Edie in Between

by Laura Sibson

  * * *

  * * *

  On Wednesday, I go to Cosmic Flow in response to a text from Rhia that she needs help with a project. Tess has a family thing, so she’s out. I’m sort of nervous and excited to be alone with Rhia. I find her outside the back entrance up to her elbows in a huge tub of dirt. “Ready to help?” she asks.

  “Sure, what is it today? Witchy bridal shower? Wiccan naming ceremony? Earth goddess spell bottles?”

  “Not spell bottles,” she says. “Flower bombs. And you look better.”

  “Thanks.” Days after my forced trip into the shadow world, I’m starting to feel like myself again. As much of myself as possible while a magical infection works its way into my body. For just a moment, I’d like not to think about it. So I focus on Rhia. “What exactly are flower bombs?”

  She motions with a dirt-covered hand for me to come join her. “Did the journal reveal anything?”

  “Way too much,” I say. “Remind me to never write down my sexcapades. I do not want any future children of mine reading about my hookups.”

  Rhia laughs. I shoot a look at her.

  “Sorry!” she says. “But it is sort of funny that you’re reading about your mom’s teenage sex life.”

  It feels somehow bold to talk about this with Rhia, who I’ve wanted to kiss more than once. Who I wouldn’t mind kissing now as I watch her blow a curl away from her face. Nothing has happened since our close moment in front of the coffee shop.

  “Let me help,” I say. “My hands are clean.”

  She tilts her face toward me, and I brush the curl back, letting my fingers linger on her warm skin. Her eyes catch mine and my body responds with a roller-coaster swoop somewhere deep and low inside me.

  “Thanks,” she whispers. Her hands have stilled their work. My eyes go to her lips. Her eyes go to my arm where those awful lines snake their way up to my shoulder. I drop my hand and step back. No wonder nothing has happened—why would she want to kiss someone who is infected with corrupted magic?

  “I meant to tell you a while back,” I say, to change the subject. “I think I know what my mother used for the invocation spell. She talks about pulling together yarrow, peppermint, and ginger.”

  Rhia shakes her head a little bit. “Doesn’t make sense,” Rhia says. “Yarrow reduces swelling and can also bring on a late menstrual cycle. Peppermint and ginger are good for calming nausea and cramps. I don’t see how those three things would be used to call a spirit.”

  I frown, digesting this new information. So Mom had tried birth control. A natural remedy that failed. But if that yarrow concoction was used for birth control, then when and how did she perform the invocation that called the spirit?

  “You know what? Enough about my family and my problems. What’s going on with your grandmother?”

  Rhia bites her lip and exhales through her nose. “My parents are looking at places tomorrow.”

  I see how hard this is for her. I wish I could help.

  “Do you think it would make you feel better to go with them? So you can check them out, too? Maybe they won’t be awful.”

  Rhia presses her lips together and gives me a brief nod. “Maybe. I’ll think about it. Thanks for asking. Means a lot.” Then she clears her throat. “Let me tell you about these flower bombs,” she says, and it’s clear that I’m not the only one who wants to change the subject.

  “I was visiting the beech to see how it’s doing,” she says. “There’s actually new growth where the tree had burned. Did I tell you?”

  “No! Really?”

  “Yeah! I’m sure it’s because of Miss Geraldine’s brew. Anyway, being there, seeing the burned-out area looking so dead got me thinking about how to make areas beautiful again. People can throw these flower bombs out their car windows or toss them into fields when they’re hiking. They will beautify areas that have been neglected. Wherever people drop them, flowers will come up next year.”

  “Like magic,” I say.

  “Ordinary magic.”

  “Still magic.”

  Rhia smiles and that feels like magic, too. Nothing ordinary about it. She shows me what she’s doing. “I’ve got dirt and seeds and stuff all mixed up in here. I’m molding it into these balls and then I’m setting them on those cookie sheets. Got it?”

  I plunge my hands in and after a while I’m surprised by how calming it is to immerse my hands in dirt. Maybe, when all this is over, I’ll ask GG to teach me about gardening. I cling to the hope that we’ll conquer this magic and I’ll be okay.

  “Another thing did come up from the journal,” I say as I’m molding a ball.

  Rhia glances at me. “What’s that?”

  “Jamie asked my mom to kiss the coin that she’d made into a necklace for him. Could that be the ‘love, worn in a never-ending circle’? It’s round. And she loved him.”

  “Maybe,” Rhia says. “Where is that one supposed to be hidden?”

  “According to the map, it should be somewhere on the marina.”

  I mold more balls, my mind stuck on the hamster wheel of wondering if we can collect the last two items and banish the spirit before these veins reach my heart. Knowing that I was in that shadow world for over an hour when it felt like minutes scares me more than I’ve been letting on. My hand meets Rhia’s beneath the dirt. I want to grab her fingers in mine, but I think about how she eyed my arm. She’s probably repulsed. I move my hand away and start forming a new ball.

  “How do you think we can find that coin?” I ask.

  “What did you say his name was?”

  “Jamie.”

  “Last name?”

  I shrug. “She never mentioned it.”

