Page 24 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
Gillian stops laughing, eyes darting from Jess to Amy. “Well! I better get going,” Amy says. She rolls her eyes, not bothering to say goodbye before turning on her booted heel and walking back to her car. The tight gossipy group disbands. Gillian shrugs and walks away, and Jess turns toward the lane that leads to the library, feeling slightly sick and hollow.
She replays over and over what she said, what Amy and Gillian said, trying to find the gaps, what they didn’t say out loud. She’s mostly annoyed at Gillian, who does try, in her own way, but is so easily influenced by the crowd. So ready to turn on someone she used to be friends with and believe every silly little white lie about her.
Without thinking, Jess lifts her hand up to glimpse the silvery scar on the edge of her palm, from the day she and Carrie became blood sisters, when they were fourteen. After watchingPractical Magic, they pinched Carrie’s dad’s pocketknife and went up to the lookout, high above the rooftops of Woodsmoke. She remembers how odd and exhilarating it felt, the shock of blood, the press of Carrie’s skin to her own, how they grinned at each other in the dark and promised to be sisters forever.
Jess is so in her own head all morning at the library, constantly and absently rubbing a thumb against the silvery scar, that she doesn’t fine someone who’s had a book out for over six months. She drops a full cup of coffee in the tiny kitchen behind the desk and lets someone take out a book without remembering to stamp it. She forgets to change the sign fromopentoclosedwhen she and Dawn go on their lunch break, and she finds a disgruntled note tucked under the door from a resident when they return.
“Get it together, girl,” Dawn huffs on her way to the back stacks with a trolley of books to reshelve. “Or take some annual leave. Get yourself a haircut. Dosomething. But stop being so damnabsent. Yes?”
Jess knows Dawn means well, but it’s not good that she’s noticing her absent-mindedness. Jess doesn’t want to appear any different, to give away that Carrie’s return has had any effect at all.
But it has.
She asks her mum to collect Elodie from school for her, vaguely citing a need to pop over to the shops in the next town. But really, she’s avoiding the other mums. She doesn’t want to find their eyes sliding away, gossip hot on their tongues about her and Tom. So she drives over to the next town and loses herself for an hour in the pre-Christmas throng of shoppers. Walking along the parade of high street shops, she sinks into anonymity. She buys a takeaway coffee with too much extra cream and feels the lump ofoverprocessed dairy and sugar heave like a rock in her stomach the whole drive back. She isn’t comfortable. Not in Woodsmoke, not in her own skin, not in her ownlife.
“Damn you, Carrie,” Jess says inside the silent car as she pulls onto her road. “Damn you.”
The big problem, what’s cutting her up and dividing her in two, is that she misses her friend. Acutely. She doesn’t want anything in her life to change by stirring up the past, but she wants just as much for Carrie to be here. She can’t marry the two sides of herself, and it’s leaving her immobile. Disconnected. Desperate.
Still preoccupied, Jess barely registers Tom saying he has to go out that night. She’s wrangling Elodie into bed, going through the nighttime routine of a cup of water, finding Moonlight the bear, kissing her the same number of times on each cheek... then she hears the front door close and realizes he’s gone. Just... gone.
And so Jess spends another evening alone. Another evening stewing over Carrie, unable to close the division cracking her apart. She wonders if she’s made the right choices, if this life is what she’s always wanted. Or whether, without Carrie, it’s like winning a coveted prize and finding out it’s all a lie.
Chapter 20
Carrie
Memory lives in our skin. We experience it with our whole being, a touch awakening a moment from years before. I remember how his kisses felt. How they shivered along my skin, my mouth. How every moment waiting for him to call would stretch as long as an hour. The tinny landline would trill downstairs, and I would go still, every fiber of my being straining toward that phone as my mother picked up the receiver. I remember how my heart would race as she called up the stairs for me. How every step on that staircase felt like a victory march as I walked to the corded phone receiver, lying ready for me on the side table in the hallway. How I would cradle it to my ear, a slow smile spreading throughout my body. How we would arrange to meet, and I knew he would kiss me again.
I sigh, then snap back to the present when Tom taps on the window. I nod slowly, the first fingers of unease crawling over me. He’s not smiling. This is not a fond reunion. He slides quietly into the passenger seat and closes the door. I don’t turn to look at him. I keep the headlights on, watching the light pool over the snow outside, pushing against the darkness beyond. The air is thick with all the words we never said to one another. The conversation I never had—couldn’thave—with him before I left.
“You could have warned me,” he says finally, brushing his dark, tousled mass of hair back from his face with his fingers. He’s grown it longer than he used to wear it.
“What good would that have done?”
“I would have had time. To prepare, or—I don’t know. To think.”
I swallow, shifting in my seat. “You don’t seem so thrilled that I’m back.”
Tom stares moodily out at the night. “I guess I didn’t expect you to come back, Carrie. Not after what happened. Not after you left so suddenly. Jess is...”
“Jess is what?” I ask quickly.
“She’s not herself.” He sighs, flicking a glance at me, before turning back to the night. “She’s jumpy, and quiet. You haven’t seen her, have you?”
“No,” I say quietly. “No, I have not.”
“Are you going to?”
“Wouldn’t it be the right thing to do? Call on my old best friend, arrange to meet up—”
“I don’t think so.”
“Look, Tom, I get it, my presence is an issue for you. I didn’t leave in the best way, and I didn’t get in touch...”
“You left me at the altar, Carrie.”
I blink steadily, feeling the weight of his words. Feeling the ghost of a long-extinguished relationship sitting between us. We never got any closure, we never closed that chapter, and yet... there is nothing. We nearly got married, and I feel nothing for this man. He’s a near-stranger sitting beside me.
