Chapter 10 New Hexes and Flowers
Salem started its Saturday cool and partly cloudy until about nine that morning when the clouds parted and the town tilted just the slightest. There was a new sense of frenzy and being off-kilter.
The town usually found itself floating through spring and summer gently and lazily until they jumped into their witchy season, which typically started as soon as August. Spring and Summer had a film around it, the town came out from hiding in winter to plant their spring gardens and meet each other for walks and coffees.
The months of March and April were riddled with rain showers until the ground had swallowed enough to hang onto precious roots and push out new blooms which was when spring would bleed into summer.
But today, today felt like they had skipped two seasons and there was a buzz that no one could quite name or catch in their hands and was typically ushered in with apple-spiced winds and bonfires, not this petrichor mixed with blooming hyacinths and lilacs.
Everyone was thrown. It was manifesting in little ways, like the mailman delivering mail to the wrong mailboxes, people waking up later than usual or in the middle of the night thinking it was morning, and how neighbors started watering the coral bells next door instead of their own bearded irises.
Eloise could smell it, like a clashing mash-up of spring, summer and autumn smells trying to right themselves. Peonies, summer thunderstorms and spiced cider were battling against her senses. So intense was the riot of smell that she rubbed peppermint oil underneath her nose to drown them out.
She brought a tin of herbal tea to the shop that she had mixed after Ursula had pulled in roses, mint, and chamomile to dry. The aroma was airy and fragrant and she put it on the menu as Salem Spring Herbal tea and it was ordered exactly fourteen times while she was there.
She'd gotten everything in order, staying a little over two hours, but felt good about the coming week.
Once she sent Shellee an email giving her an update on how everything was going, she called her own store to check in.
The peppermint oil had worn off a bit ago and being tucked deeply into the coffee shop, she could breathe easier.
She was leaning back in the old office chair that smelled like dust and coffee grounds listening to her store manager talk about how much they missed her and their regulars asking where she was but overall the report was good.
She could admit she did miss the shop, the thing she had poured herself into and built over the last few years, and still, she didn't feel a press to return and she was chewing on that after she hung up and one of the baristas popped his head into the doorway.
"Hey, Eloise?"
"Hey," she said and paused. Phillip, a thirty-something who also worked in IT between his shifts at the cafe, looked discombobulated. His usually buzzed hair was longer in patches around his head and still buzzed in others giving him an ornamental grass look. "You alright?"
"Eh," he shrugged. "I think so. I feel off. And I woke up to my hair growing like this overnight, which sounds crazy. And we've gotten a couple of new customers that aren't Salemites."
"Is that really what locals are called?"
He shrugged.
She smiled. "What's up?"
"Someone left a tip but wanted it to specifically go to you," he said.
She shook her head and told him to add it to the tip jar for them to share but he made a face and shrugged saying, "I mean, it's Canadian so not really sure we can do much with it."
At his words, her stomach dropped violently as her chair slammed back to the ground with a thick slap. Her heart was beating hard, pushing against her ribs as a sudden flush of heat overtook her skin. But this wasn't like a regular hot flash. This was anxiety, sudden and fierce.
This was fear.
She held out her hand, trying to regulate her breathing as Phillip placed the Canadian coin into her open palm, the smell of sweaty coins and spicy cologne assaulting her and then leaving her alone to stare at the offensive talisman that would bring anything but good luck.
The next two days she spent on high alert, her eyes always looking a few seconds longer in places, and her hand always in easy reach of her phone.
She didn't sleep well either night under the peach tree, and when she did she dreamed of running, of raging words being yelled at her, and a worn woman crying.
When she woke both mornings, she was surrounded by rotten peaches, their smell sickly sweet and sharp.
By the end of the second day, her mind loosened slightly, her body didn't hold itself as tightly. Still, shadows were darker and noises held ominous possibilities.
She helped Kelsey with coaching soccer and brought the after-practice treats; crinkle-cut carrots and cinnamon peanut butter, fat grapes and blackberries, and of course, butterscotch rice crispy treats cut out using a cat-shaped cookie-cutter.
She and Kelsea were talking about dating, each with a butterscotch cat in their hands.
