Bewitching Bitters

by Annabel Chase

  Kate wasn’t worried about anyone dying of starvation. She was worried about dying of abject humiliation.

  Lucas took control of the situation, carrying plates to the table. Gavin had been allowed to set the table earlier, so everything else was there except the food.

  “Dinner,” Brett yelled.

  “Sort of,” Kate mumbled.

  She sat in her usual place at the end of the table closest to the kitchen. Nausea swept over her as she glanced at the sorry state of the table. Sweet potatoes. Broccoli. Green beans. Stuffing. This wasn’t a suitable meal for a random Monday night, let alone Thanksgiving.

  “You won’t soon forget this year,” Helen said.

  “No,” Kate said.

  Lucas began to fill his plate and passed each serving dish to his father.

  “My friend’s family are vegetarians,” Brett said. “They never have a turkey on Thanksgiving.”

  “I didn’t know you were friends with hippies,” Ken said.

  Brett frowned at his grandfather. “What’s a hippie?”

  “We’re not supposed to celebrate Thanksgiving anyway,” Gavin said. “We totally screwed over the Native Americans.”

  Helen sucked in air between her teeth. “What are they teaching at that school?”

  “Have you considered homeschooling?” Ken asked.

  “Kate is far too important to homeschool,” Helen said. There was something about her tone that didn’t sit well with Kate.

  Ava’s face scrunched in horror. “Why are the sweet potatoes spicy?” She gulped down her entire glass of milk.

  Lucas scooped a spoonful from Ava’s plate and stuck it in his mouth. His eyes widened, suggesting his taste buds agreed with Ava’s assessment. “Is this a new recipe?”

  “No, it’s the one I used last year.”

  Brett darted into the kitchen and returned to the table with a small plastic container. “This was on the counter.”

  “Yes, that’s what I used.”

  Lucas frowned. “It says cumin.”

  Kate nearly choked.

  “Isn’t that what you use in a chili recipe?” Ken asked. “Why would you put that in sweet potatoes?”

  “It wasn’t deliberate,” Kate said. “I thought I used cinnamon.”

  “Well, this must be unprecedented,” Helen said. “Two mistakes in one day.”

  “We ran out of gas on the boat and she forgot to pick up Brett from play practice,” Gavin said.

  “That’s enough, Gavin,” Lucas said sharply.

  Ken’s hand trembled as he reached for the serving bowl. “I’d like to taste them. I’m a big fan of spicy.”

  “He even puts hot sauce on macaroni and cheese,” Helen said.

  Kate’s body grew numb. She’d single-handedly ruined Thanksgiving. Even the very first Thanksgiving dinner she’d ever cooked had gone better than this one, and her kitchen had been the size of a shoebox. It had been the year after college graduation. She’d been renting an apartment with two friends. Libbie had plans to eat at her parents’ house and Kate had no interest in being subjected to them. She’d decided to make the best of a bad situation and invited similarly situated friends to the apartment for dinner. She’d punched above her weight, of course, choosing recipes that only experienced cooks would be willing to tackle. The meal had come together flawlessly. Everyone had raved over dinner and heaped praise upon Kate.

  And now this.

  “What happened to you, Mommy?” Ava asked.

  “I wish I knew,” she whispered. It didn’t matter. This was her mess and she had to clean it up. “I’m sorry.” She jerked back her chair and fled the room before the emotional floodgates opened.

  “It’s the change,” Kate heard her mother-in-law announce. “Hormones do all sorts of crazy things to people.”

  Kate raced upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom until she calmed down. It was one thing to ruin a single dish, but Kate seemed to have screwed up everything she touched, which was par for the course lately. She didn’t think she could take much more of this. She wasn’t equipped to handle failure. Kate had only trained herself for success.

  She splashed cold water on her face and gazed at her reflection in the mirror. The wart stared back at her, taunting her. It had all started with that stupid cocktail. Why had she ever wanted magic? She didn’t need it. Her life had been perfect as it was.

  Or was it? a small voice inside her asked.

