Page 71 of Witches of Honeysuckle House
Violet would have only been five years older than Florence was now when she penned the letter. She feared her love had cost Tillie her life. If she’d known what the curse would take from her, would she have kept her distance from Tillie the same way Florence had locked her own heart away?
“She lost so much.” Florence’s voice caught in her throat, and she set the pages on the coffee table.
“So have you,” Owen said.
“Both of us,” Florence replied.
“It’s hard to think what my life would’ve looked like if Tillie had survived. If my family hadn’t left Burdock Creek,” Owen said, his eyes searching hers. “Maybe we’d have become friends.”
“I think I would’ve liked that,” she whispered.
Owen set his cup down and leaned forward to fill Florence’s mug then handed it to her gently. She fought back tears at this small gesture of comfort. So few people had offered her moments like these over the past thirteen years. She didn’t quite know how to respond.
“Thank you.” A tear slipped down her cheek. Owen raised a hand to her face as if he was about to brush it away, but he let it drop and reached for his tea instead. They looked at each other for a few more moments, the air around them growing warm. Florence found herself leaning toward him, but when the lights in the room dimmed, she pulled back, quickly, splashing tea over the side of the cup.
They both started to laugh, and Florence shook her head. “Sorry,” she said as she wiped her hands on her sleeves, then put her mind back on the pages in her lap. Her aunt’s grief wouldn’t help her break this curse, but maybe something else in the letter would.
“Violet thought Regina might’ve killed Tillie,” she said. Of anything her aunt had written, that stood out to her the most.
“That surprised me, too,” Owen said. “The report showed Tillie drowned in a bathtub. Could magic do that?”
It had been over a decade since Florence had worked the flame, but she knew her family’s power could be used for bad as well as good. Her mother’s spells were evidence enough. But to take a life? That would require more than a simple candle.
“It could,” Florence said. It was the sort of magic that would have consequences—maybe even the kind that could bring about a curse. “But what about the deaths thirteen years before? And then Regina’sown death thirteen years later?” Florence asked. “Even with Regina trying to tear Violet and Tillie apart, it doesn’t add up.”
Something else in Violet’s retelling of the days leading to Tillie’s death had struck Florence. She set her tea down and flipped through the pages. Then, she started to read. “The night Tillie moved in, Regina accused her of trying to take the house from her the same way her family took the shop from our parents.”
Owen sat up a little straighter. “That’s sounds like what we found in the police reports.”
“If we hadn’t gone through those, I would’ve thought Violet was just trying to make sense of her sister’s hatred for Tillie, but maybe there’s something to it.”
The rest of the paragraph read:
But the Greys paid us for the shop, and I still worked in it. At the time, I thought Regina was lost in her own grief with the anniversary of our parents’ deaths looming. Now, I realize she was trying to turn me against Tillie, to keep me from having love because she was afraid of being alone.
“If Regina thought my great-grandfather killed her parents, that would give her motive,” Owen said. “But she and Violet were together when Tillie drowned.”
Florence pursed her lips in thought. The pieces were there, but she couldn’t quite see how they fit together. “Tillie died in the bathtub—in a house where, without the curse, she should’ve been safe.”
The Caldwell curse always took its victims at Honeysuckle House, and each death looked like an accident. Florence herself had almost been one of those victims when the honeysuckle had attacked her. But only one thing controlled the vines in her childhood home—Honeysuckle House itself.
That was when it hit her. What if they had it all wrong? What if her great-grandparents weren’t the first victims of the curse at all?
She looked up at Owen. “What if the house drowned Tillie?”
The house had tried to kill Florence. It had knocked her grandmother down the stairs and crushed her mother with a chandelier and pushed her dad out the window. But it hadn’t killed her great-grandparents.
She paused, a hand over her mouth as the words from the report came back to her:Thirteen years to the day after the deaths of Helen and Christopher Caldwell.
“Violet wasn’t the only one who was there when Regina accused your family.” Florence leaned back against the couch and pressed her hands to either side of her face. “Honeysuckle House would’ve heard her, too.”
Owen turned to look at her. “You think the house killed her in retaliation?”
Even hearing the words took the wind out of her. She didn’t want to believe it. It was one thing to know the house was somehow wrapped up in the curse, but for it to be the cause? For it to be a murderer? The house had attacked her once, but before that, it had been her protector, her friend, one of the only people who looked out for Florence after her father was gone.
“Helen brought the house to life,” she said. “The grief of her death could’ve pushed it over the edge. It lost someone it loved, and so it took someone the Greys loved.”
“But why does it keep happening?” Owen asked. “Violet and Regina and Linda were all Caldwells. Wouldn’t the house want to keep them safe?”
