A shiver coursed through my body, and Granny tucked another quilt over me. I did my best to let go of the anger I felt at her for helping Miss Maeve. Like Mr. Lybrand, she’d tried to aid a young woman who’d been deeply hurt, without first stopping to consider a wronged person could do a great deal of wrong herself.
I pulled my hand from beneath the covers and grasped hers. As Granny Ardith looked at our joined hands, her eyes widened. When I glanced down, cold spread through my chest.
The bracelet Miss Maeve had crafted to trap Lilah, the one I’d torn from her wrist and tucked away before Maeve’s final attack, now coiled around my wrist. The strand of strawberry-blond hair woven in with the vines had changed to a dark brown. Even though it was braided and wound with the honeysuckle, I recognized it as my own.
Granny’s voice dropped to a nervous whisper. “When they pulled you out, it was there on your arm. That was the well’s doing, not mine,” she added quickly. “I reckon when you cut the one off of Maeve’s arm, all that keeping power had to go somewhere. And it found this other charmed bracelet right there, just waiting…” Her thin lips pinched together. “It seems like the well didn’t want all that power to drift away into nothing.”
Truth hit me like a tidal wave, tumbling my thoughts. I tried to sit up, but the motion set my head spinning. I propped myself on my elbows instead. “When I broke Maeve’s keeping spell, the charm transferred to me.”
Visions of endless fog and a blank sky, of black trees and a desolate riverbank, swam before me. I had to swallow the panic clawing its way up my throat before I could speak. “Will I be pulled back to the Hollow every night? Am I like Maeve now?”
Granny Ardith’s bleak stare confirmed my fears.
I lay back on the table, stunned as surely as I’d been when Miss Maeve tried to crush my skull in the well. “Miss Maeve wanted to follow my father when he left her and went back to New York. But the keeping spell ensured she couldn’t get too far away from Wheeler.”
Granny Ardith’s wrinkled lips worked. “That’s right. Once the well’s power got her bound up when she drowned in it, we couldn’t get the bracelet off. She was trapped, day and night.”
My breaths shallowed, and my newly beating heart pounded. “And so am I.” A spark of understanding for the desperate, dangerous woman Miss Maeve had become glowed in me. I’d never condone her cruelty, but I could at least comprehend how she’d eventually chosen her dark path.
Big Tom’s hulking form appeared in the cabin’s doorway, turning slightly to fit through. Hettie pushed her way past him and rushed over to me. She glanced at the sun, now fully over the horizon, glowing through the open door. “It’s true, then. What Della said about the keeping spell and the well…” Her voice trailed off, and she pressed me in a tight hug.
I closed my eyes, resting my head on her bony shoulder.
“We prayed you’d come back with the morning, but we weren’t sure.” Her voice hitched. Big Tom fished a handkerchief from his overalls, dabbed at his own eyes, then handed the damp cloth to his wife.
“Granny told us about Miss Maeve, about her past and the well,” Hettie said, wiping her nose. “I can hardly believe it, even now.” She stood up, running a shaky hand over her apron.
“And we know about your daddy,” Big Tom said. He twisted his battered hat, looking miserable. “We’re real sorry for your loss,” he added in his slow, rumbling voice.
I reached for his and Hettie’s callused hands. None of us knew what to say, but making that small circle lifted some of the weight of my sorrow. The aching in my chest eased, if only a little.
My attention shifted toward two figures approaching through the herb garden. Hettie followed my line of sight through the open front door. “Lord have mercy, it’s hotter than blue blazes in here. Why don’t we all step outside for some air?” Without waiting for their consent, she herded Big Tom and Granny out as Della entered.
Della’s hands flew to her mouth to stifle a cry. She charged in, slid onto the tabletop where I lay, and crushed me in a fierce embrace. “I can’t believe it worked. When Granny Ardith told us about Miss Maeve and the well and the keeping charm, and how you might come back, too, I thought she’d gone off her rocker.” She dropped a kiss on my cheek, her laugh wobbling. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth, Verity Pruitt. To think, I stayed up a full night bawling over you dying.”