  She slid to the floor, not caring whether the tiles were clean enough for her Saint Laurent tailored trousers. She hugged her knees to her chest and closed her eyes. A memory stirred. She still remembered the chill in the air that day. She’d worn a chunky knit scarf, a gift from her mother. Her mother had spent weeks knitting the scarf without Kate’s knowledge. Kate had been surprised to learn her mother knew how to knit. There’d been so much Kate hadn’t known about her mother. Too much, really.

  In her mind’s eye, Kate saw her mother’s lifeless body on the floor. The earth seemed to tilt. She’d dropped the container of milk and watched as creamy white pools formed around her mother, creating the illusion of angel wings. After the police and paramedics had come and gone, Kate cleaned up the milk until there was no trace of it. Not a speck of evidence of the tragedy that had occurred there.

  Her grandmother had moved in afterward. Her father hadn’t offered and Kate had been too proud to ask. She and Grandma Iris spent the next two and a half years leading parallel lives until Kate left for the University of Pennsylvania. Grandma Iris hadn’t been a warm woman, but she’d been there when Kate needed her and, for that, Kate would always be grateful.

  Kate stared at the white tiles, picturing spilled milk in their place.

  There was only one way she was going to get through the rest of this horrific holiday.

  Tequila.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kate sat in her office that night, her eyelids heavy. Everyone had gone to bed after dessert except Lucas and Kate. Lucas had volunteered to sit with Ava until she fell asleep. She’d heard him go downstairs at some point, but lost track of him after that.

  Kate would suffer the consequences of her tequila consumption tomorrow, that much was certain. She knew she should be drinking water now, but she couldn’t seem to uproot herself from the chair. This was her comfort zone and she was loath to leave it.

  Cat-Cat jumped on the desk and walked across the keyboard. Kate’s arm shot out to sweep the cat off the desk. She missed the cat entirely and smacked the side of the computer. Kate’s pained laughter morphed into a belch.

  “Thanksgiving is the worst holiday,” she told the cat. “But Christmas sucks too. People buy you gifts you hate because they don’t really know you. They just think they do. It’s all surface level.” She paused to burp again. “You have to smile and thank them. Helen buys the most heinous presents imaginable.” She shook her head so hard, she nearly tipped over. “Helen is my mother-in-law. You’re lucky you don’t have one of those.” She narrowed her eyes. “Because you’re a cat and cats don’t get married.”

  She started to fall asleep, her head lolling to the side. Suddenly she snapped back to attention. “Marriage is hard work and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Lucas calls himself a feminist. Ha! He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. He leaves me to do all the household work and childcare even though my career is just as busy as his.” She tried to run her fingers through her tangled hair, but they got caught and she fought awkwardly to extricate them. “Don’t let a tomcat devalue you, Cat-Cat. That’s my advice.”

  Cat-Cat moved across the desk, traipsing over the keyword without a care in the world.

  “I’ve worked so hard to become this person. People don’t see that—they think I rose out of the sea on a clam like that goddess.” She snapped her fingers repeatedly. “Athena. No. Aphrodite. Venus.” She gave her head a dismissive shake. “Whatever. The point is there’s no clam. Not even a seahorse. I have to swim and I’m tired, Cat-Cat. I’m exhausted. I make
it look effortless, but they don’t see my legs frantically kicking underneath. I’m not even going anywhere. I’m treading water.”

  Cat-Cat meowed.

  “You’re absolutely right,” Kate said in response. “I have no business coaching anyone. I should ask them to coach me. I’m a fraud. A fake. The veneer’s been cracked and now everyone can see there’s nothing underneath. I’m naked like that emperor. Exposed.”

  She covered her face with her hands and started to cry. As though sensing her distress, the cat jumped onto her lap and purred.

  “My life is a mess and I don’t know how to fix it. I’m not Wonder Woman. I’m just like everyone else, only worse because I pretend I’m not. Inga knew that about me. She saw right through me, but she liked me anyway. Warts and all.”

  Kate tapped her chin.

