Lee left Craw Valley at eighteen without a backward glance. She wanted no part of the generations of her family who tapped into the power of the land to heal and help their community. But when she abandons her life in California and has nowhere else to go, Lee returns to Craw Valley with her children in tow to live with her grandmother, Belva.
Lee vows to stay far away from Belva’s world of magic, but when the target of one of her grandmother’s spells is discovered dead, Lee fears that Belva’s magic may have conjured something far more sinister. As she searches for answers to protect her family, Lee travels down a rabbit hole of strange phenomena and family secrets that force her to reckon with herself and rediscover her power.
Lee left Craw Valley at eighteen without a backward glance. She wanted no part of the generations of her family who tapped into the power of the land to heal and help their community. But when she abandons her life in California and has nowhere else to go, Lee returns to Craw Valley with her children in tow to live with her grandmother, Belva.
Lee vows to stay far away from Belva’s world of magic, but when the target of one of her grandmother’s spells is discovered dead, Lee fears that Belva’s magic may have conjured something far more sinister. As she searches for answers to protect her family, Lee travels down a rabbit hole of strange phenomena and family secrets that force her to reckon with herself and rediscover her power.
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Overview
Lee left Craw Valley at eighteen without a backward glance. She wanted no part of the generations of her family who tapped into the power of the land to heal and help their community. But when she abandons her life in California and has nowhere else to go, Lee returns to Craw Valley with her children in tow to live with her grandmother, Belva.
Lee vows to stay far away from Belva’s world of magic, but when the target of one of her grandmother’s spells is discovered dead, Lee fears that Belva’s magic may have conjured something far more sinister. As she searches for answers to protect her family, Lee travels down a rabbit hole of strange phenomena and family secrets that force her to reckon with herself and rediscover her power.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781668045787 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Atria Books |
| Publication date: | 06/24/2025 |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One ONE
LEE
It was quiet in the car when the road began to climb into the mountains. In the front seat, Meredith’s head rested against the seat belt in a sling. Cliff was hunched on his side, making a contorted bed out of the backseat. Lee’s mouth tasted like fermented pennies from the coffee she’d gotten in Arkansas early that morning.
As the incline of the highway steepened, a chill crept in through the vents, and the air turned to mist around the car. Lee pressed the back of her hand to the window. It was freezing.
Soon the fog was so thick that she was forced to turn on her headlights and slow to a crawl, hugging the innermost lane to avoid the edge. She wound slowly through the twists of the road and passed large semi-trucks barely creeping along the pavement. Her hands were slick and tightly gripped on the steering wheel, and her foot shook a little on the gas. One swift movement, and she and her children would go careening off the edge.
They were on hour thirty-four of a three-day trek from California, and she was starting to lose it. Only a few more hours to go. She tried to put a podcast on, but she couldn’t concentrate. Her mind wandered back to the last time she’d been home.
Twenty years ago, she’d been heading in the opposite direction on a bus bound for college, looking out the window at the fog-cloaked valley erasing in front of her and replaying her last moments with Mama outside the bus station. Mama was two months sober and still a little bit beautiful, but Lee could see the cracks forming. She was on the verge of collapse; as soon as Lee was no longer there to watch her, she would fall apart.
At the driver’s final call, Mama hugged her suddenly, violently, with ash and gardenia filling Lee’s nose. Then she put her lips to Lee’s ear and whispered, “If you ever come back here, Opaline, I will skin you alive.”
College had not been what Lee expected. Her goal had been only escape, and it had taken every ounce of her to do it. She’d denounced everything she’d known, including her own name. But then she wondered, What now? She didn’t know how to make friends, didn’t know how to approach people and make herself open to them. She had the kind of weirdness that sealed her off from people. A strangeness.
She was adrift until she met Cooper with his shaggy blond hair and disheveled Bohemian style that belied his money. He claimed to like her strangeness, but after years of him trying to sand down her edges and of her contorting herself to fit his rich, shiny world, she had lost sight of who she was or where she belonged. She was a mother, and she loved that. But beneath it, she had devolved into something she recognized too well. There was a deep wrongness inside of her that she hadn’t escaped.
