Chapter 8 Reports Are In.
Eloise lifted her face to the morning air with her hands wrapped around an ivory mug with painted forget-me-nots and smelled what was a promise that rain would be visiting tonight.
It was the smell of the deep, underground breathing; the sun closing its eyes for a moment of rest. When she told Ursula she would not need her sprinklers as she was leaving for the coffee shop, her friend did not question it.
Later that afternoon she found herself on the front porch with Ursula and Crystal going over the curious case of the pink teenager.
"So, none of us hexed the kid. But he is an alarming shade of pink which is concerning after what Bess told us," Crystal mused as she sat with Ursula and Eloise on the front porch.
The days were still cool, but the sun was pressing itself more firmly against the world giving them a perfect sixty-five-degree day.
The black wicker furniture was a cozy place to talk over honey lavender biscuits and lemon sun tea.
Today was the second day that Eloise helped at the coffee shop and thankfully tomorrow they would have good coffee to work with.
She had ruminated over an idea while descaling one of the espresso machines this morning and had called Shellee before she brought it to Ursula.
Shellee, as it turned out, was an absolute delight to talk to and one of those women who encouraged collaboration in a way that made her excited.
When she got home after leaving the shop in two of the barista's very capable hands, she found Crystal and Ursula here on the porch with Casper laying in a large, grey heap soaking in the square of sunlight he'd found.
"It is concerning," Ursula agreed. "Hey, I heard your nephew and his wife are moving?"
Crystal sighed, shaking her head. Today she was in another flowing ensemble of a woven copper top and wide, breezy pants. The woman knew how to make the art of dressing like a matriarch from old money on Martha's Vineyard look effortless.
"It turns out, that they are not so keen on making a business out of an entire farm of pink, sparkly eggs."
"You think someone can make that a business?" Ursula asked.
"Oh sure, with the right marketing," Crystal said easily.
"Jen knows a guy in marketing," Eloise added with a smirk.
"I hear he's handsome and smart and likes red flowers," a fourth, masculine voice joined them.
The three women turned to see Detective Taylor White, on duty if his uniform was any indicator, walking up the steps of The Lost Souls House. "Though not as handsome as me." His dimple winked. "Ladies," he greeted with a respectful tip of the head.
"Ah Taylor, nice to see you. How's your mother doing?"
"Afternoon, Miss Crystal. She's doing well, thanks for asking. I'll tell her you asked after her."
"Do that. Can I get you some tea, dear?"
"No thank you, ma'am. I'm not much of a tea guy."
"What a shame. How can we help you?"
"I'm here on business, I'm afraid."
Eloise and Ursula shared a sly look.
"You here about that Kyle?"
He nodded, the smirk gone from his serious face. His serious face, unfortunately, was actually quite attractive but Eloise decided to simply observe that and move on. "Kyle Sandman said he woke up to find that his skin was pink for no reason," he looked at Eloise who kept her face blank.
"That is quite dreadful, but don't tell me you're here to ask us about it because of a biased newspaper," Crystal said with a disappointed look on her wise face.
"Well," Taylor drew the word out before he added the next surprise.
"I would agree with you that an article using poor journalistic integrity would not land me here in front of you.
Except, text messages were discovered between Kyle and two of his friends.
One telling them what he had told Bess about her being a pink feminist who spends her time with old biddies and then a responding text from one of his friends, a Justin Ashford," he said reading through notes on a small pad of paper, which Eloise thought was charming in a world of screens and buttons.
"He said, 'you shouldn't waste your time with a drug addict's white trash daughter who will end up just like her with missing teeth and a bottle of Hendricks Gin always in her hand. '"
"So teenagers haven't gotten any better, I see," Eloise said her tone dry.
He closed the pad of paper and gave her a flat look. "The problem, ladies, is that Justin Ashford woke up with missing teeth and a bottle of Hendricks Gin in his hand and his parents can't keep him from drinking it."
"You're kidding," Ursula said, her face held disbelief.
"We had to lock him up in psych at the hospital for twenty-four hours to keep him from the bottle. Kid left school, still tipsy, to steal a bottle from the liquor store on the corner of Greenleaf and Tenth."
