Chapter 40
Jess
Jess’s head begins to throb. A prickle of pain at first, like the patter of tiny feet behind her eyes, or the first sporadic drops of rain from swollen, bruise-colored clouds. It grows in intensity as the storm finds its center, thumping louder and louder, cracking like thunder across her skull. It reaches down the back of her neck, hugging the top of her spine, and she breathes through her nose, breathes through the pain of it. She sits across from Tom in their lounge, an ocean between them, and begins.
“Ten years ago, Carrie told me she was going to leave after the wedding and take you with her. I would be left alone, and I couldn’t stand it. I guess I was hurt . . . shocked . . . and it almost felt like a betrayal. She just said it so casually, like it was something we’d talking over before, but we hadn’t.”
Jess takes a breath, massaging her temples with her fingertips. “It felt like my world was caving in, knowing both of you were going to leave completely. Neither of you seemed happy. It didn’t seem . . . right. I didn’t want to lose her. Honestly, I was terrified of losing her. It was always meant to be us, me and Carrie in Woodsmoke, and when she told me she was rejecting all of it . . .”
She swallows, eyes flicking to Tom’s. “I went to Cora.”
“Wh-what?”
“I went to Cora and asked her to make it right.”
Jess draws a cushion toward her and hugs it to her chest. “Cora went up the mountain that night and did a working. I didn’t think it had worked at first. You both carried on up to the wedding day, kept preparing. But Carrie seemed paler. Drawn. Like the life was trickling out of her, even as the town seemed so happy. I knew she was just doing it to make folks happy, to make them accept her. I wanted you both to see what was right in front of you, and had been all along, without the wedding. Woodsmoke, your home, the place you’re meant to be.
“I don’t know how, but I woke up before the wedding day, and it was like the world had shifted a quarter inch. You both seemed different that morning, free. Then it was your wedding day and I felt so sure it would all be fine, that she wasn’t going anywhere. But then Carrie ran out of the church, the wedding was called off, and I couldn’t find her afterward. Her mum told me she needed space, and I accepted it. Tricked myself into believing that she would just be gone for a few days, that it wasn’t about the spell that I begged Cora to do, that it wasn’t because of me. And you . . .”
she says quietly, “you stayed. It wasn’t meant to happen like that. You were both meant to stay. Carrie was meant to stay. When she didn’t come back, it crept over me. The dread, the guilt over what I had done. I didn’t mean for any of it to happen. But somehow, I made it so much worse.”
The stunned silence rolls in like the fog between them, and for a moment Jess believes that all will be fine. Then Tom takes a breath.
And hurls lightning at her.
“How could you?”
he rumbles, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Of all things, Jess, meddling in that stuff. You know it’s dangerous. We both know hikers have gone missing. You don’t mess with it, Jess! And Cora, of all the people—”
“It was desperation, stupid desperation. I couldn’t bear for you both to leave—”
“But to go to Cora? That witch?”
Tom laughs, without humor. Getting to his feet, he paces across the narrow width of the lounge as Jess seems to shrink. “I thought we fell in love because we chose it, not because you drove off my ex with a spell. Did you go to Cora for us? Jess, tell me you didn’t—”
“Of course not! Look, it’s nothing, it’s just whispered words and gossip. Magic isn’t real. It can’t be real, can it?”
Jess spreads her hands out, attempting to defuse the situation, to salvage it. If she downplays Cora’s involvement, if she pretends it hasn’t haunted her, maybe they’ll survive this.
“You never should have gone to her in the first place!”
Tom shouts. Jess flinches. With her fingers tightening over the cushion, she stands and takes a step toward him. She swallows and glances up at the ceiling, thinking of Elodie, her precious baby, up there, waking, hearing this storm in their home . . . she shudders, pain dancing behind her eyes. She regrets what she did. The intensity of that regret sends her anxiety spiraling as she thinks over and over again about going to Cora and asking her to make sure Tom and Carrie didn’t leave Woodsmoke together. She never meant for it all to happen the way it did—for Carrie to run from her own wedding, never to return. Jess never realized at the time the guilt she would feel, the unending, ceaseless guilt—
Her stomach tumbles, over and over, and she thinks she might . . . she might just—
“For God’s sake, sit down. You’re pregnant.”
“You’re . . . yelling . . . at me!”
“For good reason!”
Tom shouts, but then he stops, scrubbing his hands over his face. He steadies his voice, like he’s speaking to a child or a pet. “Sit down. Go through it again. I—I’m cross, Jess. I am. But not just at you. It’s Cora, it always comes back to bloody Cora and the magic and the Morgans . . .”
