With his eyes still wide and mouth agape, Cotton was too stunned to protest. Instead, without taking his eyes from Liza, he stood, wiped his hands on a napkin and trotted over to the filing cabinet. He continued to watch Liza as he reached blindly into the drawer and pulled out an application form for a temporary card. He got the right form on the first try without even looking, which made Liza shake her head. She’d known all along that he could issue a card to her.
Neither Liza nor Cotton spoke another word to the other.
Ten minutes later Liza held a new library card in her hand. It was still warm from the laminating machine.
However, she’d somehow lost all interest in checking out any books.
***
So far the day had been a bit of a bust. So far she’d gotten herself riled up by her ex, destroyed some of her favorite bottles, freaked out her neighbor, and jumped onto the town librarian in front of a room full of people.
She hoped none of those things would hurt her place as resident healing therapist and day spa owner in Kudzu Valley.
To her annoyance, she’d gone to that buffet on Cotton’s T-shirt and the waitress had refused to bring her a drink. Instead, she’d glared at Liza and made someone else wait on her.
And the fried chicken hadn’t even been that good.
“Well, I can’t go home,” she muttered to herself as she turned onto Main Street. There was nothing for her to do at the house. She’d already unpacked, didn’t have any books, and the internet guy wasn’t scheduled for another three days. Back in Boston she might have dropped in on a friend or gone to the movies.
Well, that’s what she would’ve done before the separation and divorce filings. Her friends had all kind of scattered after they’d learned she and Mode had zero chance of reconciliation, as though the divorce was an illness and might rub off on them. Besides, they’d been his friends anyway. She didn’t win them in the custody battle.
Of course, she had zero friends in Kudzu Valley and the nearest cinema was an hour away.
“I’d like a cocktail please,” she said to her steering wheel. “Oh yeah, can’t get one here!”
She leaned over and turned the radio on, but the new artist was lauding the benefits of living in a small town and claiming that anyone who didn’t appreciate it was just wrong.
Liza wasn’t in the mood to rejoice in small-town life at the moment. Instead, she turned the music off and stared down the quiet little street in front of her, trying to decide what her next move was. She was at the greenlight that would allow her to turn left to go home or right to go eat somewhere and she was suddenly struck by a lack of motivation. It had been a long day.
Liza sat through three lights before finally moving. It was fine, though. Not a single vehicle drove in either direction the entire time she sat at the greenlight.
The town only had three fast food restaurants: a Taco Bell, Hardees, and McDonald’s. Mode would’ve complained for the rest of the day if she’d so much as looked at a menu with him in the car with her. He took great pride in the raw vegan diet he’d been trying for the past year. That was one thing Liza couldn’t get on board with, though. Sometimes she just needed a steak.
Now, however, nothing sounded better than a McChicken and caramel mocha. Cholesterol levels and waistline be damned. It wasn’t like anyone was looking at her.
“Not like I’m trying to impress anyone around here,” she sang cheerfully to herself as she zipped through the line.
She had her food beside her and was about to pull back out of the parking lot when the red sign caught her eye. “Well, hot damn!”
The town might not have had a Walmart or a cinema, but it did have a Red Box attached to the front of its McDonald’s. She closed her eyes and thanked whatever franchise owner had the foresight to include such a beacon. There were few things Liza Jane enjoyed more than renting low-budget horror movies starring people nobody had ever heard of–Redbox’s specialty.
Armed with some ghastly looking zombie films and a romance tearjerker from an author she didn’t like to admit she enjoyed, Liza happily got back behind her wheel and zoomed away. She could handle another lonely night in the house as long as she had zombies and romance to keep her company.
“But not The Wizard of Oz,” she told her caramel mocha before taking a sip. “That witch and those creepy-assed monkeys scared the hell out of me as a child and I still haven’t gotten over it.”
Liza Jane found her heightened anticipation of movie night at the house wearing off about five miles outside of town, however. It was barely 4:00 pm and she was already finished for the day, all ready to head back home and barricade herself in for the evening.
“Girl, you are one cat and tattered bathrobe short of being pathetic,” she chided herself, shaking her head in disgust. “You need to figure something else out.”
Up ahead, off to her left, she could see a sign that read “Lake Wilgreen” and without putting much thought into it, she made a quick exit from the country highway. She liked the water. Maybe she needed to hang out by it for awhile and regroup. It was important to get to know all the elemental signs, and not just yours.
Right away, the panorama view of the mountains on either side of her took her breath away. “Okay, now this is what I’m talking about,” she said happily, trying to keep her eyes on the road and look at the same time. “I’m a country song!”
For awhile she’d been listening to songs about chilling on dirt roads, going for drives and parking on the dirt roads, spending the evening at the river side, having bonfire parties with friends…
There weren’t many choices in terms of radio channels at the moment, though. It was either Top 40 (and she wasn’t really digging the current trends), an out-of-place classical channel, farm talk radio, or what sounded like an excited preacher who never stopped to take a breath and ended every word with “a.” Something was either wrong with the country station or her antenna; it wouldn’t come in.