“Your father was right. I’m a troublemaker,” I said. My smile felt unsteady as a newborn calf. There was a question I feared, but had to ask. “When the sun came up, Miss Maeve didn’t—”
Della shook her head. “She’s gone, Verity. Truly gone.” She blew out a long breath, both relieved and sad. “I hope wherever she is now, she’s with her baby girl,” Della said. And I knew it was time for me to tell my friend about the other spirit that had been freed from the Hollow last night.
“I saw Josie’s ghost,” I said. Della’s pink cheeks blanched. “She was in the place where Miss Maeve’s spirit went at night.”
The place I’d be forced back to with every eventide.
“But she’s free now,” I went on. “When Miss Maeve’s keeping spell broke, it opened a gate, and Josie was able to move on. She wanted me to tell you, and the rest of your family, that she loves you all.” Della’s tired brown eyes, still red-rimmed from crying, filled with tears again.
“Thank you,” she whispered at last.
I spoke around a lump in my throat. “When you and Abel left me in the jailhouse, I thought that was the end. I thought your father had convinced you I’d lost my mind, and you’d given up on me.”
“Verity Pruitt, do you really think I’d listen to my daddy?” Della asked. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get him to the woods sooner.” She dropped her gaze from mine and swallowed hard. “Maybe if he’d gotten there faster, he could’ve saved your father.”
“You did what you could,” I managed. It would be a long time before I could think of Papa with anything but wrenching pain, I knew. I reached for the closest good thought, and found myself saying, “You are the greatest friend anyone could ever have, Della Loftis.”
“It’s a tie between me and Abel, I think,” she said, an odd half smile on her lips. “When the two of you step out together, promise you won’t make me feel like the third wheel?”
I took in the sincerity in her dark eyes. “Della, he’s your fiancé.”
“Was,” she said. “He was my fiancé. And I loved having one, sure as shooting. But deep down, I always felt something wasn’t right. I’d heard Granny mention that she used to make love potions before. It took me a while to realize that Abel was under one.” She sighed and looked out the window. “The strangest thing is, I could’ve been happy with Abel. I’m certain of that.” Della looked back to me, her expression open, the honesty of her hurt unconcealed. “But I’m just as certain I can be happy with him as my dear friend, like he’s been all my life. I’ll need some time, but I’ll get there.”
I placed a hand over Della’s, and we sat together for a time in silence.
“All right,” she said at last, “you can come on in now.”
Abel stepped into the little cabin. Emotions cascaded in his blue eyes. Wonder, confusion, worry, relief, something I couldn’t quite name, all shifting and mingling together.
Della motioned for him to come closer and he sidled over, regarding me with a look of awe that bordered on fear. Della slid off the table and, as she passed Abel, turned her face up to look into his. “Thank you for giving us a minute to talk. I know you’ve been as anxious to see her as I have.” She laid a hand on his forearm before she left.
Abel stood before me, his tired eyes fixed on a spot just over my left shoulder. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, making it stand up at wild angles. “Granny told me I was under a spell. Della figured it out.” Abel’s cheeks went pink. “I had no idea until she asked Granny to undo it. Della decided it was either Miss Maeve who dosed me with the potion, or Katherine working on Miss Maeve’s orde
rs,” he said, looking at me at last. “So, she roused Kat out of bed at about two in the morning to make her explain.”
I let out a startled laugh. “Y’all had a busy night.”
One corner of his mouth twitched up, but his blue eyes remained troubled. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you say y’all.”
I shrugged. “It grows on you.”
“Della wore Katherine down until she got the whole story. Miss Maeve had promised her money to move away, get out of Wheeler like she’d always wanted. All she had to do was run Miss Maeve’s nasty little errands for her. Like gathering some Adam and Eve root from the woods to make a love potion. She got Katherine to put it in my pain tonic while they were at the farm for the sorghum making.”
“Miss Maeve had a way of making people take her side,” I said. “And Katherine not liking me to start with didn’t hurt, I’m sure.”