"Linus's place?" Crystal let out a low hum. "That man has a memory longer than an elephant's. He press charges?"
"We got him to drop them," he replied patiently.
"If you're standing here asking us about these texts that, admittedly, are eery foreshadowing for what has befallen them," Crystal said slowly as her slim fingers lightly tapped on the rim of her iced tea.
He nodded slowly catching what she was insinuating. "The texts were posted on social media by one of the students in the text group and they tagged Bess before the incidents."
Anyone could have read these texts, including a certain group of women.
"But we're old biddies. We don't know how to use technology," Eloise smiled at him with wide innocent eyes. He narrowed his but she could see a smile hidden in the corner of his mouth.
"So, you are looking into Bess being bullied, I assume?" Ursula asked, her words heavy and pointed.
He paused, which was answer enough.
"Ah. So we are concerned more for the boys than the girl," Eloise said and when Taylor's eyes hit hers, she felt a jolt.
She got a sudden whiff of his particular scent but it had an underlying tartness to it that reflected the regret in his blue eyes.
He understood their frustration. Did he empathize, or did he simply understand the injustice?
"Someone is pink and another boy is in a psych holding," he said by way of explanation.
Three women lifted their heads, nearly imperceptibly, merely a few centimeters of movement but the way their eyes held the detective was enough to give him warning to tread lightly.
Their silence and their steadiness was that of a lioness holding herself still in the presence of a predator encroaching on their territory and their pride, their family.
He sighed and gestured to the empty wicker chair in question to which Ursula nodded and Crystal passed him a glass of iced tea ignoring his earlier refusal. He held the amber class in his large hand and softened his stoic face.
"Listen. The new chief is," he looked down briefly and Eloise got the impression this wasn't a man prone to losing his words, but one to take his time with them when it mattered.
"Well, he has something to prove and we have a divided force where it comes to this town's," he paused, "peculiarities," he finished as he looked at Crystal, something silent passing between them.
Ursula and Eloise watched the exchange, a word turned into a silent sentence which then turned into her clear blue eyes deepening in understanding as she nodded once.
He looked into his glass, a thoughtful look on his handsome face before he looked at the three of them. "You need to be careful, is all I'm saying."
"Officially?" Ursula asked.
"Officially I asked about your connection, if any, to Kyle Sandman and or Justin Ashford."
"To which there is none," Ursula responded.
He held her eyes for a beat, then his gaze shifted to Eloise's where they held for a moment that felt like a touch. Oranges and smoked hickory flickered through her nose and she had to hold her breath.
"Unofficially?" He set the untouched glass of iced tea on the coffee table as he stood. "You need to be very careful." It wasn't a threat, but a warning. "It was nice seeing you ladies. If you hear anything, or know anything, please call me," he said as he handed out his card.
"See you later, Taylor. Tell your momma I'll stop by with my famous brownies soon."
He flashed her that smirk, seriousness melted away, and Eloise tilted her head watching him be charmed by Crystal, or was it Crystal by him? The woman smiled as he winked at her and found his way out.
Once he and his truck were down the winding way, the trees covering his taillights, Ursula turned to Crystal.
"You have famous brownies?"
She smiled.
Later that evening, a spring storm washed over Salem gracing the waking ground with a gentle baptism.
The smell of fresh cotton and secrets filled the kitchen with the open windows that brought in the mesmerizing sound of the pitter-pattering fingers.
Ursula lit a few of her favorite vanilla and tobacco candles while she, Bess and Eloise ate fettuccine with fresh basil and pine nut pesto, fresh tomatoes blistered with black garlic and flaky sea salt.
Bess was lamenting over the whispers and stares at school, the talk of her and her old coven hexing the two boys. Never mind that these two boys were bullies and treated other teenagers with an unrelenting mean spirit.
Never mind that they had targeted Bess, painting her in the light of a young woman who dared to say no.
"Kyle was nice to me, at first," she said, looking sullenly into her bright green pasta, pushing around the tomatoes with her fork.
"But when I wouldn't, you know," and they did, "he ghosted me.