Lee hadn’t planned on ever coming back to Craw Valley. And yet, here she was, running away from a failed marriage and an empty life. Returning to this place because she had nowhere else to go.
The car began to angle downward, and the thick fog receded. In the clear air, the valley revealed itself as a wet, green, sprawling country that became blue mountains in the distance. Lee opened her window and inhaled the sweet chill, her desert-dried skin reanimating with the moisture and her mind clearing of her failures for a brief moment.
She looked out over the mountains and could feel their pull even from here, reeling her in.
At the rush of air, Meredith yawned and sat up, and Cliff stretched in her rearview mirror.
“I dreamt we were in the forest and there was a fire,” her son shared sleepily. “Like we were camping, but not. It was me, you, and a bunch of strangers standing around it. You were saying something in this scary voice, and there was this buzzing like a bug in my ear. It was really weird.”
Unease slithered down Lee’s spine. “Creepy, Iff.”
“What about me? Was I there?” Meredith asked.
“No. Just me and Mom.”
“That’s messed up.” Meredith reached into the backseat and swatted his leg. “So what happened next?”
“I don’t know. Mom rolled down the window and woke me up.”
“I had to. Look at this. Smell it.” She gestured out the window at the landscape and inhaled dramatically.
“I think you have car fever,” Meredith said.
Cliff kicked Meredith’s seat and shrieked, “I’ve got the fever, too!”
Lee lowered the other windows, and their hair started whipping around their heads. Cliff laughed, and Meredith reluctantly gave up a smile.
“Are you ready?” Lee yelled at them through the thumping current.
They both answered, “Yes!”
“As hard as you can, okay?”
She counted to three, and they leaned their heads out the windows and screamed over the mountains as hard as they could. In Lee’s howl was the force of all her anxieties and regrets and love, announcing herself to this godforsaken place.
An hour later, Lee took the familiar exit. She marveled at the cluster of new chain restaurants, the freshly stuccoed Walmart, the dead-stock retailers with parking lots packed to the gills.
As she moved farther away from the highway, the country took over and the strip malls became the thick woods and empty fields she recognized. A string of local businesses sprouted up amidst the green of the pine and the hickory and maple turning gold and crimson—a hamburger stand, a tractor supply, a new Mexican place where the Italian joint had been.
She felt herself entering a familiar groove. A part of her brain that she had tried to repurpose for anything else was now awakening at the scenery she’d passed thousands of times as a child, imprinted on her like a second language. There was the red-and-yellow sign for Hardee’s where she had waited for Mama in the hash-brown fumes when she forgot to pick her up. And the small brick façade of the public library where she’d slept the nights Mama had people over who tried to climb into Lee’s bed.
A tender pain bubbled up in her chest, and she quickly buried it. She wanted to see the place through new eyes, as an outsider.
“So, is this it? Are we here?” Meredith asked.
“Yep. This is it. The great town of Craw Valley.” Her children were quiet as they scanned out the windows. “Don’t worry. Six months max, remember? Probably less. Enough time for your dad and I to work out an arrangement.” She knew it was ridiculous that she refused to say the word “divorce” to them, but the word was charged and made of a torturous metal when she saw it in her mind. This was not the childhood she’d wanted for them. At least arrangement held a tinge of enlightenment.
“I think it’s kind of... cute.”
Lee glanced at Meredith, searching for one eyebrow arched in sarcasm. Her daughter approved of very few things anymore, and none of them were cute. But her face was earnest. “You think it’s cute.”
“I mean, it’s not trying to be something it’s not. It’s not trying so hard. Like, ‘look at me, look at who I am, buy things from me.’”
“I’ll give you that. It’s definitely not trying very hard. Iff, what do you think?”
“I kind of like it, too. It makes me think of something red and veined, like when you see an animal ear in the sun.”
Lee looked back out the window and marveled at how he was able to capture the world in such a strange and perfect way. “I know what you mean,” she agreed.
Cliff saw the world through a different filter; people and places evoked colors or specific images, and he often couldn’t distinguish between his imagination and reality. Sometimes he knew things he shouldn’t: little predictions for the future, undisclosed facts about people. She had expected it to go away as he got older, but the fantasies only strengthened as he moved closer to adolescence. He had been seen by many doctors and given many diagnoses at her husband’s insistence, but they never entirely fit.
