Chapter 1
It’s hard to say which has more ingredients: a New Orleans Hand Grenade or a case of heartbreak.
As Emma stared at the bottom of her third glass, she was pretty sure heartbreak was more complicated. The bright neon green drink perfectly reflected her mood. Green.
Not the green of grass or leaves or even the bright green of freshly picked beans.
But a flashy, ugly, neon green that could never occur in nature.
Emma was angry. Depressed. Furious. She hadn’t had a significant vision in weeks. No flashings of insights. No sense of the future.
The world was a flat and ugly place and she had created her own hell in it.
“C’mon, Emms,” her sister Amy said over the angst-filled lyrics and distorted guitar sound of the 1990s-grunge playing in the background. Amy took the empty glass and put in the sink. “Have some water and let’s go into the living room.”
“I don’t wanna,” Emma said, sounding more like a stubborn toddler than a grown woman of twenty-five.
“Yes,” Amy said with a stern eyebrow raised. “You do.”
“Any more left in the pitcher,” Emma slurred. Wisps of chestnut brown hair fell out of the loose bun she wore and framed her normally bright blue eyes. Tonight, they were faded with liquor and heartbreak.
“No,” Amy lied. “It’s all gone. Where did you even get this glass?” she asked as she raised the distinctive cup to examine it.
“Senior year of college,” Emma said as she stumbled and tripped while following her sister to the couch.
“And the recipe?”
“The Internet is an amazing invention,” she slurred. Amy grinned at her sister’s drunken lisp.
After Amy got her sister seated and sipping on a bottle of water, she returned to the kitchen and began cleaning up the mess. She took a cautious sip of the bright green drink before wrinkling her nose and dumping it and the remainder of a pitcher down the sink.
“You lied to me,” Emma yelled, weaving like a drunken sailor into the kitchen. “There was more in the pitcher”
“Well, it’s empty now,” Amy said. She washed both cup and pitcher and left them in the drain. “Come on, you’re going to have a wicked headache, Emms. Drink more water.”
“I don’t wanna,” Emma said. Her arms crossed beneath her chest and her chin jutted out with a stubborn tilt.
“Then tell me why you’re drunk at 7 p.m. on Friday night.”
Emma laughed. Because if she didn’t laugh she would cry. “Don’t wanna talk about that, either.”
So, Amy sat. And waited. Either the Evans Eyes would kick in and she’d know the answer or she would wait out Emma’s drunken stubbornness.
Emma groaned and ran her fingers through her hair, knocking out the last of the pins that held her bun. “I screwed up, Ames.”
“I figured,” Amy said. “You know you can tell me anything.”
“I can’t. I’m the older sister. I’m the one who should have her life together.”
“Apparently not.”
“Ouch.”
Amy shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, I don’t even have a life.”
“You have a life.”
Amy raised one eyebrow. “I help Brooke with her homework and you at the Breakfast Club. Hardly enough to fill a blog post, let alone a life.”
“Promise me when you get one, you’ll tell me everything.”
“Promise.” She held her pinky out and Emma took it in hers in their age-old gesture.
“Gotta’ watch out for those pinky swears,” she said. “Between you and Honor, mine are taken up,” Emma said, thinking about Honor, her best friend from high school.
Amy smiled. “Maybe the Parkers will make you an honorary member of their family.” She said, referring to one of the other long-term families in Harper’s Mill. Everyone knew a Parker never told a lie and couldn’t break a promise.
“Bah, it’s hard enough being an Evans. I couldn’t even imagine being a Parker.”
There were seven original families in Harper’s Mill, referred to as the Old Families. All were descended from the seven O’Donnell sisters who had been rumored to be light mages. Every person in their line had some dusting of magical power.
