Girls of Brackenhill(38)
“I have, a few times. I don’t want to keep bugging them.” Hannah paused. “Please, Huck.” She tried to keep the edge out of her voice.
“Okay. If he calls, I’ll call you, okay?” Huck was stretched out on the couch, his long legs folded at the ankle. Aunt Fae and Uncle Stuart had never had a television, which had always suited Hannah just fine, but a week in relative isolation from the rest of the world had to be making Huck restless. He was social, used to crowds and people.
Hannah paused in the doorway, turned back to Huck. “When I get back, can we talk?”
“Sure. Am I in trouble?” He dipped his book, smiled tentatively. A thaw.
“You? No. Never.” She laughed then, and meant it. “There’s just a lot you don’t know. About my childhood here, my life before you. I feel like I can—and I should—tell you all of it now. Before, I think I was just trying to . . . I don’t know, forget it, maybe? Pretend it never happened?” She was figuring out the truth as she spoke. “It was more than that, maybe. I wasn’t ready to think about it.” She still wasn’t, not 100 percent.
Hannah tried to remember her life in Virginia. Her planned days, with their predictable rhythms.
“Sure,” Huck said, a slow smile spreading. “I’d like to get to know my future wife.” He pushed up on his elbows, a hank of hair falling over his forehead. Hannah wanted to reach out and brush it away but stayed rooted to one spot. His earlier mood seemed to shake off. “I’d like to talk too. Get a bottle of wine—we’ll make it a date.”
The drive down was slow, Hannah averting her eyes at the splintered wooden guardrail. She hadn’t heard from Wyatt about the investigation into Fae’s accident at all. Maybe it was like Huck had said, just a standard investigation. But Wyatt had said a few things didn’t add up. She picked up her phone, almost texted him to ask, but then thought better of it. Chase down one thread at a time, she admonished herself. Was that what she was doing right now? Chasing down threads? Maybe. She just knew that Jinny knew everything about everyone. There was only one place to start.
Hannah parked next to the bank, fed the meter, and walked the block and a half. When she pushed open the heavy wooden door, she was met with a curtain of beads, which she moved aside.
“Jinny!” Hannah called, but the store was silent. Jinny owned a spiritual store: tarot cards and crystals, herbs for burning, plants and succulents that all had medicinal purposes, candles and beads and incense. “Jinny!” Hannah called again.
“I’m coming!” she yelled from the back, and when she emerged, she was fidgeting with a black velvet turban on her head, tied in a front knot, her hair poking out like straw. She looked electrified. Her lipstick was bright red, smeared across her top front teeth.
“HANNAH!” she shouted, her excitement contagious as Hannah laughed and hugged her. She smelled like lavender and something earthy, musky. She jingled when she moved, all her rings, the bells on the fringe of her shawl, her silver and pewter bangle bracelets. “I’m so happy you’re back. Will you live here now? Fae didn’t bring you around much, but when she did, you girls were always a bright spot in my day. Then you got moody and teenagery, but we all do, I suppose. Hell, I used to sneak smokes from Billy Crawler’s pack, and he was at least ten years older than me. I was a bad kid, though—you guys were never bad kids. Come in; sit down. SIT DOWN!”
She pulled a chair out from the round table in the center of the store and got busy, wrapping a bundle of herbs: lavender, sage, and sweetgrass. She lit it on fire and danced gracefully around the room, her arm bowing in a swooping arc. She turned down half the lights and hummed as she worked. “Your aura is like death, child. What is so heavy? Is someone dying? Well, that’s an insensitive question, I suppose, given the circumstances. We’re all dying, at any rate.” She stopped and peered right at Hannah, and again Hannah felt overwhelmed at the volume of chatter. “No, that’s not it. You’re not upset about Stuart. He’s been dying for years. Waiting to die! Ridiculous. We treat animals better than humans. Who waits to die? Now he’s alone. A burden. That would kill him, you know. No, it’s not Stuart.” She leaned closer still, scrutinizing Hannah’s face. “It’s not Fae either.”
“I came with a question.” Hannah picked at her fingernail, uncertain how it would be received. “Who was Warren Turnbull?”
Jinny stopped moving, stared at Hannah, her mouth gaping in shock. “Where the HELL did you hear that name?” She threw the bundle of herbs on the ground and stomped the embers out with her Doc Martens (oh God, Hannah had just noticed she was wearing Doc Martens). She flung open the cabinet doors and started pulling out dried bales of green, stacking them on the checkout counter. She wrapped a new gathering and rambled as she worked: “Cedar, sage, I think. We need a smudge.”
“Jinny, who was he?”
Jinny lit the end and blew gently across the embers. She began her dancing anew, slower, her eyes closed, her lips moving without sound. Hannah watched with amusement and awe, but the smoke was starting to give her a headache. Jinny carried the bundle over to a milk glass bowl and set it down, and a curl of smoke lifted, swayed toward the ceiling.
Jinny pulled the chair out opposite Hannah and sat down abruptly. “Warren Turnbull is a terrible human being.” She slammed her hands flat against the table. “He’s abusive and a drunk, and he’s evil, pure evil. He’s the worst person I’ve ever known, and believe me, I’ve known an awful lot of completely devoid human beings. People with no soul. The man has no soul. He’s still alive, goddamn it, because even the Lord don’t want him. He lives over in the brown house next to the old railroad station. It looks like it’s made of kindling, and I do sometimes wish it would burn to the ground with him in it. I wouldn’t say I pray for that, but I say my ‘incantations,’ we’ll say.” Jinny bunny eared her fingers around the word incantations. “You leave him alone. I don’t want to hear of you going anywhere near him, y’hear?”