They continued down a one-lane road and passed small, neat salt boxes and prefabricated ranch houses. One decaying wood house stood with an abandoned school bus parked out front and a cracked plastic pool piled in the side yard. And then there were no houses, only a narrow, winding road with a succession of dirt and gravel drives receding into a wall of trees on each side, closing them in. Lee felt safe under its canopy, no longer exposed to the sky and the elements as she’d been for the thousands of miles they’d streaked through flat, dry country.
Before she was aware of it, she spotted the crooked oak and hung a right onto a gravel road. Though her hybrid SUV was supposedly made for off-roading, she could hear scraping as she navigated each curve and dip. After a while, the trees gave way to a clearing with a modest cabin in its center, as if raised from the earth itself. Buckets and barrels sat around its perimeter, waiting for rain, and something copper-colored hung from the tree in front at a sinister angle. She parked in the dirt next to a pickup truck, and they emerged stiff-legged from the car.
Lee took a deep breath in. The air was pure rain-watered wetness, and it smelled of trees—the salted bark, the vegetable leaves, the oxygen fumes. She told herself she could appreciate this place like a tourist. No plans to stay long term. Just passing through to soak up the clean air and leer at the deciduous shedding their leaves in a riot of color.
A Black woman came out of the screened porch, and it took Lee a moment to place her. A friend of her mother’s, but only in the early years. She was wearing sensible, loose-fitting jeans, and her hair was combed back from a high-cheekboned face with no makeup. She pulled her hands out of her pockets and gestured at them in welcome.
“Hey, darlin’. Do you remember me? Luann?”
“Yes, I think I do. You were Mama’s friend.”
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s been a long time.” She reached out and shook her hand with both palms wrapped around Lee’s. “Belva’s out back.”
“Sounds good.”
Cliff held on to Meredith’s sleeve as they warily approached from the other side of the car. They weren’t very high on strangers.
“Meredith and Cliff, this is Luann. A friend of the family.”
They nodded in greeting, and Meredith pointed to the thing hanging in the tree. “What’s that?”
“Oh, yes. We been light on rain for the past week, so Belva split a snake down its middle and hung it in the tree there. Got a good sprinkling this morning before y’all arrived.”
Meredith’s eyes widened, and Cliff huddled closer to her. Luann took her cue. “You must be tired after your trip. Y’all come on in.”
They followed Luann through the porch and then the front door, still painted blue with old iron tools hung above its frame.
The small wood-lined living room was the same as it had always been, with the orange polyester couch and the rag rug fraying at the edges. Carved birds sat perched on shelves looking down at them. The old money jar stood by the door filled with coins and labeled MYRTLE BEACH in faded marker. Lee wondered if Belva ever made it to the ocean.
The most pronounced change was a spread of picture frames on the east wall. As Lee moved closer, she realized it was every Christmas card she’d ever sent. Fifteen photos of Lee and her family in sweaters, lined up in black plastic Walmart frames. It broke her heart a little bit, this preservation of the type of card that people usually threw away when January came around. This grasping at some connection to the granddaughter who had neglected their relationship for decades. She wondered if Belva understood that it had never been about her. It was about this place, and this life. It was hard to hold on to a piece of it when she’d intended to leave it wholly behind.
Before she could dwell on it further, she noticed a hulking man in a worn flannel standing at the counter in the kitchen. He was covering steaks in a marinade with large callused hands studded with thyme flowers, and when he looked up, his eyes sparkled with mirth.
“Shit dog, it’s Opaline.” As he came around to hug Lee with hands pointed up to protect her shirt, Meredith shot her a look and mouthed Opaline?
“Uncle Billy! I’m actually going by ‘Lee’ now.”
“Oh, right, I knew that. I seen the Christmas cards.”
Lee’s shame was renewed at the mention of them. “I didn’t know you’d be here. How are you?”
Billy sighed. “Same old, same old. I couldn’t miss meeting the famous Meredith and Cliff.” He bent his large frame toward the kids. “Meredith, I’m Billy. I’m sure your mama’s never talked about me, so I’ll save you the trouble and tell you I’m Redbud’s crazy little brother.” He eyed the paperback sticking out of her bag. “So you’re a reader, huh? What you reading right now?”
