The Gilly Salt Sisters (33 page)

She stood alone. Her father had chosen to keep the diner open after all, and though folks recognized her, they didn’t know her well enough to invite her into their huddles. She watched a group of high-school girls about her age giggling over a boy they liked, but when they saw her looking at them, their faces hardened into blank masks, and Dee quickly moved farther around the other side of the fire, thinking how just a few months ago she could have had a part in their plots and girlish plans. She stepped a little closer to the heat of the blaze and let herself, for a brief moment, regret her mother’s death and wonder what she would have made of this celebration, but before Dee could wallow too much in her
own loss, she felt a hand grab her shoulder, and she knew that Whit had found her, as they’d planned.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, “before people realize I’m here.” Dee almost didn’t recognize him herself. He was wearing a watch cap like many of the other men, a dark parka, and jeans. He looked so uncomfortable that she almost burst out laughing, but then her stomach twisted at the thought of the effort he’d made to join her. She wondered where the clothes had come from but decided not to ask. With Whit it was better not to know the little details of the bigger situation.

He let her slip her arm around his waist once they were far enough away from the fire and hidden by shadows. If anyone was looking, Dee thought, they could have been any couple. All anyone would have seen was their posture of togetherness and none of the things that actually kept them separated: their different stations in life, his marriage, their ages. They skirted the edge of the green without speaking and then sauntered to the bottom of Plover Hill and the pear tree, safe in the darkness. Every now and then, a stray spark floated above them, flaring brightly at first and then fading into a white fleck of useless ash. Without preamble Whit leaned Dee up against the trunk and starting unbuttoning her pants.

“Open your legs a little more.” His voice was a hot buzz in her ear, and for a minute it sounded to her like he was asking her to open her heart, so she inched up on her toes and let him lift her thigh.

“Wait.” She tried to shift his hand out from under her leg, but things were too far gone between them, and he took her movement as an invitation to close the deal. It wasn’t unpleasant either, even if the pear tree’s bark did rub her ass an unholy pink, a fact Whit couldn’t see in the dark but one he probably would have appreciated. He liked tangible results, Dee was learning, whether it was a love rash down her neck or a toothy bruise tattooing her soft stomach. She could imagine him wanting to notch his initials into her skin the way people carved the bark of the old pear
tree, nicking a crude heart around the letters and sticking them through with an arrow. The sick thing is, she probably would have let him.

She was starting to wonder if maybe she was in a bit over her head. She leaned back against the pear tree’s trunk while Whit did up his trousers, and she closed her eyes, picturing herself driving Claire’s little sports car, hands all buckled up in expensive leather gloves, hair tied inside a giant silk scarf, just like some old-time movie actress. Claire never wore a scarf that way, but if Dee had a flaming head of hair like Claire’s, she wouldn’t either.

“You still haven’t told anyone, have you?” Whit’s voice smacked her like a splintery paddle breaking up still water. Dee opened her eyes and pulled her shirt closed. In the moonlight the line of Whit’s jaw was as hard as the wood behind her back, maybe harder.

“No.”
Really
, she wanted to ask,
who would I tell?
Whit Turner might have been richer, older, and a heap and a half more educated than she was, but he was still a man, and like all men, in Dee’s opinion, he still thought with his prick.

“Good.” He leaned in close and pressed his full lips against the bottom of her throat. “I have something special for you,” he said.

They didn’t have much more time, Dee knew. She was supposed to rush back and help her father at the diner. Whit opened her hand and put something into it, and when Dee looked down, she saw a tarnished silver locket in the shape of a heart. She turned it over. On the back, in florid script, was a single
W
.

“So you don’t forget me.” Whit grinned.

Dee frowned. Compared to the other things he’d dangled in front of her over the past few weeks, this trinket looked shabby, like something one of those high-school boys back in Vermont would have presented to her, convinced it was as precious as all the tea in China. On the other hand, none of them had actually given her jewelry before. She should take what she could get, Dee thought. She let Whit fasten the chain around her neck.

“Don’t make that face,” he said, putting a finger under her
chin. “This locket has been around longer than you have, and I just happened to find it again the other day. It means something to me. If I catch you without it”—his expression turned naughty—“I’m going to have to spank you. Although”—he turned serious again—“maybe you should tuck it under your uniform during the day. I wouldn’t want Claire seeing this.” That made Dee giggle, but Whit didn’t laugh with her. He pressed the locket into her chest, hard. “I’m not kidding,” he said. “Don’t lose this. It’s old.”

Dee shrugged. Honestly, she wasn’t interested in the old with Whit. She wanted the new. “I thought this night was supposed to be about the future,” she said with a pout. Immediately she realized she’d said something wrong.

Whit’s face closed up like a fist. “Who told you that?”

She swallowed and pushed a stray piece of hair away from her face. She was starting to shiver. “I heard about it from Mr. Weatherly,” she said vaguely. “About how the Gillys used to burn salt to predict everyone’s futures…” She trailed off into silence, the secret of the babies Claire hadn’t been able to carry a clumsy burden on her tongue. Whit waited for her to finish. “And now they don’t,” she said lamely.

Whit stepped away from her so she couldn’t see his face. When he spoke, his voice cracked. “You know nothing about my past, Dee.”

