by Kristy Tate
“I knew it.” Gabe took another long swallow of Coke before pointing the can at Jason. “It’s that Quinn chick, right? You saw her at the wedding.”
“We didn’t speak.” Jason got up, went to the fridge and pulled out a soda of his own. He popped the lid. “At least not there.” Sitting back down, he filled Gabe in on his parking-lot adventures.
Gabe grinned, lay back against the sofa, and propped his feet up on the coffee table. “You don’t know what happened?”
“No.” He didn’t like the smile on his cousin’s face. “I think someone drugged me.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. Don’t you remember all those stories and rumors about the Witching Well?”
“The what?”
“The Witching Well,” Gabe laughed. “In high school and junior high we used to go on rampages trying to find it. Supposedly, the water from the Witching Well causes hallucinations.” Gabe took a long drink from his soda. “There’s even speculation that the Witching Well water could have played a part in the Witch Trials…which, as you know happened just down the street.”
“And to our ancestors,” Jason added, “hundreds of years ago.”
“Exactly.” Gabe pointed his soda at Jason. “So, how is it you don’t know about the Witching Well?”
“I don’t believe in Witching Wells. Maybe while you and your fellow thugs were busy raising hell in the woods, I was bagging groceries.”
Gabe shook his head. “My poor cousin’s sad, misspent youth.”
“Did you ever find it?”
“No. Later in an American history class, I learned that this fungus grows on rye, wheat and barley and can cause mental effects including mania or psychosis—hence—”
“Hence?” Jason laughed, feeling better. Maybe he wasn’t going insane. Maybe his obsession with Celia Quinn wasn’t turning him into a lunatic. “You don’t use the word hence.”
“Hey! I can use hence.”
“All right, let’s drop your vocabulary. Do you think it’s possible that somehow I came in contact with water from this Witching Well?”
“No.”
“No?”
Gabe shook his head. “No. I think you’re loco for Celia Quinn,” he said in a serious, somber tone.
Jason threw a pillow at Gabe’s head as he stood to leave. “You’re moving out tomorrow.”
“The project hasn’t even started,” Gabe argued.
“It’s starting right now,” Jason said over his shoulder. And he wasn’t talking about Gabe’s demolishing the Dressy Occasion shop.
“Where you going?” Gabe called after him.
“Where are you going, is a better question.” Although Jason knew he would never kick Gabe out, he thought it better to not let him know that.
Moments later, Jason sat at his computer, searching for anything he could find about the supposedly hallucinogenic water lurking in the New England soil.
CHAPTER FOUR
Becca frowned at her cookie crumbs as if she could read them like tea leaves. “So, you’re telling me that you had a dream that Jason West, the hunky lawyer that swindled your grandmother out of her lease, was a highwayman.”
“That’s right,” Celia said, picking up her cookie. She couldn’t eat it. It seemed like she hadn’t been able to eat for weeks. “What does it mean?”
“Dreams don’t always have to mean something,” Becca told her.
“Come on, you can do better than that!” Celia shoved her cocoa mug across the table. “Why did you get a psychology degree if you’re not going to help your friends?”
“There’s no help for you. Besides, there’s no definitive explanation of dreams. There are a thousand and one theories.” Becca bit into a cookie and chewed thoughtfully. “I think the one that best applies here is the one that claims we often dream about the things that frighten us the most.”
Celia nodded. “Okay. That makes sense. Kissing Jason West would be my worst nightmare.”
“Or fantasy?” Becca grinned and waggled her eyebrows.
A fantasy would be finding a nineteenth-century emerald necklace…
Celia raked her fingers through her hair. She had taken it out of its bridesmaid up-do, but it was still sticky from hairspray. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window. She looked pale in the warmth of Becca’s sunny yellow kitchen. Taking a deep breath, Celia tried to be calm. “It just seemed so real.” She touched her lips.
