Chapter Eighteen
Harriet
The pull is instantaneous, his magic flaring hot around us.
The music box on the counter tips over as we’re torn away, twisting and tumbling through time.
The hand not holding mine settles on my hip as I clench my eyes against the force of it, his fingers spread wide, edging up beneath the hem of my sweater to the bare skin beneath.
I make a shaky sound that’s swallowed up by a dull roar as he traces a slow path against my hip bone.
Magic and motion and his bare skin against mine.
It lights up my body from the inside, a shower of golden sparks cascading over my shoulders like fireflies.
We slow to a stop. I keep my eyes shut tight. Nolan shifts in front of me, his arm around my shoulders, scooping me closer. He holds me there, tucked within the shelter of his body.
“Harriet,” he says.
I’m still trying to get my bearings, my nose buried against the front of his shirt.
“Harriet,” he says again, urgency in his voice.
I open my eyes. We’re behind the counter at the Crow’s Nest.
I look around, frowning. “Did we travel … ten minutes into my past?”
Nolan looks back toward his button tray. “I’m not certain.”
“I think we just hopped the counter.”
He gives me a look.
“What?” I ask. “That’s the only thing different.”
“My magic wouldn’t have felt like that if I merely jumped the counter, Harriet.”
That’s a fair point. I open my mouth for another useless explanation when two voices near the back of the shop catch my attention.
One a rough scratch, like she’s been crying.
The other light and comforting. It’s a voice that reminds me of hot sticky buns, fresh from the oven.
The windows open over the water and humid, salty air. Cool hands against my cheeks.
I back away from the counter, my hip bumping against a Christmas ornament display.
The ornaments don’t move at all despite the force, staying eerily silent on the shelf.
We moved this display a year ago— farther into the shop—but my aunt Matilda always kept it front and center.
She said she liked the way the light played with the brass.
Nolan moves with me. “What is it?”
The light coming in through the windows. The red velvet bows tied around the lamps. The garland I replaced last winter because it was threadbare in the middle, pine needles littering the floor every time I even thought about moving it.
“We did travel,” I explain, trying to peer over the shelves toward the back. “We went back to my past. When my—” I swallow around the jagged edges that still slice me open. “When my aunt Matilda was alive.”
Nolan’s hand cups my elbow. “Are you all right?”
I nod jerkily. “Yes,” I whisper. “She just—she meant a lot to me. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her.”
“We can leave,” Nolan says. The voices from the back of the shop grow closer.
My aunt Matilda laughs and tears immediately burn at the backs of my eyes.
Across the bridge of my nose. It’s been so long since I heard that sound and my memory of it is watered down at best. Like looking through a frosted window or trying to see to the bottom of a lake.
I have the impression of it, but the reality, the sound of her, here, in this place, it’s—
It’s a gift. It’s a gift I thought I’d lost.
“We can leave right now,” Nolan says again. I shake my head, moving closer to the quiet voices in a daze.
“No,” I answer, my voice hushed. It feels sacred being in this place, at this time. Magical. “I want to see.”
I edge around the evergreen wardrobe with the mismatched hardware and down the aisle with the tea cozies and the hand-knit scarves.
I turn left at the artwork, drifting closer.
I can feel Nolan close behind me, his presence like a warm, comforting shadow.
But everything disappears—the oversize painting of a sailboat on open waters, the sound of Nolan’s deep, easy breathing, the sunlight drifting through colored glass, and the dust motes twirling up toward the ceiling—it all disappears when I see them at the end of the aisle.
Us.
My aunt Matilda with a crate in her arms and me—ten years earlier in my school uniform, tear tracks on my cheeks.
“Your parents are going to be worried sick,” I hear my aunt Matilda admonish, reaching up to wipe at my face. I watch as I lean into her touch, running a shaky hand beneath my nose.
“Are you kidding?” I ask, my voice warbling around a watery laugh. “They won’t even notice.”
Aunt Matilda’s mouth fixes into a firm line, her curls pulled back in a ponytail at the base of her neck. It was rare for her to do anything at all with them, the same chaotic sweep of hair as me. But when she was working with a new shipment, she’d always tie it back.
I used to love that we had the same hair. It felt like something special, just for the two of us. Especially since my mom seemed to hate mine so much. It was always too difficult, too messy.
