Cursed be the Wicked (19 page)

He looks over to her and she nods, catching on.

“You know he grew up here, right?” Dan says.

Finn looks up at me and smirks. “Yeah but he doesn’t seem to know a whole lot about the city he grew up in, that’s where I come in.”

She leaves her words hanging out there for Danny to soak up while we have a private moment between us. Danny recovers from his letdown fairly well, I have to say, even if he isn’t the brightest star in the galaxy.

“Then I guess I’ll have to see about a new plan then. Next week.”

“Actually, I’ve pretty much got her booked ‘til I’m gone, Dan,” I tell him. “And I’m not sure when that’s going to be yet.”

I stare him down this time and he looks like he wants to deck me about ten times harder than his brother did the other day. But eventually, he gives, turning to Geneva with a polite yet pointed smile.

“Guess we’ll be talking soon then, Geneva.” He nods to Finn as he passes us without another word and when he’s gone from sight, everyone breathes a little easier.

“What the hell?” I mutter.

Geneva rolls her eyes.

“Been here for about an hour looking for you, Finn. Thought I was gonna die listening to him go on and on about your fictitious date.”

Finn mumbles something under her breath that I can’t make out and I wonder just how long this has been going on.

“How big of a problem is this family for you all, Finn?”

“He’s not a problem,” she insists.

“You sure?”

“As sure as I ever will be,” she tells me.

And with that, Geneva says goodnight, a small grin on her face as she disappears into the house and climbs the stairs.

Finn is getting ready to leave me as well when I grasp at the first thing I can. Her hand.

Before she faces me full on, she eyes our fingers, entwined together.

“Talk to me,” I tell her quietly. I’m granted her eyes looking into mine.

“I can handle it,” she says, then pauses for a second or two. “I’ve been handling it for a long time before you. It’s not them I’m worried about.”

I pull her closer. “And what
are
you worried about?”

“Who,” she whispers and it floats through the air like a dream of some sort.

“What?”

“
Who
am I worried about,” she corrects me. She looks up and waits for me to get it.

I’m not ready for that conversation, though. So instead of talking, I lean in and kiss her.

Our earlier argument melts away, along with every doubt I’ve been having about my parents.
About me.

I’ve missed her lips since the first time we did this and I tug at her waist in an effort to get her closer to me.

Her hands slide up, around my neck without a single hesitation. Heat follows wherever she touches and I don’t remember the last time a woman gave me goosebumps. I grab at her top, inching it upwards, wanting to feel the skin underneath, while I press her back against the house.

Then my cell rings.

I want to ignore it. Truly. But I have to check it. It’s like a sickness with me.

I pull away from Finn and immediately regret my decision to answer this call when I see whose name is flashing on the phone. What was I thinking?

“Bill.” I stand up straighter and Finn smoothes her clothes.

“I can’t take it anymore, Coop, this article is fantastic. What else have you got for me over there?”

“I, um.”

I watch Finn’s eyes dance away as she tucks some hair behind her ear and forget what I was about to say.

“Coop.”

“What?”

“Don’t hold out on me, buddy.”

Shit.

“Bill,” I turn and walk toward the railing, “I’ve got plenty but like you said, we’ve got all month, right?”

He hems and haws.

“I’ll clean up what I have and send it,” I assure him. And I find it completely ass backwards that I’m wanting to stay when not a week ago, I didn’t even want to come.

I turn around. Finn’s trying to leave me again. So I pull at the hand I held in mine not too long ago.

“I’ll get something to you by the middle of the week, I promise.”

He doesn’t respond.

Finn smiles. “Goodnight, Coop,” she whispers.

“I-”

She’s already inside the house by then, closing the door on me without another word.

“I trust you, Coop. I just want to make sure your head is in this, that’s all. I worry about you. You seem, disconnected right now.”

I step out onto the lawn and look up to see a light turn on from one of the windows. I watch to see if I can catch her shadow but I don’t see anything while I wait there.

Then I do. And I smile.

“It’s all good, Bill. I’m good. I have this great angle I’m working. It involves witches, before and after.”

