The Gilly Salt Sisters

by Tiffany Baker

  Dee thought that over and then wrinkled up her nose. “I guess that makes sense,” she said, but she didn’t sound happy about it.

  When Claire got to the bottom of Plover Hill, she paused under the pear tree. The fruit was knobbier and scarcer than ever. She reached up and plucked off one of the misshapen globes, remembering the hours she and Ethan had spent in the shrubbery under the tree and the day in the dunes when he’d broken her heart, and then she recalled the beat of Icicle’s hooves as she’d galloped him to Salt Creek Farm with Dee. A lifetime could pass in a single year, it turned out.

  The wind shivered through the tree’s leaves, causing one or two of them to detach and flutter to the ground. It was almost as if the thing just wanted to get it over with and die. A year ago Claire might have felt sympathy, but her skin was rougher now, toughened by salt and then made tender again in ways she’d forgotten existed. She’d lost a husband but gained a sister—two sisters, really, plus a nephew of sorts—and she’d reclaimed her home. And if Whit Turner thought he was going to take that away, he had another thing coming.

  She headed up Plover Hill, taking longer strides as she climbed higher, until she reached the gates of Turner House, where she stopped. Today she was just a messenger, not an intruder. She opened the mailbox and thrust in the letter and the salt packet, then tipped her head back and regarded the stern façade of the house she knew so well, remembering the things of hers that were still inside—riding attire, clothes, a book about an English heiress she’d been halfway through reading last winter. Cosmetics. Her wedding albums. A framed photograph of her beloved Icicle. More problematic were the intangible things she’d abandoned to the Turner walls. There was her dignity, for starters, hooked together with her pride. Memories. The enviable status that went along with being Claire Turner. And, finally, there were the wisps of her unborn children, the specter of Ida, and the phantom of her youth.

  She’d been so god-awful young when she’d married Whit. Being around Dee had made her see that. Dee still liked cherry candies—the kind with the gum in the center. She turned the kitchen radio to pop music and danced when she thought no one was looking, and if Claire and Jo let her, she’d stay in the shower so long there’d be no hot water for the next two hours. Sometimes, though, when Claire watched Dee playing with Jordy, tickling him on the parlor floor, rolling on her back and waving her feet in the air to make him laugh, just as full of puppy fat as he was, she wanted to weep.

  Everyone had moments that acted like a prism, Claire believed, breaking up visible matter so you could see elementally what was in front of your eyes. She squinted, her vision coming back to Turner House. She wished she could wad it up with her eyes. When Joanna returned her wedding invitation, Claire remembered, she’d filled the envelope with salt to remind Claire of who she was and where she’d come from. Claire had opened it in the Turner foyer, spilling chunky gray grains across the floor, and as she’d swept them all up, she’d vowed revenge. But what if she’d been wrong all these years? What if Jo hadn’t been sending her a curse at all? What if it had simply been her blessing?

  The weather on the night of the bonfire was so miserable that Claire was surprised it wasn’t canceled, but tradition in Prospect was nothing if not stalwart. In the end she packed Dee into the truck with a box of spice cakes, an urn of hot cider and one of mulled wine, a folding table, and a cash box, and warned her not to abandon her post until the flames were all dead.

  “I’m going to freeze my ass off,” Dee griped, wrapping her arms around herself.

  “Everyone’s going to be freezing their asses off, Dee,” Claire replied, opening the truck door for her. “That’s the point. They’ll want something hot to drink. We’ll make a killing, and you can keep half the profits.” Dee’s eyes glowed at that, and Claire suppressed a smirk. Life with Whit had been worth a little something. It had taught her that profit margins made good incentives.

  When she went back inside, Jo was rocking Jordy by the fire in the parlor. She looked up at Claire. “Do you have Ida’s letter?”

  Claire scowled. She had some time yet before she was supposed to meet Whit, and she and Jo had been over the plan twice that day already. “It’s upstairs in my drawer. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring it.”

  Jo frowned and considered. “I suppose you’re right. We can’t replace it. But what if he doesn’t believe you?”

  “Oh, he will.” Claire was going to meet Whit alone. She and Jo had decided it would be better that way, and besides, the weather was so rotten that someone needed to stay indoors and tend to Jordy. Dee had wanted to go to the bonfire. Privately, Claire was more than happy to serve as the sole messenger. After so many months of being baited by Whit, after what he’d done to Icicle, she wanted to be the one to sink a hook into him and watch him writhe.

  There was just one thing she needed to do first, though, before the fire. She kissed Jordy on the top of his head and drew her scarf tighter around her throat. Jo glanced up, her glass eye burning with the reflection from the hearth. The image was disturbing, and Claire looked away. She was supposed to be the one filled with fire.

  “Weren’t you supposed to go with Dee?” Jo asked. “I just heard her leave.”

  Claire shivered and buttoned her coat. “I’m walking into town. I’ll be there in time to throw the first salt packet,” she said. “Don’t worry. I just have a few loose ends to take care of first.”

  When the wind hit St. Agnes hard enough from the north, the whole building hummed, a vibration that started in the roof beams and rattled to the roots of the church. Claire fumbled to light a candle to Our Lady. The hesitant flame trembled and then made a sole point of yellow. Claire cupped her palm around the votive and knelt in front of the faceless Virgin. She thought about how Our Lady had absorbed the pains and joys of the town over the years with calm abundance, and then she thought about Jo and Ida and how some sorrows were too deep to tell. Claire rose and stepped close to the wall, stretching her arms out along the Virgin’s. The two of them were almost the same shape and size. She closed her eyes and inhaled the odor of dust and plaster, what bones must smell like after they’ve been powdered in the grave.

