The Gilly Salt Sisters (54 page)

T
he bonfire was roaring full force when Claire arrived. She had missed the lighting of it, but it didn’t matter. Frankly, the town had been relieved when she didn’t cast the salt. Nothing good ever happened when she did.

She pushed her way through the small crowd, scanning faces she recognized. She heard whispers of smothered speech as she passed the trio of Agnes Greene, Cecilia West, and Katy Diamond, but Claire no longer cared what those women thought of her. She nodded to them cordially as she neared them, but they didn’t reply in kind, and that was fine. Claire hadn’t expected them to. It was enough to see them holding the salt again.

She neared the table that Dee had set up at the back of the crowd, but it was empty, the cash box locked, the paper tablecloth flapping ragged in the wind, fat snowflakes beginning to disintegrate it. “Dee!” she called into the darkness, but there was no answer.

“She left,” a gravelly voice said. “Right after the fire began. Didn’t even throw her salt. See?” It was Mr. Weatherly, Claire realized. His gnarled finger was pointing to the dampening envelope propped next to the cider.

A fizz of irritation bubbled through Claire. “Did she say where she was going?” The wind whipped the sharp ends of her hair against her cheeks, stinging them.

Mr. Weatherly shook his head. “Nope. But what about you? Why don’t you have a go?” He gestured at the salt on the abandoned table.

Claire remembered the time when she’d thrown her first packet into the fire and how the flames had turned black. The crowd’s hush had been so absolute she thought the world might never come to life again. And maybe, for her, it hadn’t. She shook her head. “No,” she said, an uneasy feeling beginning to crawl up her bones. She knew better than anyone what a tricky business dabbling in the future could be. She was through with all that now. The sooner she found Dee, she thought, the better.

D
ee hadn’t wanted to, but Jo convinced her to ride into Prospect to deliver the bulk of the salt packets the day before the December’s Eve bonfire. Overnight, it seemed, the trees had dropped their leaves and changed to skeletons. Out in the marsh, the wind scratched at the farmhouse’s shingles and windows, and veils of frost raced across the ponds and turned the levees white. As they bumped along the lane in the truck, Jordy nestled in blankets on Dee’s lap, she couldn’t help but think back to the bonfire the previous year, when Whit had given her the locket and made love to her under the pear tree and all she’d known about Gilly salt was the extra saliva it cultivated on her tongue.

Jo turned onto Bank Street, and Dee blinked against the cool winter light, surprised at how narrow the road now seemed. She remembered the hazy dawns when she’d wait by her window for the sound of horse’s hooves and a glimpse of Claire’s braid and then, later, the sound of Whit’s car, idling quietly. She thought that if she really did manage to leave Prospect, how sad it would be to have no one to say good-bye to anymore, for the less Claire and Jo knew about her plan, the better.

Jo pulled even with the diner and slowed the truck. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked, but Dee simply thrust Jordy at her and opened the passenger door.

“Just wait here for a minute,” she replied. “I’ll be right back.”

She yanked on the door to the diner, and, as usual, the bells above the door burst into life, making her cringe. Her father was at the counter, stooped over the cash register. He looked a lot older than Dee remembered, and she felt sorry if she’d caused that, but truth be told, she didn’t think she had. His ruin was between him and the bottle.

The place had a neglected air to it, as if he hadn’t been getting a lot of business. Some of the counter stools were dusty, and several of the lightbulbs in the ship lanterns were burned out or flickering. The menus had turned yellow under their plastic sleeves, and there wasn’t anything written on the specials board.

“Hey,” Dee said, and Cutt narrowed his eyes at her.

“What do you want?” he asked, and the way he practically wadded up the word and spit it in Dee’s general direction told her he hadn’t reconsidered his policy of scorched earth. Dee might as well have been an insignificant mouse, scurrying through the walls. She pictured Jordy’s wriggling body after his bath and couldn’t imagine any crime he could commit that would be large enough for her to want to walk away from him. She tossed the packet of salt on the counter and shoved her hands into her pockets.
Your loss
, she thought. “Here,” she said. “This is for the bonfire tomorrow night. Claire and Jo are giving them out to everyone this year.” Cutt looked confused, and Dee remembered that he hadn’t gone to the fire last winter. Only she had, and only briefly, before Whit had gotten his hands on her.

“I had the baby,” she said. “Just so you know. It’s a boy. He’s in the truck out there with Jo.” She pointed through the window at the rattletrap pickup, but Cutt didn’t look. “He’s doing good.”

