Page 26 of The Witch’s Orchard

“She came here as a teenager. They often do. She and her friends showed up at my door one night asking about silly things that young people pay heed to. Mandy was poor, she said, couldn’t pay me.

She was saving her money for college books.

Odette said she was going to school on a big scholarship and Mandy blushed pink as a petunia.

They were kinda poking fun, but good-natured.

I told her nothing comes for free and she said okay.

But then, you know what she did? She came back the next day and said she’d noticed my house needed dusting and, if she cleaned it, would I do her cards. ”

“Did you?”

“Sure enough.”

“You said Odette was there? You mean Odette Hoyle? Tommy’s little sister?’

“That’s right,” she says. “The very same. Odette came often enough, poor thing, before she died. And she’s the one who first brought Mandy.”

Susan looks away from me for a moment and then back, a deep sadness in her eyes. Sadness, I assume, that follows Mandy around.

“Did Mandy come a lot?” I ask.

“Not regular or anything but, a lot of times, when she was at the end of her tether. That happens a lot. No therapists around here, you know. No psychologist to sit you down on a sofa and listen to your woes, write you a prescription for Xanax. They come to me, tell me about their worst day, and ask when it’s gonna get better.

But, for some of them, it never does. Never will.

All I can do is advise the best I can. Help where I can. ”

“Sounds like it’s as hard on you as it is on them.”

She shrugs.

“Did Kathleen Jacobs ever visit? Olivia’s mother?”

Susan rolls her eyes and says, “Hell, no. Those Jacobses are too churchy for all this.” She waves her hands to acknowledge the interior of the small, shabby cabin and all that it contains, including us.

“I’m guessing Bob and Rebecca Ziegler would also be considered ‘too churchy’?”

“Well, almost,” she says, giving me a knowing eye. “I opened my door one morning stunned as anything to see Rebecca Ziegler standing there. Good Lord, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather.”

“What did she want?”

“Well, that’s the thing. I invited her in and offered her some tea and sat her down.

Same as anyone—I’m never going to turn away a woman in need, am I?

And then I waited for her to say something—which I could tell she wanted to do—you know, ask me for a reading or for advice or for medicine.

Some women come up here wanting birth control, off the record.

And some want the opposite. Well, I waited and waited, but then suddenly Rebecca just stood up and said coming here was a mistake and she turned around and walked out. ”

“And that was it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You never found out what she wanted?”

“No, and I wish like anything I had. I’ve seen her around town over the years and she’s never spoken to me once.”

“What about Deena Drake? Do you know her?”

“Up on the mountain? Sure. I pay her for the rose hips I collect on her land.”

“Rose hips?”

“I make tea and oil, sell it at farmers markets. Rosa Rugosa is my favorite to use but it won’t grow down here.

Too dark under the canopy and too cluttered up with mountain laurel.

Deena Drake grows some of the best roses in the state, and she knows it.

Every year, I hoof it up the mountain after the first soft frost and take those rose hips. ”

“And she knows about it?”

“She better. I pay her a decent enough wad of cash for it. Don’t let that miss-priss attitude fool you.

The woman knows her plants and she knows how to drive a bargain.

But is this really what you want to know about?

Herbal remedies and where to procure them?

Ain’t you here for some more pressing reason? ”

“Molly Andrews,” I say.

“That’s right,” she says. “Poor little lamb. You know her brother came to me.”

“Max? He wanted his fortune told?”

“Yes. About one year back.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“I told him what I saw. That he would find help. A warrior from another mountain would put his heart to rest, put an end to his suffering.”

I snort at the hokeyness, the vague imagery.

“Well, you’re here, ain’t ya?”

My mouth opens and then snaps shut again, and Susan gives me a sardonic look.

She gets up, goes into the other room. I hear the opening and closing of a drawer and then she comes back. She puts a battered tin box on the table between us and clears away the plates. The box has the imprint of a queen of hearts on the lid.

Susan opens the box and takes out a set of grungy playing cards. The backs feature art nouveau daffodils, the green and white set against a deep red field, all made darker by years of use.

