The Lost Girls of Devon

by Barbara O'Neal

  I nodded, a rock weighing down my gut. “Thanks, lads. Have a great day.”

  They ambled down the hill, and I watched them go. Surely Jennie had not run off with Andrei? She’d been frightened of him, of his violent tendencies, and honestly, I didn’t think she would have lied to me.

  Once the mess was cleaned up, I tried to call Jennie, but her phone went to voice mail again. I left her a message asking for an update.

  As I washed my hands with sandalwood soap, I looked up at my face in the mirror, and just like that, I was snared by the past, by a sharp, painful longing for India. It caught me under my breastbone, sudden and intense. Perhaps it was the smell of incense or some other unknown thing that my limbic brain remembered from that time—dank water that had been standing in the close, or a whisper of light breaking just so.

  Whatever it was, I stepped into memories like a thousand scarves. The orange sky of sunset over Lake Pichola, the intense brilliance of the sun on the palace, the sound of Ravi laughing in that way that he had, throwing back his head and letting it pour out of his mouth, upward, like a song. My memories tossed out the sound of calls to prayer, echoing out at regular hours, so holy and beautiful. And there, in the middle of it all, was Kashmir, so beautiful and now so beleaguered. We were so happy there.

  I caught my arms around my middle, holding the memory within me.

  There are things you never get over. I closed my eyes for the space of a few breaths, letting it roll through me. Then I squared my shoulders and continued on.

  As one must.

  My assistant, Mia, made it in around noon, apologetic and irritable, but she was industrious and put herself to work blending spell packets for the festival, glaring every so often at a hipster pair with London accents who made sport of the tiny bottles of essential oils I had so carefully mixed and presented for all manner of purposes.

  “Hippies!” the girl trilled, casting a glance over her shoulder.

  “I am,” I said mildly over the reading glasses perched on my nose.

  Mia, carefully measuring scoops of dried calendula into a silver bowl, glowered at them. I’d only hired her a couple of months before, but she’d proven her worth a thousand times over. She had toured on the festival circuit for several years, offering tarot and henna tattoos while her girlfriend played as a violinist with a start-up band. When the girlfriend ran off with a fire dancer at Glastonbury last summer, Mia reluctantly made her way home to her middle-class parents, who were both proud of and flummoxed by their tattooed, green-dreadlocked girl. I’d adored her on sight, her fierceness hiding a heart as kind as dawn, and had only grown to love her more as the days went by.

  “Be careful,” she said now in a mild voice. “I’ve oil of toad here in my hand. Do you know what it does?”

  The London girl smirked. “Give me warts?”

  Mia blinked her enormous green eyes. “Ruins every selfie you ever take.”

  “Right.”

  Undeterred, Mia continued calmly. “Do you want to play a game? I guess your—”

  I gave her a raised eyebrow and subtly shook my head.

  “Never mind.”

  The two laughed and hurried out, the bell ringing behind them. Traffic was picking up this week—the street was full of people, tourists and locals out in the sunny day. Local shoppers in their sensible shoes and hats. Women in oversize sunglasses with designer bags, ramblers with their packs, and middle-aged couples on holiday from Switzerland and America and Australia.

  “They’re not worth your anger,” I said, measuring oil of rose into a fairy-size jar the color of rubies. The jars were teardrop shaped, like something from the Arabian Nights, and came complete with glass stoppers. They cost a pretty penny even in bulk, but they more than paid for themselves during the festival. This particular one would be a love potion to draw a lusty lover and give the wearer eloquence. I would not have a single bottle left when the long weekend was over.

  “I’m just sick of their type,” Mia said. “Think they know everything, and all they do is gobble up every resource on the planet and then shit it out as carbon dioxide until the world is so hot it wants to explode, and then they make fun of those of us who want to live a simpler life.”

  I paused in my counting. “What else is happening, my love?”

  She shook her head. “My parents are on me again to go to school, to cut my hair, to be”—she rolled her eyes and put the word in air quotes—“normal.”

