Page 50 of Summer of Salt

“The spirit world is notnothing!”

“I don’t even believe in that stuff, really. It was all Vira’s idea.”

“Cheap tricks and hay,” she amended. “What exactly are you up to?”

“Okay, well, wediduse the Ouija board. But just a little,” I admitted, sitting next to her on the bed.

“Did you learn anything?”

“The person who killed Annabella is a man,” I said.

“It’s always a man,” she said grimly. “Anything else?”

If I wasn’t ready to tell Mary that I knew she was in the barn the night Annabella was murdered, I certainly wasn’t ready to tell my mom. I was suddenly thankful she hadnever fed us a truth serum (that I knew of) and did my best to make my face as neutral as possible.

“That’s all. The spirits were pretty unforthcoming.”

“And the hay?”

“What?”

“Why do you smell like hay, Georgina?”

“Oh.”

“You went back to the barn.”

“Just for a minute.”

“And you found?”

“Nothing at all,” I said. The locket burned in my bureau, announcing my lie, and I was afraid it would set the whole thing on fire. But my mother just nodded to herself.

“Throw those over the cliffs,” she said, getting up, pointing to the bag of feathers. “Or bury them, or burn them, I don’t care.”

“But if they came from Mary, isn’t that a little harsh?”

“If they came from Mary, I’m sure she’ll just go ahead and make more,” she said. She looked tired, strange, worn thin around the edges.

“You don’t think this is like...” I paused. I held up a feather in the hopes that it could convey what I meant without me having to actually say it. That Mary wasn’t the first Fernweh woman to leave feathers on her pillow when she woke up in the morning. That was how it started with Annabella too.

My mother sighed. “If it is,” she began, “then it’s yoursister’s business. And I suppose, for now, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Mom, that’s not helpful at all,” I said.

She kissed the side of my head and let herself out of the room.

“That’s not helpful at all!” I called after her.

She did not come back.

Among the small number of people not avoiding Fernwehs like the plague was Peter, who gladly obliged my request to get rid of the feathers. It felt like something much more illicit than it was, handing him the overstuffed pillowcase and relaying my mother’s instructions to make it disappear.

I’d found him in the backyard, trying his best to sweep rainwater off the porch, and he wrinkled his nose as he peeked inside the case. “Feathers?” he asked.

“It’s sort of a long story.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll take care of it now.”