The Gilly Salt Sisters

by Tiffany Baker

  The 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.

  The 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.

  Dee hesitated. All around her, people were laughing in the face of the cold wind and tossing their packets of salt to the flames. Flashes of blue, green, and bloodred popped and danced like fireworks. Gangs of preteen girls squealed and flipped their hair when high-school boys paraded by them, and young families huddled in knots, trying to keep their sleepy kids warm.

  Dee’s heart started beating a little harder. She looked at her watch. Where the hell was Claire? She’d promised she’d be here. Dee could only stay maybe five more minutes before she left to meet Whit in the barn. A burst of wind snagged the bonfire’s flames, sending sparks shooting into the sky and scattering people who had gathered too close. Dee pulled her coat tighter. The temperature seemed to have dropped ten extra degrees in the past half hour. More wind screamed over the fire, and people laughed and clutched their hats and scarves.

  “If this keeps up,” someone said, “we’ll all be burned to high heaven.” The flute music stopped, replaced by what sounded like a banjo. Out of the corner of her eye, Dee watched someone step up and throw one more handful of salt into the bonfire. She held her breath and waited. The flames sputtered, but from where she was standing, she couldn’t see what the future held. She looked at her watch again. It was time to go. She had her own date with destiny.

  On the lane to Salt Creek Farm, the weather wasn’t just bad; it had turned shit-storm terrible. Dee had left the truck at the bonfire. It would be easier to keep a secret meeting with Whit if Jo and Claire didn’t know she was back in the marsh, she thought. She’d get what she needed from Whit, wait until all of Salt Creek Farm was asleep, and then she’d disappear with Jordy. She’d even packed some of their things in an old duffel bag and hidden it out on the lane. She pulled up her hood and started jogging in the darkness, stuffing her hands in her pockets. She passed St. Agnes and was tempted to stop in and get warm, but she had only a little distance left to go and not much time, so she pushed on through the wind and sleet, picking her way along the edge of the marsh, past the graves and around the back of the salt barn. It was a good thing Whit was as stubborn as a mule’s mother, Dee told herself, because she wasn’t sure how many other men would bother leaving their comfortable houses on a night like this. But Whit would. Surely he would.

  She froze as a pair of headlights swung up the lane and Whit’s car pulled into view. She was totally exposed where she was standing, but Whit was focused on getting into the barn and so didn’t see her. From her spot by the marsh, she watched him unlatch the double doors and let himself into the structure. She held her breath, listening, but heard only the wind and pelting rain.

  Fuck it, she finally thought. My ass is going to ice over standing out here. I’m going in.

  As she pulled open the door, two things struck her. First, she had the impression of something—or someone—rustling in the dark. She glanced into the rainy air but saw no one, and so she stepped into the barn.

  Without Icicle the air in the barn had started to smell different. Not cleaner, the way Dee would have expected, but heavier, sweeter, smokier. She inhaled again and frowned. Where was Whit? She wanted to settle things now. She imagined again the apartment she would rent, just Jordy and her. But now it was getting harder to see, and her eyes were stinging, and then she heard a roar and looked up to see a wall of flames bearing down on her. She screamed and turned, but the darkness had turned to heat, light, and ash, and she realized too late that there was going to be no such thing as a future for her.

  Chapter Thirty

  If the time had come for truths, Jo knew, th
en she possessed a black one. She wondered if she could have saved Dee the night she was trapped in the barn with Whit, but there was no way to know for sure. The fire department had declared otherwise. By the time Jo got to the barn, they’d pointed out, Whit and Dee were most likely already gone, but Jo knew from experience that a person could walk through flames if she had to, and she wondered why she didn’t do it again that night.

  It was the way Claire had entered the house on December’s Eve that told Jo that something was terribly wrong. Claire had come inside far too quickly, slamming the door behind her as if she were shutting out a pack of feral dogs. Outside, Jo heard a crackle and a snap. The bonfire’s wild this year, she thought, laying a sleeping Jordy down in his bowl and wondering what Claire was doing home so early. It’s strange to hear it all the way out here.