  “Mmm.” I waited.

  “I’m stuck! Stuck in this Muggle town with Muggle people who are all oblivious to what really matters.” She waved a hand toward the window. “We have to learn to live more lightly. More spiritually. I just—”

  I touched her hand, feeling a swirl of longing and regret and the surge of moon-time emotions. “You aren’t stuck. You’re just resting between things.”

  She looked at me, a swell of tears making her look almost like an anime character. “I’m not running away? Because that’s how it feels sometimes.”

  “Oh, no.” I brushed hair from her face, feeling a vast sense of love for her. The world seemed so sad and lonely today. “Believe me, I’ve run, and that’s not what you’re doing. You were sent here to help me. What would I do without you just now?”

  “Really?”

  I thought of Zoe, standing like a medieval guard at the door to the house I’d grown up in. Thought of Diana, rosy with love, and Jennie, who still had not texted me. “More than I can say.”

  “Thank you.” She sniffed. “I’m going to have a smoke.”

  She was headed out the back door just as another customer came in the front door. “Hello!” I called as the bell rang. “Come in, come in. Look around.”

  The girl who entered the shop was tall and willowy, with long graceful limbs and black curly hair, like mine.

  I swallowed.

  She paused by the door, as if her bravado had carried her this far but no farther, and then she visibly gathered herself, took a breath, and crossed the uneven wooden floors of the shop. “Hi. My name is Isabel, and I think you’re my grandmother.”

  My heart squeezed. “I think you’re right. Come in.”

  She hovered right there, between the door and the counter where I stood, as if she wasn’t sure if she would stay or flee. “I have a question,” she said.

  “Please ask it.”

  “Why did you leave my mother?”

  “Oh, my dear,” I said. “That is a very complicated question. What if we start with something a bit simpler? Would you like to have a cup of tea?”

  “I don’t know if I should.” She looked over her shoulder, toward the door. “It’s going to make my mom mad if she finds out I came to see you.”

  I nodded, folding my hands to force myself to just wait for her, as if she were a wild thing that might startle.

  She took a breath, looked back. “I would like a cup of tea. I’ve been out all morning.”

  “Wonderful. Why don’t you come sit with me?” I gestured toward the back room, where I kept a kettle and a little table by the window. I filled the kettle and turned it on. “Do you like black tea? Earl Grey?”

  “Just the usual.” She looked around as I busied myself with mugs and such. “Do you make all this stuff?”

  “I do. With help from Mia there.” I pointed to my assistant, vaping as she leaned on the fence visible from the back door. “Are you interested in the magical arts?”

  She shrugged. “Not sure I believe in them. My other grandma says magic is evil.”

  “Hmm. That would be Florence, is that right? The Catholic Mexican great-grandmother?”

  “You know her?”

  “I did, a long time ago. I lived in New Mexico, at the farm. Does your granddad still live there?”

  “Yeah. He has sheep and goats and a big garden.”

  I smiled, somehow pleased that he was living that simple life he had longed for. “I’m glad.” I poured milk into a small pitcher and placed it on a wooden tray. “M
agic isn’t evil,” I said. “That was simply a way for the church to take the power of women, who were the healers and wise women.”

  Isabel’s eyebrows rose. “Huh.”

  Mia came back in. “Hello,” she said.

  “Hi.” Isabel waved a hand.

  “This is my granddaughter, Isabel,” I said. “We are going to have a cup of tea. Will you watch the front?”

  “Sure.” Mia inclined her head, smiling softly. “She’s your Mini-Me.”

  Pleased, I laughed. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t say that in front of my mom.”

  “No. We won’t.”

  When the water boiled, I filled a fat-bellied pot and added it to the tray. “Let’s sit over here, shall we?”

  She rose and joined me. It was true that she looked like me, but I could also see her dramatically handsome father, especially in her willowy grace and her ripe lips over even white teeth. So American, those teeth. She was clearly nervous, pulling her sleeves down over her hands.