Abel searched my eyes. “Verity, I’m sorry. Miss Maeve convinced Katherine that your mother had betrayed her years ago, and this was her way of getting retribution. And Katherine thought she was helping Della, too. Making sure me and Del ended up together.”
He took a breath, like someone about to jump from a great height. “Miss Maeve thought it was the perfect payback. Elizabeth took the boy she loved. She thought you wanted me, and she saw a chance to ruin it.” His voice was low, tentative. “She might’ve overestimated how much you cared about me.”
I lifted my hand, ran my fingers lightly over his cheek, across the stubble on his chin. “No, she didn’t.”
He captured my hand and pressed it to his chest. “I pulled you up from the bottom of the well. You were dead, Verity.” A tremor rippled through his voice. “I knew it, but I held your face above the water anyway. I carried your body back here.” Tears filled his eyes, making them blue as the ocean. “You were so cold.”
Slowly, I slid off the table. He steadied me as I stood on shaky legs. My arms twined around him. Resting my chin on Abel’s shoulder, I looked beyond him to where Lilah still slept soundly. “You saved my sister’s life. She has a future because of you.”
Abel ran his hands down my back, circling my waist. “I hope she grows up just like her big sister,” he said.
“Oh, do you mean stubborn? Or nosy and outspoken?”
“All of that,” he said, drawing me even closer. “And smart. Determined. Brave.”
This time, his lips met mine first. He tasted of mint and clear water. In the cramped little cabin, wrapped in his warm arms, for a moment I felt freer than I could ever remember.
When we broke apart, I leaned my forehead against his. Lilah’s voice drifted from inside a mountain of blankets. “You’re all right, I guess, but I’ll never be half as bossy.”
My legs almost buckled as I tried to rush to her. Abel maneuvered an arm around my waist and helped me across the little room.
“What happened to your hair?” Lilah asked, apprehension in her voice.
I swept my hair over my shoulder, and suppressed a gasp. The strange twist of magic that had taken the color from Maeve’s auburn hair had done the same to mine. I dropped the silvery locks and lifted shocked eyes to Abel’s face.
He shrugged. “Nobody wanted to be the one to bring it up,” he said, almost bashfully. “Granny Ardith reckons it has something to do with being tied to the Hollow. Maeve always told her it’s a colorless place.”
Abel pulled up a chair, and I lay down beside Lilah. Hot tears filled my eyes as I thought of Lilah’s deathly cold hands, her blue lips. Gratitude and aching love overtook the words I meant to say. I thought to ask how she was feeling, what she remembered of the night before. She needed to know I wasn’t losing my mind, and what had become of Miss Maeve. And Papa. The tale I had to tell her was one full of dark moments, with more sadness than anything she’d read in a book.
But not right now. Those words came later in the story. Instead, I heard myself say, “I love you.”
“Love you too, Very.”
“You should rest as much as you can,” I said, taking in her pale face and shadowed eyes. “We’ll talk more later. For now, try and go back to sleep.”
Lilah’s freckles bunched together as she wrinkled her nose. She looked at Abel, then put her head on my shoulder with a sigh. “See what I mean? Bossy.”
EPILOGUE
September tempered the summer’s heat to mellow warmth. Still, my bracelet stuck to my sweat-dampened wrist as I shielded my eyes and looked around the Argenta train station. In the other hand, I gripped a worn leather suitcase. The station wasn’t busy today. For that I was grateful. I didn’t want a crowd witnessing this goodbye.
“Hand it over, Very.” Abel reached for the bag.
I swatted him away. “It’s heavy. I’ll hold it so you won’t tire your arm.” I had cut his cast off myself months ago, but I knew the old break still hurt him a good deal.
“The convenient thing about arms is that they usually come in pairs.” He reached around me to take the bag. I took the chance to hug him, crushing the brim of my Sunday-best hat, one of the many I wore to help cover the pale roots of my dyed-back-to-brown hair.
Abel smelled of mint leaves today, and he wore his hair neatly combed. I fussed with his tie, though I’d already straightened it twice. “Merlin’s going to miss you,” I joked.
