Chapter 3 Carrie
Abigail had wildflowers left on her doorstep for a month and a day this summer.
—Clemence Morgan, December 18, 1875
Cora opens the door as though she is confronting a ghost, her own skin skull white, eyes glistening slightly. She’s still wearing her dressing gown, the one she’s always worn. It’s pink and felted, with buttons instead of a cord. More of a housecoat. She opens then closes her mouth, and I can’t help the smile bubbling up my throat. I’ve never known my great-aunt to be anything less than effusive, with a snap or a crackle to her words.
I say, “I can come back later or . . .”
just as her arms come around me. I hesitate, her scent and the nip of her bones crushing me, before I bring my arms around her. She’s all sage and coffee and snow, ribs too sharp, just like always. I still can’t pass a coffee shop, even now, without picturing Cora and her kitchen.
“You got my letter?”
she asks, finally letting me go. She stares up at me with those watery blue eyes of hers, the irises circled with a deep navy blue. “Did the mountains want you back?”
“I did,”
I say, my hand straying to my pocket. For some reason, ever since it arrived on that damp day three weeks ago, I haven’t been able to put it down. I’ve scoured Cora’s letter and the terms of Ivy’s will as though searching for hidden meanings, secrets buried within secrets. “And they . . . I think so. I walked up to the lookout. But I thought I saw or heard . . . I don’t know.”
Her blue gaze narrows. She knows. “Did you leave the path?”
“Not once.”
She exhales, her sharp edges softening, and the house at her back exhales along with her. “You best come in. Howard’s eating his breakfast. You want eggs? Toast? There’s a fresh pot of coffee, but if it’s not enough I can make more.”
Her words trail away with her as she turns from me, making her way deeper into the house. I linger for a heartbeat, remembering the last time I was here. How I pulled all the pins out of my perfectly tamed hair, leaving them in a snarled little heap on the sofa.
And then I left.
I step along the hallway. Past the old photographs lining the walls, the sepia-toned images of families long dead. The portraits of ancestors, of trappers and the men of the mountains. Cora collects them. She finds them in charity shops and junk sales around Woodsmoke. Dusting them off, she carries them back home like a magpie. She says they are the history that no one else will remember. That’s up to us, up to every Morgan woman, she says, to remember the stories and preserve them. Because when a story is no longer shared, it becomes a secret. Then it all too easily either withers and dies or grows into something quite monstrous: a curse.
There is one photograph I remember, one that she acquired a year or so before I left. It chills me even now. A black-and-white photograph of a man, standing with his back to the mountains. It’s actually not that old, taken just before Cora acquired it, which is why my eyes are drawn to it. His eyes, flint and hunger staring back, as though he will somehow reach out and snatch you in. A shiver curls down the back of my neck as I catch sight of it, and I walk a little quicker. It lingered at the corners of my dreams before I left, but now, glancing at that portrait with fresh, older eyes a decade later, I see he is around my age. Handsome in that rugged way that few men are nowadays. Perhaps his true story wasn’t recorded by a Morgan woman, and that’s why he’s so hungry to tell it. Perhaps his true story withered and died along with him. That’s all I know, all Cora told me. That the man in this portrait was lost to the mountains.
I walk into the dining room, and Howard raises himself from his chair. He looks at me the way he always does, with a slight smirk turning up his sunken brown cheeks. Like we have a private joke that only we know. He never shares that look with Cora.
“Good journey, my flower?”
he asks in his cracked old voice.
I grin. I haven’t been called that in so long. Flower. “Not bad. The car didn’t give out on me, so . . .”
He shrugs, waving his hand at a seat. “Coffee’s hot still. Good to see you, Carrie.”
“Good to see you too.”
I take the mug from Cora, hovering next to me, and we all sit in uncomfortable, charged silence. I sip the coffee, trying not to look at either of them. Wondering why in these moments I don’t have a single word in my head. Like I’ve forgotten the entire dictionary.
Cora opens her mouth, then closes it, as though conflicted. A sad frown appears in the grooves of her forehead before her gaze snags on mine. “You should have come sooner.”
