Page 12 of Big Witch Energy

“When does your contractor get here for your meeting?” Caroline asked pointedly. Riley only chuckled into her coffee.

“If you don’t want to talk about Ben, we don’t have to talk about him,” Alice told Caroline. “But maybe it would help you process your emotions a little bit before you scrub the finish off of this very old bar.”

Caroline glanced down at the scarred old oak bar top, shiny with steaming-hot water from Caroline’s third wipe down of the morning. Caroline tossed her cleaning rag into the nearby bar sink.

“It’s normal to be upset, seeing someone that used to mean a lot to you, after a long separation,” Riley told her quietly.

“I’m not upset, exactly, it just brings up a lot of feelings that I thought were settled,” Caroline said. “Ben and I were high school sweethearts, childhood sweethearts, really. And it was before…”

Before she’d accepted that her college plans were never going to happen, that she would spend her entire life on this tiny patch of land because…well, the Wiltons had never really understood why. They just called it “the curse.” Any Wilton who stepped off the island for more than a day—exactly twenty-four hours—would suffer some violent, often humiliating death. The number of relatives Caroline had lost to being hit by a mainland taxi was just not mathematically feasible. Great-uncle Louis who hung all the Guinness posters in the bar? He’d died when Caroline was five, having left the island to finally see his beloved Tigers play. He managed to make it thirty whole hours before he missed the boarding ramp for the ferry, bumped his head, and drowned on the return trip. Caroline herself was almost hit by a campus bus when she’d dared to travel to Lansing for an admissions interview, ending her college aspirations very quickly.

“I realized we were never going to work long-term,” Caroline said. “He was so smart, he actually graduated high school almost two years early, working at his own pace at the island school. He had all these scholarships… He had his big life plans, and I wanted him to have that. I wanted him to be happy, to have the whole world out there as an option. I tried to be all stoic and selfless about it, but yeah, it hurt that he was able to go out and live his life so easily. He came back those first few years, every holiday, but seeing each other was just too hard, you know? So, he stopped, and…I moved along to my casual but discreet dalliances with tourists.”

It wasn’t a pattern of behavior she was ashamed of, and it had helped her cope. She’d told Ben he needed to go away to school. But a tiny part of her that she didn’t want to admit existed hoped that he would find a way not to leave her. On one hand, she couldn’t blame Ben for abandoning her. It wasn’t like there was a college on Starfall. On the other, knowing that he was out there in the world, living his life, it hurt. She’d avoided social media because she didn’t want to see his life. She knew he’d gotten married young, had kids. Oh, the idea of seeing him happy was chilling to her, and that probably made her selfish; she was willing to accept that. And so, she’d replaced him with a series of men that didn’t matter, because when she pushed them away, it didn’t hurt.

“They’re not nearly as discreet as you think they are,” Caroline’s mother told her as she passed by with a tray full of turkey melts—fancied up with sweet potato fries and a canned cheese sauce Gert doctored with five-spice powder and candied jalapeños.

Gert’s creped arms bulged under the heavy burden. Her iron-gray hair was swept back from a face that was pale and drawn into tired lines. Dark circles stood out under her wide brown eyes. Thin lips that Gert had once carefully enhanced with carmine-red Elizabeth Arden lipstick were chapped and bitten.

Sadness and fear gripped Caroline’s heart with twin fists. She had the most unsettling feeling that she was looking into her own future, working herself to the bone for a family that couldn’t stir itself to recognize her effort. The inevitably of it all, the weight of it, seemed to chase Caroline through her dreams at night, leaving her more exhausted when she woke.

She shook off the useless woolgathering and ran around the bar after her mother. “Let me take that, Mom.”

“No, no, I’ve got it,” Gert sighed. Caroline could smell cigarette smoke on her breath, a sign that her mom was having a worse day than usual. “But if you could find time in your busy chatting schedule to go check on the fryer before the fries burn, I’d appreciate it.”

Oof, score one for Mom in the Great Maternal Passive-Aggressive Comment Roundup, in which “Gert Wilton” was permanently inscribed on the Eternal and Universal Grand Champion Cup.

Feeling like a chastised teenager, Caroline shot Riley and Alice an apologetic look before she backed into the tiny kitchen, retrofitted for commercial service in the ancient building. The food smelled good, and the space would pass a health inspection, but Caroline cringed internally at the dingy cutting boards, crumby counters, and general disarray. She was grateful that the swinging kitchen doors kept her friends and customers from seeing the mess.

She watched the bubbling fryer as instructed, but also eyeballed the employee roster near the back door. As she suspected, her brother, Will—yes, really, Will Wilton—was scheduled to work the lunch shift that day, but simply hadn’t shown up. After all, it was Tuesday, and Will couldn’t be expected to sacrifice his Tuesday—or Wednesday or Thursday or most days ending in Y—to something as inconvenient as showing up to work. After all, his twin brother, Wally—yes, again, really—only showed up for every other shift on his own schedule. Why should Will have to do more than that?

“Thanks for not setting the place on fire, I suppose,” Gert muttered as she carried the empty tray into the kitchen. “I heard you out there, talking about the Hoult boy.”

“He’s, like, forty,” Caroline noted. “And a doctor. Hardly a boy.”

“But, either way, out of your league,” Gert told her. “He’s got a job and two kids to take care of, and he doesn’t need you and your ‘casual dalliances’ making things messier for him.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Caroline said, smiling with a sweetness she didn’t feel.

“I’m just saying, even if Ben is…comfortable…for you”—Gert said carefully as she dipped another basket of sweet potato fries into the bubbling oil—“you’re not at a place in your life where you could be a good influence on those kids.”

Hurt had her changing the subject. Caroline didn’t need her mother’s dissertation on what she was and wasn’t capable of. And right now, she didn’t know what to do in terms of Ben. Conversations with him seemed to derail themselves before they even started, and Ben seemed to be by turns uncomfortable around and suspicious of her. Did he really think she was going to just follow him around the island, waiting for the chance to talk to him? She wasn’t some desperate stalker.

Or maybe she was. She did spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about someone who would never truly be part of her life again. It was pointless, and she didn’t want to waste her life on pointless things. So, when her eye landed on a Harp tap on the far counter, she was happy to seize on the chance to change the subject.

“When did we decide to serve Harp?” Caroline asked.

Her mother jerked her shoulders. “The Harp distributor offered me a better deal.”

“Wait, we’re going to serve Harp instead of Guinness?” Caroline replied. Harp was a fine product, but they had some pretty hard-core Guinness drinkers in their clientele, and she doubted they would be very happy about switching brands. Hell, Guinness was a key part of the bar’s décor, if it could be called that. “When did we decide to do that?”

Her mother sniffed. “Well, you know, maybe if you spent less time at Shaddow House with that Denton girl, you would know more about how we run things around here.”

Caroline stared at her mother, mouth agape, as the older woman moved efficiently about the kitchen. Gert had no real room to complain, and Caroline knew that. Caroline still worked her shifts (plus extra) and did her job to the best of her ability, but the bar wasn’t her whole life anymore. Did her mom resent that?

Gert hissed as the fryer oil popped and her hand got hit by a rather sizable splash. Caroline moved quickly toward the freezer to grab the medical ice pack they kept there for just such an occasion. She wrapped it against Gert’s skin with a dish towel and took over the fryer. “Mom, you can’t serve and do the paperwork for this week and cover the kitchen for Will. Why don’t you just call him in?”

“Will has other things going on today, and if he needs help, we help. That’s what family does for each other,” Gert said.

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