The Parkers couldn’t tell a lie and never broke a promise. Harper’s were gifted with luck. The Race family had an ecological empathy that made their land grow and produce even in the harshest of conditions. The Simpson men were cursed. They produced a male heir but were never able to hold onto a wife. The Lights were a tight knit clan but had the gift of psychometry. When someone was lost, especially on the Appalachian trail, the police knew they could call on a Light. They were able to find almost anyone. The Spencers had sugar sight, the ability to see sugar crystals dancing in the air. And then, there was the Evans family.
An Evans woman had a natural affinity with healing herbs and essential oils and the gift of precognition.
“I was seven I had my first knowing,” Emma said. To the untrained eye, it was a change of subject. For Emma, it was an indirect path to the subject.
Amy nodded and remained quiet, hoping her silence would encourage her sister’s story.
“Do you remember Mr. Tristan?”
“The assistant principal?”
“Yeah, he was by the time you got there. He was a second-grade teacher at the time, though.”
“Okay. You had a premonition about Mr. Tristan?”
“My eyes began glowing, you know how they do.”
“Neon Evans blue,” Amy said. “We should totally copyright it and market it. It would make a great paint color.”
Emma rolled her eyes at her sister and took another sip of water. “What was it grandma used to say? With great power comes great responsibility.”
“That was Spiderman’s uncle,” Amy corrected.
“Same thing,” Emma returned. Emma began playing in the condensation ring around her glass and humming a song that was both out of date and out of tune.
“So, Mr. Tristan,” Amy prompted. At this rate, it would be morning before she got the story out of her sister.
“Oh. Yeah, right. Anyway, I walked into Mr. Tristan’s second-grade class at Harper Mill Elementary School and I felt my eyes start to glow. And I knew, just absolutely knew Mr. Tristan’s wife was having a baby.”
“Uh oh.” Amy didn’t need to use her own gift of sight to realize where this was going. Everyone in town knew that Mr. Tristan’s divorce was epically crazy. In addition to the usual back and forth, it had included no less than four misdemeanor charges, a small fire, and two overnight stays in the town jail cell. To top it off, the rumor mill had run overtime with the grist that Mrs. Tristan’s pregnancy was not, in fact, due to Mr. Tristan’s efforts.
“The rest of the year, Mr. Tristan treated me like a pariah. At age seven! He never seemed to forgive me for my childish chatter following that first premonition. And, naturally, it went rampant through the halls of HMES I had inherited the Evans gift of knowing. “
“Was it bad after that?” Amy asked, thinking about her own experiences after her first premonition.
“That was when I learned that responsibility doesn’t come with a guidebook. And too often it comes at the cost of friendships.”
“I know.”
“You, too?”
“I think that’s part of our gift and curse,” Amy said. “Precog comes at a price.”
“I lost a lot of friends,” Emma whispered, weighed down by the confession.
“Which ones?” Amy asked.
“All of them,” Emma said. “Until Honor and her mom moved to town.”
“You had us.”
“It wasn’t the same.”
“I know, but still. It’s more than a lot of people get.” Amy shrugged. “To be fair, it’s probably intimidating for other people to be around us when we can see their future or tell if they’re lying.”
Emma sighed, her mind and heart heavy. “I guess.” She blinked slowly and curled into her sister’s warmth.
“Is that why you got drunk tonight?” Amy asked, stroking her sister’s soft chestnut hair.
Emma looked at her younger sister and for a moment the cloud of alcohol lifted and pain shone in her bright blue eyes. “I messed up big time,” she said, tears filling her eyes and rolling in heavy waves down her cheeks. Amy hushed her and hugged her and let her sister cry it out.
“It can’t be that bad.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“About what? From where I’m sitting, your life is pretty sweet. You’ve got amazing sisters, a kick-ass brother, parents who love you, and a best friend who would walk through fire for you. Or at least bake you an apple pie.” Emma giggled through her tears.
“I lost my gift,” Emma said with a wail. She buried her face in the crook of her sister’s shoulder as she cried out from the loss. “I’m like half gone,” she said. “The world is so flat.”
Amy’s mouth opened in shock. “What? How? How is that even possible? It’s our gift. It can’t be lost.”
