Chapter 2
Then
The bruise on Mrs. Earline’s cheek was palm-shaped. It was fresh and looked painful and was the second one in as many months.
Nobody deserved to get slapped like that, but it was particularly hard to imagine the older woman who sat at my table wearing her Sunday best taking one across the face.
Her hair curled around her head in a silver cloud, still fresh from her weekly wash and set at the beauty shop, and her nails were painted a matronly plum that matched her lipstick.
It was a pretty manicure but an unfortunate lipstick choice, as the deep shade coordinated with her healing injury, drawing even more attention to it.
Which, on second thought, could’ve been the point.
Mrs. Earline was a deaconess at her church and head of the Friends of the Library committee, and her quilts always placed—if they didn’t outright win—at the Puddle Creek fair each year.
Always poised and put together, she was a woman who did not make mistakes with her appearance.
That didn’t mean I was allowed to mention it.
If a flicker of anything resembling pity crossed my face, Earline Baker would never darken our door again. Which was a shame for many reasons.
My aunts liked the older woman because she lent an air of respectability to our family business.
If Earline Baker was on our schedule, then the rumors about what those Robbins women get up to couldn’t be nearly as bad as they seemed.
Her association with us made it okay for others in Puddle Creek to have their leaves read by me or Aunt Ruth or to purchase home remedies from Aunt Hattie-May, even if they did run their mouths the moment they left our house, downplaying what we did as only a bit of fun, or witchy nonsense, or (and I really hated this one) proclaiming their visit as nothing more than charity to keep those “troubled girls out of the system.” Mrs. Earline would never say anything like that.
I liked Mrs. Earline because she was punctual, an easy read, and, okay, a great tipper.
I was saving up for a homecoming dress, and I needed to look good.
No. That’s not true. I needed to look hot.
Casey would be at the homecoming dance, and I wanted him to finally notice me as something besides his best friend.
The thought filled my chest with bees, a new occurrence when I thought of the boy who had been my partner in crime since third grade.
“How’ve you been, Mrs. Earline?” Seemed a dumb question to ask, considering the bruise.
“Can’t complain.” Mrs. Earline sat her handbag in an empty chair. “Weather’s been nice. Warm for fall, but I like it that way.”
“Me too.” I nodded as I sat a white saucer and teacup in front of her. “You finish up that quilt yet?”
“Oh, not yet.” Her lips parted into a smile, showing off too-white dentures.
“Should be done soon. Those judges haven’t seen anything like it.
Between you and me, I can’t wait to see the look on everyone’s face when I get the blue ribbon again this year.
” Her eyes twinkled. “How about you, Milly? Senior year going well?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I smiled. That was another reason I liked her.
She treated me like a normal Puddle Creek kid.
Not some charity case with a dead piece-of-shit daddy and a jailed mama.
Maybe that’s exactly who I was, but Mrs. Earline seemed to understand that it wasn’t all I was. “I’m on track to be salutatorian.”
“That’s good. Grades are important.” Her voice held no surprise that I could graduate near the top of my class.
My intelligence was often in the shadow of my sister’s genius, but Mrs. Earline always gave me my due, despite my reputation as “Witchy Milly,” the next in the line of strange Robbins women.
Frances, my golden-haired baby bird of a sister, had dodged the reputation, and I was honestly thankful for that.
While I didn’t think of me or the aunts as witchy—not really—it was hard to dispute the nickname when I read tea leaves for tips, divining simple futures for a college fund, while the fence post at the end of our driveway glinted with pearly, sun-bleached bones.
The Robbins reputation went back generations.
That didn’t mean that getting to a place of self-acceptance had come easy.
When I arrived at Puddle Creek as a scared, hurting child, standing in front of my great-aunt’s house for the first time, with my back to the social worker’s car, I’d longed for understanding. To feel like the person I was before Mama had taken Daddy’s gun and freed herself once and for all.
I’d harbored another wish too, one I hadn’t quite understood myself. A secret desperation to stop fearing that deep well, that door inside myself and the intensity it ushered in.
I’d thought something was wrong with me. That I was bad. Or broken.
Hattie-May, still a stranger, had blown through the front door, the long floral skirt of her housecoat swirling around her plump calves as she stepped onto the sagging porch, pausing only a moment before crossing the yard, her clogs kicking up dirt.