“He won’t even notice I’m gone. You know he’s smitten with you lately,” he said. “I put some dried apples in Lybrand’s carriage house for him.” I nodded, finding it hard to speak. Each night, Abel’s horse carried me to the woods when the well called to me. Abel had turned the carriage house where Reuben Lybrand once kept his car into Merlin’s makeshift barn. Every morning, when dawn pulled my spirit back, I’d find the chestnut stallion waiting patiently in the burgeoning light, ready to carry me back to the farm. Those rides back home wouldn’t be as eager, now that neither Merlin nor I would have Abel waiting to greet us.
I cleared my throat, hoping the quaver in my voice wasn’t too apparent. “I’m doing a terrible job at being your steadfast, cheerful girl back home, and you haven’t even left yet. I promise my letters will be nothing but lighthearted notes about how excited I am for the next school break when I can see you again.” I straightened my shoulders and looked into his morning-glory-blue eyes. “I’ll miss you.”
There was no question of me traveling to Fayetteville, where Abel had been accepted to the University of Arkansas’s College of Education. Granny Ardith had been right. The bracelet that gave me the gift of renewed life had indeed come with a price. There was no use trying to travel beyond the daylight boundaries of the keeping spell.
Abel pulled me close. “I’ll be done with school and back here teaching before you know it.” He slid a hand under my chin and tilted my face up. “And I’ll be home to visit as often as I can until then.”
I reached up and clasped his sun-warmed hand in mine. “If you don’t, I’ll send Hettie to fetch you. And nobody likes an angry Hettie.” The afternoon sun winked off the tiny sapphire in my engagement ring. “I need you here as much as possible.”
His lips brushed my ear as he whispered, “You’ll probably change your mind after a few years of coming back from the well and finding me in your bed. I’ll always be waiting for you. Morning after morning, for the rest of our lives. You’ll be tired of me before long.”
My pulse quickened. With a quick glance to make sure we were still alone, I lifted onto my toes and kissed him. “You’re handsome when you’re wrong,” I said.
Hettie and Big Tom had taken Lilah inside the terminal, ostensibly to check the schedule and see if Abel’s train would be on time, but I knew it was so Hettie could gather her emotions and give Abel and me a chance for a private goodbye.
I caught the eye of a lady from church who was in her eighth month of pregnancy. After news of my helping with Clara’s delivery spread, a few mothers-to-be had approached me with tentative requests that I attend the births of their little ones. I was far from experienced still, bu
t I found midwifery suited me. And it gave me a reason to dust off a few of Papa’s medical texts. Leafing through their pages gave me a sense of connectedness to him. I was the next link in a chain of Pruitts practicing medicine, just not in the way I’d imagined.
The few other locals waiting for the train gave us tight, sympathetic smiles. It was the usual reaction we got since that fateful night in the woods.
The general consensus was this: The widely disliked Mr. Lybrand had indeed formed an unseemly attachment to the woman who’d pretended to be his niece. He’d gone into a fit of rage upon finding her former lover in town and killed them both, with Miss Pimsler being an unfortunate victim in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In the court of public opinion, it hardly mattered that Sheriff Loftis had come to a far different conclusion, one much nearer the truth. In his estimation, Lilah and I were the unfortunate bystanders. Miss Maeve Donovan had concealed her past for years and, when faced with exposure by Miss Pimsler and the reappearance of the man who’d wronged her, she’d gone completely mad. Insanity was the reason she’d taken Lilah to the well that night, and Providence had seen fit to thwart her plans in the form of me and Papa arriving in time to rescue Lilah.
The sheriff didn’t try to deny that Miss Maeve had killed my father, to my surprise. Mr. Lybrand convinced him of the truth before the banker quietly left town under a cloud of black suspicion. We never learned where he went, and the beautiful house on the edge of the woods was abandoned. Even though no one in town knew of the otherworldly aspects of what happened, of trapped spirits and the Hollow, no one tried to buy the Lybrand house, even when months passed and it became clear its owner wasn’t coming back. The lore of the woods held sway over the town still.
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