The Gilly Salt Sisters (38 page)

D
uring Dee’s first morning on Salt Creek Farm, she began to suspect she might have been better off on the street, where her father had threatened to throw her headfirst. At least there she might have gotten more sleep.

“Get up.” She was already awake, but Jo marched into the room anyway and yanked the covers down. Apparently, awake wasn’t good enough for Jo. A body had to be upright and busy as well. Dee groaned and flexed her calves.

“Leg cramps?” Jo asked, folding her arms across her square chest. “I’ve heard that pregnant girls can get those. You should eat a little extra salt.”

Dee scowled and sat up.
A little extra salt?
Was Jo kidding? Had she looked around her lately? Dee snickered. “I guess that’s not really a problem, is it?” she said with teenage sarcasm. “All I have to do is walk outside and lick the ground.”

For a cripple, Dee thought, Jo moved pretty fast. One minute she was looming over the mattress like some warden in a prison movie, and the next she was way too close and personal, snorting the odors of bacon and coffee into Dee’s face. “If you knew how to look a little harder at the world, maybe you wouldn’t have landed in this predicament, girl. Lesson number one: Salt is never just salt. It’s my livelihood, and I take it serious. And if you’re going to get along with me, you better learn to take it serious,
too.” She flicked a plaid shirt at Dee. “Get up. Get dressed, and meet me downstairs in five minutes. And just so you know, I have a clock down there. Don’t think I won’t be watching it.”

She left the door open as she departed.
Thump, thump, thump.
If her steps were any more regular, Dee thought, shoving her head through the neck of the shirt, Jo would turn into a damned clock herself.

When Dee entered the kitchen with one minute to spare, she saw that Jo had set several small bowls of salt out on the table. The first bowl was chipped, with shamrocks painted around its rim, and it held a mound of familiar gray salt. The heavy grains looked almost wet, all clumped together. The second bowl was a scoop of polished wood, and those granules were an alarming bloodred. They must have come from that funny pond in the marsh, Dee thought. There was a plastic mixing bowl sitting half filled with ordinary table salt, and then, placed in the middle of everything, Dee saw a crystal bowl filled with a kind of salt so flaky and lush that it reminded her of the coconut shavings on a wedding cake. She licked her lips at the sight of it. She was very hungry.

Jo gestured at the table. “Which one do you like? Which bowl makes your mouth start watering?”

“I don’t know. What’s the difference” Dee slid her gaze sideways, but Jo stepped a little to the right, back into her field of vision, forcing her to confront Jo’s scars head-on. Dee tried to swivel her head, but Jo stopped her.

“You don’t get to do that,” she said. “Not out here.”

Dee bit her thumbnail and eyed Jo balefully. “Do what?”

“Look away. Pretend you’re bored and not answer my questions. I saw you staring at the table. I know something snagged your attention. I saw you lick your lips.” Dee glanced at the crystal bowl in the middle of the table again. The etched glass looked like ice and the salt like the last of the season’s snow—but the pure storybook kind. Flakes that never touched the ground, just hung around in the air, thumbing their noses at gravity. This wasn’t the same salt Jo delivered for the tables at the Lighthouse. It was
wealthy
salt, Dee thought. It was the kind of salt Claire would eat if she so chose.

“That one.” Dee turned her cheek and pointed at the crappy plastic bowl of ordinary salt. Everyone knew about that kind of salt. It was loose. It poured in all kinds of weather. You could get it anywhere, and, of course, it was dirt cheap.

Jo raised her eyebrow. “Really? That one?”

Dee just shrugged. She was legitimately starving now. Like, Africa starving. What was up with the twenty questions? She put her hands on her hips. If Jo was going to dish it out, Dee could go her one better. “What’s the deal anyway?” she demanded. “I don’t get it. What makes your salt so special?”

Jo appeared taken aback for a moment, and then a canny look crept into her eye. “I don’t really know,” she said. “It’s been here long before any of us, and it will be here long after we’re gone. It feels the weather, and it knows both the land and sea, and that’s good enough for me.”