"So, the dating scene in the real world isn't better than the dating scene on the apps?"
Eloise snorted. "I wouldn't say that. I was the one who undressed without an invitation for him."
Kelsea looked at her wide-eyed and then the blonde and auburn-haired women bent together in laughter.
"You don't talk about dating," Eloise realized, looking at Kelsea with a tilted, scrutinizing air.
"Well, I haven't. Not in a few months, at least," she explained like she was waving away Eloise's epiphany.
"Not that dating is the end-all, be-all," Eloise started and paused before she continued saying, "Women are allowed to not want to date without explanation.
That being said, you are a romantic. We spent an hour talking about Wuthering Heights the other night on the back patio while eating honey cake.
" She held up two hands. "But, I have been wrong before and I will be wrong again. "
Kelsea's not-quite smile pulled up her pretty face as she thought and then she let out a breath.
"You know I dated a married man. A misogynistic, cheating, abusing asshat," her vehemence pierced the words and pricked Eloise's skin.
She smelled dry ice and crisp water, searing pain wrapped in coldness.
Eloise watched Kelsea close her eyes and shake her head before she opened them and gave her a grim close-lipped smile.
"I hurt someone by having an affair with a married man.
And I knew he was married. And not only did I hurt someone innocent, I hurt myself.
A lot." She shook her head, her look of remorse sharp. "Not that I'm a victim."
But she didn't realize she was in the company of a friend, in more ways than one.
"No one tells you that that particular sin you carry from something like that is covered in barbed wire, which is on fire," Eloise said gently. "That it digs into your skin leaving behind marks, and if that's not enough, the fire will leave its brand taking away hope of redemption."
"Maybe I deserve it," she said quietly, resigned. "Maybe I earned this barbed wire shame."
Eloise felt her words pelt her skin. She understood them, was intimate with them. "Redemption is messy. I think the only way you earn it is by owning the consequences of your past actions. You make mistakes, sometimes big ones, and then you learn and do better."
"And the people we hurt?"
Oh, the burning pain in this young woman's eyes seared her.
"We bear the responsibility of their pain, silently, and then one day," she let out a deep breath, remembering different pain-filled eyes looking into hers. "One day, if you're brave enough, you forgive yourself for that too."
Kelsea's eyes locked on hers and they shared a moment. Silent thoughts dancing around Eloise's words, letting them sink into grey memories, feeling the communal understanding.
Then Kelsea looked off down the field where the last girl was picked up by her parents, her arm waving goodbye before she said, "I hope one day I believe I'm good enough to want to date again."
Eloise swallowed the words. She could be her sin-eater.
After all, she understood living stuck in the ashes of the past you burned down.
She held her words, unsure of what to do other than let Kelsea go through this stage of grief.
And she would be there to be more kind to Kelsea than she had been to herself when she was alone.
But as they each slung a thick black bag over their shoulders filled with soccer equipment, Kelsea smiled brightly and the smell of the sea when it's just finished crying out a storm hit her; rain-washed sand and salt-softened air. Hope.
"You will feel okay," she said, wanting this young woman's eyes to believe what her smile said.
"It will feel like the universe is watching you, every moral pore on display for a while.
And then one day, you'll wake up," she shrugged, "and you'll feel more secure, like you're allowed to live and not hold yourself so tightly. "
She didn't look like she believed her, but she wanted to. "Okay," she replied, the softest voice of hope mixed with disbelief.
"I need some olives," Eloise announced and waved her hand at a perplexed Kelsea. "It's a perimenopausal thing. Want to go to Hera's?"
"I could go for a gyro," Kelsea agreed with a hearty nod.
"I'll order us a car," her legs were exhausted, and the idea of walking into town made her more tired. "Those girls are freakishly fast. I won't tell anyone, but," she lowered her voice, "you drugging them? Roid parties?"
Kelsea threw back her head and let out a laugh so deep, it cleansed the air around them.
And as they got into the back of the car and talked about a book Kelsea had let her borrow, Eloise thought that the young woman looked, to the naked eye of a sister who empathized, a little lighter, her eyes a little brighter. And now the smell was less post-storm, and more of a fresh, light sky.