Chapter 15 Eva
Eva
Eva spread the atlas she’d taken onto the dashboard and squinted at her father’s minuscule scrawl in the margins.
The tentative hunch she’d had when she found this map stashed away with his letters from Charlotte solidified a little more as she traced a heavily circled mile marker, and the note beside it. Aspens.
“Take the north road,” Eva said.
It was the quickest way to the trailhead, and rarely used by visitors. After Arthur dropped her off, he could follow the back roads all the way down to the valley.
She expected Arthur to push back and demand more information.
Instead, he only nodded, gripping the wheel.
They’d gained an advantage by disabling the patrol car back at the house, but Eva knew the sheriff’s men would call for backup soon.
The oncoming storm might delay them, but she couldn’t rely on the incompetence of the county’s paltry sheriff’s department, not with so much on the line. They needed to hurry.
After another mile, Eva turned to him. “Do you remember my father’s stories?”
Maybe it was a mistake to crack open the door like this, but she needed someone to reassure her she wasn’t crazy for thinking there was something more to those old tales than simply a child’s entertainment.
“Remember?” Arthur snorted. “They gave me nightmares.”
“Do you remember the honeyman who found a field of magic flowers?”
“Sure,” Arthur said. “He stole their magic or something?”
“Right.” Eva took a breath, tapping the mile marker on the atlas. “Well, I think this might be that meadow.”
Arthur’s eyebrows shot up.
“Dad used to hike here every summer to collect a rare blue flower he dried into tea,” Eva went on, desperate to lay her theory out so he could see all the pieces. “He hasn’t been since the… accident.”
“A blue flower?” Arthur murmured. “Like the tea blend Lenny had back at the cottage?”
Eva’s thoughts slammed to a halt. “What?”
Arthur’s gaze jumped to hers. “I found him in the kitchen with one of your jars.”
The words brought an instant wash of unease. Eva hadn’t known anything about that.
“Sorry,” Arthur said when the silence between them went on a beat too long.
“It’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. Eva hated that Lenny Walker still had the power to catch her off-guard in the worst of ways. She hated that he’d come into her home and rifled through her family’s things. She hated that she was finding out only now, with Arthur glancing worriedly over at her as he drove.
Eva plucked the envelope she’d brought to the holding cell from her pocket and unfolded it, trying to pull his attention off her face. “I never knew what those flowers were called, before this letter.”
To her relief, Arthur let her guide them back to the topic at hand. “Oh?”
Eva nodded, transported for a moment to her kitchen as her father’s words unraveled inside her again. I named it after her, you know. She bit her lip. It felt like giving away a piece of her father she’d only just found, and wanted to keep for herself.
But the secret wasn’t hers alone to inherit.
“He called them Little Lotties,” Eva said.
Arthur sucked in a breath, surprised. “For my mom?”
“Yeah.”
Her father had kept the details of his friendship with Charlotte Connoway largely to himself, and before now, Eva hadn’t cared. She bore no love for the woman who’d made Arthur feel so disposable.
“He wrote that the flowers there have healing properties. That’s why he hoards the tea,” Eva went on.
She twisted a loose thread at the waist of her overalls around her little finger, pulling it taut.
“What you said, before, about the honey? About it helping him…” Eva trailed off, feeling suddenly foolish.
This was just superstitious folklore.
But it was also the only shot she had.
“You think the honey I saw him eat that night came from those fields?” Arthur guessed.
Eva nodded. “He’s never planted those flowers at the cottage. He must have established a hive up there.” The pain the sapling caused could have prevented him from making the trip again, cutting off his access to the healing honey.
The possibility made something in Eva’s chest go tight. How much of Dad’s pain had he buried over the years? How much better might it have been if he’d had this honey all along, if he’d trusted her to help him? She wasn’t fragile! She could handle knowing he was in pain, even if she was the reason—
Stop.
Eva corked the thought before it could play out. She’d show him just how strong she could be.
“I’m going to the meadow he wrote about,” she said in determination. “And I’m going to bring more honey back.”
She expected Arthur to scoff or to laugh at her.
Instead, he fell silent. A storm had gathered overhead, heavy dark clouds lower in the night sky now.
At the first drop of rain, Arthur leaned over, popping open the glove box between her knees.
He fished out a honey stick and stuck it in his teeth, then handed her another. “Want one?”
“You just have these on hand?”
A flush peeked from beneath the collar at his neck. “Just take it. I know you get snacky.”
In minutes, the sky unzipped, raindrops pelting the windshield.