Meredith shot Lee another look as if to say Redbud? “Oh. Um. I guess I’ve been reading a lot of Ursula K. Le Guin.”
“I don’t know her. What does she write?”
“Sci-fi fantasy. She’s one of the most important writers in that genre.”
Billy whistled. “Can I borrow one? Damn shame I never heard of her.”
Meredith visibly softened. “Yeah, sure. I only found out about her on Reddit. It’s, like, a crime no one talks about her.”
Billy pivoted toward Cliff and studied him for a little bit before asking, “What do you make of this place?”
Cliff’s eyes scanned the walls and the people around him with an intent gaze. Lee expected Cliff to shy away from Billy, but he seemed drawn to him. His voice was dreamy as he said, “There are so many colors here.”
Billy nodded. “What’s my color?”
“You’re sorta orangey gold. Like those flowers outside. With the tiny petals.”
“Marigold.”
“Yeah, like that.”
Billy smiled. “This is a special place. Not much like it except for my cabin a little ways down the road. Y’all should come over sometime. I got a mess of animals and other stuff I can show you.”
Cliff glittered at the mention of it.
Billy turned back to the steaks and sprinkled salt on them. “Hope y’all like venison.”
Meredith and Cliff looked at Lee incredulously.
“Venison is deer, guys.”
They both went a little wide-eyed, and Billy guffawed up to the ceiling.
In the silence of her children, Billy kept jabbering on, but Lee couldn’t hear him. A vibration was building in the air, and Lee was the only one who could feel it, pulling her toward the back of the house.
She left the kids in the kitchen and traced a path down the hallway. On a side table covered in white lace sat a few framed photographs with candles, a gold necklace, and a packet of chewing tobacco in front of them. One photo was an old glamour shot of an auburn-haired woman with intense, nervous eyes and a red feather boa wrapped dissonantly around her shoulders. It had been so long since she’d seen her aunt Ruby Jo that she had a hard time recognizing her at first. She died when Lee was still in elementary school. Next to her frame was a senior portrait of a fluffy-haired white boy with the grainy overexposure of the early 2000s. It was Ruby Jo’s son, her cousin Earl. Lee remembered when her mother called her in the middle of the night years ago. Her words had dissolved in her mouth as she raved, drunk or high or both, about Earl dying in a motorcycle accident. It wasn’t until Lee had looked it up online that she learned he’d been running from the police after a drug bust.
The vibration built, rippling through her as she continued down the hallway toward the sunshine spilling from the back windows.
When she stepped out the back door, the buzzing swelled into a primordial harmony.
The real magic of the property was the garden, which stretched from the back door to the woods, as thick with life as you’ve ever seen a patch of earth. There were rows and rows of vegetables, flowers, herbs, and plants that defied category. Countless stalks loomed and coiled and presented their autumn blooms to the sky with a prescient boldness, and the air fizzed with insects.
Some of her best memories as a child had been in this garden, wandering the rows with her grandmother and learning the names and uses of its wild inhabitants.
In a clearing to the right, an imposing figure clad in cream canvas and a wide, netted headdress stood wreathed in smoke, surrounded by shoulder-high white boxes that buzzed with the sweet, resonant music that had pulled Lee here. She watched for a while as the figure removed trays from the boxes coated in wax and dripping with honey, whispering to the bees.
The figure noticed her standing there and stepped away from the hives, pulling back their headpiece to reveal an older woman. Her hair had become the same shade as her skin, both bleached to a pale, dull pink.
Lee and Belva moved toward one another and embraced tightly. Lee inhaled dandelion heads and Dial soap through the canvas and relaxed against the familiar smells of her grandmother. A fleeting sense of safety washed over her. She hadn’t been held like this in so long that she’d forgotten what it could feel like. It was too much too quickly, and the buzz in her chest turned to a warm, sickening ache.
“Hell’s bells. I can’t believe you’re here.” Belva scanned her face, and Lee could feel the power of her observation penetrating beneath the skin. She instinctively took a step back.
“Let’s go inside. I wanna meet my great-grandbabies.”
