Page 5 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
What if that man isn’t really a man at all?
I turn the door handle, shoulder my way into the cottage, and carry the wildflowers into the kitchen. Then I take down one of Ivy’s old enamel milk jugs, fill it with water, and leave them in there. It’s superstitious, but I can’t shake it, even after all these years. You don’t discard or scorn a gift from the mountains.
I want to believe these wildflowers were picked and left here by someone I used to know, but I can’t be sure. Not with that press of unseen eyes I felt last night, or the faint finger tap on the window that echoed through my dreams. Not with the frost arriving today, early for this time of year. And certainly not with that man, that beautiful, quiet man who vanished up the mountain path, gone between blinks as though I might have imagined him.
My fingers tremble as I arrange the flowers, humming an old song Ivy used to sing, a song that’s really a story, about a woman who had flowers left on her doorstep, who fell in love and disappeared into the vast mountains, never to be seen again. I bunch my hands into fists, the slow trickle of fear taking hold, the knowing that life is different in Woodsmoke. You can’t be sure that a gift is always left with good intent. You don’t stray from the path. And if you see someone stepping off the mountain trails, or hear a voice luring you away, never follow. Sometimes a gift is just a gift. But sometimes... I swallow.
Sometimes it’s a warning.
Chapter 4
Jess
She can’t tell him. She can’t tell him that Carrie’s back. That she swept in here with the frost last night, and she’s heard this time Carrie might stay. He left for work at half past seven, as always, and Jess is watching the clock, knowing she’s only got an hour before she has to walk Elodie to school. The school she and Tom went to... the school Carrie went to.
Elodie walks the same way Jess used to—along the track edged by high hedges, fields, and mountains beyond. For now, Jess walks with her every day, holding her hand and sometimes savoring those ten minutes with her daughter. But sometimes, like this morning, nothing goes quite the way it should. She boiled the kettle, made her cup of breakfast tea, allowing a dash of milk to whirl and bloom in the center. She made a cup for Tom as well, and then was irritated when he took only two small sips, made a face, and left it in the sink. How was he so fussy? It was tea, for goodness’ sake. She’d been making it for him for years.
Then she forgot her own tea as Elodie began her day with one ofthosemornings. The cereal was too soggy. Jess hadn’t found the right pair of socks for her to wear. The clouds in the sky, with their pattern of wisps like the marks of a skater on ice, were too crooked. Elodie lay on the floor in the hallway at twenty-five minutes to nine, her school shoes next to her, and that was when Jess took her first gulp of tea. Stone cold. Her irritation, at Tom, at the morning, at her six-year-old daughter who was going to makeher late for her shift, only grew. It sprouted talons and claws, digging into her thoughts as she gritted her teeth and jammed the shoes onto Elodie’s feet.
The walk to school was not to Elodie’s liking. Jess walked too fast. She was hungry. Thirsty. She didn’t like the frost dusting the ground. She had left behind her bear, Moonlight, who went everywhere with Elodie and smelled like spilled milk. Jess kept gritting her teeth until her jaw ached, nodding to the other mums and dads, trying to pretend this morning was goingexactlyas she had planned. But really, underneath it all, her world was a howling tempest.
It was on the tip of every tongue, the news of Carrie’s return. She could feel the other mothers watching her with furtive little glances, marked looks, raised eyebrows. They all know what happened ten years ago—or at least, theythoughtthey did. As Elodie muttered like a thundercloud at her side, Jess strode past all of them, sticking her chin in the air and making sure to avoid eye contact.
Her school mums WhatsApp group had been abuzz since dawn. The evening before, someone had seen Carrie’s car pull up to Ivy’s cottage, the caravan attached to the back. It didn’t take long for the news to spread around Woodsmoke, especially with Facebook and WhatsApp groups, the embers of gossip shared with strings of shock-faced emojis. An explosion of whispers had fanned the news at the school gate, but Jess ignored it all. Ignored the thrum of her heart. Ignored the part of herself that had lived in fear of this day, when her best friend of so many years ago would return and see how the pieces had fallen since she left.
