A Broom With a View (17 page)

L
iza didn’t think she could eat another single bite. Lamb. She’d eaten lamb for the first time since she’d moved out on her own.

And then there had been pie. So. Much. Pie.

Liza thought she might burst.

Not one moment of awkwardness, either, had passed amongst them. Well, okay, maybe
one
moment. It had come when Filly had declared, “So we hear you killed Cotton Hashagen for destroying your business!”

Liza’s mouth had been full of mashed potatoes at the moment, and she’d almost spit them across the table at Colt’s mother.

Not a
great
impression.

But she’d managed to swallow before answering, “Not exactly. I don’t know what happened to Cotton, but it wasn’t me.”

Whinny had shot her daughter a
look
at that moment and then Colt changed the subject.

There had been no other talk of magic.

Once they’d all helped clear the table, they’d gathered in the living room where Colt had brought out his guitar. He'd sang country songs from people she’d never heard of, songs like “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” and “On the Other Hand” which made her realize that, indeed, her country music education was sorely lacking.

Bridle had excused herself after that, claiming exhaustion, and her sisters had helped her up the stairs.

“Does she stay here sometimes?” Liza asked.

Whinny shot a look at her son and let Colt answer. “She lives here,” he said at last. “I couldn’t have her home by herself. She needed to be with someone, and I can take care of her. I have more space than Mama does now.”

“It’s true,” Whinny laughed. “I blocked the upstairs off at home. Too cold in the winter and I can’t afford the heating bill.”

Before Liza left, she asked if she could peek in on Bridle, to whisper goodbye if nothing else.

“Sure,” Filly answered. “Her lamp’s still on. She’s probably just watching TV.”

Bridle, in an old-fashioned white cotton nightgown, was indeed watching TV when Liza arrived–some black and white 1950’s show. Maybe “Donna Reed.”

“Liza,” she smiled thinly. “Sorry to leave the party so soon. I swear it wasn’t your company. Or maybe it was. Maybe you bored the pants off of me once you admitted you didn’t kill Cotton.”

Liza laughed. “I was just on my way out and wanted to say goodbye,” she said, not leaving the doorframe.

“It’s okay; you can come in.”

Liza entered the room and sat in the rocking chair by the bed. Someone had built a fire in the fireplace, and it was cozy sitting there with the television on low and the warmth of the room seeping into the bones.

“I don’t always feel so poorly,” Bridle explained. “I had chemo today. It takes a lot out of me. But today was my last go around. So maybe things will get better now.”

The look of hopefulness on her face was so optimistic that Liza smiled back, touched. Maybe Bridle was right.

“Where were you before Colt brought you here?” she asked, knowing she was prying but unable to help herself.

“At home,” Bridle said thinly. “With my husband. He stuck around for a while but then he couldn’t take it. He couldn’t watch me be sick. He had to do everything around the house, work
and
take care of me. It was too much. He couldn’t take what I was. What I am.”

Liza looked down at the pale woman, surrounded by love and warmth, and lightness. And she was jealous. “My husband couldn’t take what I was either. So he cheated. And then he left me for good.”

“Men are pricks,” Bridle laughed before going into a coughing fit that made her forehead shiny with sweat.

Liza leaned over, placed her hand on Bridle’s forehead, and murmured a few words. The coughing stopped, her face cooled, and her head fell softly to the side. Soon, her chest was rising and falling in a deep, peaceful sleep.

It wasn’t much, but Liza could, at least, offer her rest.

LIZA DROPPED
off her holiday open house flyer at the Chamber of Commerce and then walked back to her building, astonished at how cold it was.

She’d been vastly unprepared for the bi-polar weather of Kentucky. Having lived in Massachusetts for so long, she was used to the cold and snow and figured that with Kentucky’s obvious geographic location she’d be enjoying a much milder climate.

She was wrong.

That morning she’d woken up to an outside temperature of thirty-five degrees and, according to the weather forecast, it was meant to get colder over the next few days. When she’d visited over the summer, she’d all but melted in her rental car, driving around in the upper 90s.

Liza thought that dropping off her materials would just be a matter of paperwork, a small errand of little importance. She’d applied for her business license with little fanfare and didn’t expect the handing over of a flyer to be any different.