After the introductions, Billy finished dinner, and the group gathered around the old oak table. The thick deer steaks were served with soup beans and cabbage cooked soft with bacon, and the food restored and fortified Lee like no meal had done in a long time.
The conversation was relaxed and irreverent, like the times she and the kids had when Cooper was away on business trips and they could be themselves. When Cliff spilled salt on the table, Belva showed them how to throw it from their right hand over their left shoulder to ward off bad luck, and she asked them specific, interesting questions about themselves—not the usual patronizing fodder. When Belva asked Cliff what her color was, he studied her for a moment and whispered, “Green glitter.” Belva looked impressed.
It was late by the time they’d cleared the table, and Meredith and Cliff were exhausted. Luann and Belva set them up on cots in a small room used to store Belva’s issues of National Geographic dating back decades. Lee helped Cliff settle in; she knew it was hard for him to sleep outside of his room back home. He seemed a little uncomfortable as his eyes roved fearfully over the walls, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He would adapt to its new colors and images.
As Lee went to leave, Meredith sat up on her cot. “Mom, this place is amazing. Your childhood must have been beautiful. Why didn’t you tell us?”
Lee closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I didn’t grow up in this house, honey.”
“What do you mean? Where did...?”
“My mom raised me. Redbud.”
“Oh, so that’s who that is. When did she die, again?”
“She’s not exactly dead.”
“What does that mean? You for sure told us she was dead.”
As terrible as it sounded, it was so much easier to think of her as gone. She wasn’t ready to explain this to her children. “We can talk about it later.”
“What about our grandpa? Is he still alive, too?”
Lee startled at the mention of her father. It had been a while since she’d thought of him. “I said I don’t want to talk about it.” Lee could feel the sharp edge of the words on her tongue.
Meredith’s skepticism dissolved into hurt, and Lee’s chest lurched. This was why she’d kept them separate from this part of her life; it only caused pain. “No, he’s been gone for a long time. Get some sleep.”
Lee was given the old living room sofa covered in a sheet and a wool afghan. She stayed up watching TV until everyone was asleep, and then she snuck out to the car, pulled a box of wine from the trunk, and sat on the front porch swing sipping from a coffee mug in the dark. She deserved a drink after all that driving.
There was no moon that night, and no lights for miles, so it felt like she was at the back of a cave, hunched over her wine, brooding over the past.
Lee recalled the last time she sat in the porch swing. She was nine years old, and she had just gotten her period. Her mother had dropped her off to be with Belva, and it had been the beginning of something. An initiation into a world of magic. The gift of a black book and an introduction into how she might wield the power of the land around them.
The very fact of being a witch wasn’t too impressive in Craw Valley; it was well known but rarely acknowledged that some in the community could get rid of warts with the touch of a hand, or blow out the fire in a burn. But the Bucks were notorious for their special talents and ability to perform powerful mountain magic, and Lee was next in their illustrious line.
Then her father died the next morning, and Mama cut them off from Belva, and just like that, her connection was severed. Her access to that world, that power, denied.
Lee now saw the magic for what it really was—a way for people with very few resources to feel they had some control over their hard, chaotic lives. Losing the magic hadn’t been a great loss; Lee had found school as another way of seizing power.
But losing Belva had been crushing.
She’d asked her mother over and over why she couldn’t see Belva anymore, but Redbud only told her that it wasn’t safe and refused to explain further. She told Lee that she was better than this place, and that one day she’d get out. That was what she needed to focus on. Forget Belva, and the magic, and Craw Valley, and even her.
Lee hadn’t only lost her father—she lost her mother, too. The woman who was once the vibrant center of her universe collapsed in on herself and went dark; she now floated around the house like a dead star. When Lee needed Belva most, when she was forced to take care of herself and hurt all alone, her mother took Belva away from her.
When Lee was around thirteen and things had gotten really bad with her mother, she snuck over to Belva’s cabin one afternoon. She pleaded with Belva to let her stay with her, but Belva drove her back immediately, telling her she couldn’t violate her mama’s wishes. When Lee asked why, she wouldn’t say, but Lee could see tears in her eyes. Belva’s mere presence had acted as a balm for her loneliness, but as she disappeared down the road, leaving her alone at that house, Lee felt the despair returning, threatening to pull her under.
