Chapter 32
Now
While I was in Persimmon Key, Frances’s life had continued in Puddle Creek. I’d known this, but seeing the evidence was jarring.
My sister was sent away to boarding school, then received a full ride to Auburn, but she’d come home for holidays and summer breaks.
Her years were showcased in mismatched frames on top of the wooden box television that Aunt Hattie had used as a knickknack shelf since before I’d ever called this place home.
They began with blurry-edged pictures of the both of us together, feral girls barefoot and covered in dirt, arms around each other.
The photos of my sister were like a timeline of a girl growing into an adult.
A snapshot of Frances at junior prom. Portraits of my sister in her cap and gown—both high school and college.
Even a photo of Frances in her elegant wedding dress standing alone in front of a stained-glass window.
I knew from Frances’s Instagram that they’d not been at her wedding and wondered if she’d had the photo sent to the aunts without Burt knowing.
The photos of me ended when I was seventeen. In the most recent one, I lay on an old quilt in the backyard, wearing cutoff shorts and a yellow bikini top, sticking my tongue out at the camera. It was a regular, random day commemorated for no reason at all. And then… that’s it.
It was like I’d died.
My gaze flickered over each photo before landing on one I’d forgotten about. A lump formed in my throat.
“You okay?” Frances sidled up next to me and followed my gaze.
“Yeah,” I said, unable to look away. The photo was of me in middle school, my arm draped over the shoulders of a boy with rust-colored hair.
It was the year before Casey shot up like a weed, when we were still the same height.
It was four years before I’d pull him by his ankles to a sandy patch of dirt and leave him there.
“Yeah,” I repeated. “Just strange being back.”
Frances slid her hand into mine and gave it a squeeze, then silently set the picture of me and Casey face down on the shelf.
“Come eat,” Bunny called from the tiny kitchen, setting two plates down for me and Frances at the table. She’d microwaved leftover pot roast and made sandwiches. After we inhaled them, it was time to get down to business.
“I know your sister read you, but I think we should have another look. Just to be sure.” Ruth took a saucer and cup from the shelf and sat them in front of my sister.
Frances looked at me, brows steepled. “Okay. Can’t hurt, I guess.”
“If it’ll give you some peace of mind,” I said with a shrug. Then to Aunt Ruth, “You want me to put the kettle on?”
“Get with the times, dearie,” Hattie-May piped up. “We don’t do that anymore.”
“Oh?”
“We got us an electric kettle.” She pointed to where the appliance sat on the counter. Ruth flipped the switch at its base, and it gurgled to life. “Best thing ever. Cuts down on appointment times.”
“Speaking of—how is business?” Frances asked. She ran her index finger over the white saucer.
“I’m sure you saw the store burned down,” Aunt Ruth said, plunking a ceramic container of tea onto the table.
“Yeah. I hated to see that,” Frances said. “What happened?”
“Lightning hit a utility pole. Happened last year.” Ruth gave a little shrug. “I miss visiting with the old folks. Otherwise, things have been about the same.”
“Still lots of clients?” I asked.
“Mmm. Yeah. Ebbs and flows, like everything else.”
“She’s being modest,” Bunny said, shooting Aunt Ruth a sly look. “Ruth’s been doing a lot of wild game processing—she’s had to expand her shop.”
I thought of Shane. Of the whirring bone grinder. My shiver laced my spine.
“And your Aunt Hattie-May does holiday orders for baked goods.” Bunny patted Aunt Hattie-May’s hand. “People scramble to buy from her—feuds have broken out in the Puddle Creek Rants and Raves group on Facebook. Whole families torn apart.”
“Not as dramatic as all that,” Hattie-May said, the smallest smile tugging at her mouth.
“That’s great,” I said, meaning it.
“What about the greenhouse?” my sister asked.
“Oh it’s still out there—though a bit neglected. I grow a few things here and there,” Aunt Hattie said. “Not nearly as much as I used to.”
Ruth sat the kettle on the table, then held out the tea scooper. “Milly, why don’t you do the honors?”
“Okay.” The smell of Ruth’s favorite blend of tea, earthy and sweet, was like a time machine as I scooped it into the cup.
Frances closed her eyes. I hoped what the Sight showed us would bring peace.
That when I opened the door, a feeling of security would float from that place inside, whispering assurance that we’d defended my sister’s fate.
That her leaves would show a plan put into motion, one that brought safety.
That we could put to bed all the talk of killing, once and for all.
I poured water over the tea leaves.
Aunt Ruth leaned forward, lips parted in anticipation, and Bunny and Hattie-May hushed their whispering.
The three women watched as I grabbed Frances’s hands.
Their faces wore the kind of reverence churchgoers reserved for Sundays, and I couldn’t blame them—being back in this kitchen, with these cups and this tea, surrounded by these women—it felt spiritual.
“Focus,” I instructed my sister, and I did the same.
Show that my plan worked. That Burt is no longer a threat—or at least a threat contained. That he’ll die years from now locked away in a cell.
A gentle pressure hummed through me, and I beckoned it to build. God. I’d missed it. Reading my own leaves and reading Frances from far away, I’d clawed and scraped and begged the Sight. Then, in a hurry in my Persimmon Key apartment, the door had thrown open, the Sight slamming into me.
Neither time had felt like this. It couldn’t feel like this. Nothing could. Being next to Ruth and Hattie-May, clasping my sister’s hands as that place inside me stirred as if giving approval: In that moment I was my true self. A Robbins woman.
Power built until it thrummed through me as I beckoned the Sight to open, open, open. This power, for a few seconds, was uniquely mine. Power in a world that said I didn’t deserve any.
I thought of the decade of seeing nothing but sister in my teacup. Of feeling linked to Frances, despite our distance.
Our fates were always tangled. Tethered together. Tethered to this place.