“And the future,” Dee piped up.
And maybe the past, too
, she mused, thinking of Claire’s unborn babies. She really wanted to ask Jo about them, but she didn’t dare.

Jo shook her head. “No, child. That’s just what people like to think.” She bent down close to Dee. “Listen, this is important. The salt just heightens what’s already in people’s lives, the same way it does with food. It brings out the sweet and the sour, and when they ignore what it tells them, when they ignore the truth of their own selves, that’s when trouble starts.” Jo straightened herself and slammed the cupboard door, then leaned against the counter. “To really know the salt, you have to wait until summer.”

Summer
, Dee thought. Where would she be by then? The baby and her, that was. She looked at the salt on the table. Jo followed her gaze.

“This.”
Jo drew a tight circle in the air over the white flakes. “This is the real magic, wouldn’t you agree?”

Dee’s mouth watered again, and she yearned to take just a single morsel onto her tongue.
That’s it
, she thought.
That’s exactly
what I want.
She opened her lips to ask for a taste, but old habits died hard, and she found herself insulting Jo instead. “Magic is for little kids and old women,” she said, tossing her hair. “Now, can I please get something real to eat?”

Jo regarded her for a moment, then stuck a dented spoon in the plastic bowl of cheap salt and handed it to her. “You said you liked this one. You can have all you want. When something nicer comes out of your mouth, you can have something tastier to put in it. Until then, enjoy.” She turned on her heel, leaving Dee holding the bowl in her confused hands, doomed to hunger by her own stupid words, another test failed. It was going to be a long morning.

I
f Dee was wondering how and when Whit would come to find her, it turned out she didn’t have long to wait. She had just finished a plate of scrambled eggs when he squealed his car up to the front of the house, whirling mad and hell-bent on causing the maximum amount of damage. She and Claire might have tumbled onto Salt Creek Farm like a bursting squall, she thought, but Whit blew into the place with the fury of a tornado.

Jo and Dee stared at each other, and then Jo clamped her lips tight and began clearing the table while Dee backed up to the far counter, holding its edge for balance. She remembered the way Whit had pinched his hands around her throat in the barn and how Claire’s fingers had wound tightly around the shovel handle. She remembered clinging to Claire’s narrow waist for dear life as they galloped down Plover Hill in the half-light of dawn. If it had been any lighter, Dee wondered, would Claire have scooped her up like that and saved her? Or would she have taken a better look at the situation and then aimed the shovel a little differently?

Dee scanned the room again, searching for angles of escape. The window above the sink? No. The door behind her? The broom closet? No way. She shivered. No escape, then. Just the full
morning light, her enraged lover, his wife, and too much salt for anybody’s taste.

Whit began his onslaught with the rushes at the edge of the porch. He kicked those to kingdom come, then stomped his way up the porch’s warped steps. Hearing the wood crack under his heavy steps, Jo just shook her head. He burst through the front door in the hall without asking, marched past the broken piano, banging the few keys that worked just to set the mood, and arrived in the kitchen doorway out of breath, the side of his face bruised from where Claire had whacked him with the shovel, in absolutely no mood to wait. “Where is my murderous wife?” he said.

Dee cowered at the counter and began rattling the spoons in the silverware drawer until Jo reached out and gave her a little pinch to make her stop. Dee began stirring a cup of tea instead, dragging her spoon along the bottom of the mug, and that was even worse. Jo cleared her throat, and Dee set the tea down. She’d accidentally scooped salt into the cup instead of sugar anyway.

If a bear on the attack ever came for her, Dee’s father had always told her in Vermont, one of the actions she was supposed to take was to make herself look bigger, and she thought that maybe Jo had heard that same thing, because that’s what she did now, planting her feet on the speckled linoleum, jamming her fists on her hips, and taking the deepest breath she could. She kicked a chair away from the table and motioned to it.

Whit stood stock-still for a moment, letting his gaze rove Jo’s face like someone searching for the X on a treasure map. He must not have found what he was looking for, though, because he gave up, sneered, and took a seat. That’s how Dee knew they were ready to get down to business.

