Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Evie, Now
Evie stood in the old attic room in a pair of jeans and a loose gray T-shirt; she’d pulled her hair back beneath a scarf to protect it from dust and plaster. She lifted a sledgehammer, holding it with both hands, and prepared to swing.
“You’re taking a wall down?”
Evie whirled around to find her sister standing at the top of the spiral staircase. Were it any other house, she’d have heard Florence coming, but even with everything that had happened, it seemed Honeysuckle House still enjoyed surprises.
“You’re here?” Evie asked, shock clear in her voice.
“I should’ve been here yesterday,” Florence said.
“You should’ve,” Evie agreed.
Florence opened her mouth but waited a few moments to speak. Finally, she said, “I’m here now.”
She took a few steps forward until she was right next to Evie, her height forcing Evie to lean her head back to see her. Evie did her best to look like she was staring down her nose at her all the same.
Florence held a hand over her mouth as she surveyed the damage. “This room isn’t how I remembered it.”
“That’s because there’s a hole in the wall,” Evie said as if it were obvious.
Florence cut her a look. “No, I mean …” She stepped back and turned in a slow circle.
“It felt smaller the last time I was up here. I thought it was because I was older; before Mom died, I hadn’t been in this room since Dad …
” she trailed off, not finishing the sentence.
“Mom must’ve put this up after that.” She rested a hand against the damaged wall.
Then, she ducked down and stepped through it.
It took Evie a few moments to process what her sister was saying.
She set the sledgehammer down and followed after her.
Already, Florence stood at their mother’s altar, staring at the small table where Linda had done her spellwork.
Evie had no memories of it. The only thing she remembered about this room were the warnings to not go in, and after that first time her mother grabbed her by the hair, Evie always listened to her sister’s warnings. At least, she had when they were kids.
“You mean you knew this was here,” Evie said.
“I’ve only been up here twice,” Florence said. “Once with you.”
The day their mother died.
“The answers we needed to end the curse were hiding in plain sight, and if you’d come by Honeysuckle House even once, you could’ve told me the room looked wrong. We could’ve broken this wall down and put an end to all of this. We could’ve been a family.”
“What do you mean, the answers to end the curse were right here?” Florence asked.
This was Evie’s chance to tell Florence what she found, but she didn’t know if Florence would see things her way.
Evie wanted to bind the darkness in the house while protecting the part of it she loved.
But the house had attacked Florence thirteen years ago.
Evie knew her sister had never looked at it the same way since, and if she knew what Evie had discovered, she’d want to raze Honeysuckle House to the ground.
Evie dodged Florence’s question by waving a hand as if to encompass the whole room.
Florence reached for one of the crystals on the altar. “It looks like Mom was in the middle of a spell.” Then, she paused and glanced back at Evie. “Wait, did you just admit you didn’t break the curse with all your candles?”
“It’s kind of hard to pretend otherwise,” Evie said. As much as she wanted to believe her work would’ve broken the curse had Florence been at her side doing the same thing, the binding spell suggested neither of them had been right about that tarot reading.
Florence set the crystal down and turned back to face Evie. “Does that mean you’re canceling the festival?”
“For now.” Evie took a deep breath. Florence may have been gone for years, but she’d finally come home. This was their chance to work together. Evie tried to center herself, to convince herself Florence might actually help her if she told her the truth.
“I’m so relieved,” Florence said. “I thought I was going to have to drag you from here kicking and screaming so you wouldn’t be in the house on the thirteenth.”
Evie rolled her eyes. “I’m not a kid anymore, and we don’t even know if that would keep us safe. We weren’t able to leave when Dad died.”
“Because you wouldn’t leave without your necklaces,” Florence said. As soon as the words left her mouth, the color drained from her face, but the damage had been done.
Evie’s heart clenched, and tears welled up in her eyes.
“You think I don’t blame myself for that every day?” Evie’s voice cracked. “But it wasn’t my fault, not really. We found ourselves back here when Mom died, too, remember?”
“Because you wanted to make sure she was alive,” Florence said.
Evie crossed her arms. “Is that why you came? To blame me?”
“I came here for you. For us. For Clara,” Florence said. “Time’s running out, and my way of trying to stop this curse didn’t work. I was hoping the house could show us—”
Evie cut her short. “At least you admit it.”
“Maybe it would have if you’d listened to me!” Florence said.
Evie shook her head. “Maybe if you had been here, things would be different. But you were so afraid of us getting hurt, you couldn’t see you were the one hurting us.”
Florence reared back as if slapped. “Everything I did was to keep you safe.”
Fear gripped Evie’s chest at the familiarity of her sister’s words.
She shook it off, trying not to think about how much Florence looked like their mother, as she took a step forward and pointed directly at Florence.
“Everything you did was to keep you safe so when the curse rolled around, you couldn’t be blamed for anything going wrong. ”
Hurt flash across her sister’s face, and though Evie felt it, too, like a knife twisting in her gut, she stood her ground.
“I tried to come yesterday. I got in the car and almost made it here before I had to pull over because of a panic attack. I did that for you. Because I knew you needed me.”
“Don’t try to act like you’re the only one who came away from our childhood damaged. I’m the one Mom grabbed by the hair. It started with me.” Evie pointed at herself, driving a finger into her own chest.
“It started long before mom put her hands on you.” Florence steadied herself with one hand on the wall, and Evie wanted to throw her out then and there for trying to find comfort in the place she’d abandoned.
“I protected you from that, Evie. Me. And if you think for one second I don’t blame myself for not being there fast enough to stop Mom that day, then you don’t know me at all. ”
“Maybe I don’t,” Evie said.
Florence shook her head, and when she spoke, her voice came out so soft it sounded broken. “I thought we could do this together, but I was wrong. I’m not going to let you yell at me when I’m trying to help.” She stepped past Evie toward the hole in the wall.
“Fine!” Evie called after her. “Go. Run away like you always do.”
Florence paused before she turned back to face her. “This time, I’m not running, Evie. You’re pushing me.”
Evie crossed her arms. “Maybe you deserve to be pushed.”
Florence opened her mouth as if to speak, then thought better of it before she slipped through the hole and headed down the spiral staircase. Evie tried her best to ignore the house creaking its boards and rattling its pipes in protest.
She stepped up to the window and crossed her arms as she watched her sister emerge from the porch below. Florence stalked toward Owen’s truck. Evie turned away from the window and lifted the sledgehammer before she approached the damaged wall.