Page 40 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
“But the cost was losing Carrie, wasn’t it? Isn’t that enough?” Jess says, her desperation surfacing now. Carrie was right the othernight. Jess did choose Tom over her. And now with Elodie and the baby, she would have to do it again. Was losing Carrie—her closest friend—the price? She betrayed Carrie horribly by going to Cora behind her back. By asking the mountains to make sure that she and Tom were with the person they truly loved, and that they were where they both belonged. And it turned out that Tom was meant to be with her, in Woodsmoke.
But was Carrie meant to wander? To feel constantly adrift and unsure of her place in the world? Carrie was meant to cut ties with everyone and everything in Woodsmoke, and yet she’s back. Jess needs that spell reversed; she needs to know that it would have all worked out the same, even without the mountains and the magic.
“Get the book, Cora. Get the book and tell me what to do. I’ll go to the mountains. I’ll deal with this. Then I’ll know that Tom loves me for me, and that Carrie was always meant to wander and I didn’t ruin both their lives. Just tell me—”
“It wasn’t you that paid the price last time,” Cora barks. She stands up suddenly, tutting down at Jess. “It wasn’t onlyyouwho lost Carrie.”
Jess’s eyes burn, her whole being burns, and she flushes with the guilt, with the knowing. “I’m sorry. Cora, I’m truly so sorry.”
“Time for you to go. Time for you to go back to little Elodie, back to the nice life you’ve built here. Time for you to weather the storm. And perhaps... perhaps you need to tell Tom. Perhaps it’s time to fix things yourself and tell the truth—that you meddled. No book. No bargains. No magic. Just you, Tom, and Carrie, figuring this out. You have to trust that your love is enough that he won’t leave you.”
Cora gestures to the door, then watches Jess as she crumples. She’s reminded of Howard, of how he drags his feet through each day, how he holds it all in, all his disappointment. Jess rises to herfeet, not bothering to hide her burden, or the fatigue so obvious on her sagging face, a fatigue that seems to have penetrated her very bones and taken root.
“You’ll have to weather it too,” Jess says, walking past Cora. She pulls on her boots and her coat, then turns back. “If it can’t be reversed, if it all comes out, what you did that night, what I asked of you... you’ll have to weather that too.”
Jess makes it halfway back to Woodsmoke before she has to pull over. She kills the engine, leaving the lights on, the soft glow revealing a frosted hedge and ground glittering with ice. She wipes at her eyes, staring without seeing, replaying her conversation with Cora. Finding all the holes in it, where she could have pressed more. Maybe she needs to steal the book. Break in when she knows Cora and Howard are both out, take it, and find the passage or story inside its pages that will help her. That will tell her how to reverse what she did a decade ago.
She brings her fingertips up to her mouth, gulping in air as her nose begins to run. She feels sure that Tom loves her, that he would have loved her without her meddling, but there’s doubt and guilt tangled up in all that history. Knotted like poison, choking her now that Carrie is back.
She has carried this guilt with her for ten whole years, carried it alongside her elation that Tom is all hers. She has traced Carrie’s journey. Like running a finger over a map, she has tracked every place Carrie has stayed, visited, or painted, checking her Facebook profile, then Instagram, even searching her website for any details she can glean. But she never felt brave enough to message her, to open the door onto their past. The past is so mixed up with love, guilt, and longing that she can’t see a way back to it anymore.
And now that Carrie is back, all of Jess’s guilt is resurfacing.She supposes that’s partly why she went over to see Carrie. She’s so wrapped up in her guilt, in her fear of losing the life she’s built, but she’s also missing her friend. Desperately. Now that Carrie is only a mile or so away, it all seems so immediate, so unresolved.
Gradually Jess’s tears subside, leaving streaky paths of salt stinging her skin. Checking her reflection in the mirror, she dabs concealer under her eyes and on the tip of her red nose. She checks her phone, finds a message from Tom asking when she’s getting back, if she’s okay. Then she takes a deep breath, turns the key in the ignition, and begins the slow drive home.
Chapter 32
Cora
Ten Years Ago
She doesn’t tell Jess about the potion. She doesn’t mention the little nudge, how she meddled in Carrie’s and Tom’s lives, thinking it would fix everything. For a time, of course, it did. Carrie had a first love, a best friend, and a wider circle of other people who accepted her, cared about her, and gave her the kind of teen years she craved. But now it’s all unraveling, and all she can do is try to reverse it.
Cora pauses for a moment, takes a deep, unhurried breath. The air is swampy and thick, promising a thunderstorm in a few days, and with every step up the mountain crickets sing to mark her way. It’s the kind of night she lives for—the velvet dark so close it feels like a caress, the song of wild things, the mountains bathed in silver from a full, beautiful moon. But she doesn’t appreciate it tonight. All she can think about, all she sees, is Carrie.
When Jess tapped at the door, eyes red, skin pale and taut, she fed her homemade lemonade and cookies and promised her she would take care of it. Promised her that her two best friends wouldn’t leave Woodsmoke for good. She held Jess’s hand, then sent her on her way before leafing through the book, poring over workings and stories. It all came back to this, back to her. Back to the potion, the little nudge, and the fact that she had to undo itall... then cross her fingers that Carrie and Tom’s love was real and Carrie would stay in Woodsmoke for him.
She rounds the corner in the trail, reaching the lookout, and leans against a tree, staring down at the town below. Five days. Just five days until Carrie will marry Tom. If she doesn’t truly love him, it could be the biggest mistake of her life. Cora knows she shouldn’t have let it get this far. She should have reversed the potion long ago, allowed Carrie to view Tom with clear eyes and see for herself whether she truly loves him. But it was so easy to let it be between them. So easy to see the path before Carrie winding forward into the future, a future of love and acceptance and the book.
But... love doesn’t work that way. It can’t be forced; it can’t be tricked.
She opens the book, which she’s been clutching against her chest, and turns to the page containing a reversal. It was recorded by Tabitha, her grandmother, to reverse a working for a dry season. There had been a drought in Woodsmoke that year, she wrote, and she lost ten years of her life to the working to bring the clouds. When she made the bargain to reverse it, the rain pattered on Tabitha’s head, gathering in the deepening wrinkles lining her face. When she got home, she looked in the mirror and realized that the mountains had taken ten more years from her.
Cora pulls out a pocketknife, pierces her thumb, and lets the blood drip, drip, drip into the loam. She makes her request of the mountains, just as it says to do in the book, and braces herself for what they will take from her.
Chapter 33
Carrie
Our first date is meant to be dinner. Getting all dressed up, putting lipstick on, and hoping it will be kissed away later. But we can’t wait, don’t want to wait. So we take the day off and carve our first date out of a January Tuesday.
Matthieu offers to drive my car, and we travel away from Woodsmoke, away from the clutter of collective stares and speculation. His hands drum on the steering wheel as he drives, and I sing along to old songs that the local radio station still plays, staring out of the window to watch as the landscape peels open, the mountains drifting away to linger on the horizon.
“Nearly there. Twenty minutes,” he says, and I glance over at him, catching his grin as he keeps his gaze fixed on the road.
“Any more hints?” I’ve been trying to guess all morning where he’s taking me. We began our first day off from working on the cottage in months by making pancakes in the cottage kitchen and toasting the day with fresh coffee in the French press I bought. The only details I’ve wrangled are that it’s best to wear thick socks, a hat, and gloves and to pack a thermos of tea. We’ve got biscuits, a thermos of tea, and enamel mugs in a basket on the backseat, and I’ve been asking questions ever since. “Is it... outside?”
“Yes.”
