Spells for Forgetting(4)

“I saw them,” I answered, my mouth twisting to one side.

When her eyes finally landed on me, they held the look of an impending interrogation. Nixie wasn’t my aunt by blood, but she’d been my mother and father’s best friend since they were all kids. And to my knowledge, I’d never won an argument with her.

“Turned all in one night. Just like that. Bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?” she rasped.

We both knew it was anything but. I’d been taught from a young age how to read the omens, the way children on the mainland were taught their letters and numbers. A butterfly entering the house through a window. Spotting an owl in the daylight. The thin glow of a halo that sometimes circled the moon in winter.

My grandmother Albertine would stand over me as I perched myself on the stool in her kitchen, stirring a pot of bubbling elderberries with a wooden spoon. The deep tenor of her voice still echoed within me. But I’d also been taught that there are some premonitions that stay neatly folded beneath time, only visible when looking back. I’d seen my fair share of those as well.

I came up the steps and fit the end of the key into the lock. It took three tries and a push with my shoulder to shift the bolt free, and the door swung open. The long-lived incense of lavender and sage came rolling out, breathing to life a thousand memories, no matter how many times I smelled it.

Pale light streamed through the windows of the shop, illuminating diagonal beams of dust in the darkness, and I slipped through them as I went to the rusted wall hook to hang my bag. Bundles of wildcrafted herbs dangled from the rafters and shelves lined with neat rows of brown paper bags were stacked against the walls, reaching all the way up to the ceiling.

Handwritten labels identified teas crafted for everything from anxiety to menstrual pains to relief from a sore throat. But it was the more mystical brews you couldn’t find on the mainland that most people crossed the water for on those dim autumn days. Recipes for infusions to draw love, conjure luck, or beckon dreams were only a few of those that had filled the shop since its doors first opened in 1812.

Nixie shut the door behind her, finding the nearest corner of the counter to place the pumpkin. “I thought I should come check on you,” she said, breaking the awkward silence between us. We both knew why she was here.

“Check on me?”

I traded my jacket for a linen pinafore apron, busying my hands with the ties.

“After last night.” She raised her eyebrows, knowingly. “Hell, the whole island heard you two fighting, Em. Heard you making up, too.” She set a hand on one hip, waiting. But I wasn’t going to take the bait. “How many times are you going to make that boy ask you to marry him?”

“We are not having this conversation, Nixie,” I said firmly. As if that would put an end to it.

“I know you don’t want to hear it, but someone’s gotta say it.”

“You have said it. A hundred times.” The CLOSED sign hanging on the door rocked on its chain as I turned it to read OPEN.

“Then when are you going to start listening? One day he’ll stop asking.” Nixie lowered her voice, waiting for me to look at her.

I swallowed against a tight throat, remembering the way Dutch’s shoulders had pulled up as he stood at the sink the night before, every angle of him hardening. Nixie was right. One day, he’d get tired of asking me to move in. To marry him. To start a family. There’d be no more late nights by the fire in his cabin or weekends at the beach. The idea was as terrifying as it was relieving, and that was the worst part of all of this.

“We still on for tomorrow?” I said, changing the subject.

Nixie gave me an irritated look, finally relenting. “Yep.”

The words she wasn’t saying were clear in her eyes as she watched me. We weren’t finished with this conversation. We never would be, as long as I kept pretending that she couldn’t see right through me.

From the beginning, Nixie had never really liked the idea of me and Dutch. She hadn’t bothered to keep it to herself, either. But her real fear was that after she was gone, like my mother, that I’d be left alone. I could feel her worry mounting by the week.

She leaned forward, giving me a rough kiss on the cheek. A peace offering.

The old brass bell on the door jingled as she pulled it open, but I didn’t relax until she was down the steps and out of sight.

I peered up at the gray sky. It would be only minutes before the rain began to fall, but that wouldn’t keep the ferry passengers away. Up the street, the low clouds drifted toward the woods, where I could still see the yellow hickory standing like a sentinel at the top of the hill. It vanished and then reappeared as the fog moved, like a candle flame flickering in the wind before it turned to smoke.

Across the shop, my shape moved over the old framed mirror. My blue eyes stared back at me, the left one aglow where the light caught the burst of brilliant green that painted a star in my iris. When I was little, my grandmother told me that it meant I was marked for something. That I was special somehow. But here I was, standing in my mother’s shop, wearing her apron. I’d inherited an entire life. One I had once sworn I would never live.

I came around the crude worktable at the back of the shop and replaced the candles that had burned out before I’d finished the new batch of tea the previous night. The open page of The Herbarium still stared up at me from beside the row of amber glass jars.