I pushed the letter back into the bottle, re-corked it, and tossed it into the fog.
The tide pulled back, grabbing my ugly message with foamy white fingers.
As if she had been thirsting for it, my secret drifted in her deep waters. She craved only my dreadful evil. The letter after the last full moon hadn’t been enough. The ocean was never satisfied, craving each and every new moon, too. Every end and every new beginning.
My love for the sea was an unrequited, toxic sort of love.
She took and took, I gave and gave, and my love for her remained. But I still held on to the day she stopped taking, or until the day she’d take me completely.
“Adora,” Fable’s sing-song voice called out, penetrating the seams of the salty breeze. I clutched the chain around my neck. The lightness of this spare moment alone was gone. “Everything all right?”
Fawn hair whipped around my younger sister’s face and shoulders as she stood atop the porch balcony. Her freckle-dusted cheekbones shone down at me like dawn stars, yet a heaviness hung under her eyes. “Come inside. Dad made breakfast.”
A mid-morning snowfalltickled the floor-to-ceiling windows at the back of the cottage. If one listened closely, the almost-muted sound was like a soft thumping. Rhythmic. A melody that was beautiful and belonged in a song and not in Weeping Hollow.
Dad made crepes from scratch. A variety of jams and jellies covered the kitchen island, each jar with a gingham lid.
Ivy sat at the breakfast nook, surrounded by embroidered, hand-stitched pillows. She was tying knots in ropes for fishermen for when they could ship back out to sea again.
My older sister depicted a stormy night. Black hair parted down the middle of her full-moon face, and navy edges struck her pale-blue eyes. But this morning, after many sleepless nights, she sat dazed in the kitchen, her fingers working on frayed ropes with robotic fingers.
I sat on a barstool at the island beside Fable, and Dad slid a jar across the island. “I picked up your favorite. Hazelnut peanut butter.”
I caught the jar in my palm, and Adeline’s face instantly took shape in my mind.“It’s impossible,” she mumbles with a mouthful, catching crumbs falling out of her mouth, but it sounds more like ih ipaw-ih-ble. A plate of crackers coated with peanut butter sits between us on the floor, challenging each other to eat six of them in under a minute. We’re giggling in the middle of the night. With ten seconds left, we shove two more crackers into our mouths. When the alarm sounds, we fall onto our sides, our faces and fingers sticky, laughing so hard our laughter turns silent, mouths agape, saltine sludge sliding out, and we can’t breathe.
The blaze from the fire crackling in the stone fireplace behind me licked the nape of my neck, pulling me back.
I lifted my eyes, catching Dad watching me as I traded the peanut butter for the jelly. “I thought Mrs. Cantini wiped out all that was left,” I said, spreading the jelly onto a crepe.
“Viola sure did,” Dad rushed to say, pacing the kitchen with flour caking his forearms and dishes clinking together in his hands. “I had an early start this morning. The Shadows took her handyman, Tim. So, I was over at her property to help fix a broken railing.” Dad swiped a dish towel from the edge of the sink and dotted his forehead, not looking at me. “Then I’m walking up our porch steps just as Mrs. Madder spotted me. Perfect timing, as always. I had to board up her windows.” A groan. “Don’t get me wrong, I adore Mrs. Madder, but that woman drives me nuts.”
Of the three of us, I looked the most like our father. We both had blond hair, though his was graying on the sides, and green eyes. When he smiled, wrinkles fanned around the edges, but the days of Dad smiling were few and far between.
As it was, youthful skin ran on my maternal side. Mom once said it was because of the ocean, and that her waters would keep us young and beautiful forever.
“Viola knows how much my girls love jellies with their pastries in the morning. And you, Adora, with the peanut butter. It was the least she could do.” He’d said it as if he rehearsed what Viola had told him. From her lips to his ears, then ours. But if they’d paid attention, they’d know I hadn’t had peanut butter in over twelve years.
As Dad rambled, Fable faced me with humility shining in her eyes. Freckles splattered her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose, and they moved as she fought back a doubtful smile. One that also recognized Dad’s strange behavior.
I followed Fable’s gaze to Ivy sitting in the corner of the kitchen, and for a moment, we all exchanged knowing glances.
Sometimes in moments like these, it reminded me of when we were kids—before Mom left—when all five of us were together in this kitchen. A time when the Curse of the Hollow Heathens remained, and their remnant shadows weren’t haunting the streets of the town. A time before the Panic and piles of unpaid dues. A time before Kane took Mom away. A time before a Heathen took Adeline away.
Dad leaned over the island and shoved a fork-full into his mouth. “What?”
“Oh, nothing,” Fable sang, sliding one of my magazines closer to her from the end of the island. A vintage December 1949 Vogue issue from my collection. It had been sitting on the island from the night before. I’d been working on Viola’s dress and needed inspiration.
Dad stabbed his fork into another buttery layer. “I ran out of wood on Mrs. Madder’s windows. I have to go back into town for more and start on ours. That is if there’s any wood left.”
The boards weren’t there to protect us from the Shadows because the Shadows didn’t come from anywhere. They just appeared. The boards were needed to stop those on the west side from breaking in and stealing food or money. Sometimes both. Anything they could get their filthy hands on.
“Adora,” he pointed his fork at me, “could you close your shop an hour early? We must be at the Pruitt’s by one and home before nightfall.”
“Close early?” I was already closing early, with nightfall coming at three in the afternoon. “No. There’s still so much that needs to get done with barely any time left. There’s no way I can leave early.”
The Founder’s Day Ball was only six weeks away, and I was already behind. Most women in Weeping Hollow paid their deposits a year ago, the day after the last ball, expecting me to have finished their dresses by this time. Their pantry may be empty, windows not boarded, empty batteries in their flashlights. However, they would still pay me what was due for the ball, the most prestigious event of the year. And we needed money. I had a responsibility to uphold, regardless of the Panic.
Which had me worried. How much longer could we go on with a reduced income? Dad was unable to fish, the docks were closed, and the entire town was suffering while slowly dying off one by one.