Which, wasn't the worst, but when he gets with Justin, who is a complete ass, he's just mean and ghosting turned to reputation-bombing. "
Ursula and Eloise shared a look between two friends who knew that story well, had lived it. Unfortunately, a tale as old as time, a young woman at a tender age learning how many boys at that age are like water: flowing where there is no resistance and the harder lesson of where to draw her lines.
"Sounds like the little twerps deserved it," Eloise remarked, receiving raised eyebrows from Ursula. "What?" she asked with a shrug. "I'm not saying I would hex them. I am saying, in the privacy of this home, that it sounds like they need to learn a lesson."
Bess was half happy, half miserable as she nodded along to Eloise's sentiment.
"I'm sorry, honey," Ursula said softly. "I wish I could say it gets better, but you only get better at recognizing when someone wants you for you, or not."
"Remember when I dated that guy in college who told me he loved me one month after casually dating?"
The memory pulled a groan from Ursula's full mouth and she swallowed. "Yeah, and when you said you weren't there yet he was flabbergasted. Like, how dare you not be in love with him yet?"
"And he promptly broke up with me, saying that he didn't want to waste his time," she said with a smirk.
"And he called you, what, a week later asking to come over?"
She nodded. "Yep. So, like the hopeful nineteen-year-old that I was, I agreed. He came over, drunk, and told me he could wait for me to fall in love with him, because he just knew that I was the one for him. Pawed at me, and when I wouldn't, you know," and they did, "he yelled at me and left."
"Oh my god. What is wrong with guys?" Bess exclaimed with disgust, that pitch of voice teenagers harness so well. Sulphur raised her head at the tone from where she was lying in the kitchen windowsill. She stretched, then hopped down and jumped gracefully into Bess's lap.
"And you're telling me it doesn't get better for a decade?" Her wide eyes of disbelief were comical but they knew better than to give into the laughter. For her, this wasn't a laughing matter. She was still at the beginning of learning all of this.
It takes quite a while for women to be able to make light of how deeply some men's insecurities affect them. One day, usually with the help of another feminine heart and a cupcake or two, they realize it has nothing to do with them. And that is where boundaries are born.
"Ah, a decade or two. Maybe longer?" Eloise looked to Ursula in question.
A slightly panicked look crossed Ursula's face before she shrugged. "I found your uncle. Finally," she said encouragingly.
Bess pressed her face into Sulphur's black neck and mumbled, "Why is dating the worst?"
"Babe, if we knew that, I think we'd come as close as possible to a love spell," Eloise replied with a laugh.
"Oh the heartbreak we could have saved ourselves!" Ursula said twirling her fork in the air. "I do want to tell you I'm proud of you for not giving into pressure," she told Bess with what Eloise thought was a beautiful motherly look of love for the teenager.
One thing that Eloise had enjoyed watching over the last few months here at The Lost Souls House was her best friend taking to Bess so naturally. She encouraged her, spent time with her, was protective.
She and her friend had shared a desire to never have children, something that had been considered odd to some over the years.
It had been a relief to be in the company of someone that required no explanation. Ursula was the friend with which Eloise could unload her baggage at the front door with a heavy sigh and drag herself inside to sit next to her friend without the need to unpack.
But here was Ursula, so naturally and without pause, stepping into the role as if by divine prophecy.
While she didn't want children of her own, there would be an intentional use of her ability to love without hesitation and without bounds.
It was, Eloise believed, another piece of Ursula healing from a previous decade of her gift of loving being used and taken for granted.
"I have an idea," Eloise announced gaining two pair of eager eyes. "Let's clean up dinner then eat the blackberry walnut tarts I made this afternoon while we play cards in the greenhouse and listen to the rain."
They smiled at such a romantic plan for a rainy, spring evening and they each took on a different task until they were playing hand and foot on a potting table dotted with green and ivory candles, which flickered from time to time from the hand of a playful soul, brushing soil from their hands and letting their laughter soak into the potted plants which took in their easy camaraderie helping the cafe au lait dahlias and the apricot beauty tulips grow two inches that night.