Thyme
My phone rings while Victor’s bringing the bags up from the car. Rosemary and I swapped our room for two adjoining suites because bunking with your sister’s one thing. Bunking with your sister and her guy and your guy … that’s another kettle of fish. So she’s on the other side of a solid wall. But, even so, when Blue Mountain FCP, the minimum security federal prison camp my mom calls home (for at least another six-to-nine–months), scrolls across my phone’s display, my immediate thought is I don’t want Rosemary to overhear this conversation.
Don’t be ridiculous, I scold myself before taking a cleansing breath and picking up the call.
“Mom, is everything okay?”
“As okay as it can be when one’s wearing an orange jumpsuit, dear.”
I manage a nervous laugh. “I just thought something might be wrong with you—or Dad.” Dad’s just down the road (and on the other side of the barbed wire fence) at the Blue Mountain West, the men’s facility. Mom tells people it’s like they’re at single-sex sleep away camps. But somehow I doubt the wardens get their respective charges together for dances and field days.
“No, no, your father’s fine. I just saw him at the backgammon tournament yesterday. We ladies cleaned their clocks.”
She chortles, and I revise my assessment of the summer camp analogy.
“Why are you calling tonight, then?” My assigned day for calls from Mom is Monday.
“Well, honey, I’m concerned about Sage. I called her at the appointed time but she didn’t pick up. And she hasn’t called me back. Lights out is in ten minutes. So I just wanted to check and see if you’d heard from her?”
I can hear the anxious quaver in her voice. Only a mom would be worrying about her grown daughter’s safety from within the big house.
“She’s okay, Mom.”
“You’ve talked to her then?”
“Um, actually, I saw her. Rosemary and I came to town to help her with some wedding stuff. We got in earlier this evening.” Even though, intellectually I know it’s not my fault she committed tax evasion and fraud, I feel a twinge of guilt that I’m here and she’s not.
“Oh, that’s nice of you girls.” Her tone sounds wistful, and the guilt twists my gut.
“Have you heard anything about your furlough request?”
“As a matter of fact, we have. As long as your father keeps his nose clean, that nice young man from the IRS, Colin Morgan, has convinced both wardens to approve a social furlough for us. Because we’re a flight risk, we’ll have to pay to have two corrections officers escort us. But we can come. I was hoping to tell Sage the good news tonight.”
“That’s great! Wait, has Dad been getting into trouble?” My mind finally catches up with the part about him keeping his nose clean.
“Not exactly. Not yet. He’s taking bets on the board games, though.”
“Dad’s a prison bookie?”
“He says it gives him something to do, keeps his mind sharp.”
“Tell him I’ll send him more crossword puzzles and Sudoku books. He has to stop that—Sage needs you two at her wedding.” My tone’s sharper than I intend.
“What’s going on? Why didn’t Sage answer her phone?”
She can tell. I don’t know how, but she can sense something’s wrong.
“Sage banged up her leg this morning—”
“Banged it up how? Can she walk? Is she paralyzed?”
“Mom, calm down,” I start talking over her as loudly as I dare. The last thing I want to do is make so much noise that Rosemary comes over to check on me. “She just bruised her shin and sliced up her calf. It was a pretty deep cut, so Roman took her to the hospital to get stitches. I guess she cut a muscle or something because her leg keeps cramping up. But they fixed her up and gave her some muscle relaxants. She’s going to be fine. But that’s why she didn’t answer her phone. She’s zonked out.”
“How’d she hurt herself?”
“I think she just tripped or something.”
“Bad luck,” Mom muttered.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“What’s that mean?”
Crap. Way to go, Thyme. Way to open your gigantic yap.
“Um, nothing.”
“Thyme Peppermint Field. What’s going on?”
I cringe at the use of my full name. Not because I have a latent childhood memory of knowing I was in trouble when she trotted out my middle name, but because said middle name is Peppermint. I mean, come on. There’s a reason why Rosemary Vanilla, Sage Almond, and I didn’t ditch our New Agey first names in favor of our middle names. That reason should be fairly obvious.
“It’s not a big deal. Sage has been having a run of bad luck lately. Her leg was the proverbial straw.”
“What kind of bad luck?”
