Chapter Seven #2
A laugh punches out of me. She’s probably right. I slip one finger in her left coat pocket.
“Lemon drops are in this pocket?” I tug on it, twisting her slightly. I don’t know why, but messing with Harriet is like cracking open a rusty door to a part of myself that hasn’t seen light in a hundred-something years. I’m stepping down a very dangerous path.
She nods. “Yeah. They’re in there.”
“All right,” I agree. “But I’ll get them.”
I slip my hand inside her impossibly small pocket without looking away from her face. Her lips part as my fingers come in contact with roughly ten thousand pieces of candy. I can barely fit my hand in among all the sweets.
“You have a problem.”
“Never know when you might get a craving,” she says faintly.
Her tongue appears at the corner of her mouth and everything in me pulls tight. A snowflake drifts lazily from the sky and lands against her bottom lip, a tiny crystal miracle before it melts into her skin.
I pull in a deep breath through my nose, then release it. I tug the candy out of her pocket and hold it in the palm of my hand.
“Thank you,” I manage, my voice sounding like it’s been dragged over rocks.
Harriet smiles up at me, shifting her attention back to the wobbling tree. “You’re welcome.”
I stare at her profile while I unwrap the lemon drop and try to rationalize the knot tightening in the middle of my chest. Harriet is the first assignment I’ve had in a decade that’s been close to my mortal age.
I don’t usually engage in casual conversation.
I can’t remember the last time someone touched me that wasn’t by accident or a part of my job.
She’s achingly beautiful with a wicked sense of humor and a desire for kindness that I’m starting to think might not be an act.
Her proximity is affecting me. That’s all this feeling is.
I shove the candy in my mouth. For a single, hopeful heartbeat, I think I can taste it. Smooth, creamy lemon and the bite of something sharp. But then the flavor dulls and fades away, my senses muted once again.
I release a sigh. “What exactly are you doing to that tree under there?”
Harriet snickers. “I’m brutalizing the poor thing. I was twenty-one and painfully uneducated on forestry tools. I couldn’t figure out how to use the saw.” The tree shivers, a victorious screech coming from beneath the branches. “Hold on a second. This is the best part.”
“I don’t understand why you came out here by yourself.” I keep waiting for someone else to materialize. A family member or maybe a boyfriend. Someone to help her with the tree roughly five times her size. “Or why you picked that tree.”
Harriet rolls her shoulders back, her candy cane between her teeth like a cigar. “Because I’m a strong, independent woman.” A thoughtful look wrinkles her nose. “Although …”
A sense of foreboding grips me by the back of my neck. “Although, what?”
There’s a loud snap as the trunk finally gives. I watch as the tree begins to fall—forward instead of back. Toward Harriet’s outstretched legs.
“I was sawing the wrong way,” Harriet supplies next to me, a laugh bubbling up. “Physics never was my strong suit.”
The tree lands with a muffled thud in the snow, right on top of Harriet.
In front of us, we watch as she struggles beneath the weight of the tree.
I’ve never interfered with the past before, but right now I want to.
I want to grab the tree and drag it off her.
I want to help her stand up and brush away the needles that are undoubtedly stuck in her hair.
I want to make sure she’s okay.
I don’t think she has anyone to make sure she’s okay.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” I say instead, clenching my hands into fists at my side. I bite down on the lemon drop and aggressively chew until I don’t feel so out of control.
Harriet waves her hand, dismissing me. “Everything turns out fine. Look.”
The tree tips to the side and Harriet emerges, red-faced and victorious. She does have pine needles in her hair. A pinecone, too. The beanie she was wearing is now tangled in the branches of the tree, an unintentional ornament.
But it’s the look on her face that has my breath backing up in my chest. She’s beaming down at the tree like she’s just conquered something.
“I didn’t have anyone to come with me,” Harriet explains.
“I’m sure you noticed with our last trip to the past, but my family isn’t exactly the ‘walk through a field and perform manual labor’ type.
My mom didn’t want—” She huffs a deep breath through her nose, then exhales it slowly, letting the rest of that sentence go.
“They had other plans and I wanted a tree for my very first grown-up apartment. My aunt Matilda offered to come with me once she heard I was on my own, but I think I wanted to prove that it was okay to do things by myself. That I could want something and deserve to have it. That even if it ended up being hard, it would be worth it.”