“I haven’t had a vision in weeks,” Emma admitted. “What if it’s gone for good?”
“Have you talked to anyone about this? Maybe another one of the Old Families has heard of this.”
Emma hiccupped. “I think David made me lose it.”
Amy frowned. “How could David make you lose it? He loves you.”
Emma waved her hand. “Bah. A crush. That’s it,” she said.
Amy hugged her sister closer. “No, Emms. He loves you. Even if you can’t see it, I do.”
“I can’t see David,” Emma admitted softly.
“That’s funny. Because every time I turn around, you two have your lips locked together and it looks pretty damn cozy from my perspective.”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Emma said, waving her hand. “I’ve dated before. Always, I can see them. See enough into the future to know if they’ll hurt me. If it’s worth risking my heart and falling in love. But with David, it’s like… I don’t know. A postcard of Hawaii after you’ve seen the real thing. Everything is flat and two dimensional. It scares me.”
“Emms,” Amy chided, cradling her sister’s face. “You know that’s not the way our gift works. We can’t rely just on premonition before making a decision. At some point, we need to cut loose and jump into the abyss. And if we’re hurt, well. The sad truth is, humans have an amazing ability to recover from a broken heart. Precog doesn’t prevent heartbreak.”
“But what if mine is gone forever?”
“It won’t be,” Amy said. “Whatever is wrong, I’m sure it can be fixed.”
“Maybe.” Emma rose to refill her water glass and make a pot of chamomile tea. “Do you know Mandy Jones?”
Amy shrugged, following her sister into the kitchen. “I went to school with her.”
“April, her mother, had a gift, you know. I don’t think she’s one of the old families or anything, but she could cut hair and transform anyone who sat in her chair. From pretty or cute or even a little plain she had the power to turn them into an amazing beauty.”
“That’s weird,” Amy commented. “Violet told me Mandy enrolled in beauty school this past fall.” Violet was her best friend in the world and she missed her terribly. Violet’s husband was currently stationed out of Norfolk and Violet had left Harper’s Mill to join him.
The kettle let out a high-pitched screech as it boiled and Emma poured the water over the leaves arranged in the bottom of each cup. “When April married Judge Jones she lost her powers. “
Amy waved off the implications of Emma’s comments. “You think if you stay with David you’ll lose your gift? That’s why you think your gift is gone?”
“Union with the wrong man can destroy a woman’s gift,” Emma said, eyes filling with tears. “I don’t know if I could do it. Until I came to the blind area that David triggered, I never really considered how deeply engrained our gifts are. But I don’t know how other people do it, only seeing in two dimensions.”
“That’s stupid, Emms. Violet’s gifts have grown beyond anything she had here in Harper’s Mill. She’s been working at a nursery and sent me pictures. Flowers are gorgeous. There’s no disease. The fruit is heavy and ripe. Her boss said he’s never had so many compliments on his produce before.”
“Union with the right man can enhance a gift,” Emma clarified. “Brick and Violet were meant to be together. Everyone knew that but them. Her gift is expanding.”
“Oh. Well, newsflash. You and David are meant to be together, too. Apparently, everyone knows that but you.”
Emma nodded, shamefaced. “I can’t do it, Amy. If this two-dimensional view is how other people see the world, I couldn’t do it all the time. Where is the color and depth and vibrancy?”
“Have you considered that refusing the union with the right man might ruin our gifts, too?”
Emma gasped. “I never thought of that.” Dawn crested over the trees, pinks and purples and blues radiating into the horizon. “We talked all night.”
“Yep,” Amy agreed. “And today is gleaning day,” she reminded her sister. “I guess you can ask him yourself if he shows up at Race’s Orchards.”
Emma shook her head. The wings of exhaustion beat at her and fine lines of weariness and heartbreak showed on the delicate skin around her eyes. “I’m going to take my cup of tea and go to bed,” she announced.
