The Gilly Salt Sisters (27 page)

At the time Jo had just chalked his behavior up to the ramblings of a lonely old man, but the penny was falling through the slot for her now, and she was starting to see that maybe Father Flynn was cagier than she gave him credit for. He must have been plotting how to bring Ethan Stone home, Jo realized. Not that it would do to let Whit know that. She worked her tongue along the roof of her mouth. “I wish I could take credit,” she said, staring into his eyes, “but the Lord’s work is beyond me.”

Whit didn’t blink, and Jo remembered that about him, how he’d always won every staring contest they’d ever had, every card game, and always, without fail, all the best marbles. “But you knew.”

She looked down at her boots. “Yes,” she admitted. “I guess I did.”

Whit extracted a pair of gloves from the inner pocket of his jacket and began pulling them on, and Jo saw how the skin on the backs of his hands was still flecked with faint freckles, the way hers used to be. She wondered what Ethan Stone was going to look like after all this time. He’d come back to Prospect only once for his mother’s funeral, but that was ten years ago, and he’d been so swamped with grief he hadn’t been quite himself. When his father died, he’d stayed away, and no one blamed him for that, given the man’s foul temperament. Merrett always seemed to have had one foot planted in the great beyond anyway.

Whit’s lips curled into a sneer. He leaned forward, and Jo caught a whiff of his cologne—a curious aroma that reminded her of wet ink. He glanced around the dusty barn at her pitiful heaps of salt. “Doesn’t look like you’re doing too well,” he said.

Jo didn’t reply, just tipped her chin higher.

“You know,” Whit continued, folding his fingers, his gloves sodden now, “nothing’s changed. Let me take this place off your hands. You’re just fighting a losing battle out here, Jo.”

This was true. Claire’s insinuations and rumors about the salt had shriveled almost all of Jo’s customary accounts over the years. To make a sale, she was having to drive farther and farther away—not always a certain endeavor in her truck. In fact, if it weren’t for the likes of Chet Stone and the rest of the fishermen’s steady business, she thought, she might have had no choice but to take Whit’s money.

In the beginning the drop in business had been bearable, but then Claire had gone and done the worst thing imaginable. She’d banned the salt from the December’s Eve bonfire. Something about violating a municipal order of burning chemicals in public, the constable told Jo, but she knew it was all just a bunch of puffed-up nonsense. Claire had always hated the whole ritual, and now that she was Mrs. Whittington Turner, she’d decided she was free to live without it, the rest of Prospect be damned.

“But what will you tell the townspeople?” Jo had asked the
constable as he’d stood shuffling his shiny black boots on her porch, cradling his hat in his beefy hands. “How are you going to break the news that this year the town won’t have a future?”

He’d just shaken his head. “Guess you’ll just have to keep what you know to yourself this year,” he said, and he didn’t look all the way sorry about it either.

Whit was standing in the doorway of the barn much as the constable had taken possession of her porch, Jo thought—ready to spit bad news in her direction. The thing was, she wasn’t ready to let him. She took a step into the open air, braving the weather.

“What are you still fighting your mother’s battles for?” she said, oddly tempted to reach out and stroke Whit on the cheek even as she scolded him. “When are you finally going to be your own man, Whit? This place isn’t going to help you build up your business again.” She gestured at the ruins of the autumn ponds. “Look at it. It’s a cursed bog. And my sister doesn’t want it either. You should have buried whatever beef your mother had with this land along with her.”
Besides
, she wanted to add,
you’ve already won, and you know it. You took Claire.

Whit slowly buttoned his jacket. Even in the rain, he managed to stay perfectly groomed, and Jo remembered how when they’d split from a day of playing as children, all the muck and mud would have stuck fast to her and he’d be spotless as a dish of baking soda. It had never bothered Jo, though. In fact, she’d been happy to have some visible proof of their friendship worked into the knees and elbows of her clothes. She didn’t know then that some stains don’t wash out.

“Claire wants what I want,” he said. “She’s a Turner. And what we want is to finish the work my mother started. My only regret is that she won’t see it come to light.” He leaned down closer to Jo, and for the first time that day she felt the air’s chill. “But you will,” he said. “I’ll make sure of that.” He dropped his voice almost to a croon. “I know people at Harbor Bank, Jo. You haven’t got too long left out here. I’m coming here friendly. Sell it
to me now for a decent price and we’ll both be happy. If you want to go belly-up, that’s your business. I’ll just wait and buy from the bank. One way or another, this place will be mine.”

Jo watched him walk out into the wet, wandering off to the same spot where he always parked on the lane—the place where he’d waited for Claire before speeding her off into her new future as a Turner. Back then Whit had been all about the future. Jo wondered when he’d gotten so caught up in the past.

It didn’t matter. Claire wasn’t coming back—and Ethan Stone was, and Whit couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Nor would he get his hands on her land. But what if he did? Her stomach clenched. Where would she go?

I
t irked Jo that Whit set foot in the marsh only when he wanted to steal something—the title to the land, the secret of the salt, her sister. Jo never knew what until it was too late. Take the day he’d come to get Claire, for instance.

It had been an early-June evening and lovely, if Jo remembered right, except for the sight of Whit lurking out by the barn. As Jo stumped across the marsh to see what he wanted, a miniature blue butterfly had risen up from the mud and fluttered against her arm. She batted it away. Most people would have said they were pretty, but Jo saw them as a plague. Mama always said they were bad luck, but then Mama thought lots of things were bad luck. Jo neared the barn, but she stopped when she realized that Whit wasn’t standing alone. She caught her breath, trying to understand what she was seeing.

