Miranda is already squirming before she can join her family on the two small sofas. Interestingly enough, she doesn’t sit on the sofa with her husband. She sits with a little boy who watches me with eyes too guarded for his age. Wearing his green striped pajamas, he looks frail hiding in his mother’s embrace.
Chad and Bella are staring at the couch across from them as if daring either of the other two to speak first. Miranda is whispering into the little boy’s hair, ignoring them. It’s a cold stalemate with me awkwardly stuck in the middle of their passive war. On most nights, I enjoy watching a family self-destruct, but this is a bit much even for me.
“Want to tell me about the little girl?” I ask with hopes that attaching bells to the elephant in the room will make someone acknowledge it.
Miranda’s whole-body tenses when hearing my question. “Ben, let’s go ahead and get in bed.”
Her attention is for the little boy she helps from the couch, but her eyes are all for me. It’s not the first time tonight I’ve been gifted a glare of anger. With my choices tonight, it won’t be the last time, either. I still have to face GiGi.
The room still wears its blanket of silence as the two leave. It’s tucked securely around us leaving no edges but cradling their raw nerves with false comfort. Like the fake perfume from the air freshener, it sits heavy, smothering the ability to fully breathe. Only when Miranda and Ben are safely away does conversation begin again.
“Can’t we just show her?” Bella whispers to her father.
Chad slips to his nervous habit of clearing his throat when words unsettle him. “We don’t even know if it’s true.”
“Dad…” Bella lets the unsaid words trail off, but her eyes hold what she doesn’t say. Reading her posture, it’s easy to see she is tired of being stuck in the middle, too.
Chad temples his fingers to hold his suddenly heavy head. “Your mother,” he starts, but stops to look where I am sitting in an overly stuffed chair. “What is it exactly you do? I’ve heard the rumors about your family my whole life, no insult intended, but what is it exactly you are going to do?”
“You mean if I find out your wife has the undead kept as a pet?” I don’t mesh my words. It’s late, making my filter thin. “I’ll put it back to rest where it belongs.”
His eyes do a quick dance around the room as he weighs his thoughts. He’s trying to choose his words carefully, afraid of what ripples he’ll make with the wrong choice. “I haven’t seen her,” he whispers to some far-off point in the room.
“But?” I ask, trying to force his conversation.
“But there are things I cannot explain.”
“Like?”
“She redid a room downstairs in the basement. She kept it locked, but just recently when Bella started talking about you, she emptied the room while we were all out.”
“Then there’s Becky’s room.” Bella, too, is verbally encouraging her father but for Bella the dam is broke. “She yelled at me when I went in there after her death. I was going to clean it up, but she went irate when I moved the toys around on the shelves. Last week she just upped and boxed the whole room, but we don’t know where the boxes are. Then there’s the weird late night grocery shopping and the random trips with just her and Ben. Ben won’t even talk about where they go. In fact, Ben doesn’t talk much at all anymore.”
Chad holds up a hand to slow the steady rushing of words from his daughter. “Things have been a bit off, to say the least.”
So far all I’ve heard are examples of grief, mood swings, and someone trying to hide their outburst. “People do weird things when they lose someone. What makes you think any of this has to do with something I handle?”
“The call from the cemetery.” Chad’s eyes are still far away. “Someone dug up our child.”
I’ve heard a lot of explanations for why someone calls me. Sometimes the long laundry list of people they have suspicion of, or even for, can run for hours with their demands for a curse or a hex before I stop them. There’s the normal need due to greed and the constant one last conversation, but this is a first. My face must show it.
Chad does his throat clearing again before he explains. “The cemetery called one morning when I was driving to work. Asked me if I could swing by before heading into the office,” he pauses shrugging. “I thought it was more paperwork or something of that nature. When I got there, they took me out to her grave.”
Chad’s eyes are everywhere but here in this room at this moment when his words fail him. He’s seeing that day again. Whatever he saw there still haunts him.
Glancing quickly to Bella, he pulls himself back to the present to tell me, “The whole area was disturbed. The flowers we had just placed were covered with dirt. Someone had dug the grave the night before and then hastily recovered it.”
“I don’t remember hearing about this around town. How did this escape the local gossip?” I ask him, pretty confident such a scandal would have been plastered across every paper the town prints.
“We agreed to keep it quiet. The sheriff was afraid it would cause too much panic. He said he would look into it privately.”
“How did I miss this round of investigation?” My tone isn’t altogether friendly. When you live in a town this small, the police normally know who to ask questions to when certain things happen. The fact they never showed to knock on our door, shocking.
“You had an alibi.” Chad at least has the decency to blush, confirming my thoughts.
“Now that you know it wasn’t me, you think your wife dug up your child?” My tone still isn’t friendly.
Chad stumbles over his words unsure of which way to answer.
“Yes!” Bella isn’t unsure of hers.
“Yes, they do.” Miranda’s voice cuts through the living space. “The sheriff even pulled me in to question me. Me!”
“Well did you?” I ask the outraged woman.
“Of course not! Why would I?”