  Over the past hour, Jo had watched the weather whip itself into a snit. Wind had started slapping at the shingles, daring them to come loose, and every now and then evil fingers of lightning reached down from the sky and grasped for the earth like a hand pulling weeds. She waited to hear Claire take off her coat and boots, then stick her head around the corner of the parlor door, hatless, but that wasn’t what happened. Instead Claire had come careening into the parlor, snatching Jordy out of the bowl, speechless with terror.

  “Where’s Dee?” Jo had asked, frowning at the rivulets Claire was dripping on the floor, but Claire had just stuttered, her face turned waxen. “What on earth is it?” Jo asked as Claire uttered the same frantic words over and over: Dee was gone.

  “What are you talking about?” Jo said, pushing past Claire out onto the porch. And that’s when she saw that in the distance the salt barn was on fire. Jo placed her hand over her heart—or where she thought it might be—and felt it thumping, and then she tore off into the darkness, her slippered feet sinking into the icy mud, her bad leg dragging behind her.

  “Dee!” Jo screamed as she neared the fiery structure. She ripped off her robe and tucked her head down, ready to rush through the flames. After all, she’d done it once. She could do it again. But out of the corner of her eye, she saw Whit’s car sitting on the lane, and she immediately stopped, straightened up, and put a hand over her mouth.

  “Too bad I burned the damn thing down once already,” she remembered Claire muttering the night they’d hatched their plan to corner Whit. They’d been closing up the barn after bringing in the salt, and Claire had cast a glance back at the building. “Whit would make perfect kindling.”

  “Don’t get ideas, Claire,” Jo had answered. “Whit’s not kindling. He’s kin.”

  But Claire had just loped ahead, her long legs outpacing Jo’s, leaving Jo to straggle the rest of the way back to the house alone, juggling the uncomfortable fact that while she and Claire might finally be family, they’d never really shared the same skin.

  “Oh, Claire,” she said now, turning her face from the rising heat. “What have you gone and done?” And then she stood and watched with horror as the roof came crashing down, sending an explosion of sparks straight up into the night.

  February 18, 1981

  Dear Jo,

  Thank you, child, for returning Ida’s letter after all this time. You were but a girl when you found it, you say. You came in that day to pray, I remember, after an argument with Whit. Instead you ended up committing a sin. Well, you are not alone in that. What must you have thought of me all these years?

  It’s true that I loved Ida. I gave her the necklace shortly after I found out she was pregnant with you. I wanted to abandon the priesthood. I even offered to leave town with her and make a new life for all of us, but she refused to let me ruin myself and threatened to tell everyone I’d forced myself on her if I breathed a word to anyone.

  What could I do? I was weak to let you be born to this kind of life, but I felt I had no choice, and after so many years lapsed, you seemed so grounded where you were. It never seemed appropriate to reveal the truth. Instead I had to satisfy myself with the small moments I was able to have with you when you came to St. Agnes. I truly regret all this now, but I also consider myself a lucky man that you chose to come to me for answers.

  I really was stuck in Prospect during the time when you and your brother were born. Your mother was alone out in the marsh, or so she thought, but she didn’t know that Ida had snuck out of the Temperance League with you wrapped in blankets and made her way to St. Agnes to find me. You were just hours old.

  She came to the church, but she found your mother instead, defacing Our Lady, her own newborn babe bundled to her chest. They made a pact that night. Ida would remain silent about what she had seen if your mother would raise you as her own. When I returned, Ida was long gone and Sarah had two babies, one with ginger hair and freckles and the other with the eyes of the woman I loved. I never thought Ida would be back. I don’t believe she thought so either. Certainly no one ever predicted she would become a Turner.

  It’s a remarkable and terrible thing which you’ve told me, the barn burning down like that in a storm with Whit and Dee inside, but I guess once a spark lights, you never know what will happen. The fire department ruled it to be the fault of lightning, you wrote, but the devil sometimes has an unseen hand in these matters, I have found.