  I sat back. “Would you like to learn a little bit about the cards?”

  She eyed the decks stacked neatly on one side of the table. “Sure. Like, just for fun, not for evil.”

  I laughed. “Of course. Just for fun. For interest.” I picked up my old, worn Rider-Waite. “This is the most traditional deck. It has major and minor cards.” I laid them out and then showed the suits and told her a little about each one.

  She sipped her tea. Touched the Page of Wands, then the Queen of Pentacles. I smiled. “Page is a young person. Queen is an older woman.” I laid them down, side by side. “You and me.”

  The moment ignited her imagination. I saw it flare in her dark eyes, in her quick smile. “Can you do more?”

  “Of course. Would you like a reading? Something simple?”

  She raised her shoulders, both not sure and sure. “Yeah. I do.”

  I picked up the cards, leaving out the Queen of Pentacles, the card of motherliness and nurturing, and the Page of Wands, which tells of a youth in some trouble, which wasn’t hard to see. I shuffled the cards, over and over, letting them clear, then handed them to her. “Shuffle three times.”

  She did. I admired her long fingers, her smooth young hands, and when she returned the cards, I cut them, then offered her the deck again. “Cut them once more.”

  I turned them over, one by one: Page of Swords, reversed. The Empress. Nine of Swords, reversed, thank goodness. The Fool. “This is nice, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “Page of Swords is someone who crossed you, a vindictive and maybe furious person you can’t trust.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Weird. What else?”

  “The Empress, which is almost certainly your mother, who is in your corner completely.”

  Isabel looked at it for a long moment, then blinked hard, as if to hide tears. She touched the skirts of the Empress. “She is. In my corner. That makes me feel kind of guilty for being here.” She scowled. “But I don’t love the look of this card.”

  “It looks bad, but it isn’t. Nine of Swords, reversed. You are moving away from a nightmare or a terrible time.”

  “That’s creepy.”

  “Why?”

  She frowned again, those thick beautiful brows beetling down as she stared at the cards. “Because this”—she stabbed the Page of Swords—“is my friend Kaitlyn. And this is my mother, who would do anything to make me happier. And this”—she touched the Nine of Swords with a fingertip—“is everything lately.”

  “The good news is,” I said with lightness in my voice, “the final card is the Fool, who represents optimism and fresh starts. That’s a good thing.”

  She pulled her sleeves down over her hands. “I guess.” She stood up. “I’m glad to meet you, but I really think I have to go now. I don’t want my mom to get mad at me.”

  I stood, too, and carefully did not touch her. “I understand. I am so glad you came by. Come anytime.”

  With that, she turned and disappeared, like a hare.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Zoe

  The morning of the sweep, I was the first one awake. I peeked in on Gran, and she was sleeping peacefully, tucked beneath her big down duvet. Her color was good, and I felt a sweet sense of relief.

  And maybe a slight triumph. I couldn’t believe my mother had just shown up at the door, as if she had a right, as if she hadn’t been wandering around the world for nearly three decades, never bothering to check in with anybody. How dared she?

  As I came into the kitchen, however, a contrary voice suggested, very quietly, that perhaps Poppy had a point. If she’d been visiting regularly, maybe I needed to at least ask Gran if she wanted her here.

  A vivid red blast through my entire body said, No! No way!

  I was saved from considering it further when Isabel came down, hollow eyed and grumpy. She hadn’t washed her hair in a while, and when I brushed it off her face, she looked like she might break.

  Sweet girl. “Did you have a bad night?”

  “Sometimes I can’t sleep,” she said, and she flopped down at the table. “Mósí made it better.”

  “That’s good.” My mom radar was bleating loudly, and to give myself a minute to choose my words, I filled the kettle. “Do you want some tea?”

  A shrug.

  I crossed the stone floor and bent down and wrapped my arms around her from behind. I pressed my cheek into her hair. She didn’t talk, and I felt her trembling, in resistance, in fear, in whatever this was. Tears burned in my throat, but I forced myself not to shed them, to swallow them back down.