  “She would’ve embraced this. Given the wart its own Twitter account. Not me. One wart and I crumble. What’s the universe trying to teach me, Cat-Cat, because I don’t have a clue? How am I supposed to become the best version of myself when I thought I already was?”

  The cat rubbed Kate’s hand with her face.

  “You’re so wise. You should have your own YouTube channel.” She bonked the cat on the nose with her index finger.

  The cat returned to the desk and tried to settle on the keyboard again, but Kate gave her a gentle push and she jumped to the floor.

  Kate staggered out of the office and followed the cat to bed. Thankfully, she had the presence of mind to turn off her cell phone so she could sleep in tomorrow morning, assuming one of the kids didn’t come charging into the room in dire need of pancakes or a sharpened pencil.

  If she dreamed at all, she didn’t remember it.

  She woke up to ribbons of sunlight streaming across the bed.

  “Hey, sleepyhead.” Lucas appeared in the doorway. “How are you feeling?”

  Unsurprisingly, her head felt like it had been cracked open by a sledgehammer. “Fine,” she said.

  “I brought you a glass of water and ibuprofen earlier.” He nodded toward the bedside table.

  Kate shifted to a seated position. “Thanks.”

  “Good news is that the kids are occupied and my parents have vacated the premises.”

  She grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

  “They usually leave early anyway. You know my dad likes to beat traffic, as if there’s something pressing they need to do at home.”

  “They’re set in their ways.” She drank half the water and downed the pills.

  “I’m worried about you,” he said. “You haven’t been yourself.”

  She managed a smile. “No shit.”

  He perched on the edge of the bed. “I know this weekend is always rough, but I feel like it’s more than that.”

  “I’ve had a run of bad luck lately, but I’m going to turn it around.” By sheer force of will, like always.

  “There are scrambled eggs in the pan.” He smirked. “And turkey.”

  She groaned.

  “What? I finished cooking it last night so we could have it for dinner tonight. Why waste it?”

  “No, you’re right. Thank you.”

  He patted her leg. “I’ll be downstairs. Ava is finger painting.”

  Kate tried not to think about the mess that was sure to follow. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  After he left, she went into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. Her breath had to be worse than normal. She caught sight of the wart in the mirror and glared at its reflection. “I blame you.”

  She ate alone at the table and started to feel better. “I’m going up to shower.”

  “Can we play Monopoly later?” Brett asked.

  “Anything but Monopoly,” she called over her shoulder. The last game had taken three days to finish. No game should take three days unless it was The Hunger Games.

  Kate ventured upstairs to her office to check emails and comments before she showered. It was a habit she was unable to break, even hungover and miserable.

  She automatically scrolled to the top comments and frowned.

  I feel you on Christmas gifts, wrote Tamara from Florida. My mom gets me the Christmas Barbie every year and I’m 28.

  LOL. Guess your MIL isn’t a subscriber, wrote Janine from Tennessee.

  Huh?

  Kate scrolled to the video at the top and leaned forward to examine the image more closely. She recognized her top from the night before and her heart sank. Her hair was in complete disarray and there were pieces of food stuck to her cheek. According to the small print, the video lasted twenty-two minutes. Her mind drifted back to the middle of the night. She’d sat in this very chair, a drunken mess. Even Cat-Cat had tried to console her.

  The cat.

  It seemed that not only had she been inadvertently recording herself, she’d also managed to upload it to the internet. Her easy system, the one she’d created to streamline her process, was about to destroy her.

  “No, no, no.”

  With a shaky finger, Kate hit the play button.

  She listened for twenty-two agonizing minutes as the words she spoke last night were thrown back in her face.

  Kate avoided looking at the rest of the comments. Instead, she began researching the help topics to see how to take down the video. She didn’t know how because she’d never encountered an issue before. Her videos had always been flawless.

  Until now.

  Frantic, Kate clicked on the first link that seemed to offer a solution. It took fewer than five minutes to do, but the video had been up for over ten hours and the number of views...Well, the video had clearly gone viral.

  Under other circumstances, this would be a dream scenario. All her carefully crafted motivational videos—any single one of them would’ve been an ideal choice to go viral.