I pushed Frances, always quiet and too young to fully grasp what was happening, behind me as I tried to summon something that resembled bravery.
Hattie-May smiled sadly and knelt in front of us, comfort radiating from her.
She’d smelled exactly the same as she did now. Tomato vines. Something sweet. Something thriving.
“Breathe, honey,” she’d murmured.
I’d wanted to, but my lungs wouldn’t listen, and I could sense the place inside me opening.
That air-sucking feeling. That drowning.
No, no not again. Not here. I’d whimpered, trying to push it away, to keep my head above water as it tugged me below choppy waves.
It was no use. I’d had no control over it yet, and this strange new setting encouraged it. I’d grabbed Hattie-May’s arm in panic.
It was the house.
Long and narrow, with its sagging porch and peeling layers of paint, it was like a living thing. A snake with a full belly, a nesting doll with secrets, secrets, secrets.
A terrifying foreboding slid over my skin and whispered in my eight-year-old ear. It’s going to eat me up. This place is going to swallow me, and I’ll never be the same.
Tears slipped down my cheeks and I whispered, “I don’t want to be swallowed up.”
Hattie-May had cupped my face gently in her old hands. “I promise you, Milly. I’m not going to let that happen.”
Mrs. Earline tapped her hands on the table, jolting me from my memories. “Any plans after high school?”
“Oh.” I startled. “Nursing school, I think.” I carried the kettle to the sink and turned on the tap. “I’m going to be an RN.”
“How lovely. I wondered if you’d gotten some of your Aunt Hattie’s artistic talents.
” She gestured to the walls, which were papered with fifty-something years of Aunt Hattie-May’s sketches.
Some hung in frames, while others were tacked in place, their corners curling, showing the torn floral wallpaper beneath the artwork.
My great-aunt drew all kinds of things, but mostly she drew the trees and plants that grew wild in our woods.
Her favorite was a particular willow tree she’d seen as a child. It had curling branches weeping to the ground, and leaves so green they were almost black. She said it was called a mourning willow, and it was extremely rare. One of only nine trees protected by the Endangered Species Act.
God, I’d been so afraid of that tree, once upon a time.
Or at least the version I’d invented in my head.
Hattie-May’s drawings were frenetic, and it was easy to imagine a dark, weeping tendril snaking through my bedroom window and curling around my ankle, pulling me from beneath my covers to be devoured.
Frances and I had grown up nervously clutching our bedsheets, scaring each other by whispering stories of deep dark branches and hungry roots.
When I’d first moved in and asked my great-aunt about the drawings of the creepy tree covering the walls, she’d spoken almost reverently, describing it as a thing of beauty.
A weeping willow with near-black leaves and red seed pods.
I’d been transfixed as she’d explained how it wasn’t like other willows, which were easy to grow.
How the mourning willow required decomposition.
How the tree grew from death after a seed found its way into a rotting animal’s carcass.
She’d spoken as if it were the most natural process in the world, but what my eight-year-old ears had heard was a story about a bloodthirsty tree.
At some point, I’d anointed the tree with a new name, rotting willow, and while Hattie-May longed to see one again, their numbers scarce and growing scarcer, I was glad I had never crossed one.
Mrs. Earline paused thoughtfully over one of the larger drawings. She continued. “Thought maybe you were an artist too and perhaps would go to school for that.”
“No, ma’am.” I shrugged. “My sister can draw a little, but not me.”
As if my thoughts had conjured her, the front door creaked open, and Aunt Hattie-May shuffled inside. The wicker basket she used to carry her sketch pad and pencils when she went on one of her nature walks was looped over her dimpled arm.
“Earline?” Her voice carried like a song through the small room. “Thought that was your car in the yard. My ears are burning. You and Milly must be in here talking about me.”
“Hi there, Hattie-May. Milly was telling me about her future nursing plans. You must be so proud.”
“Couldn’t be prouder.” Aunt Hattie beamed and shut the door, then set her basket of art supplies on the coffee table. “How are you doing, honey?”
“Oh, I’m all right. That elderberry syrup you gave me knocked the croup right out of my system, and I—”
Hattie-May gasped, the sharp inhalation stopping the conversation like a kink in a garden hose. Her eyes narrowed on Mrs. Earline’s bruised cheek.