Setting down her mug, Becca studied Celia. “Tell me, how does Jason make you feel?”
“In real life, you mean?”
Becca nodded. “Let’s go back to the beginning, before you knew he was Clive Carson’s attorney.”
“I…don’t remember.”
Becca gave her an I-don’t-believe-you smile.
Celia looked away from her friend’s steady gaze. “I bet you’re a really good therapist.”
“Should I double your rent to cover the counseling costs?” Becca tapped her finger on the table.
Celia’s smile faded. “You know that once the store closes and I’m unemployed, I won’t be able to afford the rent. I’ll have to move back home with my mom and grandma. Oh—” her voice caught.
Becca frowned at her. “What did I tell you about the awfulizer?”
Celia swallowed, nodded and quoted, “Do not engage the awfulizer.”
“That’s right,” Becca said, patting her hand. “No need to awfulize just yet.”
“I don’t want to move home. It’s too…”
“Awful?” Becca supplied.
Celia looked out the window at the dark night. “It’s wrong for me to say that, isn’t it? I should want to be at home, helping my mom.”
“You are helping your mom,” Becca reminded her. “You drive her to all her chemo appointments. You take your grandmother shopping, and you take her to all her doctor appointments. Twice a week you make them dinner, and you run the shop.”
“Ran the shop.”
“Seriously, if you did any more for them, you would sprout angel wings and be lifted up into heaven.”
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Celia looked up from her mutilated cookie and saw her brother standing on the other side of the Dutch door. He tapped on the window again. She could tell from his face that he did not consider her angelic.
Becca bounced from her chair to let Joel inside.
He brushed past Becca, snagged a cookie off the table, and shook it in Celia’s face. “I can’t believe you ditched like that. You know you set yourself up for all the family table-talk, right? We’re going to be discussing your anti-wedding behavior for months.”
Celia ducked her head. “I was sick.”
Joel slipped into the chair beside her, bit into the cookie, and studied her like she was one of his lab rats. “What’s wrong with you? Besides the obvious, I mean.”
“Nothing like a brother to keep my ego nice, small and manageable,” Celia said. She bit into her cookie and glared at Joel. She had to admit he looked good in his suit, despite the putrid pink bow-tie.
Probably because they had different fathers, they didn’t look like siblings. Celia looked like her dad, green-eyed, fair-skinned, and with red hair that clashed with putrid pink, while Joel took after his dad, a dark-haired and swarthy pirate-looking Italian. According to their mom, Joel’s dad looked much better than he behaved. Mia was the only sibling that had inherited their mother’s blonde hair, blue eyes, and lily-white skin. The only family trait they all shared was a red-hot temper that matched Celia’s hair.
“You’re not still obsessing over Judson, are you?” Joel asked.
“Of course not!” Celia said too quickly. “I don’t have time for guys.”
Becca caught her eye, and Celia looked away.
“I know that your kind like to think that my kind spend our days pining for the perfect lover-boy, but really we girls have much more important things going on in our heads.”
“Who made you the spokesperson for the entire female gen
der?” Joel chuckled and looked around the tiny kitchen. “Was there an election I missed?” He pulled the plate of cookies in front of him.
Celia reached over and slammed her fist down on his cookies, smashing them to crumbs.
“Hey!” Joel and Becca complained at the same time.
Celia brushed the crumbs off her hand and onto the table. “I am so stressed about the shop, I can’t think about anything else.”
“That’s no reason to destroy perfectly innocent cookies,” Joel said.
“Until I see the business booming, I’m done.”
“Done with what?” Joel asked.
“Define booming,” Becca said.
Celia gave Becca a whose-side-are-you-on look, but knew it was wasted. Becca had been clearly on Joel’s side since the first day they met. But seeing how Becca had been twelve and Joel seventeen, Joel had never seen her the same way. And even now, thirteen years later, Joel still wasn’t seeing it. Celia thought that for a scientist, Joel wasn’t very observant.
