When the Moon was Ours(16)

That left the awful possibility that they’d lost him. It left Miel to guess how, to wonder if it was her fault.

With each wink of glass the moon found, her mother’s song sounded a little sharper, a little more like weak sobbing.

Mr. and Mrs. Bonner would notice. And if they asked, their daughters would blame Miel. Chloe and Ivy would tell their mother and father that Miel was not only a girl once made of water, but that she’d had a mother who tried to kill her. The girls half this town thought were witches would call Miel a witch, a wicked girl the river had kept and then given back, and who was now turning their fields to glass.

The lies in the Bonner girls’ hands were a thousand pairs of scissors, brass and tarnished. If they spread that story, her mother’s soul would never be free of it. It would follow her, pin its weight to her and drag her down. Her mother already stayed too close, watching Miel and looking for the brother Miel would never see again.

She had to do what Ivy said. She had to wait for her next rose to grow and open, and then she had to let the Bonner sisters have it.

The question of why they wanted them pinched at her. It couldn’t have been as simple as making boys fall in love with them. They already knew how to do that. Even Chloe, months gone, with the rumors trailing through her hair like ribbons, hadn’t lost the shimmer that lived on their skin.

That was the worst thing, the not knowing. If them wanting the roses was about any boy in particular, or all of them. If it meant Ivy was set on the boy who’d been so disinterested at the river, or if one of her sisters had decided on a boy from another town who had never heard of the Bonner girls, and would be unprepared for the force of them.

Or Sam. That possibility whispered to Miel too. He worked at their family’s farm. No other boy had ever gotten that close to the Bonner girls without wanting them.

Miel put her palm to her wrist, the muscle still sore. And the words she hadn’t been able to find when Ivy opened those scissors filled her mouth.

No, she whispered over those fields. No, you can’t have this part of me.

If they tried to take Sam, she’d do anything she could to stop them, but that choice was his. This one was hers.

I am not your garden, she said, the words no louder than the thread of her mother’s voice the wind carried.

I am not one of your father’s pumpkin vines.

You do not own what I grow.

The wind, and the crackling sounds of leaves and vines, answered her.

Those glints of glass looked a little duller. Instead of their shine, she saw the cream gray of the Estrella pumpkins or the deep blue-green of Autumn Wings.

The wind, and that thread of her mother’s voice, quieted.

It was the first time the sight of pumpkins, fresh and alive, had warmed her. She stood facing those fields instead of cringing away. And this was as much of a sign as her mother had ever given her. Between them, pumpkins were a language as sharp as it was unknowable to anyone else. If she heard the distant rush of her mother’s voice, it was her blessing.

Miel wouldn’t do it. The next time she had a full rose on her wrist, she was staying far from the Bonner girls.

A tired feeling swept over her, equal parts exhaustion and relief. She wanted to sink into it, fall onto her bed with her clothes still on. No matter how the Bonner sisters thought they could threaten her, she wouldn’t give in to it. The decision had left her worn out, ready to slip beneath the glow of Sam’s moons.

She went home to the violet house, and found the light on in the kitchen.

Aracely was standing in front of the wall calendar, the belt on her robe tied in a halfhearted bow.

Aracely looked over at Miel, eyeing her sweater, her jeans, her lack of a nightgown. “Where were you doing out?”

“What are you doing up?” Miel asked.

“Trying to remember the last time Emma came in.” Aracely studied the calendar. “I think we’re about due.”

Emma Owens, the wispy blond woman who ran the school office, managed to get her heart broken at least once every couple of months. She fell in love with men who didn’t call, or men who did call and who she scared off with her gratitude and hurry. In her early thirties, hell-bent on getting married before thirty-five, she ended up sobbing on Aracely’s table at least once a season.

Every time she set her hands on her rib cage, Aracely told Ms. Owens to slow down, that the right heart would find hers, but only when both hearts were ready. But every time Aracely cured her, rid her of wanting whatever regional produce buyer or accountant did not want her back, she was barely off the table by the time she had another date with another man who would drift between interested and indifferent. Even in her prim pearl-buttoned cardigans, she was pretty and white-blond-haired enough that she was rarely alone on a Friday night.

Miel stood next to Aracely. “Don’t you worry about how often she comes in?”

“First rule of business, never argue with a repeat customer,” Aracely said. “Besides, I know what I’m doing.”

“One day you’re gonna pull her whole heart right out of her.”

“Oh, I’d love to explain that,” Aracely said.

Miel extended a hand in front of her, like she was setting a headline. “‘Curandera accidentally kills local woman.’”

“Screw ‘accidentally,’” Aracely said. “They’d never believe it.”