I hesitate. I really, really, really do not want to get into the whole curse thing with my mother. But she’s going to eventually find out (like as soon as she talks to Sage). Then she’ll be irritated I didn’t tell her.
“Listen, we’re going to see Sage in the morning. Do you want me to tell her the good news or will they let you call her again tomorrow? She’ll be so excited!” This is true. And I need to know if I have to provide her with a full accounting now or if I can put it off.
“I’ll ask my unit leader at our morning meeting. I’m pretty sure she’ll let me call after breakfast.”
Yay.
“Great,” I say feebly. “So, before you talk to Sage, you should know that a lot of things have gone wrong recently—just typical planning hiccups and bumps in the road. But, she’s got this idea that a conjurer has cursed her wedding.”
“Sage crossed a root man?”
I hold the phone away from my ear. “Sage didn’t cross anyone, Mom. Roman’s family has some ancient feud with the neighbors or something. And his grandmother convinced Sage that a descendent of this so-called root man or conjurer or whatever cursed the wedding.”
I think that’s the story. Or is it the spirit of the long-dead conjurer himself, still pissed off like a hundred years later, who’s supposed to have put the hex on the wedding? I realize I never got the details.
“Thyme, I need you to listen to me. This is important, okay?”
“I’m listening.”
“Tell Sage to smudge her entire home. She needs to get a bundle of dried white sage and—”
“Mom, she knows how to purify a space by burning sage.” We all do. We grew up smudging every room in the resort on a regular schedule.
“Don’t interrupt. My time is almost up. She should burn some sweetgrass afterward.”
“Okay, I’ll tell her.”
“Thyme.” Her voice is a warning.
“I promise, I’ll tell her. But, look, this should make you feel better, Roman’s aunt gave her a spirit tree for protection, and I saw some sort of sachet on her bedside table when I was helping her get ready for bed. The Gullah/Geechee have their own rituals, okay? You don’t have to worry about this.”
“Good, good. Did you say Gullah? I think one of the girls over in Cell Block D is Gullah. I’ll ask Charla for some tips during library time.”
“Great idea. But, honestly, Mom, the most important thing you can do for Sage is to make sure you and Dad are there at the wedding—and try not to get yourselves abducted in the process.” I throw in a reference to Rosemary’s wedding, which saw her and my parents held captive in a storage pod.
My attempt at comedy falls flat, though, and my mom sniffs. “Well. Unlike your oldest sister, Sage has actually invited us to her wedding. We won’t have to skulk around in the bushes like criminals.”
“But you were criminals.” The words fly out of my mouth and I clamp my hand over my lips as if that’s going to help.
“Thyme Peppermint!”
Twice in one call. Yeesh.
“Sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean it as a bad thing.” Weak, I know. But I don’t know what else to say.
“I just hope that you and Victor wait until your father and I are released to tie the knot. I’d really love to help one of my girls plan her wedding. Do you have any idea when he—?”
I suddenly desperately wish we were still talking about Wiccan cleansing rituals. “Victor and I haven’t ever talked about marriage, Mom. I’m not in any hurry.”
“Hmm. You say that now. But, you know, your eggs are as old as you are. They’re not going to stay fresh forever. If you think you might want to have children, you really—”
There’s a loud knock on the door. I send up a silent thank you to the Universe.
“Mom, there’s someone at the door. Gotta go. Love you, ‘bye!”
I jab the button to end the call and peer through the peephole. Not surprisingly, it’s Victor with the bags. I yank the door open.
“Boy, am I glad to see you.” I plant a kiss on his lips as he tosses the bags on the suitcase stand near the door.
“How long was I gone?” he asks in an amused tone.
“Too long.”
“I see. You seem to have missed me.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
He smiles a crooked smile and traces a finger along my collarbone. “Why don’t you show me how much you missed me?”
I grin up at him, lace my hands together behind his neck, and lower myself to the bed, pulling his mouth down to meet mine in the process. He stares down at me hungrily while our tongues explore each other’s mouths.
All thoughts of evil spirits, meddling mothers, and wedding jinxes evaporate, no doubt vaporized by my rising body temperature. I arch my back, straining toward him and he smiles a lazy smile.