Liza did, however, have a stack of CDs in the passenger seat. Without taking her eyes off the road she let her mind shuffle through the titles until she landed on sunglasses-wearing Eric Church. Still dividing her energy between traversing the narrow country lane and opening the jewel case, she didn’t break concentration until the CD had floated up from the seat next to her and dove into the awaiting slot. Only then did she release her breath and relax.
Soon, the lyrics of “Springsteen” were pumping through her car and, with her windows down, she sang along as loudly as she could, flat notes and tone deafness be damned.
“Huh, this is a lot farther than I thought,” Liza murmured to herself as that song ended and faded into two more. She was enjoying the drive, but she’d been on it for awhile. Not much farther and she’d be in another county. Up ahead, Liza saw a gravel road and pulled into it. It didn’t look like it went to a house or anything so she didn’t think she was blocking a driveway.
Liza didn’t have a map or a GPS so, with nobody else around, she turned the radio down, cleared her mind, and closed her eyes. She envisioned the road she was on and forced her eyes to travel down the winding pavement. She took in more barns, the rolling farmland, towering green mountains off in the distance, more burnt-out trailers and old farm houses…but she didn’t see a lake of any kind. She traveled all the way to the end where the road literally made a dead end into a barn that was leaning precariously to one side.
“Well. Damn,” she muttered. Now she’d have to turn around and go home, her little adventure over before it had begun. She was definitely going to stop somewhere and get a county map. She needed to learn about where she lived.
Still lost in her own thoughts, Liza had no awareness of the outside world and jumped when the hand tapped at her window.
The man who stood by her car, his knuckles inches from her window and a worried expression on his face, was in his mid-to-late thirties. He was tall, gorgeous, and more man than she’d seen in a long time.
His thin frame didn’t
look like it held an ounce of body fat. She might have been able to fit into his jeans (and wouldn’t that have been fun) but what she could see was all muscle. His biceps were bulging under his stained white T-shirt and his rugged jeans molded perfectly to his strong-looking legs. He wore what appeared to be a real leather belt whose ends were held together by a shiny silver buckle–a picture of a horse head. More cowboy than Godfather.
She could see shocks of reddish hair poking out from under a baseball cap. The same fine hints of red were woven throughout the stubble on his darkly tanned face. He had perfectly straight, white teeth, although his mouth was currently set in a grimace of concern.
“You okay?” he hollered. His voice was muffled by the window.
Feeling silly, she rolled it down and turned her engine off. “Yeah, sorry,” she apologized. “Am I in your driveway?”
She saw a four-wheeler parked a few feet from her car. Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t heard it pull up.
“This just goes up to the barn and livestock pond. I was headed across the way to my house. You having car trouble?”
“Oh, no, sorry. Just got, er, confused for a minute. I thought there was a lake out this way?”
It was his turn to look confused now. He scratched his head through his cap in bewilderment and then broke out into laughter. “Oh! You mean Wilgreen. Well, you see, that’s kind of a joke around here.”
“What?”
“Yeah, see, Clementine Wilgreen lives about a mile from here. He’s eighty years old. Played the lottery, BINGO, whatever you got almost all his life. Said he was going to win one day and buy himself a big mansion on a lake.”
“Yeah?” Liza prodded. A man named Clementine?
“Yeah, so anyway, he got himself a lottery ticket about five years ago. Told everyone it was the one. Went around town bragging about all the stuff he was going to buy when he was wealthy. Even filed divorce from his wife so that the old broad wouldn’t get all his money when it come in.”
“Did he win?”
The man grinned. “Sorta. He won $500. I guess that’s a lot, especially considering he lives on Social Security. Hired a guy to come out and build him a pond and now he stocks it with catfish. That took all his money. Some of the fellows down at the Elk Lodge felt sorry for him about the divorce so they put that sign up for him. You know, so that he can finally say he lives in a house on a lake.”
Although she felt foolish for following a sign to a lake that didn’t exist, Liza Jane laughed in spite of herself.
“That’s just some small town humor for you I guess,” he blushed. “You’re not from here, right?”
“How did you guess?”
“The accent. The hair. The Massachusetts license plates…”
Liza found herself blushing now. “Well, I’m originally from here. I’m living in my grandparents’ old house.”
“Oh yeah. Rosebud and Paine. They were good people. Awfully sorry they’re gone. So you’re their granddaughter?”
“Well, one of them. But you won’t catch Bryar down here any time soon. She lives in Brooklyn and to her taking a vacation or leaving town means going to Manhattan.”
The man didn’t look like he knew what in the world she was talking about but he smiled politely all the same.
“I’m Liza Jane Higginbotham, by the way,” she said, holding out her hand to him.
“Colt Bluevine.”
His hand was rough and warm as it engulfed hers. She winced as a bolt of electricity shot through her arm and made her fingers tingle. Colt jumped back a little, pulling his hand away. “Sorry about that,” he said, wrinkling his brow. “I must’a shocked you or something. Could be my side by side over there. She’s cranky.”
Liza Jane didn’t think it was the four wheeler’s fault, though. She’d felt that bolt before, seen that flash of blue light.