But Effie Trilby had been in the office and had introduced Liza around to several other people who were there for whatever reason and then she’d been invited to stay for breakfast because someone had apparently decided just to wake up that morning and feed everyone in the office. Someone had led her to a table full of biscuits, gravy, bacon, what someone called “breakfast potatoes,” and several jars of homemade jams and jellies.

When she’d left, one of the women had handed her a plate stacked with biscuits. “You need some meat on those bones,” she’d told Liza. “Take those for later.”

Everyone had been extraordinarily friendly and seemed to be genuinely excited about her business. They’d all had nice things to say about her grandparents and promised to stop in and visit her soon.

For at least a few minutes, Liza had felt like she was part of a
something
.

A
nd then, just like that, her mood plummeted.

She was a wash-up. Her business was a failure. That was all there was to it. Two people had canceled–the only two appointments she’d had on the schedule. Then the damn detective had returned, questioning her about Cotton.

Word
had
to be all over town by now: She was a witch with real powers, and if you double-crossed her she’d hurt you or worse.

People thought she’d killed one of their own, and now they wanted nothing to do with her.

After not a single client had entered her business all day, Liza did the only thing she
could
do–she stopped by the grocery store, bought two gallons of Rocky Road ice cream, and went home and ate them both.

But then, once she was full and had cried a few dozen times and was starting to suffer a tummy ache, Liza realized she was going to have to go about it a different way.

People canceled appointments. It happened. It was all part of running a business.

People
would
believe bad things about her. That was bound to happen, too. She couldn’t stop that from happening, either.

All she could do was take care of herself and do what she could.

All her collectible cola bottles began rattling in unison, threatening to fall off their shelf, and Liza jumped to her feet. She ran and knelt on the floor before them, trying to steady them before another crashed to the ground.

“Okay, okay. I get it; I get,” she mumbled. “I get it.”

And then someone knocked on the door.

Before Liza had even turned the knob all the way, Jessie from next door was flying through, sleet turning her coat to ice and dripping tiny puddles on Liza’s floor. But Jessie’s cheeks were flushed with excitement, rosy and happy.

“Guess what, guess what?” she sang, all but jumping up and down as the cold wind rushed past her and chilled the living room.

“Um, what?” Liza asked, trying to echo the woman’s cheerfulness.

“He got a new job!” Jessie squealed. “But, even better than that, his uncle who died a year ago? Everything is out of probate. My husband got more than $6,000 left to him. We’re going to have it by Christmas! Can you believe it?! We’ve been waiting forever!”

She gripped Liza in a frigid squeeze and before Liza could say a word of congratulations, Jessie was running back into the night towards her old Ford truck, oblivious to the cold and ice. She wasn’t even wearing a coat.

Somewhere in Liza’s house, a bell jingled fiercely.

LIZA WAS MORE
of a night ritual kind of gal, kind of the way she preferred to do her drinking around midnight, but sometimes, when the morning light was just right, there was nothing like a spell first thing in the morning.

It was that kind of morning.

Liza could not cure cancer. As much as she would like to, she just couldn’t. But she’d met Bridle, she’d heard about why her husband had left her, and she’d looked into her eyes.

She couldn’t, in good conscious, not try something.

After giving Bryar a call and filling her in on her plans, she also knew she had some backup.

People in the music industry feared Bryar, not because she was also a witch (most didn’t know) but because she was a bitch. But Liza knew her other side, the sensitive side–the side that would do just about anything for anyone.

So, five states apart, both women sat down at their altars and began the formalities for what needed doing.

Liza put everything she had into the spell. She chanted, she poured water, she mixed herbs, she sprinkled oil, she called to multiple deities, and by the time she was ready, she took in as much of Bridle’s pain as she could. She took in as much until she was writhing on the ground, crying and screaming from the power of it.

And that was where Bryar stepped in, ready to soothe Liza’s discomfort.

Hours later, she awoke. Her joints were stiff, her muscles were tight, and she had a migraine from hell, but her mind was clear. And, above all, there was a sense of peace surrounding her.

That was when she whipped out the scissors. Because, unfortunately for her vanity, there was one more part of the spell.

Liza had talked herself out of it, at least, half a dozen times, but, in the end, it didn’t matter. She did it for Bridle and the awful husband of hers who couldn’t hack it with a wife who had cancer.

She did it for herself and her awful husband who couldn’t hack it because his wife was a witch and he’d always feel inferior, no matter how much she gave him.

