Spells for Forgetting(30)

He wanted to lie. I could see it in the way he only met my gaze for fractions of a second. “Your mother thought it was best that we didn’t tell you,” he said quietly.

The weight of my feet suddenly felt as if it might pull me straight through the dock, into the freezing water. I stared at the letter in my hands and a pitiful laugh escaped me, bringing tears to my eyes. “That whole time, when I was looking for him, you knew exactly where he was and you didn’t tell me.”

He stared at his boots. There was nothing he could possibly say to justify it and he knew it.

“How could you do that to me?” I asked, weakly.

He took a step toward me and I instantly stepped back, keeping the space between us. “I’m sorry, Em. Your mother—”

“She what?” I cut him off. “She’s not here. So if you’re going to try to put this on her—”

“I’m not.” He lifted his hands into the air. “I’m not. It was both of us. We were afraid that you would leave. That you would go after him if you knew where he was.” His voice was careful. “You weren’t in any state to leave home, Emery. You were…” He paused, wincing. Like remembering it pained him.

But I knew. I remembered those days better than anyone. I’d fallen apart when August left the island. Not only because I’d loved him, but because I felt truly alone for the first time in my life.

“I’m such an idiot,” I murmured to myself, wiping a single, pathetic tear from my cheek.

“Emery.” He reached for me.

I shook my head, shoving the letter back into my pocket. “You’re just like them,” I said heavily. “You’re just like all of them.”

“We were trying to protect you.”

I smiled sadly, meeting his eyes. “You sure that’s all you were protecting?”

His mouth went slack, his eyes widening as I said it. And for the first time, the truth of the thing we’d never really talked about was laid bare between us. My father loved me, but there was more than one secret on this island.

I turned on my heel and I was grateful when he didn’t follow. The stairs at the end of the dock carried me back up to the house and when I reached the truck, I climbed inside, closing the door with a sob breaking in my chest. The sound filled the silent cab, the keys shaking as I fit them into the ignition.

The phone on the seat beside me buzzed and the screen lit up with a text from Dutch.

Checking in. You weren’t at the shop.



I stared at it until the screen went dark and I set my forehead on the steering wheel. After August left, my parents had tried to draw me back from the shadows. So had Nixie. But there was a part of me that had never left those dark corners of myself. They’d crept behind me all these years, even when I was sure I’d left them in the past.

Dutch was the only person on the island who’d understood that. In the end, it was the thing that brought us together. All we had was each other when the town flung us to the wind. But the more his hand tried to close around me, the more I wanted to run back to that darkness.

I turned the keys until the engine roared to life. The wheels cracked over fallen branches, taking me back onto the road, and the cold wind whipped through the truck, cooling my hot skin.

My parents had been right. If I’d known where August had gone, I would have followed. But now the truth was finally sinking in—that he hadn’t just left the island.

I may not have known how to find him, but he’d known where I was. He’d always known. August wasn’t lost. He wasn’t taken away or waiting for me somewhere. He never came back.

He had never come back for me.





Sixteen


    NINE YEARS BEFORE THE FIRE


   EMERY


“Candle?” My grandmother held the match between Lily and me, her eyes unfocused.

Lily was the one to take it, answering the question left hanging in the silence of the living room. “Air.”

“And the salt?” she asked, her face turning toward me.

I picked up the little bowl she’d filled and moved it to the center of the floor. “Earth.”

“That’s right.”

My grandmother Albertine had been teaching me how to bind herbs into charms and read the phases of the moon since I started talking, but I’d never been allowed to open The Blackwood Book of Spells. Not until my ninth birthday.

That’s when my mother had begun to be taught by her grandmother and so on, and that’s how I would teach my own granddaughter, Albertine said.

Her first lesson with the book of spells open was that every spell needed to be grounded by the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire, Water.

The candle’s flame reflected in Lily’s pale blue eyes as she blew out the match. The curl of smoke dissipated into the air over our heads as Albertine slid the book toward me. “Now, read it aloud.”

I set my finger on the first word, following as I read. “Spells for growing.”

“All right,” she chirped, feeling along the floor for the single rosebud she’d plucked from one of the pots in the greenhouse. When she found it, she handed it to me. The lavender petals were closed up tight, the tip pointed in a perfect spiral. “Go ahead, Lily.”

Lily’s lips pressed together excitedly and she scooted closer, reading over my shoulder.