Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It had been almost thirteen years since Violet left Burdock Creek—and her sister—behind forever. Thirteen years since she lost the love of her life. Since the plans she’d so carefully set in motion fell apart, leaving her heartbroken and alone.
In that time, the lines at the corners of her eyes and along her forehead had settled in.
The fullness of her cheeks had hollowed out.
She’d grown her hair long and shaggy not so much in the style of Jane Fonda as a reminder of the way Tillie always wore hers full and wild and free.
She’d started to go gray at her hairline, and she imagined Tillie would’ve said it made her look distinguished.
Regina would’ve told her to dye it. Once, the thought would’ve made her laugh.
Now, it was a reminder of how her sister had tried so desperately to control her.
Violet sat in the small living room of her Greenwich Village apartment, listening to an old Billie Holiday album and settling into her melancholy and grief with a freshly poured drink.
She’d never found love again, not like the kind she had with Tillie.
She’d tried, once or twice, managing a couple of good years with an older divorcee who had an apartment on the Upper East Side, but the weight of Violet’s heartache was always too much for anyone she might start a life with.
Even her magic had weakened, as if the flame in her heart had burned to an ember.
Yes, the candles did their work, but in quieter ways.
Where once Violet could bring in enough money for half the year with a single green taper burned, now one spell would pay her rent with only a little left over to buy a bottle of gin.
So she lent herself to helping other people who society thought didn’t belong. She registered Black voters. She marched for an end to the war in Vietnam. She joined the Women’s Strike for Equality and dipped candles for the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell.
While these things brought her a sense of purpose, they were never enough to fill the hole of what she’d left behind.
Selling spells had been a quiet existence—it could’ve been a happy one, had things turned out differently—now she offered her power freely to those in need, the double boiler on her small gas stove always warm and ready.
But it would take more than a few weak candles to change a country hell-bent on maintaining a status quo built on oppression.
Still, she did what she could.
But for the past few days, none of her spells seemed to work correctly.
Every candle dipped came out warped or twisted, the wax all wrong.
It wouldn’t cling to the wick, or if it did, the wick would get lost, and the candle couldn’t be lit.
With each failure, it felt like a light was going out inside of her, like she herself was the flickering flame and one gentle breeze was all it would take to snuff her out.
She’d chalked it up to the approaching anniversary of Tillie’s death and her own unhealed heart.
The lights softened overhead, a reminder that though Tillie was gone, Violet wasn’t alone. Her magic had brought these seven hundred square feet to life, and while it was no Honeysuckle House, the apartment loved her, and that, at least, was something.
She took another sip of her drink, when the phone started to ring.
She considered letting it go, ignoring whoever might need her.
With how her candles had been coming out, it would probably be for the best. But the work she did was all she had.
So, she set her rocks glass on the table and pushed up from her chair.
She picked up the handset and wrapped the cord around her finger.
“Violet Caldwell,” she said.
There was a brief pause, a sigh. Then, a familiar voice. “It’s me.”
Cold crept along Violet’s spine. She leaned against the wall for support, and it softened into her.
“How did you get this number?” Violet asked.
“Magic,” her sister replied.
“Don’t call here again.” Violet set a finger on the switch and prepared to press it down, but she stopped short at what her sister said next.
“I have a daughter.”
Violet’s hand fell to her side as she stood shocked by this confession and her sister’s hypocrisy. “So you can have a lover, but I can’t?”
“There is no lover,” Regina said. “There’s only my child, and I’m afraid I’m going to lose her.”
“If you treat her the way you treated me, that will be your own doing.” Violet tried not to imagine her niece. She couldn’t let herself guess at her age and wonder if she had Regina’s dark hair and worry after how a child would turn out, raised by her sister’s hand.
“That’s not what I mean,” Regina said. “Our family is cursed.”
“If you mean the way you tried to tear me and Tillie apart—”
But her sister cut her short.
“No,” Regina said. “Actually cursed. I realized it after you left. The whole town did. It was thirteen years to the day after our parents’ deaths.”
Violet narrowed her eyes. “That’s not proof of a curse.
” But something about the word felt right.
Tillie’s death hadn’t made sense. The police had told her bathtub drownings were rare, but they happened.
A person who’s too tired or had too much to drink slips below the surface of the water and doesn’t come back up.
But Honeysuckle House should’ve saved her.
It should’ve woken her up or drained the tub or done anything other than let the water fill her lungs.
It was part of the reason Violet had left that same week.
Not only had she lost Tillie, but the house she trusted had failed her.
Her own spells had failed her. All of her protection candles hadn’t been enough.
For thirteen years, Violet wondered if her sister had found a way around them.
If she’d taken Tillie’s life with magic.
But she had no proof, and she feared that, had she accused Regina, her sister would’ve made Tillie’s family suffer even more.
But if there really was a curse, then Regina hadn’t hurt Tillie after all. Yes, she’d tried to break them apart, and Violet didn’t know if she could ever forgive her. But there might be a chance for at least some sort of peace between them.
“It takes someone we love,” Regina said. “Mother and father were the first. Then your …” Regina trailed off.
“The love of my life?” Violet supplied.
No one spoke for a few seconds.
“Her name is Linda,” Regina said. “My daughter. She has Mom’s eyes and your way with the bees.”
