Spells for Forgetting(32)

The next item in the drawer was the photograph that had been stuck to my dresser mirror as a teenager. I’d put it away after the funeral.

I hesitated before I let myself look at it. Lily’s wide smile beamed up at me. Her head was tilted to one side as she sat on the dock, her toes in the water. I don’t know what she was laughing about. I can never remember. A fifteen-year-old version of me sat beside her, my face turned to look at her. It felt like that was how it had always been. Me watching her. Taking my cues. Trying to mimic her carefree, spontaneous spirit.

The rain didn’t stop for eight days after Lily died, and the fire department said that it was the only reason the entire orchard hadn’t burned to the ground. The first drops began to fall in the early hours after the fire, while Nixie and I were on the ferry to Seattle. We spent the next four days at the hospital with my parents and when I returned to Saoirse, the rain was still coming down.

A cleansing, my grandmother had called it. The island’s way of purging herself of what happened.

I could still see the casket in my mind, a gleaming black surface covered in wildflowers. The asters and red valerian and sage that marked the summer season as the solstice drew near.

I’d heard my mother and Nixie talking in the kitchen that morning about the eulogy. There wasn’t a single person who’d wanted to give it. Not her parents, not her grandparents. Even Lily’s favorite teacher had declined. What did you say over the body of a dead girl? There were no words for that.

No one remembered what was said, anyway. All I could recall was the sound of Lily’s mother crying.

I reached into the drawer again, pushing aside a stack of papers until my fingers found the thing that I’d really been looking for—the brown file folder. I pulled it into my lap, debating whether to open it. The tickets I’d hidden to protect August. This, I’d hidden to protect my father and Nixie.

Inside, there was only a single sheet of paper. The deed to Salt Orchards.

If anyone else on Saoirse saw it, they probably wouldn’t see what I did. Because they didn’t know what I did.

Six months after Henry Salt died, Abbott Wittich announced in the Saoirse Journal that the old man had left the orchard to the town. It had been almost two years since I’d stopped looking, but I couldn’t stop thinking that if I could get my hands on the will, I might find some clue that would tell me where August and Eloise had gone. I didn’t. But I did find something else.

A buzz reverberated against the floor and I closed the file, pulling the phone from my back pocket. Dutch’s name was on the screen.

I bit down on my bottom lip and picked up the wineglass, draining it before I answered. “Hey.” I tried to keep my tone light, but it rang false, making me pinch my eyes closed.

Dutch wasn’t fooled. “Hey”—he paused—“you at home?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I’m heading over to the shop in a bit to measure for the glass. Should I stop by and grab the key?”

“No.” I closed the file in my lap. “I’ll be there. I have some catching up to do.”

“All right.” He sounded almost formal. He was being careful. “I’ll see you there.”

“See you.”

He hung up before I did and I pressed the corner of the phone to my forehead, sighing. There was always more unspoken than spoken with Dutch. We were a long, trailing conversation of things that neither of us wanted to say. But eventually, they came to a head. They always did.

We still hadn’t talked about our fight a few nights ago, and there were only so many free passes he would give me. I’d rather it be the shop than the house, where I knew how things would go. When Dutch and I didn’t agree, we made peace in the only way we did make sense—in bed.

I tucked the file back into the bottom of the drawer and closed it. A scratch against the single-pane window made me turn my head, and I squinted, trying to see past my own reflection in the glass. Outside, the arm of the aspen tree was rocking, the tip of its bare fingers hitting the pane. It wasn’t until I was standing inches away that I saw the starling perched at the end of the branch. Its head cocked to one side as it watched me, almost invisible in the dark.

I reached up, touching the glass, and it fogged around my fingertips before the bird took off, leaving the branch swinging again. When I dropped my hand, the outline was still traced there on the window.

The trees may have finally turned, but the starlings still hadn’t left. I didn’t want to think about what that might mean, but I was sure that it did mean something.

I pulled on my jacket before I took the keys from the hook and opened the door, stepping out before I’d even looked up. I sucked in a breath when I almost slammed into the broad-framed figure in front of me.

The hood of my jacket fell back and every drop of blood in my body turned cold as a painful, piercing ring sounded in my ears.

August.

He stood on the top step, no more than two or three feet away.

Brown eyes the color of toffee met mine beneath the swinging porch light. I hadn’t been able to see their color across the road when I saw him before, but I could see it now.

I watched him swallow, his muscles tensing beneath his shirt. The sleeves were rolled nearly to the elbows and his dark, wild hair was curling at the ends, his jaw covered in a scruffy beard. He stood at least a head taller than me now, but he looked the same. The exact same as I remembered.