Howard releases an exasperated sigh, darting her a look. “Coraline—”
“Well, she should have. Can’t all wait for a death to shake our lives up, can we?”
Cora folds her arms, knitting her lips together. Cora’s always been like this every time I see her: taciturn, frustrated, and elated in equal measure, like she could shake me and embrace me all at the same time. Sighing again, Howard slides back into that slight smirk, just for me. He shrugs one shoulder, making sure she can’t see it, as if to say, You know how she is. I know I should have come sooner. I know ten years was far too long to stay away. But I can’t seem to admit it.
“The cottage—”
I begin, attempting to change the subject, to shift the conversation from the past and my failings to the present.
“Howard will be along,”
Cora says, not meeting my eyes. “No need to fret.”
I dart my eyes to his, and he raises his eyebrows. “Actually, I might try to find someone in Woodsmoke, or the next town over. Maybe you know of . . . I don’t know. An electrician? Just to get that going at least.”
Cora coughs. “There’s only Tom now in Woodsmoke.”
The coffee mug slips from my fingers. “Shit!”
I say, leaping up as coffee drenches the lace tablecloth and splashes over Cora’s pink housecoat. “I’m sorry . . . Cora, I—”
“Don’t fret, girl.”
She leaves the room, muttering about how I’ve gone and got clumsier.
“I’m sorry,”
I whisper, to no one in particular.
Howard sighs, sipping his coffee in that contained, quiet way of his. “You’ll have to ask in the next town. Or I can ask around for you. Tom, he—”
“I know,”
I say quickly, as Cora bustles back in with a wad of tea towels. “I can’t ask him.”
Cora looks at me, those lips knitting even tighter. I wait for it, sure it’s coming. Then she looks at me, and I see it. All that frustration, all that love . . . She’s as blunt as a butter knife and just has to speak her mind. She can’t bottle it all up any longer. “Five addresses, Carrie. Five. I sent that letter, and it kept coming back, took six weeks to chase you around Europe, and you never updated us, you never said a word—”
“I had to move around a lot, for work. There was the gallery opening, and then I got a lead on some design work, but that fell through—”
“That’s in one year! How many more addresses before that? Hmm? And are you even painting still? You haven’t updated that website of yours in an age.”
I sigh, the berating edge of her voice grating on me. She’s right. I don’t like admitting it, but it’s true. I haven’t painted in a year. The last images I uploaded onto my website were of the streets of Prague, the gray of them, the crowded squares littered with tiny tables, women sipping from espresso cups. I sold all of them. That kept me going on a backpacking trip around Croatia and Greece. Then I couldn’t bring myself to even pick up my sketchbook. I’ve been drifting, scraping by on a little graphic design work, some waitressing. Nothing substantial. “It was hard to find a landlord I liked, and sometimes I just needed a change. It’s just how I am, Cora.”
“It is not how you are, my love. You can’t run forever!”
“Coraline . . .”
Howard chips in, warning lacing his voice in a way I’ve seldom heard. “Let the girl eat some breakfast.”
“But the old ways, her heritage, the book—”
“Not the damn book. Not before the blessed sun’s fully up, woman.”
Cora clicks her tongue before disappearing with the tea towels. I shove some toast into my mouth, just for something to do, and eye the muddy coffee stain on the ivory white tablecloth. I wonder how many more things I’ll ruin before I’m done with Ivy’s cottage this winter.
“Does she still talk about the old ways . . . a lot?”
I whisper to Howard, keeping an eye on the door. The book, as Cora calls it, is our history. The Morgan Compendium. It’s the collected stories of every Morgan woman who’s carried it, going back generations. Tales of the mountains, of the seasons, warnings and curses and fables and recipes and spells, shared around the fire on winter nights. I can count on both hands the number of times I laid eyes on it before I left, a couple of times even turning the brittle pages. I fear it and yearn to read it again in equal measure, and that scares me. The magic of the mountains is a dark thing, demanding a price, demanding blood from a Morgan woman for every bargain made in its shadow, or so it’s whispered around the town. And Cora has carried all of that with her for many, many years.