“Tom—”
He raises his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m a shit and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. You don’t—you don’t deserve that.”
His face crumples, and she sees just how tired he is. How this winter has dragged him down, drowning him, pulling him back, when all they ever wanted was to move forward. He’s right. She never should have gone to Cora all those years ago. Too many times in Woodsmoke people have gone to Cora and the outcome has sent ripples through them all. “Please sit down,”
he says. “Please.”
She stands there for a beat before slinking toward the chair and sliding into it, her hands staying clamped on her belly. She rubs it in soothing circles, calming them both, as Tom takes the seat opposite. This feels like judgment day. She feels like she’s thrown herself over a cliff, with only the slightest hope that the sea will allow her to plunge into the water and then resurface.
“Are you going to control your temper?”
“I will, I’m sorry. Just—just explain what happened. From the beginning. Please.”
His voice fades into desperation, his gaze fixed on her, as she stares down at the wood grain of the table. She follows the pattern of it, the eddying whirls, the black knot that looks like an eye. Jess swallows, clearing her throat and her thoughts.
“I went to Cora a month or so before you were meant to marry Carrie.”
She fidgets with the tassel on the end of her scarf. The storm of her migraine has dulled to a continuous growl. “When Carrie told me you were both planning on leaving Woodsmoke after the wedding and that you didn’t intend to come back, I just . . . snapped. I was terrified of losing you both. I—I told Cora that it was all wrong and that you both couldn’t leave. I wanted her to do something. Anything.”
Tom frowns, creasing his face, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Cora said . . . she said she would handle it. When I left, she was holding the book, and she had this look about her, this determined look. Can you remember when we snuck in and Carrie showed it to us? We must have been fifteen.”
“I remember. You kept asking Carrie if we could leave. You didn’t want to get too close to it, like you were afraid, or spooked by it.”
“I was afraid for good reason,”
Jess says numbly. “We should all be afraid of that book. Of the old tales.”
“Go on.”
Jess breathes in through her nose and shrugs. “After Carrie left, I cried myself to sleep every night. I was heartbroken. I’ve never known pain like it, knowing that Carrie was gone and it was my fault. I thought you’d both stay, I never thought . . .”
“You cursed us. You—you meddled with my feelings, my emotions—”
“No, absolutely not,”
Jess says, her voice intense. “I would never, ever do that.”
Tom is quiet for a moment, and Jess wonders if his memories are clicking into place in a new way, rearranging themselves to fit with this revelation. Is he remembering that morning when it seemed as though a hole had been rent in a gauzy panel, letting in the stark colors of the world, rushing in sharp as knives?
As Jess watches him, Tom remembers cringing away from the path laid before him. The plan with Carrie to move away and leave behind everything they had always known. He didn’t want to leave, but he wanted Carrie, he was sure of it. He wanted to hold her hand in his, to make her happy. But he hadn’t told her about the apprenticeship, about the deposit on the house . . . and it plagued him. He woke up one morning a month before the wedding and it was like he was seeing clearly, feeling clearly. When he saw Carrie later that day, sunlight no longer danced around her.
It danced around Jess.
He draws in a shaky breath, pushing his fists into his eyes. “After Carrie left, you and I kissed. That night at the bar, when I was playing in the band still. And it felt so right, being with you . . .”
“I’m sorry, Tom. Truly,”
Jess says, tears prickling her eyes. “But at the same time, I’m not at all. I love what we have here. I love what we’ve built together.”
Tom slowly lowers his fists, placing them on the kitchen table and stands, pushing the chair back suddenly. “I have to end this, Jess. Once and for all. This all has to end.”
Jess gulps, swiping at her tears, standing up to follow after him as he lunges for the door. “Tom, wait, please—”
“Not this time,”
Tom says sadly. “Not this time. It’s my choice. My decision and my life. We’re all too tangled up, and it’s holding us back, isn’t it? I have to fix this.”
“How?”
“However I want to, Jess,”
he says. He turns to her, features regretful, drawn in lines of sorrow. “However I think is best.”
Then he’s gone.
Jess stands in the doorway, blood-hot panic coursing through her. She shivers as she clutches her belly and watches the car as it pulls down the road. Watching her first love, her only love, leave her.
“No, no, no . . .”
she whimpers, pushing the door closed on the night. She hunkers down on the other side of it, tipping her head back as her migraine takes over, exploding like a bomb. All she can do is sit there, trapped in the tempest he has left her in.