  In answer to your final question: I don’t know if Dee and Whit would still be with us if all this had come out sooner. History will bear witness, I suppose. And in that vein, being family and perhaps needing fewer words than other people, allow me to suggest that now that old truths have come to light, this well may be the time to turn the page and start writing a new and brighter Gilly history. Stay true in your faith and heart, my daughter.

  Magna est veritas, et praevalibet,

  Patrick Flynn

  Jo put down the letter and closed her eyes, trying to do the familial math in her head. Three women and a child tangled around one man. Two sisters and the same man. One faceless woman and a man without a name. A woman with half a face. Any way Jo whittled down the story, she couldn’t make it come out even, but how else had she thought things would end? When it came to the Gillys, history was always going to be at odds with itself, and Jo was just going to have to learn to accept that.

  It was seven in the morning on Salt Creek Farm. Outside, in spite of the bitter cold, Timothy Weatherly was pacing in the marsh and sketching plans for a new barn. He promised to build it so strong and fine this time that nothing would ever bring it down again—not lightning, not a match, not even the tempers of the Gilly women.

  In the kitchen Claire was feeding Jordy his morning bottle and baking a loaf of cinnamon bread. In the past month, Jordy had started crawling and was everywhere now. After the fire Cutt had left town, and no one could find him (not that anyone had really wanted to), so Claire had gotten her wish and gained custody of Jordy. One day, Jo knew, they’d have to tell him what had really happened, but hopefully that was still years away, and by then maybe they’d be able to tell the story right.

  Jo walked over and plucked Jordy out of Claire’s arms. After the fire Claire’s scarlet hair had started developing strings of gray in it, as if ash had settled permanently on her head, but Jo thought the look actually suited her sister. It softened her somehow and took away a little of her venom. Or maybe it was all the fish. After everything, Ethan had decided to stay in town and join his uncle Chet at the docks. At first, racked by guilt, shocked by the loss of Dee, Claire had wanted nothing to do with him, but every day over the past two months Ethan had brought her something to eat from the sea until, to his relief, she decided that salt and fish went together after all and accepted his proposal in the dunes with a solemn nod and a deep kiss.

  Jo looked down at the silver locket hooked around Claire’s throat. Claire had gone and set it with Ida’s pearl. Pasted inside on the left was a picture of Claire and Jordy, covered in flour and laughing, and the right side contained a photograph of Dee cradling Jordy.

  “Are you sure you don’t want this?” Claire had said when she�
�d asked Jo for the locket. “The pearl should really be yours by rights. Not to mention the locket.”

  But Jo refused. “I didn’t want it the first time around,” she said, “and I don’t want it now.” The truth was, it pained her to be reminded of Dee. No matter what she did from now on, Jo knew, a part of her would always be lingering in front of the barn as it burned, as trapped as Whit and Dee. And how much worse it was for Claire, she suspected. Bad enough to wear that necklace like a penance, where it thumped and twisted on her chest, with every movement reminding her of what she’d done. Jo reached down and stroked Jordy’s nose, so similar to his mother’s.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  Claire swallowed and bundled Jordy tighter. “Not really,” she admitted.

  They said little as they trudged together toward St. Agnes and even less as they approached the faded and chipped painting of Our Lady.

  “Are you sure we should be doing this?” Claire asked as Jo opened the rucksack she’d brought and began uncapping pots of paint.

  Jo held out a brush and waited for Claire to lay Jordy down. “You know it’s the right thing,” she said as Claire opened the locket to the photograph of Dee.

  Claire took the brush in her shaking hand. “I know,” she said, and then added, “I once made a promise to the Virgin that I’d give her a face if I ever had a son.” She hung her head, tears forming in her eyes. “I only wish I weren’t doing it like this.”

  “I know.” Jo put her hand around Claire’s and guided the brush to the wall, smearing fleshy paint on the Virgin’s cheek, first by dabs and then in bigger smears.