It was Claire, her russet hair pulled back, her bones so delicate they looked like they would buckle in a hard wind, except Jo knew that they were really lined with iron for marrow. Claire seemed to be wrapped in Whit’s canvas jacket. There was a movement between them, a rearrangement of arms and limbs, and Jo’s blood ran cold. Claire and Whit had twined their arms together, she saw, and had tilted their heads to touching—a breathless posture
they couldn’t sustain for long, but they didn’t have to, because before Jo could let herself think twice, she charged toward them to save Claire from making a terrible mistake. Just as she arrived, Whit dislodged one of his hands and put it up to Claire’s flushed cheeks, staring into her eyes. He opened his lips as if to say something, and that’s when Claire spotted her and made an ugly little noise of surprise.

Whit half turned, as if he’d suspected all along that Jo was there, but couldn’t be bothered to face her. He folded Claire into him, tucking her under his arm like a bird to the wing, and then he said the worst thing Jo could imagine: “Meet my future wife.”

Jo waited for Claire to do something—anything. Slap Whit, maybe, or run away, or fall to her knees. But she didn’t. Instead she smiled. Not a large smile, just the corners of her mouth readjusting a little, getting used to her new position in the world, seeing what it was going to feel like to be a Turner. A butterfly landed on the crown of Claire’s head, and though Jo had the urge to brush it away, she didn’t. She’d saved Claire enough, she decided. She took a step backward. Whit’s eyes combed the ruin of her face, a barely concealed expression of disgust on his.

“Claire,” he said, his eyes riveted on Jo. “Go get your things.” Without looking at Jo, Claire scurried off, and Jo waited until she was a little ways across the marsh before she spoke. Even in a whirl of fury, she still had the urge to protect Claire.

“It won’t work,” she said. “You won’t get your hands on our land like this. Gilly women don’t thrive out of the salt.”

Whit took a step toward her. With implacable logic he replied, “Then I suppose it’s lucky for all of us that Claire’s decided to become a Turner.” He smirked. “My mother’s will only stipulated that I couldn’t marry you, Jo. It never said anything about Claire.”

“How are you going to support her?” Jo asked. “Claire thinks you’re richer than Midas, but I know better. What are you going to do when she discovers that the Turner coffers aren’t quite as full as she thought?”

Whit looked bored. “Claire will think she’s in Shangri-la,” he
replied, running his eyes across the marsh. “Especially compared to this place. A girl like her deserves better, and I can give it to her. I can at least do that.”

What could Jo say to that? One way or another, Claire had always meant to leave. If she couldn’t do it with Ethan, then she would take Whit, the only man in town brazen enough to have a Gilly woman. Jo wondered if Claire’s future would be a happy one or if, after a few years of living in Ida’s house and sleeping in her bed, she, too, would start wearing too much makeup, too many jewels, and thinking only of the things she didn’t have.

She tried to imagine Claire rambling around in that big house up on Plover Hill, locked away behind the iron gates, the taste of salt a memory on her lips, but she couldn’t make the picture fit. She sighed. “Claire doesn’t love you,” she said. “And I doubt she ever will.”

Whit’s face slammed shut at that, like a door pushed by the wind. Still, he didn’t like anyone to have the last word. He regarded her with sorrow, and for a moment Jo saw the boy trapped in the glass tank of Whit’s body. “I guess love comes and goes,” he finally said. “Tell Claire I’m waiting for her with the car down the lane. Tell her I won’t wait forever.” And with that he sauntered away, the mud from the marsh darkening the fine soles of his shoes, making the going rough.

C
laire and Whit didn’t waste time on a long engagement. A few weeks after her departure, Claire sent a gold-engraved invitation to the marsh, and Jo peeled back the tissue and linen layers of it, opening cards and envelopes, trying—and failing—to find one scrap of Claire in all of it.

“Look, Mama.” Jo brandished the invitation. Since Claire’s quick departure, Mama’s health had worsened, and she was often in bed. “They’re getting married in St. Agnes. I’d have thought they would have picked something fancier.” But Mama just turned her head and said nothing, so Jo sent the return envelope
back empty of words and filled with salt. Just because she wasn’t planning on attending Claire’s nuptials, that didn’t mean she was going to ignore them. Not hardly. She had a special gift planned for Claire.

The morning of the wedding, Jo snuck out of the marsh and over to the church early, long before the sun was up and long before even Father Flynn would have risen for prayer. She carried, hidden in a burlap sack, a jar of ashes, a pot of paint, and a paintbrush.

It wasn’t hard to pick the lock on the church’s weathered double doors—it was old and just for show, mostly to keep the wind from blowing them apart during storms. A twist with a hairpin, a wrench of the wrist, and the antique lock yielded, clicking open. Jo pulled out the hairpin, stuck it back in her pocket, and stepped into the dark sanctuary.

Even though she knew the dips and hollows of that old floor as well as she knew the mud of the marsh, even though she could have moved down the tiny center aisle with her eyes closed, she walked slowly, first so as not to wake Father Flynn, asleep in the little attached rectory, and second because the white plane of Our Lady’s bare face seemed to float in the dark.

“Hello,” Jo whispered to her, opening the jar of ashes and fishing the paintbrush out of her bag. It pleased Jo that Claire would have to enter St. Agnes again to be married, when Jo knew she hated the place. She hoped the memory of Ethan pained Claire every Sunday from there on out as she knelt next to Whit, but in case it didn’t, Jo had a plan to make it so.