When he pulled up in front of the house, his mother came out to greet him. She gave him a big hug, then pulled back to look at him. “You’ve already talked to Jessie, I see,” she said. “Come inside, I’ll make you something to eat, and we can talk.”
David followed her inside and watched while she made him a sandwich, feeling all the while like he’d been ganged up on. When his sister Natalie came into the kitchen and quietly sat down next to him, he knew that he was outnumbered.
He was only halfway through his sandwich when he realized that he wasn’t going to be living in Nashville for very much longer. His mother was excited about Jessie’s plan, gushing about eco-tourism and switching to crops that they could sell at farmer’s markets and county fairs.
“Don’t you see, David? This is our chance to not only keep the farm but make a difference. Reach people who have lost touch with where their food comes from, people who don’t know what lies beyond the cities they live in,” she finished.
David shook his head. “I think you’re all crazy, but I’ll call my boss and tell him I won’t be back,” he said.
***Michelle***
Her parents stared at her in shock for a few minutes, but her mother was the first one to recover. “You’re going where, to do what?” she asked, rubbing her forehead with her fingers like she always did when she heard something she didn’t want to hear.
“I’m going to Gypsum Creek, Tennessee to write my master’s thesis,” Michelle said as calmly as she could, even though her heart was pounding in her chest.
“That was not part of our plan,” her mother said firmly, as if Michelle was a child and could be ordered around. “We all agreed that you’d give that up, that modeling was more important.”
“And let’s not forget the legacy you’ve inherited,” her father spoke up for the first time. “It’s time for a McIntyre to lead the coven again. Think how proud your grandmother would be.”
“But that’s not what I want. I want to get my master’s degree and teach,” Michelle said, trying to sound as sure of herself as she could.
Her mother actually shuddered. “That’s just not going to happen; we’ve invested too much time in your modeling career to give up now. Don’t you remember our dream?”
“That’s your dream, mother, not mine,” Michelle said, a little pleased with herself for standing up to her mother.
“You talk some sense into her, Walter. I told you letting her go to college was a mistake,” her mother said, leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest.
Michelle sighed; she knew how difficult her mother could be but wasn’t sure just how far her father would go to get what he wanted. “Darling, don’t you remember your grandmother? Don’t you remember how much she wanted you to embrace the magic inside you, how important it was to her that you represent the family? It’s your legacy to lead the coven. I can’t let you throw that away,” he said, shaking his head.
She stared at her father for a long time, remembering a time when he was embarrassed by her magic, a time when he wanted to hide her from the world. Even all these years later, the pain of being twelve and sent away to a grandmother she’d never met was there. She wasn’t sure she’d ever forgive her father for trying to throw her away that summer.
That terrible summer had started with a small act of teenaged defiance when she’d cut her long black hair with a pair of kitchen shears to get her mother to let her have a normal summer. They’d had a terrible fight, both screaming at each other, her mother finally slamming her bedroom door but sobbing loud enough that Michelle could hear her in her room.
She’d gone to bed only feeling slightly guilty but relieved that she’d found a way to put a stop to all the beauty pageants and modeling jobs her mother had planned for her. But it didn’t work; the next morning, her mother came in to wake her up, talking about setting new trends as she opened her curtains, making her want to scream.
When she finally sat up in bed, her mother gasped and ran over to the bed. “Oh, thank goodness, it was all a bad dream,” she said, hugging Michelle to her.
Michelle pulled away and went to the mirror, horrified to discover that her hair was just as long as it had been before she cut it the day before. She grabbed the scissors and began cutting it off in huge chunks again, running from her mother who was screaming at her to stop.
After she’d chopped off the last piece, she stood breathless in the center of the room, the floor littered with hunks of her long black hair. Her mother opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out except a small gasp, then she pointed to Michelle’s hair.
“Your hair, it’s growing,” she finally managed to say.
Michelle turned to the mirror and saw that her hair was growing, inch by inch, until it was down to her waist. Shocked, Michelle collapsed on the floor, unable to catch her breath as she watched her mother run from the room.
When her father came into the room only a few minutes later, he took one look at the bedroom floor and said, “She’s going to my mother’s in Tennessee; we can’t let anyone find out about this.”
Her life was never the same after that day, and it took years before her father was willing to accept who she was. If she was honest with herself, she thought as she stared at him, it wasn’t until he realized that he could benefit from her magic that he’d accepted it.
A little shocked by that thought, she said, “I don’t want to lead the coven. I just want to teach. Grandma wouldn’t have wanted me to do anything I didn’t want to do. She he taught me to use my magic, but we never talked about a legacy; that’s you, dad, not her.”
“What does Bryce have to say about this?” her mother asked.
“He wasn’t wild about the idea either,” Michelle said, wishing she didn’t have to tell them the rest.
“See, he knows what’s good for you, just like we do,” her father said, triumphantly.
“No, he doesn’t. He knows what is good for him, just like you do,” she said, suddenly not the least bit sorry to tell them the rest. “I broke off the engagement with him this afternoon.”