“If we’re cursed, I don’t know how you expect me to help,” Violet said.
“I thought maybe the two of us together could break it. My magic has felt off kilter for almost a week. My candles are all wrong, and some of them won’t even light.”
Violet pressed a hand over her heart, where she’d felt herself fraying. She’d thought it was grief that had wormed its way into her spellwork, but if it was happening to Regina, too, there might be something else at play.
“If it was only me at risk, I wouldn’t bother you,” Regina said. “But it isn’t. It could take Linda from me. Or me from her. Or you before you get the chance to know her.”
“If it takes someone a Caldwell witch loves, I don’t know how that puts me at risk,” Violet said.
A sharp intake of breath came through the receiver. Violet tapped her fingernails against the wall.
“You may have left, but I still love you.” Regina’s voice came out slow and measured. After what she had said about the curse, it felt more like a threat than an olive branch.
“You drove me away,” Violet said.
“I didn’t … I couldn’t …” Regina stopped. After a few seconds, she said, “You were all I had.”
Violet didn’t speak.
“Please,” Regina said. “I can’t do this without you.”
Violet gently set the receiver back on the switch, cutting off the line. Then, she rested her forehead against the doorframe and started to cry.
A few hours later, Violet had given up on her Negronis and started drinking her gin straight from the bottle.
She’d turned up her music, trying to drown out the memory of her sister’s voice and her growing guilt.
Part of her wished Regina had told her about her niece sooner.
She didn’t think she’d have gone back to Burdock Creek, but she could’ve sent gifts and postcards and things to make sure the girl didn’t turn out like her mother.
If this supposed curse claimed Regina, then Violet would be the only person left to care for her. She couldn’t leave her niece to fend for herself.
“It’s not my responsibility,” Violet said aloud as she held up the gin, prepared to take another drink.
She’d started with less than a quarter of it gone, now there was less than a quarter of it left.
As she brought the lip to her mouth, a whistle came from the kitchen.
She lowered the bottle and narrowed her eyes.
“Are you trying to tell me I’m drinking too much?”
Her apartment had gotten in the habit of suggesting Violet switch to tea on her most melancholy nights. Normally, she ignored it. When she was deep in her grief, the last thing she wanted was a clear head.
But this time, things were different.
Her niece might not be Violet’s responsibility, but she knew she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t at least try to protect the girl.
All these years, Violet had blamed her sister, but if what Regina said was true, then Violet had no one to blame but herself.
She’d loved too deeply, and it cost Tillie her life.
As angry as she was with Regina, Violet still loved her sister. Even if a part of her wished for Regina to feel the kind of loss Violet had experienced—some sort of penance for making those last few days with Tillie a fight instead of a memory Violet could cherish—she didn’t want her sister to die.
With a heavy sigh, Violet abandoned the bottle and pushed herself to her feet. The kettle whined louder.
“I’m coming.”
By the time she got to the kitchen, the stove had turned off, and a fresh cup of chamomile tea sat waiting for her on her small kitchen table, right on top of her calendar.
When she picked it up, there was a ring mark over the thirteenth.
If Violet left by noon, after she’d slept off the gin, she might be able to make it before midnight.
It wouldn’t give them much time, but enough to attempt a spell.
“I don’t want to go back there,” Violet whispered, closing her eyes.
Tillie would’ve told her to trust her intuition, but Violet couldn’t hear it through the gin and heartache. When she opened her eyes, she found the tarot cards Tillie had hand-painted sitting on the table.
She set the mug beside the calendar and started to shuffle.
“What will happen if I go?”
After she cut the deck, she pulled the top card. The old tree that used to stand in front of Honeysuckle House stared up at her, and Violet’s heart stuttered. Across the top, one word: death.
This was where her parents’ car had crashed, the first losses Violet had ever felt. Tillie had painted the card in their memory. The tree, fallen. Honeysuckle vines wrapped around its trunk.
Violet tapped a finger against the card.
It could be a literal interpretation, but the death card so rarely was.
Most often, it was a symbol for something ending in order to usher in a new beginning.
And if her family truly was cursed, then this could portend the end of that curse.
Death was only part of the way through the fool’s journey, which meant there was more to come.
She drew another card.
Honeysuckle House stared up at her. This time, two women stood on the front steps, arm in arm. They each held a cup. People looked out from the windows, eight in all, each of them with a glass of their own.
The ten of cups. A card of family. A card of home. And a promise for the future.
Violet took a deep breath. The second card was all she needed. She stood and picked up the phone then dialed her sister’s number. On the third ring, Regina picked up.
“Violet?”
The hope in her sister’s voice almost broke her.
“I’ll try to be there before midnight.”
She didn’t give Regina a chance to reply before hanging up.
Though the ten of cups promised a future for the Caldwells, Violet couldn’t ignore the warning of the first card she’d pulled.
She might not be coming back from this trip, and if that was the case, Tillie’s family deserved to know what Violet feared had happened the night she died.
A part of her wanted to believe her family was cursed, that Tillie’s death couldn’t have been prevented. Another part of her was terrified of her sister. But she couldn’t leave a child in Regina’s hands.
She pulled out her stationery, addressed an envelope to Tillie’s brother at their old shop, and then, she started to write.