  The wind howled a higher tune, and a door banged open. Claire opened her eyes and saw Ethan standing on the far side of the sanctuary. She gasped and pushed herself away from the mural, upsetting the candle at her feet in the process. Ethan hurried over to blow out the flame before it could spread.

  “Claire, what are you doing here? I thought you’d be at the bonfire. Besides, there’s a nasty storm brewing.” She took the dead candle out of Ethan’s hands and looked out the east window of the church. He was right. In the short time since she’d been inside, the clouds had muscled themselves into angry stallions streaming across the sky, and the wind was racing to keep up. In about an hour, there would be a stampede of awful weather. Her stomach knotted. Would the bonfire still roar to life? Would Whit still come to the barn? He had to come. Everything depended on that.

  Ethan took her by the elbow and guided her over to the pews. “Are you okay? Your face has gone green.” He put a hand up to cup her cheek, then abruptly stopped himself, and Claire turned her head away from him. He was due to leave after the holidays. They’d largely avoided each other since that day at the market back in summer. Ethan didn’t know about the death of Icicle, Claire realized, or about what she and Jo were planning. He didn’t know that Claire had lost her sister in name and then gotten her back again two times over. Maybe he didn’t even know that she and Jo had given the town back their salt.

  “I’m fine.” She didn’t mean for her voice to come out so flinty, chipping the air between them, but once it did, she couldn’t stop it. She didn’t seem to be able to walk a middle ground with Ethan. She was either fire in his arms or an iceberg out of them. She put her hands up over her face and tried not to sob. “Oh, God, I’m not fine, but I can’t tell you why.”

  Ethan frowned. “Is there anything you want to conf
ess?” Claire shook her head, and Ethan bowed his. “I’m no better than you are, Claire,” he said quietly. “If there’s something you need to say to me, you can.”

  She yearned to curve her body against his. He so easily filled all the blank spaces inside her. Close to him she had been able to forget she was a Gilly, cursed by a patch of earth. She clenched her hands. She’d never expected him to come back to Prospect, but here he was, the boy’s heart she remembered still beating, the rest of him grown into a man she had no right to love. Was this what Ida—Jo’s mother, Claire allowed herself to think for the first time—had endured? Claire turned her face back to Our Lady. The past was always going to sit between Ethan and her like an empty circle, and there was no way to break it.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, standing up and edging her way out of the pew and to the door.

  Ethan stood to follow her. “Claire, don’t go, not like this.”

  She turned. For the rest of her life, she would remember the look on his face. “I love you, Ethan,” she said. “I always will. But you were right. This all has to end here.” Her hand was on the door.

  Ethan frowned. “Are you still talking about us?”

  Claire flung the door open to the weather. “There isn’t any us,” she said, letting the wind smack her face, a fitting rebuke. “There never was. There’s just a story we were fools to repeat.”

  The first raindrops were falling fat as grubs when Claire finally reached the barn. She’d left her coat in the sanctuary, and her sweater clung to her like a ruined second skin. A few degrees colder and it would snow.

  Her teeth were chattering. She paused. Had Whit even bothered to come? Was she too late? She hadn’t worn a watch since she’d come back to Salt Creek Farm, and she had no idea how long she’d spent at St. Agnes. She sniffed. She could smell wood smoke hanging in the air and knew that the bonfire had been lit, but it was okay. She still had some time. She squinted through the darkness and spied Whit’s car parked in the distance, and then she saw him approaching the barn, his jacket collar flipped up against the rain, hands shoved in his pockets. Even his walk looked mean.

  She sucked in a breath and crouched into a thicket of shrubs, glad for the shadows hiding her. She thought about poor Icicle, felled on the floor of the barn, and it occurred to her that if she could run Whit through with something sharp, she’d do it without thinking twice. She felt around in the darkness for a weapon of some kind, but there was none, and that was just one of the many problems with Salt Creek Farm. It was silted, defenseless land. She reached into her pocket and felt the book of matches. She’d slipped it into her jeans after she’d lit the candle to Our Lady. A crack of lightning clawed the sky, ripping the dark clouds to tatters and igniting Claire’s temper.

  She heard Whit go into the barn, and then, before she could change her mind, she pulled the matches from her pocket and crept to the structure’s back wall. She was sheltered from the wind on this side, and when she put her hand out to the rough boards, they still felt dry in spite of the freezing rain and snow flurries that had started to fall.

  The first match fizzled, but the second one flared with sulfur. Claire held it low to where the barn’s wood met earth, pinching it as long as she could before her fingers got scorched. One second, two, and finally the wind flickered and the flame caught life, flitting onto the side of the barn.

  She stepped back and watched it burn. Another lightning strike scratched the air, and the fire started tonguing its way around the base of the barn, each burst of wind stretching the flames a little farther. She had the impression of something—or someone—rustling past her in the dark. If I want to stop this, now’s my only chance, Claire thought as the flames turned the corner, but she didn’t. She twisted back and walked as quickly as she could through the grass, toward the lane. Behind her she smelled gathering smoke, but she didn’t stop. It was done, out of her hands. The past had a tendency to repeat itself, but this time, Claire vowed, her future would be very different.

  The 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.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Dee 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.