They drove slowly through the pounding storm.
Soon the road changed to a rough and unpaved surface, making Eva’s already too-full bladder more unbearable.
When she couldn’t stand it any longer, Arthur pulled off to the side of the road.
Eva dashed into the trees to relieve herself, and by the time she returned, her clothes were utterly soaked.
“Here.” Arthur tossed her a warm, heavy flannel shirt.
She wrapped it around her shoulders, teeth chattering. “Can we turn on the heat?”
He shot her a look of apology. “Heat’s broken.”
“Oh.”
The air in the van pressurized as the storm grew more intense, lighting up the night sky overhead with brilliant cracks of lightning.
Eva yawned to pop her ears as they slowed to a crawl.
When the road turned slick and muddy, Arthur eased onto its shoulder.
“We’ve got to stop,” he said as he brought the van to a halt.
“What? We can’t!”
“If we can’t drive in this, neither can they. And we can’t drive in this.” Arthur patted the wheel. “My girl’s got a delicate suspension.”
Eva’s helpless laugh did nothing to stall the anxiety building in her chest.
Arthur’s hand lifted off the wheel and stretched toward her for a moment before he seemed to change his mind and set it awkwardly on the dash instead. “Hey. We’ll leave as soon as the rain lets up, okay?”
“Promise?” Eva felt like a child demanding his word, but she didn’t care.
“I promise.” He smiled wearily, his eyes a treasure box of hazel. Stone. Soil. Grass. Gold. All the colors of the earth, ensconced in his irises.
“I like the beard,” Eva blurted out. Impulsively. Stupidly.
Arthur’s eyes widened in surprise, and he touched his jaw self-consciously. “It’s new.”
“It’s nice.” Her neck flamed with hot discomfort. Eva hurried on, eager to change the subject. “Do you have a medical kit?”
“In the back,” Arthur hedged.
“Good.” She pointed to the gash in his eyebrow. “You need stitches.”
He stiffened. “The hell I do.”
“You want to risk infection?”
“If you stitch me up, I’ll surely risk infection.”
Sometimes he made her want to scream. “Medical kit. Where is it?” Eva demanded.
After a tense staring contest, Arthur grumbled and climbed into the back portion of the van. Eva craned her head to see, but his living space was obscured in shadows.
“Ev!” Arthur cried out in sudden alarm. “There’s a cat in my bed!”
She twisted in her seat. “What?”
“Why is there a cat in my bed?!”
She scrambled over the divider, awkwardly trying to find a way to fit her body into the cramped space.
A neatly made bed had been elevated off the van’s floor, with storage space cleverly positioned beneath it.
Outside, rain plonked hard against the van’s vintage roof.
Arthur had pressed himself against the back door of the Volkswagen, chest heaving as he stared at the blanket on his pillow.
The blanket twitched, then rolled over. A little gray kitten batted at the coverlet’s rust-colored tassels.
Eva gasped and scooped up the kitten, tucking it into the wide chest pocket of her overalls, kangaroo-style. “Oh, you little rascal!”
“What? Why is it…?” Arthur fumbled his words. He looked, ironically, like the very creature currently making him freeze up, his body pressed far from the object of his fear into the side of the Volkswagen.
“We left the windows rolled down. She must have climbed inside.”
“This is your cat?”
“One of Hyssop’s newest litter, I’d guess.”
“Ev, I can’t have a cat. You know I can’t have a living thing.”
It shouldn’t soften her toward him when the years still sat like an open wound between them.
But Eva couldn’t help but recall the tattoos of songbirds she’d glimpsed on Arthur’s biceps back at the farm.
Had he continued to practice controlling his gift, as they’d done together as teenagers?
Or had those swirls of ink become the closest he got to touching anything living?
She swallowed the traitorous need to know and scratched the kitten’s soft little head. There were too many things she and Arthur had left unsaid, too many hurts still festering, for her to ask such a question.
“We can’t turn her out in this.” Eva nodded to the torrent as the kitten bumped her chin with its forehead, already purring. “Can we, little one?”
Arthur remained frozen, watching as Eva rewrapped the kitten in her blanket and set it on the passenger seat.
Eva pointed to the mattress. “Sit.”
Even that felt too intimate. How many times had they arranged themselves in this exact position, trading care for bee stings, cuts, and burns? There were other wounds now that first aid couldn’t fix. Hurts that scraped down to the bone.
Arthur plopped down obediently. “Wash your hands,” he muttered.