Belva still loved her. She was the only person left who loved her. And Mama didn’t let her have that love.
She never forgave her for that.
After Lee went off to college, Belva wrote her letters, hoping they could have a relationship now that she was no longer under her mama’s roof. She told her if she ever needed anything, she’d be there for her. If she needed a place to stay for the holidays or summer break, she was welcome at the cabin.
Lee didn’t respond to a single letter; she’d vowed to cut all ties with Craw Valley and start over, and she couldn’t allow herself to get sucked back in. The bond she once shared with Belva felt remote to an eighteen-year-old Lee on her college campus hundreds of miles away. It wasn’t worth it.
But when Lee decided to leave Cooper, she needed a place to go. And Belva’s cabin was the only place that came to mind. After so long, the cabin would finally be her sanctuary.
A spark came from the corner of the porch, startling Lee. In that brief flash, she could see the large, round outline of Belva. She wondered how long she’d been there. A plume of herbed smoke snaked from her direction, and each time the cherry in her pipe illuminated, Lee could see a little more of her.
“Why didn’t you drink at dinner?”
“I know how you feel about it.”
“Better than sneaking out here like someone with a problem.”
“I’m sorry, Grandma Mama. I know I just sprang this on you. We won’t be here for long. Six months, tops.
“Now, don’t make it about that. You can stay here forever if you want. I’m trying to talk to you about how you are doing.” She took another pull from her pipe. “So what happened with the husband?”
“That’s not an easy answer.”
“I’m sure it ain’t, honey.”
Lee wasn’t ready to expose the specific disappointments of her life to Belva. She decided to change the subject. “How long has Luann lived here?”
“A few years. After her husband died.”
Belva had always offered a home to people in need when Lee was growing up, but she’d never known anyone to stay for this long. She’d also noticed there wasn’t a bed set up for Luann, but Lee waited for her to say more. It wasn’t their custom to pry beyond what people wanted to reveal about themselves, even among family.
“She’s a one-of-a-kind lady.” Belva smiled at her and took another puff, and Lee knew that was all she would say about it. The smoke smelled almost savory, like standing in a kitchen while chicken and vegetables cooked down into a rich broth. It wound around Lee and cocooned her in its warm safety.
“Did he hurt you? I can help.”
“No. I don’t need—”
“I’m happy to help. We can keep him from doing any more harm to you.”
“I said no.” Lee crossed her arms.
Belva ignored her frustration. “Has Meredith gotten her period yet? I’d have thought she would at her age, but I can sense she’s not open.”
“No. Don’t mention it to her. She’s sensitive about it. I made a doctor’s appointment in California, but we left before we could go.”
“No need for doctors. It’ll happen when she’s ready. You know, you don’t seem very open either. I bet you can’t even feel it.” She brought her foot down on the wood planks. When Lee didn’t respond, Belva took a deep breath. “You got any money, child?”
“Not very much. He controlled the money. I wasn’t good with it.” As Lee said it, she wondered at its logic. It was something she and Cooper had decided years ago, and she’d come to accept it as reality. But she was the one who knew how to live on so little. “There was a prenup. I’ll get half of what we made during our marriage, but he mostly volunteered for his family’s nonprofit, and I took care of the kids. We essentially lived off his parents and his trust fund. So there’s basically nothing that’s ours to split.” Lee sighed. “I’ll fight for the kids’ support. But I won’t fight the prenup. I don’t need his family’s money.”
“Damn straight. You don’t need him or his stuck-up family. We got everything we need right here.” Belva brought her foot down on the wood planks again.
“For now, I’ve got a credit card that we can live on for a bit. I can buy food and things for the kids. I have an interview for a long-term sub job at the high school tomorrow. The eleventh-grade history teacher is going on maternity leave.”
“Oh yes, Debbie’s daughter. She’s had a hard time with it, but she’ll deliver soon.” Belva put the pipe to her mouth and inhaled, letting out a thick stream of smoke. “If you give me your left sock, I can fix something up to help you get the job—not that you need it, but no harm in it, huh?”
Lee nearly laughed. The contrast between the bland suburban life she’d left behind and this absurd one she’d returned to was hard to believe. “No, thank you. I appreciate it, though.”
