea shells, flowers, and intricate animals, or arcane symbols like trishula, the horns of Odin, and Celtic crosses. Some had fillings, from smooth buttercream to crunchy roasted almonds, fluffy ganache to exotic sugared mango, and they came in white, sweet, or dark chocolate. Regardless of shape, color, or flavor, every chocolate made the eater’s mouth dance, massaged her heart, tuned her senses. Helena’s Lilac Love chocolates were the most popular, crafted of a chocolate so dark it melted down your throat like an elixir. Helena shaped the chocolate to resemble the delicate flutes of lilac petals, and injected them with a crystalline sweet center she crafted from distilled spring flowers. Those who’d eaten a Lilac Love swore that one bite revealed your soul mate.

  Peppermint Secrets were the second-best seller. They were crafted of white chocolate molded into a delicate leaf shape with veins of exquisite green mint laced through. Helena recommended those for people whose stomachs were upset by guilt. She demurred when asked for her recipes, made no claims about the properties of the chocolates other than that they would taste delicious. And they did, always, as beautiful to the tongue and belly as they were to the eye.

  Over the years, she’d gleaned a lot of information from her customers, more than a bartender or even a hairdresser would hear in the course of their day, and she often stayed late to concoct special orders for the woman whose husband was cheating or the teenage boy who wanted a gift for the girl he was too shy to ask out.

  When customers weren’t sharing their most secret desires, according to what Helena swore to Katrine was the truth, they were worshipping the racks of gorgeous dresses in Xenia’s section of the store. Though they shared the same till, Helena limited the face of her business to the dessert coolers. Xenia spread her wares over the rest of the main room, setting up dress racks where diners used to swap farm stories over coffee and homemade cake donuts.

  She displayed ten racks. They contained sundresses and wrap dresses and formal gowns and slinky dresses, and each one was unequivocally flattering to the woman who bought it. The mayor, a short and top-heavy Finn, had purchased a black, empire-waisted dress for her husband’s Christmas party and discovered that she had beautiful strong arms the moment she donned it. Juni, owner of the salon one block over, was sure that the local kids had invented the word “cankles” purely to terrorize her and her alone, until she found that Xenia’s green pleated minidress displayed her magnificent thighs, which made her ankles purposeful atop a pair of strappy sandals.

  Women and the occasional rococo male traveled from as far away as St. Louis to browse Xenia’s racks. The demand for her designs expanded to the point where she had to register customers and impose a limit—one dress per person per year. Some maneuvered around it, but on the whole, the ladies in the know were willing to support each other.

  The store sounded glorious, but it wasn’t enough to puncture the deep sting of Jasmine’s rejection (she called me home she needs me what’s happened to us?). Nonetheless, Katrine found herself outside the store the next morning. She didn’t actually know what had brought her downtown in the first place. She had a hangover and wasn’t sure if it was from the wine or the cherry pie. She had no plan, no desire or aversion when she thought of working for her aunts. It’d be the route of least resistance, putting in seat time at Seven Daughters, protected, outside of life’s current. She craved easy. But it would mean more hiding, and she was starting to grow sick of herself. She needed to resuscitate her heart, even if the stimulant she used was a resurrected love of writing, or she’d be halfway to cat lady before she knew it.

  So, she knocked on the locked door of Seven Daughters. To her surprise, it was opened by a tall, awkward boy of 16 or so with eyes like a baby wolf.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m Katrine Catalain. Helena and Xenia are my aunts?”

  “They’re
running errands, I’m afraid.” He stepped aside to let her in. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  After the initial stare, it had taken him only a single blink to look and talk to her like a regular person. He had something about him, something that pulled Katrine out of herself and made her want to engage, despite the pain her sister’s reception had set up inside her.

  She ran her hands over the silk of a honey-colored sundress nearest the door, so soft it felt like a living thing. Even on the rack, she could tell it would hang beautifully. “Gawd, I missed these gorgeous dresses. If only Xenia would go international.”

  Leo shook his head. “Xenia said she’s an artist, not a salesperson.”

  “What errands are they running?”