There was a long silence in the room, then her father banged his fist down on the table. “This is completely idiotic, and I’m not going to stand for any more of this. You are going to marry Bryce, take over the coven, and do your duty to your family,” he yelled, getting to his feet.
Chapter Three
***David***
David stood on the porch of the store, listening to his sister harass the contractor they’d hired to expand and renovate the store. It was amusing to hear her giving him hell for the sloppy job he’d done on the built-in shelves and wondered where they were going to find another contractor willing to come all the way up here.
Sighing because he knew that after Natalie got done with him, he’d have to fire the man, he walked across the street to the diner thinking he’d get a cup of coffee. It was only a way to avoid what he had to do, but it wasn’t the first time in the two weeks he’d been home that he’d had to deal with an unpleasant situation.
He wasn’t sure now why he’d agreed to move back, take over the store, and shoulder the job of mayor and sheriff. It was more than one man should have to handle, and he wondered how George had managed, but then he realized that Gypsum Creek was nothing like it used to be.
Standing in front of the diner, he looked up and down the street. It was full of people, coming and going from the temporary stores set up in tents along the street. A month ago, if you’d told him that the sleepy little town, he called home would be this bustling hive of activity, he would have laughed.
But every day, a truck arrived, full of supplies to feed the sudden burst of activity Jessie and Sophie has spawned. His stomach still hurt a little bit when he thought of the amount of money they were investing in Gypsum Creek, but per Sophie, it wasn’t even half of what she’d been left by her grandmother.
Deciding that he didn’t really want a cup of coffee, he headed up the street toward the temporary har
dware store, thinking that it wouldn’t hurt to get the word out that they were looking for a new contractor. He was lost in his thoughts, staring at the ground as he walked, when he heard a high-pitched voice calling his name.
He looked around and saw that Millie Wilson was sitting on her front porch. “David Rayburn, is that you?” she asked again. “Come up here and talk to me for a few minutes.”
David wasn’t sure how she knew who he was since she hadn’t been seen out of her house for decades, but he did as he was told. His heart pounding in his chest as he approached the shrunken woman sitting in a rocking chair, he climbed the steps but didn’t sit down.
“Sit down,” she ordered, then added, “Contrary to the stories you’ve heard about me, I don’t eat little children.”
David smiled at her, embarrassed. “I don’t think any such thing,” he said, sitting down next to her. “But I am glad to see you out here enjoying this beautiful spring day.”
Millie studied him for a minute, then said, “I think you’re a good replacement for George; that man got too big for his britches if you ask me. The only smart thing he ever did was give you and Jessie that store.”
David looked at her in surprise. “I’m surprised to hear you say that. I always thought you hated Jessie as much as everyone else.”
Millie snorted. “George let everyone believe that, but I’ve been rooting for him all along. I’ve helped him out a few times over the years, and he makes sure I have all the fresh vegetables and meat I want; can’t stand that store-bought stuff, you know.”
David nodded. “Is that why you were willing to open up your house? I’ve been wondering about that, but I didn’t want to ask.”
“It does my heart good to see this town coming to life again; it’s been too long since there was a spark here. The house is just sitting here, going to waste; it’s my way of helping,” Millie said. Then a huge grin spread across her face, “And Sophie promised that we’d fix up the garden and the house, that it would look like it did when I was a girl.”
“That would be real nice, Ms. Millie, but I hope we’re not all setting ourselves up for a big disappointment when no one wants to come to Gypsum Creek,” he said, looking up and down the street.
Millie put her hand on his arm, and he felt a wave of comfort flow through him. “Have a little faith, David; when people work together, great things can happen,” she said.
“I hope you’re right, Ms. Millie,” he said, then got to his feet. “I guess I’d better get going; I’ve got to fire our contractor and find a new one.”
Millie clicked her tongue. “Let me make a few phone calls,” she said, “I might be able to solve that problem for you.”
David walked away feeling better than he had when he’d climbed the porch steps. He was tempted to stop at the diner for that cup of coffee, and a piece of pie, but he saw Natalie standing on the porch in front of the store and crossed the street instead.
There was no sense putting off what was inevitable, but he hated the thought of the confrontation to come. If he weren’t already so busy, he would have taken over the job himself, but as it was, he barely had time for the responsibilities he already had.
When he reached Natalie, she didn’t greet him, instead demanded, “Are you going to fire that man or should I?”
***Michelle***
Michelle turned off the highway onto the two-lane road that led to Gypsum Creek and pulled the car over, her hands shaking. It wasn’t too late to change her mind; she could turn the car around, go back to her parents’ house and pretend none of this had ever happened.
But that would mean giving up her dream, and now that it looked like that dream might come true, she wasn’t willing to do that. She took a couple of deep breaths, pulled the car back onto the road and sat up a little straighter in the seat. She’d worked hard to get here, juggling her mother and father’s expectations to get her degree in history, then to move on to her master’s.