Colt Bluevine was going to mean something to her, or already had in a time neither one of them could recall.
She’d have to investigate this further.
***
After three hard, cold, mind-numbing (and finger numbing since there was no heat in there) hours of work she had three separate piles: the boxes of things she couldn’t use but wasn’t ready to get rid of yet (those would go to the attic), the things she could use somewhere in the house (like the toilet paper), and the garbage. The whole left side of the room was cleared out, giving workers ample room to get to the window and do what they needed to do.
Her next project was to set up a space for herself.
She knew that she should really be focusing on the business that she was about to open, especially since she hadn’t gotten the workers in there yet or even seen it empty herself, but there was nothing she could do to speed up that timeline. All she could do was distract herself at home.
Liza had spotted an extra television stand in the guest room and this she lugged across the hall on a rag rug, pulling the rug gently on the edge with a strong grip, careful not to scratch the floor. The television stand was solid oak and much heavier than she’d assumed. Twice, she’d pulled with all her might, really putting her legs into it like she knew you were supposed to, only to find her fingers slipping from the rug so that she was thrown backwards, her body sliding across the hall and hitting the door to her grandparents’ old room.
On more than one occasion she’d stopped what she was doing and took stock of the situation at hand, shaking her head in disbelief and frustration. She was alone. She had little strength. She had something that needed to be done and nobody to help her do it.
She was a witch.
Granted, Liza was a witch whose abilities might not be all-encompassing but they were still present and formidable. Couldn’t she just move it? Just lift it up, watch it sail gracefully through the air by invisible hands, and then wait (unharmed and breathing properly) as it settled into the place where it was meant to go? She’d fixed her porch, after all. There wasn’t a real difference, right?
Liza, who had always had trouble saying no to her own arguments, raised her hands before her and closed her eyes, ready to move forward with the spell when she suddenly took a step back and stomped her foot.
“No! I will not do that. The porch was for my self-esteem, because I’d had a hard day. I can’t fall back on this every time something’s hard. I will take care of it myself,” she swore, wiping a grubby hand across her cheek. “Other women live alone and do this crap. I will, too.”
So, she’d gone at it again, cursing the unit and her foolish pride.
Once it was centered against the wall she slumped to the floor, panting.
“I seriously need to start working out,” she gasped as the beads of sweat rolled down her cheeks. Then she began to laugh, an almost hysterical sound that carried throughout the house, disturbing the small animals that had made homes inside the walls. On and on she laughed, until she fell over on her side and clutched her stomach in agony.
“I hurt and I’m hungry,” she laughed-sobbed. “I’m sore, I’m hungry, and I don’t have anyone to help me with either one of those things.”
Her mouth felt like the Mojave Desert inside. She thought she very seriously could’ve killed someone for a drink of something–anything. Her hair, normally her pride and joy, hung in dirty, limp clumps in her face, broken free from its bobby pins. And in her exhaustion, soreness, happiness, and hunger she thought of Mode and brought to mind the many times she’d been in bed with the flu or something and he’d brought her soup and orange juice to her in bed.
Not all the memories were bad. She didn’t want to just think of him in a bad way; she’d loved him once, after all.
But why did the good memories hurt worse?
The TV stand might have been heavy but it was perfect for its intended use. The top, once the dust and cobwebs were cleared, would hold her altar cloth and handmade rosewood box with the Swarovski crystal encrusted pentagram (a girl always needed a little bling). The VCR shelf underneath (the stand was old enough to remember the
pre-DVD player days) would store her “props” as she liked to call them: small boxes of candles, herbs, stones, and oils.
Liza didn’t use a lot of props for her rituals but she did like her fire and scents. She thought a little color, heat, and fragrant aroma made things festive on the right occasion. Sometimes the ritual of setting it all up, organizing what she needed, and then using them in the correct order and for the proper reasons was soothing and allowed her to focus more clearly on her task at hand.
Liza Jane had always enjoyed the drama of certain things, even before she was a practicing witch.
Chapter Four
“NOW YOU DON’T have to make a decision right now, but we’d sure like to have you on that committee,” Effie Trilby assured Liza for what felt like the hundredth time.
Liza had officially been open for one week. During their sessions, Liza had heard several clients complain about the “good old boy network” that supposedly ran Morel County. Liza didn’t know anything about that, but she did know that Kudzu Valley’s mayor was the size of your average ten-year-old, a seventy-two year old grandmother of thirteen and one of the most intimidating people she’d ever met.
Effie, who had been waiting impatiently for Liza at her own front door when she arrived that morning, was not only town mayor but also served as the president of the Morel County Historical Society, Vice President of the Women’s Club, Treasurer of the Ladies Gardening Club, and chair of the annual Morel County Chestnut Tree Festival–held the first weekend of August.
After her brief introduction and generic “welcome to the community” speech, both said while they stood in the cold on the sidewalk and Liza struggled with the lock, Effie’d wasted no time in getting to the real point of her visit. There was no beating around the bush with this one and she’d let Liza know right away that she was not only invited to join the groups, but expected to.
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