We watch as past Harriet bends and grabs the base of her spruce. She lifts it with a grunt and begins dragging it backward through the snow.
“Was it worth it?” I ask.
Her smile is wistful as she watches herself.
“What do you think?” The pinecone falls out of her hair when she gives the tree a particularly rough tug, bouncing down the front of her puffy jacket and landing right next to her hat.
Harriet stops yanking and stares at it, reaching up with one hand to pat at her head.
Realization lights up her face, a laugh following right after.
It echoes out across the field, twisting around the trees like tinsel. There’s joy in that sound. Relief, too.
She found what she was looking for.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Yeah, it was worth it.”
We don’t linger in the past much longer.
As soon as past Harriet disappears down the hill with her tree, I hold out my hand and current Harriet takes it without a word, the wind that’s been twisting around the trees centering on us instead, wrapping around our ankles and coiling up until her hair is in my face and my stomach is in my throat.
I’m aware of all the places we’re touching as we tumble through time.
Hands, hips, shoulders. Her steady breath on my neck and her palm pressed to mine.
When we slow to a stop, we’re back in her living room, our mugs of tea exactly where we left them. I center myself with the things I can see. Her blanket discarded over the arm of the couch. The ceramic gingerbread men on the mantel above the fireplace. The tree in the corner.
“Did you cut that one down by yourself, too?” I ask.
“I did,” she answers. “I started a new tradition that year, though I like to think I’m better with a saw now.
And … gravity, I guess. It’s much less action-packed these days.
” Her lips purse in thought. “I order the ones for the store, though. Cutting down three trees in one season feels like pressing my luck.”
A self-deprecating smile blooms across her face. I drag my thumb over her knuckles, our hands still locked together between us. I wish she weren’t wearing my mittens. I want to feel her skin.
I guess I know a thing or two about pressing my luck.
I drop her hand, pressing my palm to the back of my neck instead. I need to recalibrate. We’ve taken two trips to the past now and neither has been particularly revealing. I’m looking at a puzzle with half the pieces missing.
“Felling trees and stealing boats,” I say, frustrated. “Whatever could be next?”
“I suppose I’ve burned a gingerbread cookie or two over the years.
Maybe when we visit my past again, we’ll have to watch me massacre an entire town of licorice.
” Her smile becomes something forced, her eyes searching mine.
I’ve disappointed her somehow. I’ve said the wrong thing.
“You still think I’m hiding something, don’t you? ”
I think there’s something holding me here. Something I haven’t seen yet. Maybe she doesn’t mean to be deceptive, but the fact remains that there’s something I need to find. To see. And it’s not a train garden or trees in a field.
Mistakes aren’t made. Not here. Not with this.
“It’s my job,” I tell her, feeling a prick of guilt for reasons I can’t begin to name. “I need to get you to your next ghost.”
“My next ghost,” she repeats.
“As much as I’m enjoying myself,” I say, reaching for sarcasm, “I have other things to tend to. People I answer to.” Frustration burns hot at the back of my neck. “You really think you’re the exception to the rules that have governed this realm and the next for millennia?”
Harriet’s face collapses. She pulls the mittens off her hands.
“Of course,” she rasps. “I’ve made plenty of mistakes. I’ve hurt people. I’m sure—” She takes a shuddering breath. “I’m sure I probably deserve this.”
Guilt pricks at me again. A dull pressure that builds the longer she stares at her feet. “Harriet—”
“I mean, I haven’t called the cops on children, or been responsible for someone losing their home, but—” She shrugs listlessly. “Maybe what I did is just as bad.”
I narrow my eyes. “What did you do?”
She plucks at a loose thread on the mittens, turning them over and over in her hands. “We’ll find out, won’t we? I can’t hide from my past, as you are so fond of saying.” She gives me a tight smile. “But I get it. No hard feelings. I don’t want to hold you up or keep you from moving on.”
She offers me my mittens back.
That’s the thing. I won’t move on. I’ll stay exactly where I am, shackled to this place until I fulfill whatever requirements it has of me. How many decades have I spent trying to figure out how to move on? How many decades more will it take?
“Keep the mittens,” I tell her, suddenly exhausted. “I have other pairs.”
I can knit more. It’ll give me something to do.
“Oh, okay.” She tucks them close to her chest, her fingers gripping them tight. “Are you sure? You got them on sale.”
“They’re twenty years old. It’ll be fine.”