One day the book will pass to me. It always skips a generation, passed from grandmother to granddaughter. I know my mother wouldn’t want it anyway. Any mention of spells and curses and she shrinks away or changes the subject entirely. She hasn’t been back in Woodsmoke for years, and if she can, she’ll avoid the place for the rest of her days. To her, our legacy is poison. But to me . . . I don’t know. I’m still a little curious. I haven’t figured out how I feel about the book and the old ways.
Howard chews his toast, then crosses his cutlery on his plate. Also eyeing the door before speaking. “Only every day, flower,”
he finally responds. “Only every goddamn day.”
There are wildflowers on the doorstep when I return to the cottage. A bundle of them, tied with a length of twine. They’re the kind you only find growing on the side of the mountain, under trees, in clumps, where the wild things wander. I nudge the bundle with the toe of my boot, then turn, eyeing the wide expanse around me. All I can hear is the thump of my own heart, the curl of fear lighting it like a spark.
Wildflowers in October, with frost coating the ground. They can’t be from Tom . . . can they? I pull my arms around myself as I turn back to the door. No. They can’t be from him. But my arrival, the fact that I am back, will have caught light by now. It will have burned through Woodsmoke like a wildfire, passed from tongue to tongue, exaggerated, lengthened into a story worth sharing. Could the flowers be from someone Mum and Dad knew? An old neighbor? A friend? I shake my head, picking up the bundle. There’s herb robert, red campion, a handful of speedwell. And no note. They’ll wilt in a few hours, hardly worth picking. Better to let them sleep in the loam and frost until springtime.
A twig snaps, and I whip around to find someone standing on the path leading up to the mountains. A man. My heart jolts, and we stare at each other, twenty feet apart on the frosted field. His dark hair and eyes stand out against the pallor of his skin. His lips are red, swollen from the cold, cheekbones sharp, jaw solid and chiseled. My breath catches in my throat as I regard him, and he me. He seems . . . wild. And not quite real.
“Did you . . . are these from you?”
I call over, pointing to the flowers. But he just puts his hands in his pockets, eyes me quietly, then turns and walks away. Within a heartbeat, he’s vanished as if he was never there at all. I exhale heavily, then wonder if he heard me, if I should go after him, demand to know if he was the one who left these wildflowers. A breeze stirs around me, and I pull my arms around myself.
There are tales in the book. Tales of beautiful people who are not quite real, stories from the mountains of the people of Woodsmoke being lured into the wild depths and never coming home. Perhaps the mountains are vengeful, perhaps just playful, perhaps in love with us. But it’s been drummed into me to follow the paths and never stray from them. Most still follow the old ways here, even if they don’t admit it aloud. But the hikers, the visitors, they don’t know the rules. And some of them go missing. Some of them never leave the mountains.
What if that man isn’t really a man at all?
I turn the door handle, shoulder my way into the cottage, and carry the wildflowers into the kitchen. Then I take down one of Ivy’s old enamel milk jugs, fill it with water, and leave them in there. It’s superstitious, but I can’t shake it, even after all these years. You don’t discard or scorn a gift from the mountains.
I want to believe these wildflowers were picked and left here by someone I used to know, but I can’t be sure. Not with that press of unseen eyes I felt last night, or the faint finger tap on the window that echoed through my dreams. Not with the frost arriving today, early for this time of year. And certainly not with that man, that beautiful, quiet man who vanished up the mountain path, gone between blinks as though I might have imagined him.
My fingers tremble as I arrange the flowers, humming an old song Ivy used to sing, a song that’s really a story, about a woman who had flowers left on her doorstep, who fell in love and disappeared into the vast mountains, never to be seen again. I bunch my hands into fists, the slow trickle of fear taking hold, the knowing that life is different in Woodsmoke. You can’t be sure that a gift is always left with good intent. You don’t stray from the path. And if you see someone stepping off the mountain trails, or hear a voice luring you away, never follow. Sometimes a gift is just a gift. But sometimes . . . I swallow.
Sometimes it’s a warning.