For the last six months, she’d been struggling with a topic for her master’s thesis. Her advisor had given her a wide choice of topics, but none of them were unique or quite tailored to her specific area of interest. It wasn’t her advisor's fault; there weren’t very many master’s candidates who specialized in the history of witchcraft, so the poor woman had done her best.
Then in one of those strange twists of fate, her name had been thrown out to the Rayburns, who claimed to have a real spirit living on their farm. Their claim had been met with a lot of humor and disbelief by everyone at the university, but they’d persisted, and now she was on her way to see if their claim was real.
Just thinking about the possibility made her stomach flutter with excitement. Encountering a spirit wasn’t something new to her; in fact, blocking those interactions was one of the first lessons her grandmother had taught her. The exciting part was that this spirit came with a verifiable history: a history that included not only birth and death records but a journal written in the spirit’s own hand.
That alone would have been enough for her, but the spirit was a witch, a witch who’d inspired many ghost stories and been accused of cavorting with the devil. Normally, when doing research, she would have avoided such stories, but in this case, that was impossible since she’d been hearing tales of Molly Swensen since the first time she came to visit her grandmother in the Appalachian Mountains.
She’d heard the story that first summer when she was twelve, and every summer after that when she came to the mountains to learn witchcraft from her grandmother. The story had been told over and over as a cautionary tale of what could happen to witches who embraced black magic, but Michelle had never been able to believe that Molly was that wicked.
It wasn’t something she could explain, just a gut feeling that came each time she heard the story, a feeling that made her stomach hurt. The stories had affected her so much that she’d dreamed of Molly, or a woman who could have been Molly, ever since that summer.
As the road began to narrow and grow steeper, she rolled down her window and took a deep breath of the clean air. This was what she always dreamed of, what she’d been working so hard for, and she wasn’t going to let anyone spoil it: not her parents and certainly not Bryce.
By the end of the summer, she’d have a documented sighting of a spirit with a real history, and hopefully, the thesis that would give her the master’s degree she’d always wanted. From there, she’d have choices, choices that would help her fulfill her dreams of taking witchcraft out of the shadows and into the light.
She’d been warned about the road to Gypsum Creek but hadn’t really understood just how isolated the little community was. But she’d spent a good part of her childhood in the mountains, so the steep grades and cliffs didn’t bother her. Still, it was a relief when she came over the top of the last hill and saw the one-street town sitting in the middle of a little valley.
The town was pretty much what she’d expected: a post office, a diner, the general store, and a few houses. But on the far end of town, next to what she assumed was the school, there were two tents set up, each full of merchandise.
She drove all the way through town but couldn’t find the boarding house where she was supposed to be staying, so she turned around and started back through town. This time as she passed a big house, the biggest in town, she noticed the little sign in the front yard and pulled over. It didn’t really look like a boarding house, looked in fact like it was only a few years from being demolished, but the sign said Millie’s Boarding House.
Sitting in her car, looking up at the old house, she shivered, knowing how many spirts would be tied to a property that old. She’d have to cleanse her room if she ever hoped to get any sleep, and a protection spell might not be a bad idea, she thought as she got out of the car.
She walked up the overgrown sidewalk to the porch and climbed the stairs, grimacing when they groaned and creaked under her feet. When a high-pitched voice said, “Welcome to Millie’s Boarding House,” she jumped and almost
screamed, then noticed the little old woman sitting in a rocking chair on the porch.
“Oh, hi,” she stammered, putting a hand over her heart, which was pounding.
“You must be Michelle; Sophie said you’d be here today,” the woman said. “I’m Millie, by the way, and this is my house.”
Michelle’s heart was beginning to return to its normal rhythm, but she was still a bit speechless. Finally, she managed to say, “It’s beautiful.”
Millie snorted. “It’s a wreck and should probably be torn down, but it’s mine, and I love it. Jessie and Sophie have promised to fix it up, bring it back to life.”
Michelle nodded. “Well, I’m sure I’ll enjoy staying here,” she said, looking up and at the house to see a face staring back at her from one of the upper windows.
Chapter Four
***David***
It had already been a long day when Sophie called him in a panic. “That researcher from the university is supposed to arrive today, and I don’t think I’m going to make it back from Nashville for at least a couple of hours.”
David sighed. “You want me to go over and meet her? She’s staying at Millie’s, right?”
“Oh, David, that would be wonderful. Do you mind?”
David did mind, but he wasn’t going to tell Sophie that. “It’s fine, Sophie, I don’t mind.”
“I can tell that you do, but I promise I’ll make it up to you,” Sophie said, making him feel guilty.
“I’m sorry; it’s already been a long day, that’s all,” he said, meaning it. “Tell me about her again so I’m prepared.”
“Well, her name is Michelle, and she’s in the master’s program, and she’s going to use Molly Swensen in her thesis,” Sophie said, then added, “I don’t really know anything else about her.”
“Okay, when is she going to be here?” he asked, not looking forward to trying to connect with an academic since school hadn’t exactly been his thing.
Young Love (Wolves 0f Gypsum Creek Book 3) Page 2