“Other than the constant fighting, the crying when you think no one is watching you cook dinner, the talking to a pink bunny-slash-bear looking stuffed animal?” I ask her, bringing forth all the images my magical snooping told me from earlier, but it’s what I ask next which sets her off completely. “Or the fact you keep toting little girl’s clothing to your car at three a.m.?”
Miranda looks to Chad and Bella before returning her shocked expression to me. Part of her is wondering how much they have told me about her. The other part of her is wondering about how much the town has told her about me. Both are fair. Neither are completely accurate.
“Or maybe it’s how Ben, her twin, right, can’t stop looking over his shoulder as if Becky will still be there?” I tilt my head with my question, trying to look supportive and less accusatory. “If Becky’s ghost was here, I would see her, but since I don’t, I imagine he’s used to seeing her in a different way?”
“You’re insane!” Miranda hisses.
“Actually, I’m not. Having been formally tested as a child by people with the same suspicions of me as you, I can assure you, I’m perfectly sane.”
“I want her out of my house!” Miranda is no longer talking to me. Those hate-filled eyes are now all for her husband and the daughter who brought me here.
“Let’s just hear her out?” Chad asks of his wife. “She’s the only one who can help us.”
Sitting like the unspoken stain on a perfect rug, I wait for tempers to return to a somewhat idea of normal before speaking. “Tell me where Becky is supposed to be, and I’ll stop by there tomorrow.”
“What’s that going to do?” Miranda asks.
I can hear the guarded tone in her voice. It clashes with the hopeful look held in Bella’s eyes.
“I can try to feel if it was magic or vandalism.” I explain, “If it was magic, I can help. If it was vandalism, I can’t help.”
“It’s a start.” Chad is desperately trying to extend an olive branch to his wife. The branch may
be splintered, but it’s not completely broken. Not yet.
Miranda only acknowledges her husband with a slight twitch; a motion so fast with her eyebrow only years of marriage could decode it.
“It’s settled then,” I state, standing, eager to be free from this fragile, matrimonial bliss. “I’ll let you know what I find.”
I don’t wait for the guided tour towards the front door. Besides, it isn’t Miranda who is following me out. It’s Bella.
“When will you know?” Bella asks me with a fake smile and a hushed voice so as to not be noticed as exchanging words.
“Tomorrow.” I’m returning her smile in a game we have both learned in our years of working with the public.
“Not tonight?” Bella is making a lot of noise opening the door to cover our conversation.
“It’s already late. Police tend to get antsy when they see cars at a cemetery this hour. Especially mine.”
“She’s at the Southern Respite location. The back garden area.”
Of course she is, I think to myself, hating small town life. For Bella I smile and nod letting her know I understand.
The porch lights are off before I even step off the first step. Miranda obviously doesn’t want the upper-class neighborhood to see me leaving from her home. I don’t blame her. Most of those who call upon me meet me in secret, or at least in a less than raving reviews location. They don’t want to be seen. Miranda is no different.
She’s the type who comes to GiGi’s store, Great Hexpecations, under the guise of shock and offense that such a place exists in their community. She’s also the type who leaves with a rather large bag of bought items with hopes to keep her frenemies in check and her husband on a tighter leash. She may even pull the items out and look at them from time to time, but they would most likely stay stashed in the bag hidden under some piece of furniture in her bedroom. They would be her dirty little secret used to empower her on taxing days.
Pulling from the drive, I let my inner, insecure toddler emerge. Honking the horn three long times as I drive away in my farewell brings a smile to my face. I don’t hide my amusement when curtains shuffle in windows around the homes near theirs. I’m almost sad I won’t be around tomorrow morning when Miranda’s neighbors find oh so innocent reasons to be walking by with a false smile and curious wave.
“Child,” rebukes the female ghost who seems to always be lurking in my back seat, as if a Honda is the best place to linger for an afterlife. I don’t mind so much. No one asks to borrow my car or even ride with me. They always complain how off it feels to ride in it.
I don’t answer her. I normally don’t. I smile wider and she rolls her eyes. Crossing her arms, she settles in for the ride back to where I share a home with the only woman whom I have now as family. At this hour GiGi would normally be in bed, but I know she is also finding oh so innocent reasons to be up still. Reasons I don’t have the energy to deal with or answers to share, but I will because the woman literally will not rest until I do, and I owe her. I owe her everything.
GiGi Jo wasn’t awake when I arrived home last night. My walk of shame wasn’t any less traumatic. There’s almost something a touch depressing about sneaking through the house and down the stairs to the converted basement I have claimed as my own since the age of eighteen. Doing it all squeezed into a tight dress didn’t make the situation any better.
Now as we both sit, steaming our faces with our morning coffee in the too early morning hours. With my disheveled messy bun and thick robe, I’m staring into the depths of the dark liquid as if it holds all the secrets to my day. GiGi is staring at me like I have the answer to hers. Even the little kitchen nook in which we sit, with its many green hanging plants, seems to be watching me.
I can feel her heavy eyes reading everything I’m not saying, but she hasn’t asked for one single crumb of detail about my date. The date I have a feeling even she knew would be a disaster.
“I have a new case,” I speak into the room to break the standoff.