Dee waited one extra heartbeat to see if there’d be any kind of crack in her father’s armor, but there wasn’t. His jaw didn’t twitch, and neither did his eyes flicker. It didn’t even seem like he was really breathing. Dee glanced around at the tables and noticed dishes of salt set out, as if their presence would help stave off Cutt’s inevitable ruin.

“It’s not really toxic, you know,” she said, jutting her chin toward one of the bowls, “but it’s not magic either. Jo would tell you the same, and so would Claire. She’s a whole different kind of person now.”

And so am I
, she realized as she breezed back through the door, bells jangling, glass rattling, her bones loose and easy but her heart pounding like a fist in a fight—one she thought she finally might have won.

T
he night of the bonfire, Claire hurriedly packed Dee into the truck with boxes of spice cake and urns of mulled cider, and then she made her a promise.

“Is Whit going to be there?” Dee probed, and Claire mistook the rise in her voice for anxiety. She leaned through the window of the truck and stared intently into Dee’s eyes.

“I swear to you, he never attends this thing,” she said, totally oblivious to the fact that last year he’d not only attended but that he’d done so with Dee.

Dee shrugged and slid her eyes away. “Whatever. If you’re really sure.”

“Absolutely,” Claire answered, her voice bright, and for a moment she sounded like the woman Dee had met when she first came to town. Maybe it was the pile of gray clouds lining up on the horizon behind her, or maybe it was all the spices that had been floating around in the kitchen lately, but tonight Claire’s hair was as red as it had ever been and her skin as white. She cupped Dee’s chin in the vise of her hand and looked hard into her eyes. “You’re still so young,” she said. “Sometimes I forget that. Don’t worry about Jordy,” she continued. “Jo will take perfect care of him. Go and have some fun. Shake the dust off of yourself. I have an errand to run first, and I’ll be along soon.” Her face cracked into an unexpected smile. “You’ll be the life of the party,” she said. “I guarantee it.”

Dee thought that was none too likely, but she didn’t dispute
Claire. After all, it didn’t matter. If everything lined up for Dee this evening, she and Jordy would be long gone, and she would make sure neither one of them ever so much as touched any kind of salt again.

T
he town’s oldest person always lit the bonfire. Dee remembered Mr. Weatherly telling her that once in the diner, and when she arrived on Tappert’s Green, she saw that this year Judith Butler had the honor, the torch wobbling in her shaky hand as the town’s men finished the last-minute touches to the pyre. Dee watched from behind the plywood table she’d set up, craning her neck to witness the coming festivities. The crowd began to cheer and clap, and from somewhere in the darkness the familiar sound of a flute started up, followed by people’s voices taking up the tune.

She allowed herself to relax for a moment, enjoying the crackle of the flames and the smell of orange peel and hot wine floating over Claire’s stand. It was one of the few times Dee had been without Jordy since his birth, and though it was exciting to stand bareheaded and alone in front of a hot fire on a cold night, she also felt as if she were missing a limb. She looked around the crowd to see if she could spot Whit, but there was no sign of him, and for that she was glad. Maybe he really was going to the barn after all. Soon she’d have to sneak away.

“I was beginning to think that marsh might have ate you up,” a gruff voice said out of the darkness, and Dee jumped. Mr. Weatherly was standing in front of her, his long face grown ghoulish in the flickering light. “Where’s the baby, then?”

Dee poured him out a cup of cider and waved away his coins. “He’s home with Jo,” she said. “It’s too cold to bring him.”

Mr. Weatherly took a sip of his drink and seemed to accept that.

“Seems like it lit okay,” Dee said, gesturing toward the fire.

Mr. Weatherly looked pleased. “It sure did,” he said. “It’s nice to have the salt back.” He took another sip of his cider and regarded
Dee expectantly, and then, before she could say anything, he fished in his pocket and pulled out one of his knot charms. “Here,” he said, laying it on the table next to the plate of cake slices. “For the baby. Since you wouldn’t let me pay for the cider.”

Lying exposed on the oilcloth like that, the string looked anemic and far too ordinary to take on the kind of malice Dee now knew existed in the world. On the other hand, her time on Salt Creek Farm had taught her that anything was possible, and besides, she and Jordy were going to need all the help they could get in their new lives. She reached down and slipped the thing into her pocket.

“Thank you,” she said, regretting that Mr. Weatherly wasn’t related to her. It would have been nice, she thought, for Jordy to have a grandfather like him—somebody good with a hammer, who knew how to recite limericks and also the best legends. Someone who knew how to take the strings of the past and tie them up safe.

Mr. Weatherly jutted his chin at the packet of salt lying on the table next to the cider. “Well, ain’t you going to toss it in the fire and see what the year has coming for you?” he asked.