“Look, closing the shop will probably be the best thing that could ever happen to you.” Joel picked up cookie crumbs and dribbled them into his mouth.
Anger pure and white zipped through Celia. “Screw you, Joel.”
He held up his hand to ward her off and crumbs fell to the table. “I’m just saying—”
“—That you’re a moron.” Celia finished his sentence. “You better leave before I smash your other cookies.”
Becca stood, put on a pair of oven mitts, and pulled a fresh pan out of the oven. Warm cinnamon-scented air filled the kitchen. Kicking the door closed, Becca kept her back to the warring siblings.
Joel shook his head, like Celia was one of his failing students. “You’ll be so much more profitable with an online business.”
Celia wondered what the emeralds were worth. Her heart sped. The emeralds could be a game-changer. Could they buy the shop? Or pay for a new place?
No. The emeralds couldn’t be real. None of that episode was. She took a steadying breath and tried to back away from crazy town.
“Granny doesn’t do online and you know it.”
“Then you’ll have to introduce her to the brave new world.”
“If I have to teach Mom and Granny technology, we’re screwed.”
“Maybe you should rethink Judson,” Joel said.
Crash!
Becca had dropped the pan and several cookies now lay on the floor.
“Oops,” Becca said. The giant mitts on her hands gave her a Minnie Mouse look.
“You’re destroying cookies, too?” Joel asked. “I expected more from you.”
“Listen, I know this is none of my business.” Becca picked up the cookies that had bounced off the pan and put them on the table.
Joel, obviously unconcerned about the three second rule, slid all three cookies in front of him.
Becca set the pan in front of Celia. “You should take a few days off. Give your head a vacation from the shop.”
“I can’t do that!” Frustration filled Celia’s voice. “You know how much work there is, right? I don’t know how we’re going to fit everything into Granny’s attic.”
Becca put her mitt-covered hand over Celia’s. The mitt felt warm and squishy. “We’ll all be there to help. But soon, you need a break. You push yourself too hard.”
“You’re right.” Celia bounced from her chair. “I’m going to bed. Good night.”
But she didn’t go to bed. She flipped on her computer and googled emeralds and local pawn shops.
CHAPTER FIVE
The sun glistened through autumn leaves, casting pools of light and shifting shadows. A distant memory tugged at Celia. She recognized this place, even though she knew she had never been here before. A stream gurgled, birds called and chirped, and a squirrel chattered in the branches high above her head. A breeze fluttered her nightgown. Celia looked down and noticed her bare feet.
Odd, she wasn’t cold.
The bubbling stream sang a sort of music, and Celia tried to pick out the tune, because she knew that she knew that too. If she could remember it, she could sing along. And for some reason she couldn’t define, she wanted that more than she wanted anything else.
She headed toward the sound. It led her over a small hill and into a valley full of ferns and wild lilies. And then she saw it. The well.
A feeling of homecoming washed over her.
She woke.
Back in Becca’s house and on her bed, Celia lay in the moonlight, trying to recapture the dreamy feeling. She stared at the ceiling, but in her mind she saw the well. What did it look like? Stone—crumbly stone. It really didn’t even look like a well, so how did she know it was one? It looked like a pile of rocks in the middle of the woods.
But she knew what it was.
And she knew, although she couldn’t say why, that she had to find it.
#
Dust swirled through the attic. Celia kept attacking it with her broom, but the dust was definitely winning. Joel and Lacey were at the shop loading up the moving truck, but Celia, with a mop, broom and rags, was trying to clear a spot in her grandmother’s attic. Her granny was there to help.
But she wasn’t helping.
“Granny, it’s a 1970 toaster!”
Granny hugged the appliance to her chest. “It’s just the sort of thing that they’re always showing on that Antiques Round-up.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Well, give them ten or so years and it will be!”