“Case?” She asks, dropping more sugar, into what very well may already be, a diabetic coma of a hot beverage. “I didn’t think you were doing those anymore?”
“My bank account says I am, and the clients were a little demanding.”
“Plural?’ GiGi catches my slip up. “How many cases?”
“One case. One…” I stall, searching for the correct term. “Request.”
“You raised the dead, again?”
I can hear the disappointment in her voice. I take a little longer on the next sip of coffee before answering her. “Well, one is a family who wants to figure out what happened to their dead and other was a family demanding to know something from their dead.”
GiGi settles a little deeper into the wooden wingback chair. I’m not sure if the sounds of protest are a warning for her or to me.
“You took the job from the Ripples, didn’t you?”
Obviously, the warning was for me. “You don’t really say no to the Ripples,” I offer with hopes of diffusing her building anger, but this bomb isn’t a simple little snip of wires.
“You don’t say yes, either!” GiGi shouts.
I wince as she storms from the nook and into the kitchen. Her small frame suddenly seems very terrifying. She’s wearing her classic black outfit, but it’s the matching shawl of a deep purple which now flows behind her like a villain’s cape. I can hear the cabinets slamming as she searches through them. I can also hear her fluid Italian hinting at exactly why the slamming continues.
“GiGi,” I call, coming into the battlefield like the sacrificial calvary. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
I can already smell the herbs being crushed under the stone pestle. The harsh smell of rosemary and rue mingle in the air. Her Italian hasn’t even paused, much less dimmed in its creative pitches. It’s as vibrant as the purple dried flowers she’s tossing into the pestle of petal death.
“Evil eye? Really?” I ask her, folding my arms to cover my pink unicorn print pajamas. It’s hard to lecture someone while wearing unicorns.
“Least you remember some of the things I’ve taught you,” GiGi says. Her glare does not allow it to be confused with a compliment.
I sigh, bracing against the wooden doorway. When she’s this angry, even with all the wit and bravado I own, I’m not brave enough to come much closer. I remember the feeling of the same pestle hurled from across this very room when I dared her one too many times as a teen.
“I have warned you about those people,” she starts, mostly under her breath but just loud enough to allow me to hear what she thinks of my decisions. “Once they learn of what you are, they will never stop. They will have you casting, cursing, rising for their every evil plan. How could you be so stupid?”
At least she’s speaking English. After twenty-five years, I still haven’t picked up anything other than the most basic of Italian, and most of that is just creative words to tell people what I think of them and their actions.
“Asks the woman who owns a Pagan shop?” I ask her, tucking a little closer to the doorway. “It’s not as if people don’t already know about us.”
“Knowing we own an eclectic shop of charms,” she emphasizes her idea of the shop, “is not the same as coming out and saying look what I can do.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s like you think this town doesn’t already think the worst of us.”
“Why should we care what people think of us?” GiGi asks, spooning the crushed herbs into a small drawstring bag. She’s adding various stones and words I cannot hear. “Most of these people can be found in the shop during the week and then clutching their little beads on Sundays. They all gather round gossiping about those who shop with us as if they weren’t just in asking for something to make their husbands horny or their friends less successful.”
“Then why do you keep the back room there?”
When she stills and looks up directly at me upon hearing my question, I instantly w
ish I had just kept silent. She’s taught me the rules since I was a child when my abilities first started showing. When my parents came knocking five years after their death, she began enforcing the rules. I am well aware what the back room is for. I’ve spent many a night in there lost in the collection of books and scrolls to better train myself.
“Sorry,” I offer when her eyes haven’t yet returned to her work.
“We keep the back room for emergencies and Pinterest fails,” she huffs. “Basic bitches who watch too many shows, read too many romance books, and then somehow stumbles upon something legit leaving us to have to clean up after their girl power moment.”
“I know,” I tell her slipping a little further from the room, certain the Italian will start again. “Just seems a little ironic we can out ourselves for that but have to remain broke for not using it for our own uses.”
GiGi Jo sighs having heard my thoughts before on such matters. “People who come to us out of desperation aren’t likely to tell others they came to us. Doing it for cash and favors means everyone will want to ask to be next. Don’t you remember why you stopped?”
I do. It seemed a simple enough job until it wasn’t. It destroyed so much more than just my faith in myself. I destroyed a whole family that night.
Hugging myself with the memory, I nod. “This was different. Is different. They just want answers.”
“So did the Pickens. They had questions they couldn’t handle the answers to.”
I can still hear their screams in my darkest dreams. She doesn’t have to remind me.
“Look,” she tells my silence, “you’re going to do whatever you want to do. We both know this. Just promise me you’ll be careful. If you’re really going to go back into this line of work, you must be careful. For many reasons.”
She doesn’t need to list the reasons. I know them all. From the risks to myself, to her, and even to the people who hire me, I know them all. Unfortunately, it’s not just the money which has me shopping for cases. I just can’t tell her that yet. One case and she’s crushing herbs for protection. If I were to tell her the complete truth the neighbors would be calling the fire department with the amount of smoke her incense and candles would cause.
The Little Lies (The Great Hexpectations Series Book 1) Page 3