And then he was gone, melted right into the night. Except not exactly. Turns out he wasn’t as tricky as all that. There was the rustle of his footsteps through the snow for one thing, heading back up the hill to Claire, and the faint glow of his bare hands under the moon. And his scent, peeling away from Dee in long, slow strips like the pieces of paper she’d unwrap off a present she good and sure wanted to make last.

She brushed off her jeans and set to walking the long way back to Bank Street, unwilling to give up the serenity of the night for the harsh lights of the diner. She took slower and slower steps, but in spite of herself she was there before she knew it, facing the slanty windows, the crooked door, and, worst of all, the silhouette
of her father, hovering behind the counter like a battle flag hoisted for a fight Dee knew she didn’t have a prayer of winning.

W
eeks after the bonfire, she started craving cashews. She began carrying bags of them with her everywhere she went, her pockets bulging like the cheeks of a squirrel.

“What’s with all the nuts?” Cutt asked as she crunched yet another one of the curved kernels between her teeth at the diner’s counter. She’d eaten so many cashews in the past week that her tongue was coated with a strange white scum she couldn’t brush off in the mornings.

She shrugged. “Nothing. I just like them.”

“Since when? I thought your favorite thing was a burger and fries.”

“I’m still eating the burger and fries,” she pointed out. “It’s just that now I’m also eating cashews.”

Cutt squinted at her. “You have circles under your eyes.”

Dee tucked her arms around her chest. Her breasts ached, and she was crabby. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“And what’s with the ratty clothes? Did you lose an argument with a mower?”

She stared down at her faded gray corduroy pants and the navy blue sweater with a hole in one elbow. “They’re clean.”

Cutt snorted. “They look like they’ve been
used
to clean. Go put on your uniform. It’s hanging in the utility closet.” While she was fetching her work clothes Dee closed her eyes, and Whit’s serious, square jaw swam into view, followed by the memory of the fleshy pockets of his palms, the hollow at the bottom of his neck, and the broad ripple of muscle that was his back. There was a spot in between his ribs where, if Dee held her palm, she could feel his heart beating. Since the bonfire they’d still been meeting, but he’d talked even less than usual, and he hadn’t given her anything since the locket. The floor seemed to lurch slightly under her, and she let out a little burp, remembering she was supposed
to go change clothes. Her father was waiting for her with the mop when she came back.

“You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?” he asked, peering at her with suspicion. Beads of sweat broke out on Dee’s forehead. Whit had warned her about a thousand and one times that she’d better not let a soul know what they were up to—especially not her father, he’d said, pressing the hard tips of his fingers into the soft upper chunks of her arms. When he’d pulled his hands away, he’d left little dents. At the time Dee had liked it, but now she wished she could get rid of the feeling. She was starting to suspect that once bestowed, Whit’s gifts weren’t so easily disposed of, and she hadn’t thought to worry about that. It had never occurred to her that he might give her something he wouldn’t be willing to take back.

“Nope,” she said, grabbing the mop and avoiding her father’s eyes. “No boys. I’m over boys for good.” That was true. Whit was all man.

“Fine, then,” Cutt said, turning away from her. “I don’t know what guys would want with you anyway. You’re not really the kind of girl they’d marry, Dee.”

She reached for another cashew and crunched it. Given the fact that she was pregnant with Whit’s child, wedlock was turning out to be more problematic for her than Cutt would even begin to guess.

C
laire first heard about Jo’s money problems through Whit, and although the thought of the marsh falling into ruin didn’t bother her in the least, her concern for Jo caught her off guard.

“But where will she go?” she asked when Whit informed her that Jo had three months left on the farm—four at the most. Jo wasn’t young anymore. Not old, certainly—only in her late thirties—but not exactly young either. Who would ever hire her? Especially since all she knew was salt.

“That’s not my problem,” Whit said. “She should have taken me up on my earlier offers. I said she could stay if she would only sell me the land, but she practically spit in my face.”

Claire narrowed her eyes. “When was this?” She knew that Ida had tried to buy the farm, of course, and she knew that Whit had had his eye on the place for years, but she’d been unaware that he’d had any contact with Jo since Mama’s funeral.

Whit waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter.”

Claire pouted. “I don’t want anything to do with that place. I married you to get away from it!” As soon as the words were out, she regretted them.

Whit’s gaze solidified, and he bit down on
his
words. “And I married
you
to get my hands on it.”

Claire paled. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on,” Whit snarled. “Don’t be so naïve. You don’t really think I married into your family out of love, do you? No. I admit, I thought you were pretty and we’ve had some fun, but I married you for your half of the marsh. Only your fool mother put the brakes on that when she rewrote her will.”

Claire put a hand up to her throat. “What do you mean?” she croaked.

“Jo’s not the only one with money worries, Claire. Ever since I came home after college, I’ve been trying to turn the family holdings around, but the property business has been hard going these past few years.”

Claire thought about the empty space on the wall where Armistead Turner’s portrait used to be, and the missing set of plates, and Ida’s vanished diamond necklace. She swallowed and listened as Whit continued.

“Mother always said that if she could only own the salt, it would cancel out her debts.” His eyes glittered.