  “Helena went to Cashwise to buy sugar. Xenia is making copies of a flier for some classes they’ll be offering here in the basement.” He paused, blushing. “I’ve been working here all summer, and it’s the first idea of mine that they took. I told them they should pass on their gifts to the people of Faith Falls. You know, teach them to cook and sew. Xenia said she’d do it, but only if she could call them End of Times classes. She said that the only way the people of this town would be interested in sewing and canning was if it were post-apocalypse and they had no choice.”

  Katrine chuckled, amazed that she still had laughter in her. This boy must have some magic of his own.

  He ran his hands through his hair, still blushing. “Did you want to look around the store?”

  She sighed. Some part of her did, but she was worried by the thought of being in one spot for too long. “No, thank you. Will you just tell Xenia and Helena that I stopped by?”

  He nodded happily. Good-byes had never been her strong suit, so she turned and left the store without another word.

  “Whoa!”

  Katrine found herself immersed in soft cloth over hard flesh, the clean scent of soap, clumsiness. She had charged into a man coming out of the store next door. Catching her balance, she stepped back.

  “No, it was my fault,” she said. “I should have been watching where I was walking.” She felt herself flush. There had been a time when she’d not only known who around her was coming and going but also, sometimes, what they were thinking and feeling.

  “Hey, it’s okay.” His voice was concerned. “I just barreled out of there. Are you hurt?”

  She wiped her eyes and glanced at him. His thick hair was curly brown laced with gray, though he wasn’t old, maybe 36, with eyes so open and blue she expected to see waves in them. She noticed his big hands, long-fingered and strong, with a contrasting delicacy that reminded her of cascading piano music. He was handsome, in a goofy way.

  “You work here?” She indicated the store he had come out of, Ren’s Watches, Unique Timepieces Sold and Repaired.

  “More often than not,” he said, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. He held out his hand. “Ren Cunningham.”

  She nodded at his hand but did not take it. “I’m sorry for bumping into you.” She stepped around him and continued walking up the street, unsettled by the encounter and the buzzing in her stomach.

  “You’re sure you’re all right?” he called after her.

  She raised a hand but didn’t turn. If she had, she would have seen him stare after her, puzzled, before stepping next door to buy one of Helena’s Lilac Love chocolates, a sudden craving for which had propelled him out of his store moments before, leaving an antique pocket watch half-assembled.

  Katrine continued down the street, ignoring a momentary pang in her chest, a charged sensation somewhere between leaning over a cliff and jumping across it. Must be something I ate. She walked into the yellowed offices of the Faith Falls Gazette, unsure whether her sister had told them she was coming or not. It wouldn’t matter. The newspaper either needed another reporter or they didn’t. Besides, she didn’t know if she even wanted to work here. She just didn’t have anywhere else to be. The place stank of ink and instant coffee. Behind the front desk, a Fleet Farm calendar was one month out of date.

  “Hello, may I speak to the editor?”

  The curvy receptionist, her body perfectly suited for life in a chair, turned from the computer screen and flashed Katrine a wide smile. “You’re in luck. She came back early from a meeting. Whom shall I tell her is here?”

  Who, thought Katrine, years of training rearing up like a rash, who shall I tell her is here. “Katrine Catalain. I’m interested in applying for a job.”

  The receptionist’s eyebrows shot up at the name, and she gave Katrine a full once-over. “We’re a pretty small paper.”

  “I understand.” She didn’t offer any more.

  The receptionist shrugged and waved Katrine back, past the particle-board desks and wood-paneled walls, until she reached an open door decorated with a brass plaque that read, simply, “Editor.”

  The woman who locked eyes with Katrine when she entered was familiar. Her hair was done up Texas-cult style, serving as a tall, poofed stage to full lips and a nose like the tip of a paper airplane. Other than make-up-creased wrinkles shading her eyes, she appeared the same as she had in high school. Katrine was surprised at the strong reaction she had, her stomach muscles clenching as if she were a Faith Falls High freshman all over again, enduring the taunts: Don’t eat me! Where are you hiding your warts, Catalain? Or her personal favorite and clearly the result of protracted group brainstorming, which witch bitch? She forced herself to stand straight.