  “But he worked at the hardware store?”

  “Yeah, and the marina, I think.”

  My hands stop molding flower bombs. Rhia stands up straighter. We both speak at once.

  “That coin is in the marina office!”

  “I think Jamie is Jim!”

  “Wait. What?” I’m not sure I heard Rhia right.

  “Jim. His dad used to own the hardware store ages ago. I heard Jim had gone overseas for years. He came back—when was it?” Rhia looks up at the ceiling. “Last year some time? He rolled back into town and everyone was so surprised that he’d returned.”

  “Jamie is Jim?” I can’t even imagine Jim as a teenage boy, let alone one that my mom had fallen in love with. And if Jamie is Jim, then Jim is my father. I don’t say this part out loud just yet, though.

  “That definitely tracks,” I say, “because I’m sure that I saw a coin like the one my mom mentions when I went into Jim’s office the other day. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

  “Do you want to go ask him about it?” Rhia asks.

  “Guess we should.”

  “Don’t be nervous,” Rhia says, mistaking the source of my feelings.

  I don’t correct her. I need to digest this huge new truth before I share it. For so long I’ve wondered about the identity of my father and now I find out that he’s been right beneath my nose for as long as I’ve been on GG’s houseboat.

  We finish molding flower bombs and leave them out to harden in the July sun. After we wash up, we walk over to the marina.

  My stomach is rolling over itself as we get close. I shake out my hands to try to get rid of my nervous energy. We find Jim in a rare moment of stillness. He’s sitting on a chair in front of his office wearing his old O’s hat and his marina T-shirt. I see him differently now. That’s probably the same hat he wore when he knew my mother. The same hair that curls around his ears.

  “Edie! Rhia! How I can I help you both today?”

  I can’t speak. I’m just staring at Jim and inside my head all I hear is: That’s your father, that’s your father, that’s your father!

  “Edie needs a life jacket,”
Rhia blurts. “We’re going out on a boat tonight and we’re short one jacket. Could you spare one?”

  Jim—my father, I’m still processing—offers a slightly confused smile. “Well, sure. That’s no problem. Give me a minute.”

  He gets up and heads toward the back area where he stores the life jackets, paddles, and floats.

  “Why are you asking about a life jacket?” I whisper.

  “Because you weren’t talking,” she whispers back. “Go get the coin.”

  “What?”

  “Go,” Rhia whispers. “Grab the coin from his office.”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “You have about twenty-seven seconds. Go!”

  Rhia pushes me toward the office. I slip in. The room is dim after leaving the bright sun of the dock, but even so, right away I make out the coin still hanging from the frame where I’d first noticed it. I slip it off the frame and into my pocket. I manage to make it out just as Jim is coming back with a life jacket in one hand. “Did you need something else?” he asks, looking from me to the office.

  “Nope, only the life jacket.”

  He hands it to me.

  “Thanks, Jim,” I say.

  “Sure.”

  “No, I mean I really appreciate it.”

  Jim chuckles. “It’s only a life jacket, Edie. Bring it back when you’re finished.”

  “I will.” We turn to leave.

  “Edie!”

  I freeze. Did he realize I’d taken the coin so quickly? Did he know I might be his daughter? I turn toward him. “Yes?”

  “Have fun!”

  All my breath leaves me. “We will.”

  Rhia and I start giggling to the point of hyperventilation when we’re out of Jim’s earshot. Rhia doesn’t know that some of this nervous energy is from talking to the man who I now know is my father. I refuse to pull the coin from my pocket until we get back to Cosmic Flow.

  “I can’t believe you talked me into doing that!” I whisper as we round the corner, out of sight of the marina.

  “What were you going to do?” Rhia asks.

  I shrug. “I don’t know! Tell him the truth?”

  We pass by the diner, busy with the lunch rush. I don’t see Jorge working and I wonder if he’s with Tess at her family thing.

  “What truth, though? Were you going to tell him that you’ve spent your summer here trying to dismantle some freaky magic?” Rhia lets her hand drift over the flowers overflowing the window boxes at the coffee shop.

  “ ’Course not! I would’ve said that I’ve been learning about my mom.”

  Rhia stops in front of Cosmic Flow. “And what? That you know your mom and him knocked boots when they were your age? Awkward!” She unlocks the door and, once we’re inside, flips on the lights of the darkened shop.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I feel terrible, though.”

  “But not terrible enough not to take it.” Rhia bumps her shoulder against mine. “You can give it back when all this is over.”

  When all this is over. That cannot come soon enough.

  “Are you ready to take this away if something happens to me?”

  “I’m your girl.” Rhia gives me a reassuring smile.

  I hold the coin in my hand, rubbing the face with my thumb. Mom touched this. She blew on it for her father. Probably the first piece of jewelry she’d created—a necklace for Jamie. And she kissed it. My mother’s gift—being able to infuse jewelry with emotion—is present in this coin. I feel joy and love and anticipation. I’m holding the coin in my hand for a while before something hits me.

  “This isn’t the right item,” I say. “Nothing’s happened. Every other item I’ve touched has shown me a memory or sent me to that shadowed place. I’m holding this one, and nothing.”