Amy arched an eyebrow at her sister in disbelief. “Seriously? Eden is giving everything to the food banks and you don’t want to help us pick it?”
“I was up all night. I’m probably more than a little drunk. I am definitely hung over. I don’t want to see anyone feeling like next day leftovers.”
Amy simply held her pose and waited. “Take a shower and then let’s go. You did this to yourself, Emma Evans.”
Emma tried to stare down her sister but realized it was a hopeless cause. Amy was right and they both knew it.
With a resigned sigh, Emma headed to the bathroom for a quick shower. She grumbled at her sister’s assessment but didn’t fight her. She wasn’t the type to turn her back on a cause. She had an orchard to help glean.
Chapter 2
The sky was a clear, crisp blue with only a few puffy pure white clouds marring the skyline. Emma’s breath caught and fogged in the air, creating a delicate crystalized mist. She smiled and ran her hand through it, scattering the particles into the fall air.
Even fall was magical in Harper’s Mill.
Eden Race stood on an overturned milk crate. “Thanks for coming,” she said, her voice pulled into the fall wind until it carried to the collected group of friends. “I know it’s a cold morning and It’s early so, seriously. A round for all of you.” She applauded her thanks for their help. “For those of you who helped back in August with the potato gleaning, we were able to send almost five hundred pounds of food to area food banks.” A collective cheer went up from the crowd.
“Today, we’re working in the pumpkin field.” Her hand outstretched to indicate the low twists of vines and bright orange pumpkins. “First, be very careful. The vines are easy to trip over. Secondly, we have crates at the ends of every row. You just need to put the pumpkins there. Any mushy pumpkins, leave alone. We’ll leave them for the deer and then till them under for fertilizer.”
“What do you do with them? Thanksgiving was last week.”
Was that David’s voice? Emma arched her neck, trying to figure out who had spoken but she couldn’t see over the crowd. At least the brisk morning air cleared her head, stung her cheeks and helped keep her alert because she felt like crap. Her head was pounding like sound waves ou
t of a subwoofer. Nausea threatened to ground her and she remembered why she didn’t drink very often.
“Several things,” Eden said. “First, baked pumpkin is delicious and nutritious. You all should try it some time.” A general laugh went up in the crowd. “Seriously, folks, all the winter vegetables are really good. You should try them sometime if you haven’t already,” she reminded everyone with a gentle laugh.
“Secondly, several pounds go to the food banks and there are some families who will boil and can them. And thirdly, we take whatever is left to the large animal rescue. Horses and goats enjoy them.” Eden looked over the crowd once more for any additional questions. “We try to let nothing go to waste at Race Orchards and we have been providing food to the people of and around Harper’s Mill for over two hundred years. I want to thank all of you for coming. Volunteers may not get paid in traditional dollars and cents, but you all do important work.”
A round of applause went up among the volunteers. “And I want to send a huge thank you out to our own Emma and Thorne Evans for providing us with the lunch we’ll be serving promptly at noon. Now, go pick us some pumpkins!”
Knowing needed to come with an instructional booklet, Emma decided as she stared at the pumpkin. And a pair of painkillers, too.
Emma sighed and picked the pumpkin up. She only had herself to blame. The headache was her own damn fault and there was nothing to do except push through and finish cleaning up the pumpkins.
She missed seeing things in vibrant color. Missed the dimensions that were as distant as her precog.
At half past eleven, a food truck pulled into view. She dusted the dirt off her hands using her denim clad bottom and walked over to talk to her brother Thorne.
“You’re filthy,” he announced with a grin. His eyes narrowed. “And hungover?”
“Shh,” Emma said. “I’m faking it, Thorne. Work with me.”
His devilish blue eyes glinted with humor. “I’ll take care of the food and orders,” he said. “Go wash up and then you get the chalkboard set up and print the menu.”
Brother and sister worked together and if Emma watched the fields, searching for David’s lean muscular form, well. Only she seemed to be aware.
Honeysuckle and Roses (Harper's Mill Book 5) Page 1