My eyes greedily eat up every detail of her standing at the end of the aisle. The festive red sweater with the wide sleeves. Her kelly green clogs and thick, gray socks. The hole in the knee of her jeans and her colorful nail polish, chipped on her ring finger, likely from digging through boxes.
It hurts, but it’s the good sort of hurt. There’s so much I’ve forgotten.
Nolan shifts next to me, worried. “Harriet—”
I hastily wipe my hand across my cheek. “’M okay. I promise.” I reach behind me and find his hand, squeezing. “Trust me.”
He grumbles something but he also listens, twisting his hand so our fingers are slotted together.
I watch the two people at the end of the aisle, almost afraid to blink.
Aunt Matilda is somewhere in her forties in this memory, gray just starting to appear at her temples.
My mom ruthlessly bleached the gray out of her hair, but my aunt Matilda never bothered.
I wish she lived long enough to get more of them.
“I couldn’t stay there,” I hear myself say, voice thick, one sleeved fist wiping under my nose. “It was horrible.”
Aunt Matilda’s hands flex around the edge of the crate, annapolis canning co. printed in bright red paint on the side. I bet she found it on the side of the road somewhere and decided to bring it home. She was always collecting broken and abandoned things.
“All men are stupid, darling, but teenage boys take the cake.” She rearranges the box in her arms. “Tell me what happened.”
I remember this day. I took a city bus from my school in the middle of the afternoon to the Crow’s Nest, silently crying in the back seat. I remember the ache in my chest. How my cheeks burned from embarrassment.
The young girl at the end of the aisle sniffles some more, shuffling her feet. Next to me, Nolan’s hand tightens around mine.
“They put up mistletoe in the cafeteria. I didn’t see it at first, but they made me stop, and then I did see it and—”
I press both of my sleeve-covered hands over my eyes.
“I thought Tommy Hildenbrand wanted to kiss me, but he didn’t.
He laughed in my face and said—he said I would never be anyone’s choice,” I finish with a rough sob.
My aunt Matilda sets the crate by her feet and wraps me in a hug.
My chest aches for that young, awkward, gangly girl in her odd-fitting sweater who just wanted so badly to be loved.
Who wanted to be kissed under the mistletoe by the school’s most popular boy, but was embarrassed instead.
Aunt Matilda presses a kiss to the side of my head and I swear I almost feel it.
“I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but this ache will fade away,” Aunt Matilda whispers.
Her hands soothe up and down my back, a gentle circuit I sometimes imagine when I can’t sleep.
When I miss her so much it feels like I can’t breathe.
“You don’t want your first kiss to be from some preppy douchebag, now do you? ”
“No,” I answer. I cling to the back of her sweater. “I guess not.”
“No, you don’t,” she replies, rocking me back and forth. “Especially from a boy named Tommy Hildenbrand.” She sways to the beat of an old Christmas song from the record player in the back. “I bet he’s not even very good at it. I bet he has chapped lips.”
“He probably has chapped lips,” I hear myself agree with a snort. “See? No big loss.” Aunt Matilda urges me back and wipes at my cheeks. “Now. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
I nod, my hands on her elbows, staring at her like she’s the center of my universe. In a lot of ways, she was. She was the only adult in my life who showed me any affection. Who never tried to shape me into anything other than exactly myself. She saw me. She loved me.
It felt like the two of us against the world and when I lost her, it was just me, standing alone.
A tear slips down my cheek and I brush at it roughly with the back of my hand. Nolan shifts closer.
“I’m gonna close up early for the day and we’ll go back to my place. I’ll make you the potpie you like and we’ll use whatever vegetables are left to throw at Tommy Hildenbrand’s house.” Nolan and I snort in unison. I dart my eyes to his, catching the half smile on his face. His face softens.
“Okay?” he asks.
I nod, then shift my attention back to my aunt. She’s still listing out potential vandalism ideas.
“And when we’re done wrapping his mailbox in toilet paper, we’ll stop for ice cream. Then I’ll take you home to your parents.”
I watch as I frown in dismay. Aunt Matilda strokes her hands up and down my arms.
“I know,” she says quietly. “I know their love for you looks different than the sort of love you want, but it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
“I’m not sure it’s there. Not for me, anyway.”
“It is, honey. I promise.” She pauses, lips pressed together. “I know your mom and I have our differences, but please don’t carry that with you. We made our choices. It’s our fight, not yours.”
I shake my head, insistent. “I don’t fit.” Matilda frowns. “What do you mean?”