Jess was late for her shift at the library by six minutes. Dawn, the other librarian, barely glanced at her as she took the “hold” books from the shelves and stacked them with their printed whiteslips. The library, with the window seats, the faded blue-and-green carpet, and the dust motes gathering in the shafts of light, has been Jess’s refuge ever since she learned how to read. When she was old enough, she would walk to the library by herself and spend hours on a beanbag in the children’s corner, reading books about dragons and swoony heroes. Later, when she turned fourteen, she would stray to the romance and fantasy sections.
She’s not sure what she would do without this place. It’s one of the pillars that props her up. But today she feels exposed. Will Carrie turn up and demand that they talk? Jess jumps every time someone walks into the library, imagining her. Her face, her voice. The last time Jess laid eyes on her.
Jess gets through the morning on a wave of perpetual anxiety, then meets Tom at home for lunch in their hour off. She stuffs baguettes with ham and cheese, then with crunchy lettuce leaves and slices of cucumber, picked up from the supermarket three days ago. Jess and Tom don’t talk much at all. She figures they haven’t for a long time. It’s all logistics after you have a child. Lists and dates for the diary, birthdays and anniversaries and cards you forget to post. He pulls out the slices of ham to leave them on his plate in a pink heap and chews his baguette. He never once asks her how Elodie was after he left for work.
She considers barraging him with details—the forgotten teddy bear, the clouds, the socks. Just so he can feel even anounceof her irritation. But what would be the point? He’s too lost in his own world today. Scrolling through Twitter on his phone, texting his dad about the football match he’s arranged to go and watch later in the pub. It’s clear that he hasn’t heard yet that Carrie’s back in Woodsmoke, that she’s turned up to renovate Ivy’s old cottage.
Jess eats the last of her baguette, dusting the crumbs from her fingers, and decides to let him find out for himself. Even thoughthey got together after Carrie left, and there wasn’t even a spark in all the years before, Carrie still casts a shadow over their relationship. They do not speak of it, how it smudges and darkens an otherwise perfectly respectable marriage.
“Can you pick up some more milk on your way home?” Jess asks, tapping a finger on the fridge door. Her voice sounds awkward, full of corners and edges that aren’t normally there. “And some white bread for Elodie’s lunches?”
“Sure,” he says, not even bothering to look up. “I’ll pick up your favorite chocolate too in exchange for one kiss.”
She bites her lip, that old familiar flare igniting inside her. Even now, all these years later, Tom hasn’t lost that cheekiness she fell for. “I’ll text you a list.”
“Sounds good. I’ll collect my kiss later.” He flashes her a grin, then turns back to his phone.
“Heard any... news today? Where is it you’re working?”
“Mrs. Neal’s,” he says, pocketing his phone before swiping up his van keys from the table. “Big house on the edge of Goode Street? Electrics done by her husband thirty years ago. Bloody nightmare.”
“Right.”
“What kind of news?”
“Huh? Nothing. Nothing, really.”
He’ll hear it from someone, Jess is sure of it. He’ll notice eventually the eyes sliding over him, alight with that tingle of gossip that only small towns know how to set off. And when he does, he’ll know that Jess heard it first and didn’t tell him. But she’s not ready. She’s not ready for that conversation, for Carrie to be alive again in Woodsmoke, breathing the same air as them. Stealing pieces of the life they have carved out so carefully together. Jess has pushed away the ache in her chest that Carrie left there, tamping it down to dwell alongside every other disappointment, everyheartbreak, every loss she has experienced. But now Carrie is real. She’s here, she’s not a memory, and that ache is resurfacing like a ripped-open old wound.
She thinks about that night, what she did, and her heart quickens.
Carrie is back, maybe for good, and Jess’s safe, ordered life is about to be set on fire.
