The Wish Collector
Page 49

“Yes, ma’am. Every cent. He said the damage might be extensive.”
“Well . . . it might be.” Truthfully, she had no idea. She’d only been able to afford cosmetic fixes, but she could smell the mildew that festered somewhere. She could smell it better than anyone.
“Then it’d be best if I got started right away.”
Lucille opened the door all the way, a tinge of sunshine finding her face, a ray that must have cut through the scent of gloom she’d caught in the early morning air. “Did he tell you about my disability?”
“Yes, ma’am. I won’t disturb a thing. I’ll let you know where I am at all times, and I’ll explain what I find when I’m done.”
“That’s good. Otherwise I’d have to hang a bell around your neck like a cat.” He chuckled and she paused before adding, “I hired a contractor once when I could afford one. Gave him every cent I had to my name to make this place livable again. He stole it.”
There was a pause before Neal McMurray said solemnly, “I’m so sorry about that, Mrs. Kershaw. I can’t understand it. How a person can kick another who’s down is beyond me.” The sincerity in his voice was clear, the same sincerity that had been clear in Jonah Chamberlain’s voice the night before, but without the hue of pain.
Lucille nodded curtly, turning her head so he didn’t spot the tears suddenly burning her eyes. “Well then, I’ll let you lead the way.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
August, 1861
Homer winced as Angelina’s mama rubbed the ointment into his abraded palms, his expression relaxing into relief almost immediately.
“Better?” Mama Loreaux asked as she worked the herb-filled ointment into Homer’s raw, bloodied skin.
“Yes, ma’am,” Homer said as she slipped some cotton gloves over his hands, the gloves Angelina had sewn herself.
“Sleep with those on tonight and by the morning, you gone be healed right up.”
“You a gem, Mama,” Homer said, offering her that gentle, gap-toothed grin of his that never failed to elicit a smile from Angelina. He looked shyly at her, his smile dipping slightly. He bowed his head. “Miss Angelina,” he said. “You sleep well.”
“You too, Homer. Come see us tomorrow if you need another treatment.”
“I surely will.” With another tip of his head, he left their cabin, the screen door closing softly behind him. Angelina went to stand in front of it, watching him walk into the darkness and wishing for a breeze, even a slight one. But the night was still and breathless and Angelina stared out, the desolation she’d put aside while Homer was there, now filling her once more.
Night after night they came to her mama, seeking relief for lacerations and bloodied hands, for muscle aches and pain of every type. Those were the easy visits, though. Those were the ones that could be soothed with ointment or herbs, with Mama’s special oils, or strong-smelling tinctures.
It was the pain that couldn’t be mended that pierced Angelina’s soul—the loss, the heartache, the deep, deep sorrow.
Somewhere far beyond, under the same moon that was filtering weakly through the trees above her, John was fighting a war. He was fighting against the side that would see an end to the injustices that she witnessed every day of her life, an end to the misery and suffering, an end to the threats of women like Delphia Chamberlain who ruled and ruined lives.
She loved him, she didn’t want to fault him for things he couldn’t control, but the lonelier she became, the more fearful and hopeless, the more her resentment grew.
Her mama glanced at her, putting the satchels of herbs back into the leather case she kept them in. “You think too much, you gone give yourself a headache.”
Angelina laughed, though it didn’t hold much humor. “I wish I could stop, Mama. If you have an ointment for that, please apply it immediately.”
Her mama gave her a sharp look, thinning her lips. “You make yourself stop, girl. All that thinkin’ an dreamin’ ain’t gone come to no good.”
Her mama was right, of course. It had already come to no good. She’d fallen in love with a man who’d made her life dangerous and uncertain. Delphia Chamberlain’s threats sat heavy upon her shoulders, threats that not only included herself, but her beloved mama as well.
She had kept her head down since that awful day in the parlor. She walked through her days weak with hopelessness, foggy with fear. She had no earthly idea how anything could be made right.
Angelina eyed her mother’s case. “Mama, how do you curse someone?”
Her mother had shown her how to blend herbs to create medicines, how to make tinctures and oils that soothed and cleansed, and how to apply ointments that cooled and healed, but she’d never shown her the other rituals she performed when Angelina was gone from the cabin, the rituals she knew had been passed down from her grandmother and great grandmother before her mother had been shipped to Louisiana across a vast sea.
“I smell the smoke sometimes when I come back to the cabin. I know you still practice the old religion.”
Her mother didn’t look at her as her hands continued with the work of returning the items to her case. “You don’t need to know any a that. They call me a witch, say it devilry what I do. I never wanted that for you. I can’t help what I already know, but I sho enough can keep you from knowin’ it. Safer that way.”
Safer.
But nothing in their lives was safe. Was safe supposed to feel this way? Did her mama feel safe? Did any of the slaves on their plantation feel safe, no matter how good they acted, no matter how hard they worked, no matter how many rules they followed? Angelina didn’t think so.
“And anyhow,” her mother continued, “curses are only fueled with a whole soul a fire behind ’em. They do not work just because you wishin’ they would.”
“I do have a soul of fire behind my wish,” Angelina insisted. She wished Delphia Chamberlain would die a thousand miserable deaths. She would deserve every one of them.
“And for every ounce a hate that fuels a curse, there gotta be a equal amount a love.”
Angelina watched her mother, weariness overcoming her. It all sounded confusing and complicated, and unlikely to work.
Maybe she hated Delphia Chamberlain as equally as she loved John, though she didn’t have an idea on how to measure that. But it couldn’t just be about love and hate. Surely there were words involved, the whispery chants she heard her mother saying as she passed by the window of their cabin sometimes, the wispy vapors of whatever she had burned, drifting over the sill.
But her mother had never shared it with her, and she doubted she could convince her to begin now. And in any case, she wasn’t even sure she believed in any of that.
If her mother knew how to curse people, why hadn’t she cursed her father before he made her pregnant with a baby she never asked for on the dirt of the cellar floor? Why hadn’t she cursed the men who put her in shackles and shoved her in the vomit-scented hull of a slave ship? Why hadn’t she cursed the group who had strung Elijah up and left his body to rot in the sun?
For every ounce a hate that fuels a curse, there gotta be a equal amount a love.
Whatever that meant.
Angelina sat down heavily on the bed.
“It that man who started this,” her mother stated, her expression hard, her eyes filled with worry as she looked upon her forlorn daughter. “If he really love you, he would not put your life in danger.”
But how could he love her without putting her life in danger? Would the war really emancipate slaves? It seemed so far-fetched and inconceivable. Absurd. Could the world ever really change that much?
Doubt prickled her skin. She wanted to insist that John did love her, that his promises were real and true. But she saw him in her mind’s eye, the way his gaze had shifted away when they’d spoken about him fighting for the side that would never set her free. There had been something he’d refused to say to her and the memory only increased her doubt that their love would ever win in the end.
“Yeah,” her mama murmured, the glint of something fierce in her eyes. “He nothin’ but danger. Nothin’ but danger.”