He glared at Dee next, but it was the way a person would eye a ghost he didn’t believe in. Dee angled her shoulders away from him, even though she was used to his stares.
Still
, she thought. It would have been kind of thrilling if Whit had made the trip out here for her. She snuck another glimpse at him, but he didn’t
register her. What were they to each other, she wondered? Was there even a word for it? Not true lovers. Not companions. Something between intimates and strangers. Dee knew she didn’t have Whit’s same appetites running wild in her blood, but she had sure liked satisfying his. Maybe that counted for something.

The three of them started when the hall door crashed open, letting in a howl of wind, and then Claire appeared, as hasty as Whit and twice as mad. Without meaning to, Dee started up her infernal stirring again, the teaspoon chattering against the side of the mug like a set of windup teeth.

“You son of a bitch asshole bastard!” Claire came roaring into the kitchen, and Dee gaped. Claire had the hair of a scarlet woman, but until now Dee hadn’t thought she possessed the mouth to match. She had to admit that the transformation seemed to suit Claire. Her cheeks were blazing, giving her face a liveliness it probably hadn’t possessed for the past twelve years, and her eyes snapped and bit like those nasty turtles that had swum at the bottom of the pond back in Vermont. Claire grabbed two plates and sent them winging straight toward Whit’s naked throat, missing by a fraction.

“Amen, the Gilly fury has risen!” Jo crowed, smacking her hands together, and just like that, as if she’d somehow summoned him, Father Stone stepped into the fray, moving up behind Claire so quickly she didn’t even know he was there. He wrapped his arms around her, took out of her hand the extra plate she’d reloaded, and held her a moment, tighter than Dee thought he needed to.

“Not like this,” he said, moving her across the kitchen and then releasing her. “I think,” Ethan said, eyeing Whit’s bruised head and the marks ringing Dee’s throat, “that some explanations are in order here.”

Whit smashed his fist into his palm and took a step toward Claire. “Really? It seems to me that you’re the intruder, Father. This business doesn’t concern you.”

Ethan paled, and Dee felt a twinge of pity for him. Here he probably thought he’d be the hero and rescue Claire, only to
realize too late that he’d stepped into a viper’s nest. His voice shook a little as he faced Whit. “I’m not leaving unless the Gilly sisters ask me to. What is it you want?”

Looking at Claire, Dee could have answered that question in a flash, but Whit beat her to it. He glowered at Claire. “I don’t want my wife running off into the night, for starters. I don’t want an illegitimate child from a tramp, and most of all I would like Jo to come to her senses and work with me a little.” He turned his attention to her. “You haven’t got much time left, Jo. I know people at Harbor Bank. Wouldn’t you rather strike a deal with me? I might even let you stay awhile.”

Ethan looked blank, his eyes bouncing between Whit and Dee, Whit and Claire, Whit and Jo, trying to add them all up. “Illegitimate child?” he said.

Jo shoved Dee’s shoulder. “Dee here is pregnant.”

Ethan raised his eyebrows and looked to Claire, then to Whit, who was hunkering as cold as an iced-over stone. Then he said the least helpful thing Dee thought possible, given the situation. “You realize that it would be a mortal sin for Dee not to have the baby, don’t you?”

That gave Whit pause. In spite of all his sinning, he was still a churchgoing man, dogmatic to the core. He stood up and paced toward the kitchen door, throwing down his last words like a punch, but getting to have the last word wasn’t the same as winning a case. Even Dee knew that much.

He looked hard at Father Stone, then turned his fury on Dee. “Know this,” he said, his voice low. “The first thing I’m going to do is go tell your father where he can find his whore of a daughter.” She paled and bit her lips. “I don’t know if he’ll try to kill me or you,” Whit said, “but I’m willing to take my chances. And the second thing I’m going to do, Jo”—he turned toward her—“is tell my friends at Harbor Bank that you just refused to accept an offer that would save you and the farm. We’ll see what they think about that.” And then, without another word, he let himself out the same way he’d come in, alone and snarling.