  “Katrine Catalain, as I live and breathe. How are you?”

  Heather Lewis kept her voice level and her hands out of sight. Her mother was a Gottfridsen, and Gottfridsens were Faith Falls royalty, the spine and fingers of the town, had been since Albrikt’d opened the saw mill 120 years earlier. Their rivalry with the Catalains went nearly as far back, starting as a deep friendship that went sour after Eva and Ennis disappeared, leaving the town too much time for self-reflection, too much room to wonder at the magic that the Catalains seemed to possess.

  The Gottfridsens had passed the bitterness down to their children in their genes along with red hair, a missing pinkie knuckle, and an inclination for heart disease. Heather hadn’t inherited the little finger deformity, but her red hair blazed like a corona. She had also demonstrated a knack for making Katrine’s and often Jasmine’s life miserable in high school.

  Their rivalry had been legendary, both of them pretty but Katrine with the edge, winning homecoming queen to Heather’s princess, voted “most likely to succeed” to Heather’s “best smile.” Heather had her small revenges, and being the chief namecaller was only one. She’d also taped “Lick me, I’m a Catalain” signs to Katrine’s back, told boys that Katrine was easy and girls that she was stealing their boyfriends, and had even convinced her that their sophomore year picture day was actually 1950s Dress-up Day. It had all transpired a lifetime ago, and Katrine wondered why it had ever mattered.

  “I’m well, Heather.” Katrine turned to go. She was too numb to grovel.

  “Wait. Your sister called me.”

  Katrine stopped but didn’t respond. She wondered what deals with the devil Jasmine had made to befriend this woman who had made their school years a hell on earth. Jasmine, who are you now?

  “She said you need a job.” Heather’s voice climbed a note higher. The pencil she was gripping made a tiny cracking sound. “Do you?”

  Katrine turned and scanned the office. The venetian blinds shading the window behind Heather were dusty, and they sliced a view of the brick wall of Fenlason Portrait Studios. Somehow, the light made the sliver of an office seem smaller, barely large enough to house the desk, three file cabinets, and office chair. The desktop was cluttered with paper and a chipped mug full of pencils, a stapler, office implements. Photos of family clung to the walls like barnacles, and two more balanced on the corners of the desk. They were all of the same two girls, maybe 9 and 11 in the most recent one. There was no photo of a man. Heather’s ring finger, which she’d worked so hard
to conceal, was bare.

  “For the past three years, I’ve been an editor in the London offices of Vogue. Fashion writing wasn’t my plan, but it’s where I landed. Don’t bother calling them for a reference because I walked out three weeks ago without notice. I can write feature articles and take my own pictures. I don’t know how long I’ll be in town.”

  Heather licked her lips. “I can’t hire you full time, but if you want to be an on-call reporter, I’ll pay you per piece. It’s not glamorous work, and it pays for shit. You’ll cover football games, open houses, church events.”

  “Thank you.”

  Heather leveled her eyes at Katrine. They gleamed. “You can start on Friday. There’s a bead shop just opened up on the edge of the Avignon neighborhood. You remember the Stearns Banks that used to be there? The bead shop’s there now. They offer crafts classes Friday afternoons.”

  Katrine automatically held her breath at the mention of the haunted neighborhood before realizing how ridiculous she was being. She wanted to ask Jasmine if she still held her breath against bad luck, and the thought made her ache. Would Jasmine even talk to her?

  “You listening? The store just opened, and they’re offering their inaugural class on Friday. I’d cover it myself but I already have plans. That’s how big news like this is in town. The only bigger story will be when the snakes come back next spring.”

  A picture fell from the wall, and Katrine had the oddest feeling of falling with it. When it hit the floor with a crash, she didn’t jump—she’d seen it coming—but Heather almost leapt out of her skin.

  “Should I take that as a sign?” Heather laughed uncomfortably as she leaned over to pick up the duck painting. “Maybe I’m supposed to be the one covering the bead shop? It has been a while since I’ve gone out.”