  But not this one.

  Lucas appeared in the doorway, deathly pale. “My mother called,” he said.

  Kate blinked back tears. “And?”

  “She wants to know if you’re on medication where the potential side effects include insanity.”

  Kate closed her eyes and silently counted to ten. “I’ll call her.”

  He moved further into the office. “Did you know?”

  She shook her head. “I was drunk. I think it was the cat.”

  He scoffed. “You’re blaming the cat?”

  “Not for what I said, obviously.” For that, she blamed the tequila. “I took it down.”

  “I’m sure you did, but you know how the internet works. Once it’s out there, it’s out there.”

  Kate nodded solemnly. She’d cautioned enough clients against sending racy photos and videos to their lovers for this very reason. She knew better. And yet.

  “How are you going to fix this?” Lucas asked.

  “I’ll send her flowers.”

  “Not my mother,” he said, and waved his arms at the computer. “This. All of it. Don’t you think your subscribers will be unhappy? What about your clients?”

  Kate’s stomach twisted into hard knots. “My book deal.”

  “Everything you’ve worked for and why? Because of one lousy Thanksgiving dinner? Kate, millions of people screw up holiday dinners every year. You’re not a unique case.”

  “I know that.”

  He regarded her curiously. “Do you?” He continued to linger for a moment. “You should talk to the kids later. No doubt some of their friends’ parents watched it.”

  Kate’s throat was so dry, she couldn’t swallow. “Did you watch it?”

  “No, the highlights were enough for me. I’m taking the kids out for a walk at the lake. I need to clear my head and Ava wants to see the ducks.” His nostrils flared. “I’ll text you if we end up going anywhere else.”

  “I’m sorry, Lucas.”

  “Tell that to my mother,” he said, and stormed out of the room.

  Kate continued to stare at the computer screen, willing the whole thing to disappear. Maybe this was a nightmare and she
’d soon wake up. She’d had a lot of tequila last night. She could be unconscious, like in that strange movie with Tom Cruise. Vanilla Sky.

  She pinched her inner thigh hard and winced. No. Unfortunately, she was wide awake.

  Kate went to the bedroom to retrieve her phone. She turned it on and was shocked to see the number of messages. That video had more mileage than a NASA spacecraft.

  She returned to her office to scroll through her texts in a daze. She knew she had to rip off the Band-Aid to see the damage she’d done to her career. Just because it was the Friday after Thanksgiving didn’t mean the world stood still.

  The internet never sleeps, she thought.

  She drew a deep breath and clicked on her YouTube advertising account.

  One glance delivered the bad news. Advertisers were leaving her channel. Kate buried her face in her hands. This truly was a nightmare. It felt as though it was happening to someone else and Kate was watching from an undisclosed location with great sympathy. She didn’t know what to do. Failure wasn’t in her vocabulary. Now what? Without advertisers, she’d only have her coaching business and she had no doubt those clients would be canceling once they got wind of the video.

  Her whole life. Everything she’d worked for would disappear like it had never existed. She was eight years old again, adjusting to a new life after her parents’ divorce. A new house and school. New friends. Her old life with two parents under one roof seemed like a dream, an image she’d invented. Then she was fifteen and the earth shifted under her feet yet again. Her mother gone. An absentee father. Kate was alone and uncertain how to proceed. From that moment on, she’d been so careful to construct the life she wanted. A life without surprises or upheaval. A life where she was so wonderfully perfect that no one would ever leave her again.

  She checked her emails. Big mistake.

  At the top of her inbox was the email she’d been dreading. Paisley Sheridan was cancelling her meeting with the publishing executives in New York. There was no reason given. No mention of rescheduling. Timothy Turnbull didn’t even have the courtesy to cancel himself.

  There would be no book deal.

  Kate winced as pain, sharp like tiny needles, attacked the side of her chest. She bent forward and clutched the spot as though she could make it stop with the touch of her own hand. She was a witch, wasn’t she? Why didn’t her magic extend to self-healing?