The Sight pulsed through me like a second heartbeat.
It didn’t matter why I was called back to Tennessee, to Puddle Creek, to this table. Didn’t matter if it was to plan a murder or move a body. This was where I needed to be, right now, with these women.
When I could no longer stand it—the pressure the power the stirring—I opened the door. This time, I didn’t pry, nor did it push me out of the way and flood my senses. The fate opened simply, as if I need only ask.
My sister drank. I lifted the cup and peered into my sister’s fortune. The leaves swirled around the cup’s belly, the pattern like the design of an intricate quilt. No. I frowned. No no no.
I again closed my eyes. Show me.
Then.
An aching dread.
That hand, my throat closing. Burt. The sound, oh that loud sound. And then there was Frances and blood.
That weight and that blood.
I pushed the Sight into the cup, urging it to unlock what I was seeing into something different. Something better.
I hoped there was something I was missing. I’d never wanted to be wrong before. I looked up at my sister and frowned.
“What?” she asked.
I slumped forward and peered once more into the cup and shook my head. “Nothing’s changed.”
“Oh.” Frances wilted.
I felt defeated, like my path had narrowed to one dangerous point, and I reached inside to ease the door closed, but stopped.
Wait.
The thing inside twisted. A whisper. A scream.
Another flash of emotion, a wrenching feeling. This time faster.
I stared for a long moment, reality muffled around me. Fear nipping at my heels. Dread intensifying. Anxiety swelling. All three nesting in my chest.
“Milly? Are you okay?” Bunny touched my arm. I flinched. “What is it you see?”
I blinked.
There was an urgency in the tea that hadn’t appeared before.
“Let me see.” Aunt Ruth hunched forward over the table and peered down. Though Frances didn’t have a lick of the Sight, she stared at the cup too, palms splayed on the table as if ready to push away and bolt at a moment’s notice. Maybe she should.
“What’s changed?” she demanded. “Tell me.”
“I know you girls think you handled it,” Ruth said. “But we got to kill him for Frances to live.”
“No. He must die.” I shook my head. “But it doesn’t say kill. It doesn’t say murder, not directly, and—”
“Sister.” Frances grabbed my arm. “I don’t want to die. Not because of him.”
We locked eyes. I didn’t want that either.
“Milly?” Frances asked. “What else?”
“There’s a new urgency. Whatever’s happening, is happening soon,” I said.
“Real soon,” Ruth echoed.
“But it doesn’t mean we have to kill,” I said again, desperate. “This doesn’t mean—”
“My god, girl. There is no time to wait and see. There is only time to act,” Ruth said.
“Milly, dear.” Hattie-May spoke softly. “Even I can see it. He must die, and we must help it along. And soon.”
I’d hoped to see an indication that my plan had begun.
Something to bolster my belief that a reporter would find the evidence we planted.
That we could save my sister and get rid of Burt without spilling blood.
That I could move Casey, and we could never talk about bodies or death or murder again.
That I’d paid my dues as a Robbins woman.
But that wasn’t to be.
“What’s next?” Frances whispered.
I looked around the small kitchen at the open faces of the women who’d raised me. “Do you think he’ll come straight here when he gets home?”
Frances shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. How could he? I’m sure he tracked my phone and it showed me going back to Moss Grove, but if he’s tracking my car, it’s still in Persimmon Key. Maybe he’ll go there first. But…”
“But what, dearie?” Hattie-May asked.
“But when I’m not there… It makes sense that he’d come here eventually.”
“Okay.” I considered what this meant. “Maybe…maybe we can play into that and buy us a little time to figure things out.” My biggest concern was the urgency in the leaves.
They didn’t read exactly like a clock, but we didn’t have long.
Maybe a few days. “Do you still have access to your Instagram? You said he took control of it, but can you sign in on my phone?”
“Yeah,” she said. “He never changed the password. Never had to. It was a control thing, to see if I would break his rules. Everything was a test.”
“That’s…” That’s fucked up. “That’s good. What if you use my phone to sign into your account and post a picture of the beach? Say something about being with your sister. He’d have to check it out, right?”
“I don’t know.” Frances shook her head. “It feels obvious. He knows I’m not that stupid.”
I leaned back in my chair. “We aren’t trying to hide you forever, just trying to buy a little more time. Worst-case scenario, he doesn’t fall for it.”
“He won’t,” Frances said.
“Look. I’m open to better ideas,” I said, handing my sister my phone. “But in the meantime, post the photo.”
“Use mine,” Bunny said. She pulled her phone from her purse, beneath the table.
The chunky case was bedazzled in pink and white rhinestones.
“It’s got a VPN. Those social media apps track your location, did you know that?
Best we don’t leave a trail of where you girls are, considering…
” She unlocked it and handed it to my sister.
“Why in the world do you need a VPN, Bun?” Frances asked.
Bunny smirked. “My side hustle. I haven’t danced in twenty years, but I do a little work online from time to time.”
“Oh?” Frances said. “What kind of work?”
“The kind that only my fans know about. Last thing I need is some parasocial crazy figuring out where I live.”
“You have an online job, Bunny?” Hattie-May asked. “I didn’t know that. You have one of those blogs or something?”
I covered my mouth with my hand and wondered if I was about to witness my great-aunt’s introduction to OnlyFans.
“Never mind all that right now,” Ruth said, flustered.
Frances caught my eye, and despite everything, we were twelve and nine years old again, choking back laughter to keep from getting in trouble.
My gaze dropped once more to my sister’s teacup, and I was immediately sobered.
It was a flash. Just a flash. Just for me.
But there was no mistaking it.
My eyebrows drew together. There she was. Tucked tightly into the background of everything befalling us. A feeling of longing. Of desperation. Of love.
“Why are the leaves showing me Mama?”