“Before and after huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Before and after what?”

“Exactly,” I tell him, not thinking.

“I love it.”

“Fantastic, we’ll touch base soon.”

“This week.”

“Right,” I say, then end the call and stare up until the light goes out.

I watch Finn’s window for a little while longer before leaving, then I head back to the B&B. Once I’m there, I take the stairs, two at a time, up to my room and make a good effort to get the stick out of my ass. But as I’m sitting at the laptop, trying to pick through the most interesting parts of my days with Finn, I find myself eyeing my mother’s journals that I brought back with me.

I think about some of the conversations that have passed between Finn and me. And as much as I’d like to, I certainly can’t deny the fact that something happened in my mother’s house today. The hairs on the back of my neck rise up just thinking about the sound of that glass shattering like it did but still, it’s not in my nature to assume that means anything supernatural had happened.

At least it didn’t used to be in my nature.

I write a note to myself to drop by tomorrow and see if maybe a window from some other part of the house had broken. Then I eye the journals I brought home with me and reach into my front pocket, pulling out the nazar I stole from my mother’s home earlier.

I stare at it for a minute, then my laptop.

I’ve written what feels like a million stories for the magazine. I’ve thrown things together at the last minute that turned out to be some of the best writing I’ve done.

There’s no reason I can’t find out what’s at the heart of mother’s story
and
write a travel article that will make Bill happy. I’ve got plenty of time still.

So I grab the first journal of my mother’s, and instead of trying to iron out a good outline for my article, I begin to read a different story.

The story about my mother.

Chapter 12

Helping Hands

The journals Finn and I found at my old home begin with me.

In a prologue of sorts, my mother states that her old ones had been found and to her knowledge, destroyed. She doesn’t mention by who, or how they were ruined, only that the more she learns of life, the more she realizes just how alone she is.

If the cryptic undertone of this passage isn’t enough to get my attention, the next page certainly is.

March 4, 1984
-

I’m pregnant.

I stare at the words she’s written and my stomach falls into oblivion. This is my debut into her life. I’m trying to decide if she was happy or not when she found out I’d been created but I can’t tell from this entry. There’s nothing else but these two words and part of me doesn’t want to keep going, but I do.

Not that the rest of her first journal helps much.

Her entries are sporadic with little more than one word feelings or observations and cryptic poems scattered here and there. At times, when she refers to my father, she writes with hearts and bubble letters. Others I see where she’s written something but it’s scratched out to the point of making a hole in the paper.

There are symbols in the margins of many pages. Some have initials next to them, some have chicken scratch that I can’t make out.

I see mentions of the drunk I met, Jack Diggs. But the man who once called her “Mag Pie” and claims they were best friends is referenced only two times throughout her entire first journal.

I skim, looking for important information and when I get to one page in particular, my heart stops.

I don’t know how to tell him,
it reads.

I’m so elated on one hand. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced these feelings before. My head spins and my heart swells so huge for this baby that it hurts but telling people will change everything. Telling Ben will change everything.

I still have time. I’ll think of something.

My mother’s words sit inside my mind, brewing, as I blink at the page.

Elated.

She was happy about me.

I find myself grinning at that thought, but cannot for the life of me figure out why she would worry over telling my father she was pregnant. Unless
he
didn’t want me. Maybe they weren’t married yet? Maybe he felt trapped?

I flip through to the end but everything after that seems like a crazy woman’s rants. She has “my choice” written about a hundred times on one page and “Go” just as many times on the next.

The last page reads:

Ties that bind.

Eyes to see.

Roots to heal.

Please forgive me.

I want to know more but my thoughts are jumbled. I open up a document on my laptop and begin a list. I hope that later it will help me make some sense of her life.

Elated.

Friends?

Married yet?

Scared?

I move on and book two isn’t much better with little more than drawings and lists that rhyme. I feel like this is going to be a lost cause. The only thing it tells me is that she misses her mother.

She’d know what to do,
my mom writes.