“Granny, we don’t have ten or so years. We have maybe ten or so minutes before the truck arrives.” Celia cleared her throat. “Granny—what if money wasn’t a concern—would you still want out of your lease?”
Granny reluctantly set down the toaster and gave her a suspicious look. “But money is a concern. It’s always been a concern, and it’s even more of a concern now that your mother is sick.”
“I know…I know…but just pretend you had all the money in the world.”
“If I had all the money in the world, I wouldn’t be working in a dress shop.”
“I thought you loved the dress shop!”
“I did. Once. But now I’m just tired.” Granny picked up a battered, black sketchbook.
Below, a doorbell rang.
Celia gave a panicked squeak. “They’re here!”
“That was fast,” Granny said.
“Too fast,” Celia said, peering out the grimy window. A Porsche convertible, not a U-Haul van, stood in the driveway. Wishing she could see the front porch and the person ringing the bell, she debated. Waste valuable time by answering the door? Or stay in the attic to make sure that Granny didn’t loot the throw away pile?
The bell rang again.
Celia sighed and set down her mop. On her way out, she plucked the notebook out of her grandmother’s hands.
“Hey!” Granny complained. “That’s mine!”
“Granny, everything in this room is yours, just like everything in the shop is yours.” Celia shook the notebook at her. “We have to make room for what you really want…and need…by getting rid of what you don’t.”
Granny placed her hands on her hips. “Don’t lecture me, you red-haired buzzard!”
“I’m a buzzard?” Celia laughed as she headed down the stairs.
She found Jason West standing in the entry way. He made everything in the small space look fussy and old-ladyish. It had been years since Celia had even noticed the Hummels lining the shelves. Why did they now seem menacing in a cornball sort of way?
“What are you doing here?” Celia flinched away from her reflection in the gilded mirror hanging by the door. She didn’t need to see her messy ponytail, and dust smeared face. And neither did Jason West.
Jason narrowed his eyes at her. “Is that my tie?”
Heat flooded Celia’s cheeks. She had totally forgotten that she’d tied her ponytail with his tie. She pulled it loose and shoved it into her pocket. “Why would I have anything belonging to y
ou? You’re the one who takes my things, not the other way around.”
Jason looked suspicious and confused. “I think you have my tie.”
She took a deep breath. “What are you doing here? Did you come all the way over here to accuse me of theft?” Celia buried her hands in her pocket, shoving the tie down further.
“Joel told me about the move, and I came to help,” he finally said.
“Oh.” Celia bit her lip and tried to smooth back her hair. “Well, that’s nice of you. And totally unnecessary.”
He gave her a slow grin. “Why does your tone not match your words?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Look, I’m not the reason your grandmother walked from her lease. I didn’t steal anything from you.”
“Oh!” Granny squealed from the top of the stairs. “I knew I recognized your voice!” She smoothed down the front of her apron. “Come in, Jason, come in! Let me make you some tea.”
“Granny!” Celia shook her head. “No tea. This isn’t a party.”
“Well, it could be.” Granny stomped down the stairs. “Your life could be a whole lot more fun if you just let a few giggles out.”
“This is not a giggling situation,” Celia said.
“Thanks to me?” Jason asked.
Celia shot him a look that she hoped was as dirty as her fingernails.
Jason just grinned back at her, his gaze traveling over her Jack Johnson t-shirt and stopping at her cut-off jeans.
“Hey, what’s that?” he asked.
Celia crossed her arms over her chest. “What?”
“That.” He pointed at the notebook.
Celia looked at it for the first time. It looked like a sketchbook. She flipped it open and the pages fluttered. Dust drifted toward the ceiling, carrying the faintly familiar smell of lavender.
“My mother was an artist,” Granny said, taking her time coming down the stairs. “I bet that was hers.”
A drawing caught and held Celia’s attention. She blinked at the well she had seen in her dream. It suddenly seemed as if she could hear the gurgling spring and hear the trace of music.
“I’ve been looking for that,” Jason said.