Chapter 31
Jess
She knocks on the door, two days after Christmas, heart tapping against her ribs. She knocks once, twice, feeling the desperation fizz and heat. The night air is cold, with a bite to it. She presses her palm flat against the tiny pane of window set in the door, silently pleading that someone will hear her. Her other hand gravitates to the familiar spot where she’s been resting her hand for a week, ever since she drove to the supermarket and then to Carrie’s. Right over her belly button. Where something smaller than a plum pulses and thrashes.
A light flickers in the hallway beyond, and Jess holds her breath, stepping back to smooth down her nerves, to tame the desperation in her features. There is a jangle of keys, a creak, and the door is pulled open, Cora outlined on the threshold. Expectation lifts all of Cora’s corners, as though she hoped for someone else. Then she sees Jess, and her arms cross over her chest like a barrier. Like a silent no that has not yet left her lips.
“Please,”
Jess says. This is just like the last time, ten years ago. Even the night air tastes the same as she breathes it in. “Please, Cora.”
Cora sighs, her arms unwinding, her frame deflating. “I’ll get the kettle on.”
Because this is how it always starts. Cora has been doing this for so long now that she knows how it will end before it even begins. She knows that, if she agrees to help, she will pay the price for the person who comes knocking, whatever the cost, however steep.
Jess walks in, closing the door behind her. She shrugs out of her coat, pulls off her boots, and tiptoes to the lounge, where she sits on the sofa. Howard must be out. Or maybe he made himself scarce as soon as she pulled up to the house. She fidgets with the cushion next to her, running her frantic hands down the soft beige fabric over and over until she thrusts it away from herself.
Cora walks in, the tray balanced in her hands, just as always. She places it on the coffee table, her quick, practiced movements producing a mug of tea exactly as she knows Jess drinks it—with a dash of milk and half a teaspoon of sugar. She prides herself on remembering how every person who crosses her threshold drinks their tea.
“It’s decaf,”
Cora says gruffly, not looking Jess directly in the eye as she passes the mug to her. “You shouldn’t be drinking caffeine.”
Jess splutters, placing the hot mug on the coffee table. Her heart is thumping now, panic poisoning her body, drawing the anxiety up and out of her. “How—I haven’t told anyone—”
Cora cuts her off with a barking laugh as she stirs the amber liquid in her own mug. “Woodsmoke never changes. None of you ever learn. A secret never stays a secret long. How many weeks along are you? Twelve?”
“Ten, I think. Just over maybe,”
Jess mutters, picking her mug back up. She lets the steam roll over her face, lets it calm her, soothe her. “It’s Tom’s, if that’s why you’re thinking I’m here.”
“So you’re not hoping to have the baby later. To cover up a slip.”
“No,”
Jess says indignantly. Her hand strays to her belly, to the tiny life growing inside. “It’s very much wanted and very much ours. I just haven’t told him yet.”
“But you are here about Tom, aren’t you?”
Cora fixes her eyes on Jess, not bothering to coax it out of her.
Jess sips her tea, remembering the last visit ten years ago, when Cora held the book and was running a finger down the pages. How her brow creased, mouthing the words, and she told Jess to leave it with her. To dry her eyes, to stop her fretting. That all would be well, all would be right. That Carrie and Tom wouldn’t be leaving Woodsmoke together. And Jess wonders, not for the first time, whether she was wrong to have come here a decade ago. If she should never have trusted in the old ways, in knowing that the mountains hold far more than just earth and trees and shadow. Perhaps . . . perhaps she shouldn’t have interfered at all. Because Tom did stay and Carrie left. Creating a chasm between them that they can’t cross even ten years on.
“I need Tom to stay. With me. With Elodie and—and the baby.”
Jess stops herself from splaying her fingers across her belly, from hiding what doesn’t yet need hiding. She takes another sip of tea, the bland comfort of it hardening her. Reminding her of who she is, of what she wants. Of all she has fought to claim.
“But I can’t live like this, not anymore. Especially not with Carrie back. I need your help—like before. Because at some point it’s all going to come out. It’s all bubbling to the surface and I can’t . . . can’t lose him. I need you to reverse it. What we did, ten years ago. I need to know that he loves me for me, not because of some spell or whatever deal it was that you made with the book. I need to know that the life we’ve built is solid. I need it reversed. All I wanted was for them both to be happy. For everyone to be where they were supposed to be.”
Cora grows silent, watching her as she fidgets. “Is that all?”
Jess hesitates, then nods. “That’s all I ask.”
“It can’t be reversed.”
“What?”
“You made your choice ten years ago. We both paid the price. Tom saw the love he had for you eventually and didn’t leave. But Carrie still left. Carrie never came back, and I’ll never get that relationship back with her, not after all these years.”
Cora sighs. “Nor, I imagine, will you.”
Jess blinks back tears as she places the mug on the coffee table, then balls her hands into tight little fists in her lap. “He chose me. Of his own free will. But I need to know I didn’t—that I didn’t drive her away with that spell you did—”
“Like I said, we paid the price.”
