Spells for Forgetting(33)

His eyes ran over my face, like he was thinking the same thing, holding the image of me against the past. The feeling of his gaze dragging over me was like the cut of a blade.

“Emery.”

It was a sound that I had played in my mind an infinite number of times. The tenor of August’s voice saying my name. It nailed me to the floor, making it impossible to move.

“I…” But his mouth closed again, his jaw clenching.

My heart raced, my mind sifting through every awful thing I’d ever wanted to say to him. But looking at him now, not a single poisonous word could make it to my tongue.

“Hi, August.” I managed to put the words together, staring at the small checks in the fabric of his shirt.

“Hi.” He turned the cellphone over in his hand nervously, pressing it between his palms.

I glanced at the road behind him. Any minute, someone could drive by. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I know. I just…I just didn’t want to leave things like that—what happened yesterday.”

I could barely hear him over the sound of my uneven breath. It wasn’t just his voice. It was the feel of him that lingered in the air. Like the ghost that had haunted me for so long was finally flesh before me.

“Look.” A bloom of red crept up his throat. It was something I recognized. “Em, I—”

Em. I couldn’t bear the sound of it.

“I can’t do this,” I whispered.

His expression changed at my tone, softening, and the look he gave me made a burn ignite behind my eyes. Before a single tear could fall, I shouldered around him, taking the steps down to the stone path.

The wind picked up, tearing through the trees, and I climbed into the truck just as the first drops of rain hit the windshield. The ignition stuck, refusing to turn until the third try, and I shifted the gear into reverse as the lights flashed on the porch.

I willed myself not to look back as I let out the breath I was holding, but my eyes drifted to the rearview mirror anyway. There, in the glow of the porch’s dim light, August stood, watching me disappear.





Eighteen


    NOAH


She hadn’t been my little girl in a long time.

As soon as I’d closed up the pub for the night, I’d driven the single road from town to the house. It was the same road I drove every night when Emery was growing up, and often she’d be sitting beside me, her bare feet propped up on the dash. But tonight, I was alone.

The headlights washed over the gravel drive as I pulled in. Emery’s truck was gone, the house dark, and I sat with the engine idle, watching the rise of the moon over the roof. Once, I’d let Emery climb up to sit on the eaves because she wanted to see the sunrise. I’d gotten up in the dark and put the percolator on before waking her, and she pulled the crocheted blanket up the ladder before stepping onto the icy shingles. There she sat, her nose pink with cold, and when the sun rose, I didn’t see it because I was watching her. The way the color of her eyes changed in the light.

Much to Albertine’s displeasure, we’d never planned to have children. But when Hannah told me she was pregnant, we both surprised ourselves by being happy about it and we joked that Albertine had probably gotten her way with the use of less than natural means. I still believed that. The women had always been the ones pulling the strings on this island.

Leoda delivered Emery in the dark bedroom of our house in the middle of a storm with the power out, and the first time I’d held my daughter in my arms was by candlelight.

She looked up at me with dark blue eyes, the left one splashed with a burst of bright green. An imperfect seven-pointed star that Leoda told us was something called heterochromia. Albertine, on the other hand, said that it was a sign that Emery had been marked. That she was special.

The last time she’d looked little to me was almost a year after the fire. I’d woken in the middle of the night to a silent house. After months of Emery waking with nightmares, I’d gotten into the habit of checking on her. But that night, when I pushed open the door to her room, she wasn’t there. I pulled the blankets from her bed and searched the house, calling her name out in the woods. It wasn’t until I saw the faint light across the road that I realized.

I let myself into the Salts’ empty cottage. It was freezing cold, but the little light over the sink had been switched on. I followed the hallway to the last room and there she was, tucked under the quilts on August’s bed. I pushed the hair back from her face and pulled her into my arms and when she opened her eyes, they were red and swollen. I carried her back to the house as she cried into my shirt.

It wasn’t the last time I found her there.

The cold air ignited the raw ache in my throat and I lifted my arm, coughing into the sleeve of my jacket. The sound crackled in my chest, my ribs sore. I looked at my watch again, tilting it toward the moonlight. It was almost eight and I’d waited at the house for almost an hour. I was already late.

I reversed back out of the drive with a heavy sigh and started up the road, pulling the collar of my jacket up to my chin. The heat had gone out in the truck years ago, but it didn’t much bother me until January. The cold night was early for the year, even if the leaves had been late. The island hadn’t followed its usual rhythms, as Hannah had called them. The late autumn had pushed things off kilter and by morning, there would be frost.