The hair landed in red puddles at her feet, like blood. She was finished.

Both women had done what they could. Whatever other energy was out there would have to do the rest, along with Bridle’s body.

Then, Liza did the last, and possibly most important, part of the ritual: She got on Amazon and ordered every fluffy bathrobe, beautiful cotton nightgown, and aromatherapy body wash and bubble bath she could find and had them shipped straight to Colt’s house.

Sometimes, being pampered and getting gifts were the best possible treatments a lady could receive.

God bless the internet.

A
s Liza unlocked the door and walked inside, she was still feeling the afterglow of her experience with the spell she’d done that morning, even though she was as bald as a baby’s bottom. And, as tired as she felt, she was starting to build excitement for the day ahead because she’d convinced herself it was going to be a
good
one.

So when her phone went off, singing Mode’s special ringtone (“You’re So Vain”), she almost didn’t answer it. Why ruin a perfectly good morning?

But then she decided against it. Ignoring him wouldn’t work. He’d either keep calling or would call her mother or sister, increasing the drama. Best to deal with him and get it over with.

“Were you still asleep?” Mode demanded after exchanging polite, forced pleasantries.

Liza began her morning shop duties of turning on lights, straightening up from the day before, and lighting candles while she talked. She’d created a routine for herself and wasn’t going to deter from it just because he probably had a bug in his bonnet.

“No, I wasn’t asleep. I was at work,” she replied, trying not to sound annoyed.

“Oh yeah? So you’re really doing that?”

Liza tried to make do with letting out a string of curses in her head.

“Yes, it’s still going.”
Moron
.

“Well, I’m glad to see you’ve found things to do down there. That will be good for you,” Mode said smoothly. “At least you’re not just sitting around.”

Like I did when I was married to you?
But she kept that to herself as well. In fact, she was doing such a good job of not screaming at him that she felt she deserved at least a few after-work martinis when she got home.

Heavy on the vodka.

For now, she tried a different tactic. “Definitely not sitting around. I had breakfast with friends this morning and tonight I’m having dinner with someone’s family.”

She didn’t mention that the “friends” were her sister and Bridle’s energy. What he didn’t know would just help irritate him.

“Oh, I didn’t know you still had old friends down there,” Mode said.

“These are
new
friends. And the family actually belongs to a man I met during my first week here. He’s been around quite a bit, and I just had dinner with them in fact.”

She
might
have fudged a little there, too, since it wasn’t like he’d really been around a lot, but whatever entity existed would surely forgive that tiny white lie.

“You’ve been seeing a man?” The idea seemed to upset Mode’s groove and for a second his pitch rose and he sounded as flustered as he
could
sound.

“Believe it or not, you didn’t turn me lesbian,” she replied.

“And you don’t think it’s–“

“Please don’t tell me that ‘too soon’ was going to be at the end of that sentence,” Liza laughed.

She returned to her counter to retrieve the matches for the candles, feeling pretty good that he wasn’t getting to her that morning. She was in a good mood. She even felt that Nana Bud’s snowflake silk scarf looked fetching on her head.

“You won’t sign the papers, but you’re going on a date. That makes a lot of sense Liza.”

And, just like that, her good mood vanished.

Temporarily giving up on her morning routine Liza slumped into the nearest chair and frowned. “What?”

“You’ve had the divorce papers for weeks, Liza. I know you signed
for
them. Why haven’t you
signed
them?”

Liza didn’t know how to respond because she didn’t know
why
she hadn’t signed them. They were on the dining room table, had been there since the day after she moved into the farm house. She’d taken the pen to the table and then got distracted by a phone call. When she’d returned to sign them later, she’d suddenly had the need to go to the bathroom.

And so it continued.

She thought about those papers every day. They called to her from the dining room each time she walked by it.

But she just couldn’t do it.

“Is it more money?” Mode demanded. “Is it something else you want from me? Are you trying to punish me? Is–“

“I don’t know,” Liza answered quietly. “I
don’t
know.”

She hung up on him gently then, not hearing the words he continued to say. When the room was quiet again, she spun around in her chair and studied all her shelves, the products, and the furnishings. She was making something good there; she knew she was.

So what was wrong with her?

Feeling a little less motivation than she’d felt moments before, Liza raised both arms high in the air, snapped her fingers, and watched all the candles come to life at once, their little flames sending dancing shadows all over the walls.