  “Okay, true.” Rhia puts her hands on her hips. “What could it be then?”

  I lean against the table. “I have no idea. What else could be at the marina that fits that description?”

  “Back to the journal?” Rhia says.

  “Back to the journal.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  MAURA

  August 5, 2003

  Telling Jamie didn’t go well. It didn’t go well at all.

  I was so excited to let him into this part of my life, to know the full me. After we were together last night, while we were still wrapped in one another’s arms, I started to tell him how I was different from other people. He chuckled and kissed me and said that he knew that already. I asked what he knew, and he talked about how I was rehabbing a boat by myself and I was basically dealing with my dad’s death on my own and how strong he thought that I was. I told him that I meant I was different in another way. He asked what I meant, and I said I would show him. I figured that I’d start small. I said a few words and changed the lights in the room to different colors. He laughed and asked how I did that. I told him that I could do things. Magical things. He laughed again and said that there is no such thing as magic.

  I tried to talk to him, tried to show him more things that I could do. But then he got up, dressed himself, and said he didn’t know what was going on, but he needed to go home. He said that it was all too strange. That I was too strange.

  I went up to the cabin to find Mama, but she wasn’t there. I cried myself to sleep.

  It’s raining again.

  August 15

  I said goodbye to Jamie today. It was awful. I was crying and clinging to him and he would barely touch me. I’ve tried to talk to him, but he kept making excuses. He didn’t even bring the boat back. He had it parked at the marina and sent some guy to tell me. I gave him an herb bundle for safe travel and watched him hand it to his mom like it was something he didn’t want to touch.

  Loving Jamie so soon after Daddy died and then being rejected like this feels like being buried under the rubble of loss.

  I tried talking to Dad, like I had that one time. But he didn’t appear again. Not even the pale, flickering version. I need to figure out why he’s not showing himself to us. I need to find a way to make him appear.

  August 25

  Felt sick again this morning. But in the afternoon, I biked up to the post office to check our box. Now that the rain has let up, people filled the sidewalks, holding ice cream cones or wandering past the shops. The beachy areas were packed, and the river roared with motorboats. All these people enjoying their lives while mine felt ripped apart.

  I’d finally forwarded our mail and the post office box was packed. Neither Mama nor I had checked it in a while. I rifled through, tossing the junk. Amid the flyers and bills, and a couple letters from UPenn, was a postcard featuring the Horn of Africa from a satellite. My heartbeat sped up.

  Dear Maura,

  I’ve landed. I spent the entire flight thinking about you. About us. You meant so much to me. I’d never felt about anyone the way that I felt about you. What we had was real. I don’t know what happened, why you started talking about magic. Maybe it was your dad dying and your mom not speaking. Maybe I was not enough for you. But Maura, magic is make-believe. A game that children play. It’s not real. I’m sorry that things ended the way that they did, but I didn’t know how to handle the change in you. I hope that you find the help that you need to get through this difficult time.

  —Jamie

  I threw the postcard in the trash and biked home. I should never have shared my magic. It only led to hurt.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  MAURA

  August 27, 2003

  I’m pregnant.

  After I realized the date and that I hadn’t had my period in a while, I took a pregnancy test. Then I went to the Planned Parenthood clinic. A nurse in blue scrubs came out with a clipboard and called my name. She ushered me into a bland exam room where I told her about my pregnancy test. I heard myself saying th
e words, but it was as though I was up above watching this happen to someone else. The nurse nodded and made a note on my file.

  “The doctor will be right in,” the nurse said.

  I wished I had something to distract me. I wished that I wasn’t alone.

  When the doctor finally came in, a tall thin woman with a hawkish nose and a kind smile, she looked over my file and then told me that she was going to do an exam. A nurse stood by while she told me to put my feet in the stirrups and performed the exam. She asked if I’d used protection and I knew she meant condoms, not yarrow tea, so I said no.

  “You’re early on,” the doctor said when she was finished. “You have options.”

  The doctor told me about those options while she pulled plastic gloves off one at a time and dropped them efficiently in a nearby trashcan. I lay on the exam table in a paper gown, my knees pressed together. The nurse asked if I wanted to call the father.

  The father.

  Of my baby.

  Jamie.

  Jamie who was in South Africa. Who had sent me a postcard on the day that he landed basically telling me that our relationship was over. I shook my head no.

  The doctor told me they would give me some time to think over what I wanted to do and then she and the nurse left, shutting the door behind them.

  The obvious choice was to terminate the pregnancy. If you’d asked me three months ago what I’d do if this happened, I may have laughed. It wouldn’t have seemed possible to me then.

  But a lot can change in three months.

  Three months ago, I assumed that my father would be around for a very long time. I assumed that I would go to UPenn, as he’d hoped. But he’s gone.

  And in a way, his death led me to Jamie.

  I rest my hand on my abdomen.

  And here we are.

  I slid off the exam table and removed my paper gown, using it to wipe away the goo from my privates. I pulled my clothes back on.

  “I’m going home,” I said to the woman at the front desk.