Belva huffed. “Suit yourself.” She looked back toward the house. “They’re good kids. Bucks through and through. I thought they might be different, growing up away from the land, but they’ve got it in them.”
Lee wasn’t sure how she felt about this. She’d spent most of her adult life trying to prevent them from being anything like the Bucks. She changed the subject.
“Have you seen Mama?” Lee asked.
Belva stared into the darkness beyond the porch. “No.”
“Any idea how she’s doing?” Lee couldn’t help but ask.
“No, honey. I think Billy still checks up on her sometimes. Don’t know why he does that to himself.” And I don’t know why you’d do it either. Lee could hear it in the spaces between the words.
Belva didn’t need to worry. Lee hadn’t spoken to her mother in fifteen years, and she didn’t plan to change that now.
There was so much more to say, but the air had cooled. The smoke of Belva’s pipe dissipated and left behind a feeling of vulnerability, then exhaustion.
“You want me to draw you a special bath? It’ll clean that spirit right up.”
Lee shook her head. As much as she yearned for comfort, it was a different thing to open herself up to it.
Belva sighed and went inside, and Lee took another sip.
It was still dark out when Lee awoke on the porch to the sound of screaming. Through the wine haze, she recognized Cliff’s howl.
She stumbled into their makeshift room and found Belva, Luann, and Meredith swatting at the ceiling with brooms and rolled National Geographics as a bat whirled around the fan. All the windows in the room were open, like deep, black portals to the great beyond.
Cliff was curled in a ball on his cot, so Lee wrapped herself around him, like adding clay to a smaller piece of clay. Her heart was equally crazed from waking with half the alcohol curdling in her system and the other half still burning brightly. Soon they were breathing calmly as one.
Luann caught the bat in a fishing net and released it through the window.
Belva asked Meredith why they’d been sleeping with the windows open, and she declared that they’d been shut when they went to sleep.
They asked Cliff if he knew what happened, and he wearily replied that he’d seen a figure cross the room and open the windows. It was too dark for him to see what the figure looked like; it was only a shadow.
This was not new territory for Cliff; he experienced night terrors every few weeks that felt so real they left him sweating and shaking. He always insisted they had, in fact, happened, but Lee and Cooper always reassured him they weren’t real. He was safe. Lately, Cliff had stopped fighting to be understood, and she wondered if he held things back from her now, expecting she wouldn’t believe him.
But Cliff had found a new audience in Belva. She looked deeply concerned and asked him detailed questions about the figure. When she was satisfied, she hung rosemary above the windows and placed a rabbit’s foot under Cliff’s mattress. Then she drew a cross over the door with white chalk and bid them goodnight.
Lee lay down with Cliff on the cot and tried to put her arms around him, but he turned away from her toward the wall, not touching, except for one foot wrapped around hers. She stared up at the ceiling, remembering the nights she’d spent in this room before everything fell apart.
“Are you awake?” Meredith whispered.
“Yes.”
She was quiet for a moment. “I like it here.”
“It’s only been four hours. Give it time.”
Meredith ignored her. “Belva is so cool. What was she doing with the rosemary and the rabbit’s foot?”
“It’s just an old mountain superstition.”
Meredith paused, and Lee could hear her thinking in the dark. “Why didn’t you tell me? About your family?”
“I had a hard time growing up.” A bit of that tender pain bubbled up again, and Lee pushed it down. “But I don’t like to dwell on it. I left it behind and started over, and I had you and Cliff, and you guys became my family.” She paused. “I never meant to keep anything from you. Believe me, none of it is good. You’re not missing out.”
“Okay.” Meredith paused. “I’m sorry it was hard for you.”
“That’s all right, honey. It was a long time ago.”
“I won’t make you relive your trauma for me.”
“Thanks.” Lee looked over at her shadowy outline. “Do you want me to scratch your back?”
“No. I think I can feel it pulling me under.”
“Me too. Goodnight.”
“Night.”
Lee turned back to the ceiling and felt sleep no closer. When Belva put her to bed in this room as a child, they’d always said the same prayer. Lee said it to herself now, praying to lose consciousness.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
Amen.