I never knew my grandparents. They had Liz in their late twenties but Mom didn’t come along until they were much older in their years. Both of them had passed, one shortly after the other when I wasn’t even out of diapers yet. I was too young to remember either of them.

My thoughts turn to Finn’s grandmother as I remember my own. I worry over what might be happening with Geneva’s house and how maybe I can help her, if she’ll let me. Better yet, if Finn will let me.

As my attention turns to Finn, I note how it seems all roads lead to her these days. It’s both frustrating and fascinating at the same time. I’m just not sure how I feel about either.

I stop reading and close my eyes. I’m not going to be able to think straight anymore tonight. I could use a break anyway, so I’m done with my mother’s journals for tonight.

I grab a shower and head downstairs. I convince Betsy it’s a good idea to let me raid the refrigerator. When I’m done scarfing down some leftovers from dinner, I sit outside on the front porch of the B&B and try not to think too much about some of the crazy tendencies my mother was showing even before I was born.

I’m freezing but I embrace it. I let the cold air fill me up and make me forget about my mother and father for a while. I don’t wonder who was right and who was wrong or who lost their mind and who was abusive. I just exist on that step out in front of the Camilla Rose and I don’t let my chest pang for a while.

I know it won’t last long, but for now, I enjoy the empty thoughts.

By the time I head upstairs to bed it’s well after midnight. I’m cold and tired but worse than that, I’m mentally exhausted. When I fall into bed, I’m asleep before I hit the pillow. When the sun shines through a gap in the curtains, I have an information hangover. I want to pull the blankets over my head and stay in the dark all day but something else still nags at me in the back of my mind.

Geneva
.

After I’m dressed, I head over to her place in an effort to push the journals and what they reveal out of my head for a while. I want to see if there’s something I can do to help get her house out from under the bank’s thumb. Specifically, Dan’s thumb.

The fact that she’s not home, nor is Finn, makes my plan go smoother than it might have had the two of them been home to stop me. I wander around the yard until I find a shed in the back of the property, then some tools, then a ladder.

I pick the biggest red oak tree first. It’s not much in the way of getting her mortgage paid but it’s better than standing by and watching the place deteriorate even more than it already has at least.

The tree is a good seventy or so feet high and it’s not even full grown. I’m not exactly afraid of heights but the ladder Geneva owns isn’t the best one on the market, so I’m a little apprehensive about climbing all the way to the top.

The ladder legs shake as I make my way up. It’s not the most secure feeling but it busies my mind and about a half hour later I think I’m beginning to get this tree in good shape. I’m also starting to understand why Geneva has never bothered with it before. Most of the higher branches are dead, it’s full of spider webs and I won’t go into the number of flying squirrel encounters I’ve had already. This thing must stand over fifty feet tall. That’s not even as big as it’ll get by the time I’m dead.

I take a break and sit on the top of the ladder when I’m so out of breath I fear I might actually hyperventilate. I haven’t done this since I was a kid.

I lose my balance unexpectedly when I think about my childhood. I grab a hold of the ladder and wait for the wobbling to subside. Then I start to wonder about my mother’s secrets, the ones she hid away in that room back at the house. For the first time since I was little, I find myself wanting to know her better. Or to try to know her, at least.

I think about my father and how she was afraid to tell him about me, according to her journal. I review the list I’ve made of why she might not have wanted him to know and I start to question why they were together in the first place. Did she believe she was a witch before they got together? Did it become an issue?

I ponder the possibility of my father believing Mom was a witch and then Finn enters my mind.

Finn,
who says and does things that would lead anyone visiting Salem to believe maybe she might be a witch herself. Or a psychic.
Something
. Although, she’s certainly not like the rest of the people in Salem who advertise themselves like they’re on an infomercial or something.

No, not Finn. I don’t get the impression she wants anyone to know at all.

I stop to laugh at myself for even thinking it.

There’s no way she’s either. They don’t really exist.

Then I stop and wonder, does
Finn
think Finn is a witch? A psychic maybe?