“So you won’t help me?”
“Are you even listening, girl? I can’t help you. What’s done is done.”
Jess shudders, closing her eyes. “I don’t want this looming over me for the rest of my life, wondering if I should have left well enough alone. He was going to stay, did you know that? He was never going to leave. He—he had an apprenticeship lined up, his parents had already put a deposit on our house. It was only Carrie who wanted to go off and explore the world, but maybe if they’d stayed together, maybe he would have persuaded her . . . But then he wouldn’t have been mine, would he? He would have still been with Carrie, and they would have been miserable.”
Cora smiles, the warmth not quite meeting her eyes. The love potion she used to nudge Thomas Gray toward Carrie fresh in her mind. The one she reversed that night Jess came to her, scared of losing them both. Of course, Jess doesn’t know it was a reversal. If Cora has her way, no one will ever know that secret, not until she’s cold in her grave with the book safely in Carrie’s keeping. “Perhaps that’s the price you’ll have to pay. Forever looking over your shoulder. Forever wondering what might have been.”
“But the cost was losing Carrie, wasn’t it? Isn’t that enough?”
Jess says, her desperation surfacing now. Carrie was right the other night. Jess did choose Tom over her. And now with Elodie and the baby, she would have to do it again. Was losing Carrie—her closest friend—the price? She betrayed Carrie horribly by going to Cora behind her back. By asking the mountains to make sure that she and Tom were with the person they truly loved, and that they were where they both belonged. And it turned out that Tom was meant to be with her, in Woodsmoke.
But was Carrie meant to wander? To feel constantly adrift and unsure of her place in the world? Carrie was meant to cut ties with everyone and everything in Woodsmoke, and yet she’s back. Jess needs that spell reversed; she needs to know that it would have all worked out the same, even without the mountains and the magic.
“Get the book, Cora. Get the book and tell me what to do. I’ll go to the mountains. I’ll deal with this. Then I’ll know that Tom loves me for me, and that Carrie was always meant to wander and I didn’t ruin both their lives. Just tell me—”
“It wasn’t you that paid the price last time,”
Cora barks. She stands up suddenly, tutting down at Jess. “It wasn’t only you who lost Carrie.”
Jess’s eyes burn, her whole being burns, and she flushes with the guilt, with the knowing. “I’m sorry. Cora, I’m truly so sorry.”
“Time for you to go. Time for you to go back to little Elodie, back to the nice life you’ve built here. Time for you to weather the storm. And perhaps . . . perhaps you need to tell Tom. Perhaps it’s time to fix things yourself and tell the truth—that you meddled. No book. No bargains. No magic. Just you, Tom, and Carrie, figuring this out. You have to trust that your love is enough that he won’t leave you.”
Cora gestures to the door, then watches Jess as she crumples. She’s reminded of Howard, of how he drags his feet through each day, how he holds it all in, all his disappointment. Jess rises to her feet, not bothering to hide her burden, or the fatigue so obvious on her sagging face, a fatigue that seems to have penetrated her very bones and taken root.
“You’ll have to weather it too,”
Jess says, walking past Cora. She pulls on her boots and her coat, then turns back. “If it can’t be reversed, if it all comes out, what you did that night, what I asked of you . . . you’ll have to weather that too.”
Jess makes it halfway back to Woodsmoke before she has to pull over. She kills the engine, leaving the lights on, the soft glow revealing a frosted hedge and ground glittering with ice. She wipes at her eyes, staring without seeing, replaying her conversation with Cora. Finding all the holes in it, where she could have pressed more. Maybe she needs to steal the book. Break in when she knows Cora and Howard are both out, take it, and find the passage or story inside its pages that will help her. That will tell her how to reverse what she did a decade ago.
She brings her fingertips up to her mouth, gulping in air as her nose begins to run. She feels sure that Tom loves her, that he would have loved her without her meddling, but there’s doubt and guilt tangled up in all that history. Knotted like poison, choking her now that Carrie is back.
She has carried this guilt with her for ten whole years, carried it alongside her elation that Tom is all hers. She has traced Carrie’s journey. Like running a finger over a map, she has tracked every place Carrie has stayed, visited, or painted, checking her Facebook profile, then Instagram, even searching her website for any details she can glean. But she never felt brave enough to message her, to open the door onto their past. The past is so mixed up with love, guilt, and longing that she can’t see a way back to it anymore.
And now that Carrie is back, all of Jess’s guilt is resurfacing. She supposes that’s partly why she went over to see Carrie. She’s so wrapped up in her guilt, in her fear of losing the life she’s built, but she’s also missing her friend. Desperately. Now that Carrie is only a mile or so away, it all seems so immediate, so unresolved.
Gradually Jess’s tears subside, leaving streaky paths of salt stinging her skin. Checking her reflection in the mirror, she dabs concealer under her eyes and on the tip of her red nose. She checks her phone, finds a message from Tom asking when she’s getting back, if she’s okay. Then she takes a deep breath, turns the key in the ignition, and begins the slow drive home.