“My daddy served in World War Two. Brought these back,” she says, shuffling the cards. “From England.”

“They’re very pretty,” I say.

She nods, puts the cards down in front of me, taps them with the hard end of her first finger, says, “Shuffle ’em.”

I laugh.

Susan clears her throat once and says, “You came here. You asked me questions. You ate my food. Now I offer you a reading for free, you know what you do? You do the polite thing. You shuffle the cards and you get your reading and you say, ‘Thank you, Miss Susan.’”

I let out a long breath through my nose and take the cards. I shuffle them in a low bridge, but they’re so fragile-feeling that I change to overhand instead and just mix up choppy piles. I look across the table and find Susan watching my hands.

“Where did you learn to read cards?” I ask.

“Don’t really know. I don’t read ’em like you’re supposed to, probably. They just help me focus. That’s enough.”

I set the cards in the middle of the table and Susan picks them up and then deals four cards, face down, in a line between us.

“This,” she says, tapping the card on her farthest left and moving right, “is where you came from. This is where you are now. This one is where you are going, and this”—she taps the last card, set a little aside—“is who you are.”

“Okay,” I say.

She flips the first card, my past. It’s the five of diamonds, and she nods at the card like it’s the one she was expecting. “You came out of hardship. A darkness and a struggle. You still carry the weight of it.”

She flips the next card, my present. It’s the five of hearts. She makes a Hhm sound, deep in her throat, and says, “You are grieving. You played a game and you lost and now you are injured. It’s… This is because of Molly. This is Molly’s card.”

She runs a thumb over the grimy red heart in the center and shakes her head. “You lost Molly and now your heart is angry, you want to fight, but there is nothing to fight. Not yet.”

She glances up at me, and I meet her eyes and realize my face is set, hard, tense. I’m frowning at what she’s saying, the hard thump of my heart, the sweat on my palms.

“Go on,” I say.

She flips the next card, my future. It’s the five of clubs. Now Susan tilts her head to the side, staring at it. She laughs silently, her shoulders bouncing once and then settling.

“It will not get easier,” she says. “Forces are working against you. You will struggle. You will struggle and you will fight. There is darkness.”

She closes her eyes and raises one hand to touch the crown of her head. Her eyelids flutter and she says, “A betrayal. And… anger. Sadness. Deep sadness.”

She takes her hand from her head and opens her eyes as if waking from a dream.

I’ve seen psychics on street corners all over the world.

I know how it works. I know that they trade in vagaries and happenstance.

I know that we remember what we want to remember, that we all just want to believe we’re being watched over, that we want a shortcut to answers and so, when all is said and done, we recollect the hits and forget the misses.

I know all this. And yet I can’t stop my heart from pounding as she puts her finger on the last card. Turns it. It’s the jack of spades. A blond man, looking to the right, holds a curly staff, maybe a halberd. It’s too smudged to tell.

“As I told Max,” she says. “The warrior. You are governed by what you feel is right in your heart and you use your sharp tongue like a weapon though it opens no doors for you. You are not big or strong and, sometimes, you are reckless. But you will fight like a dog for the truth.”

She taps the card and says, “But, listen now, one day this fighting may get you killed.”

I meet her eyes, so dark and shiny I can’t tell pupil from iris, and I ask, “Susan, where do you think Jessica Hoyle is?”

“Not dead,” she says. “I feel certain of it.”

“Who do you think took those girls? Why leave an applehead doll in their place?”

“I don’t know,” Susan answers. “I wish I did. Only thing I have is a feeling. A feeling of desperate, desperate longing.”

“Whose longing?” I ask.

She shakes her head and says, “I wish I knew, I really do. All I know is, when I think about those girls—now just Jessica—what I feel is desperation.”

I sit back in my chair, hands folded in my lap, and watch as Susan gathers the cards, shuffles them, stacks them, and slides them back into the box.

The rain hammers the cabin and the chickens peck outside and somewhere, likely in this town, Jessica Hoyle is waiting for me.

And, because of this woman and her little spread of cards, I feel more like I can find her.

I let out a deep breath and say, “Thank you, Miss Susan.”