  A hundred times, a hundred different ways, I’d asked her to tell me what had happened. A hundred times she’d shut me down, closed off, and it was days before she’d come back. Dr. Kerry said she thought Isabel was slowly healing, beginning to find her way back after whatever trauma had so shattered her, and I had to just keep loving her, standing by her, but also giving her space.

  PTSD was a tricky affliction, and when she started shrugging me off, I let her go, patted her shoulder, moved back to the counter to start my own breakfast.

  Perhaps it was the exact spot I was standing in the kitchen, or the way the light fell, or the telephone that still hung on the wall with its long cord, but I suddenly remembered the last phone call I’d had with my mother.

  Or rather, I felt it right in the solar plexus—that visceral recognition that she was not going to come back for me.

  “Did I ever tell you that I stopped talking to my mother when I was twelve?”

  “No. I thought she stopped talking to you.”

  Her tone was open. I turned around, arms crossed as if to protect that child I’d been, and gently felt my way through the story. “She called me every Sunday, and it was usually about now because of the time difference.” I looked toward the phone, saw myself standing there with a bowl of porridge on the counter, brown sugar piled in a little pyramid on the top. “I heard a sound in the background. I heard it all the time when she called, and I asked her what it was. She said it was the call to prayer, and it happened five times a day.” A wild emotion rose in my chest, and I had to blink hard. “It was so beautiful, and I wanted to be there with her so badly, and right then I realized that she wasn’t coming back.” I gave my own daughter a rueful smile. “I’d been waiting five years and it hadn’t happened, but that’s when I gave up.”

  “I hate that she left you,” Isabel said, fiercely. But she cast a frown at the table.

  I nodded. “The point is, my love, that I am right here. With you. Wide open. No matter what you need. Got it?”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “Good.” I took a breath. “Now, what are you doing with your day? Do you want to come with me for the sweep?”

  “Um . . . no. Sorry.”

  “That’s all right. I do need a plan from you. Maybe a shower?”

  “Are you saying I stink?”

  I just looked at her.

  “Okay, I’ll show
er. It’s just cold in that bathroom.”

  “I think there are some space heaters around.”

  “Because that’s safe! An electrical appliance plugged in, in a bathroom!”

  “They’re fine. I’ll find you one.” The tea had steeped long enough, and I wondered what to eat. Maybe a couple of eggs. I felt hollow, like I needed something substantial to get me through the grim work of the sweep ahead of me. “I might make some pancakes. Want some?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s the rest of the plan for the day?” I repeated my query and waited at the pantry door for her answer.

  She gave a huffy sigh. “I’ll take a shower. And then I’ll take my camera out and walk around the village and shoot some photos. And check in every hour.”

  “Great.” I dove into the pantry and picked out baking powder, a canister of flour, and salt, then returned to the kitchen. “Don’t you have some homework for Dr. Kerry and for school too?”

  She nodded glumly.

  “Okay, then. That works.”

  “Fine.” She shrugged.

  “I’ll be back for dinner. What do you want to cook?”

  “Why do I have to do it?”

  “That’s your job, right?”

  “Yeah, at home.”

  I found a ceramic bowl under the counter and measuring cups in a drawer. “The deal was, you cooked dinner if I agreed to you changing schools.”

  “But this kitchen is weird. That stove is not like anything I ever saw in my life!”

  “Google how to cook on a Rayburn,” I said. “And there’s a Crock-Pot around here somewhere. Explore the kitchen and figure out what you want to cook. It can be canned soup for all I care, but if you’re going to town, you can take a backpack and get some groceries.”

  Another huffy sigh. But when I sneaked a glance over my shoulder, she was sitting up straighter, and she’d pulled the sleeves of the hoodie up on her arms.

  Progress.

  The sweep for clues to Diana’s disappearance was meant to start at noon. I walked from Woodhurst to town on a metal staircase that zigzagged down the steep face to the beach, then crossed the sand, trying to keep my mind in the present, not on what I was about to do.