I stand to get back to work at that thought. As I clip more branches away, comparisons between Finn and my mother cross my mind. I smile at the idea of Mom being anything like Finn at some point in her life-fun, outgoing,
a smart ass
. When the thought hits me, I pause. Does that mean Finn will end up like Mom some day? If it turns out she does think she has some sort of supernatural powers, will Finn go insane too?

I don’t like where this is going all of a sudden, so I stop letting myself make comparisons.

I’m struggling to reach some branches, attempting to clip this one... last... splint before I have to move the ladder again, when speak of the devil, I hear Finn and Geneva talking. I look to see where they are and find them huddled at the back door.

They’re staring at me with confusion spread across their faces, and they’re talking to each other in hushed tones. I stretch to see them better and try to listen in but fail.

After a few minutes, Geneva disappears into the house and Finn walks out into the yard, toward where I’m struggling with tree branches. I watch her until she stops, right at the foot of the ladder.

She squints up at me.

“Ya missed some.”

“It’s not nice to bark out orders you know,” I tell her, going back to what I was doing with a grin spreading across my face.

I feel the ladder move and I can see her climbing up the other side of it from my periphery. When she’s at the top, she just stands there, so close I can smell her shampoo. It makes me want to nuzzle my nose into her neck and explore what body wash she might have used as well.

I stop what I’m doing to look down at her.

“What are you doing?” she asks with the sound of amusement in her voice.

I shrug, pulling that last branch down and dropping it. “Trying for a little bit of sincerity I guess.”

She’s quiet after I say it.

I avoid her eyes but I know they’re watching me. I feel like she sees right inside my head and it makes me itchy. Not that I don’t want her to know what I’m thinking. There are things I want to say but I don’t have a clue how to say them. Never has a woman had me this tangled up inside and I don’t know what to do with that epiphany.

“Coop?” she says, like she’s trying to save me from my own thoughts. I meet her eyes again, forgetting the mess in Geneva’s tree.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

I dip my brow at her. “For?”

She smiles. “Of course you don’t know what for,” she tells me, then reaches up and kisses me soft on the lips. It’s not a long kiss or even a passionate kiss. But it’s warm and welcoming. And it’s Finn, being Finn.

Her eyes hold mine for a few seconds. When she’s done, she climbs back down the ladder and disappears into the house.

A couple hours later, when I’ve gotten the trees looking like trees and the bushes, well, a little better looking, I put everything away that I’ve dragged out and I bundle the yard waste. Then I haul it all out to the curb.

I’m about to leave when Finn steps out into the sun again.

And she has food.

Bless this woman.

“You’re not leaving are you?”

I can smell the steak on that sandwich she’s brought me and it’s a no-brainer.

“Hell no.”

The way she bites her lip is killing me and, with a grin I want to devour, she nods over to where we can sit and eat. She’s definitely going to kill me.

Through lunch, we slide back into easy conversation with each other and anything that may have been construed as offensive the day before is forgotten. I try not to be obvious when I eye her legs as she crosses them or her lips when she licks them.

Sort of.

I’m certain it’s evident, what I’m doing, but she doesn’t say anything.

When we’re done eating, she picks up our dishes and I pick up her cell phone.

“What are you doing?” She’s not irritated, she’s amused.

“I’m making sure your number is in my phone.”

Finn laughs quietly and shakes her head. When I’m done, I start helping with the cleanup. It keeps my hands busy and away from Finn’s body, which I’m thinking for now is a good thing.

“So did you start looking over your mother’s journals?” Finn wants to know.

“Yeah, I did. I mean, it’s kinda hard to tell what the hell she’s saying half the time, but yeah.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I look for words that won’t sound too offensive. “She talks in riddles most of the time and the other times . . .”

When I trail off, Finn stops and gives me her full attention.

“What, Coop?”

“I don’t know. Look, what the hell do I know anyway, right?”

I pick the tray up and start to take it back inside for her. I know what’s coming even before Finn speaks again. And I’m kind of glad for it, honestly.

“Do you want some help? I’d be more than happy to-”

“That’d be great. Thanks.”

I smile, grateful, but I also feel like a complete dolt for the way I’m acting. Like some kid that can’t handle a trip to the principal’s office on his own.