Spells for Forgetting(16)

I’d started at the orchard as a teenager like everyone else in town, hired on as a farmhand in the summers as we got ready for the harvest season. I’d gotten the idiotic idea to go to college in Seattle somewhere along the way, getting a scholarship from some bullshit math test, but it had taken one semester for me to drop out and beg Henry Salt to give me my old job back.

Now, I was managing operations. That alone would make Henry turn over in his grave.

Wide glass windows looked out over the barn floor and flits of light danced across the office as the visitors streamed past the wide-open doors. Their chatter drowned out the ache in my head. The soreness in my back.

I sank back into the chair, and took the order list from the top of the bookshelf.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were avoiding me, Dutch Boden.”

I tore my eyes from the page, looking to the open doorway. Leoda Morgan’s mouth twisted on one side as she looked down at me. I should have known she’d show up. There wasn’t a single pot on this island that Leoda wasn’t stirring. She’d been the one to put me in that chair and she hadn’t let me forget it, either.

She stepped inside without an invitation and propped herself on the corner of the desk, folding her hands over the top of one leg. Her name had appeared on my phone screen twice since daybreak, but I’d ignored the call both times.

I clicked my pen. “Shouldn’t you be opening the apothecary?”

“I think we have bigger fish to fry, don’t you?”

I tapped the calculator, not looking up. “What is it?”

“You know exactly why I’m here.” She arched an eyebrow, reaching behind her to close the office door. “What are we going to do about this August business?” Her voice lowered to a whisper.

I set the pen down, finally turning in the chair to face her. “He’s here to bury Eloise. That has nothing to do with us,” I said, trying to believe it.

“You and I both know he’s not just here to bury those ashes.”

A tap on the glass broke the silence and the door cracked back open. Matthew Bard stood on the other side, looking between us sheepishly. “Hey, Leoda.”

“Hey, honey.” She forced a smile.

Matthew hesitated before he returned his attention to me. “Sorry. Tractor’s stalled out again. It’s on row sixty-eight.”

I let out a relieved breath, getting to my feet, and Matthew ducked out when Leoda scowled at him. She was a dog with a bone and that never ended well.

“We need to deal with this, Dutch.” Her tone took on a warning as I stepped past her.

I stopped on the other side of the door. “There’s nothing to worry about. Just let this blow over.”

Her mouth flattened as she looked up at me. She didn’t like it, but she knew I was right. Stirring things up wouldn’t do any of us any good. The sooner August was gone, the better.

I fit my hat back onto my head and walked toward the open doors, where Matthew was waiting in the farm truck. Exhaust billowed out of the tailpipe, filling the cold air with a haze, and Kate looked up from the crates on the floor of the barn, her eyes squinting against the light.

But for a moment, the flash of sun lit her hair blond. Her eyes blue. And in the fraction of a second, it wasn’t Kate standing there. It was Lily.

When I blinked, she was gone.





Nine


    AUGUST


The path I’d worn down through the woods coming and going to Zachariah Behr’s place as a kid was invisible now. I waded through the ferns and the thick undergrowth, finding my way through the trees until I spotted the corner of the cabin’s roof.

The land was wilder than I’d ever seen it, and the house was threatening to be overtaken completely by the vines that snaked down the branches and fell like a curtain over the exterior walls.

Zachariah had lived alone in this corner of the woods since before I was born and other than the Blackwoods, he was the only neighbor we’d ever had. My mother had taken on the job of looking after him, and back then, he would have been out on the water fishing this time of day. But when I crossed the tree line and the little house came into view, smoke trailed up from the chimney and the chickens hadn’t been let out yet. He was home.

My eyes roamed the woods around me before I followed the sound of metal clanging to the far side of the house, where the scrap lean-to shed faced the creek. The barn it was built onto was nothing more than a skeleton of wood, but the shed was still standing, its roof rusted over.

Zachariah sat on a metal stool that had lost almost all of its paint, hunched over the blades of his push mower that were laid out across the workbench. The tilted surface was littered with jars and tin cans filled with different sized screws, nails, and bolts. An empty beer bottle here and there.

His long johns were a dingy white beneath the dark blue elastic suspenders that reached over his broad shoulders. There wasn’t much hair left on his head, though its remnants were combed.

The rotary file that was clutched in his huge hand stilled midair when he heard my footsteps. The old man still had his hearing, at least.

“Was wonderin’ if I’d see you,” he said, keeping his back turned to me.

I couldn’t tell if his meaning was that he’d hoped he would or that he’d hoped he wouldn’t. I decided I didn’t really want to know.