MYA WALKED INTO their mother’s office first, Lucia trailing behind her into a room she had almost forgotten. It was more like a shrine to three generations of clients than a home office. Her mother kept gilt-framed photographs on the walls the way some people mounted the heads of deer: actresses and jazz singers from the “talkies” era in Hollywood, their hair short and curled with black ringlets popping out of cloche hats; models from the mod era of the 1960s with tiny legs and go-go boots and A-line paper dresses; pop stars with big hair and lots of glitter from the disco era in the 1970s; female politicians with shoulder pads and blunt haircuts from the 1980s and ’90s.
The portrait of Great-Grandmother Serena hung above the fireplace directly behind the grand teak desk in the center of the room. Her wavy black hair and pale skin reminded Lucia of herself—or how she used to look before her wrinkles began to show. Next to Serena hung the photograph Lucia had adored since she was a little girl sitting across from Willow during business calls and playing tic-tac-toe with Mya. The black-and-white image caught a very happy Great-Grandmother Serena with an arm around Marlene Lovett, a famous screen beauty from the 1930s and one of the first women to wear a smoking jacket on film. Androgynous with the sharp lines of her jaw and nose, yet glamorous with her waterfall of blond curls—she was a dream, and Willow had made sure to re-create her in the girls’ imaginations.
After a long day of work, Willow had never failed to come to their room and rest in each of their beds for a little while to stroke their hair, ask about their day, and allow each girl to pose three questions. Then she’d tell one story before heading to her room to sleep, only to wake and do it all over again. Lucia would beg for her to tell the Marlene Lovett story; she asked to hear this story so many times that Mya often whined if Willow agreed. But both of the girls knew Willow secretly loved to tell it.
“The foundation of our business,” Willow always began. Marlene had been tutored with Great-Grandmother Serena in New York and learned to play the piano with her, and Serena had comforted her after her mother died. She had been Serena’s best friend.
After returning from Borneo, Serena had tried to contact her father, only to discover he had lost his entire fortune during the crash and jumped to his death from the Brooklyn Bridge. Serena thought her tie to her birthplace had been severed forever, until she received a handwritten letter from Marlene. The Depression had been especially hard on her dear friend’s family, and her passion for the stage had led only to burlesque shows on the weekends. Marlene needed a lucky break, and Serena needed a subject for an experiment. She invited Marlene to Virginia to meet her new family, whom Marlene instantly loved, especially the bewitching little girls, and Serena offered a bottle of her hobby perfume to Marlene as a parting gift. “But do give a call in the next few weeks to let me know how you are,” Serena had told her. (This was Lucia’s favorite line of the story, one Willow always repeated verbatim and with a wink.)
Sure enough, Marlene Lovett landed one Broadway role after another, and not long after, she had taken over Hollywood. She had pink Cadillacs, many suitors, and a steady supply of dear Serena’s unnamed perfume, which increased in price with each accolade bestowed upon Marlene Lovett. (Now the price of the perfume was fixed, adjusted only for inflation or major career advances.) Once Marlene established herself, she and Serena struck a deal: Marlene had to select a fledgling actress with potential, perhaps an extra from one of her movies, and direct her to Serena. And that’s how the business continued to operate, as established during Serena’s tenure: one woman tapped the shoulder of another woman for an amazing opportunity with a talent scout, but only when the president requested that she do so. And then the vetting and interview process began. Thus, each bedtime story turned into a business lesson for Lucia and Mya, quite like how this meeting would surely unfold, but far more pleasant.
Mya seated herself in a scarlet armchair in front of the desk, and Lucia sat in the matching one next to it. Willow moved into the room as quietly as a breeze, but the smell of freshly brewed coffee gave her away. She placed her ceramic mug on the desk and pulled out the chair. Her black linen dress did not have a single wrinkle. The house might be cluttered and old, but Willow’s clothes were always neat. “First impressions happen outside the house,” she sometimes used to say, as if this was reason enough not to clean or have someone else do it for her. Her skin, however, did have wrinkles, many more than it had fifteen years ago, though somehow she still looked youthful. She and Mya had maintained their life force while Lucia had given hers to a doomed marriage and a career moving swiftly into obscurity.
Lucia couldn’t stop examining her mother as she might a stranger who refused to make eye contact. “I asked to come in,” Lucia said, “but I’ll go if it’s a problem.”
Willow directed her attention to Mya. “Is it okay with you?”
Mya looked startled to be asked. “I mean, only if it’s okay with you, I guess.”
“I’m sorry I was short with you,” Willow said to Lucia.
Lucia looked down at her hands and at the pale circle of skin where her wedding band used to be. “I get it. And I’m sorry too.” Certainly this apology could not heal fifteen years of estrangement, Lucia knew that, but the least she could do was finally apologize for so rarely calling to check on the family and the business, especially since they were in trouble and Lucia had had no idea.
Mya’s mouth quivered.
Willow asked, “Does she know?”
Mya cleared her throat and then said, “Mostly.”
Mostly? What hadn’t she told Lucia? That was so like her sister.
Willow folded her hands together. Her fingernails were long and unpolished. She never missed a manicure, not that Lucia could remember.
Willow said, “You know I know, Mya.”
Mya nodded. “I do.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you, not that I should even need to say it,” Willow said, and then straightened her posture. “I’ve thought about what I’d say to you for an entire plane ride and I still don’t know. Zoe Bennett knew more about our goings-on than I did as president. And you knew. How’d you expect me to handle that?”
The room pulsed with personal hurt, and Lucia felt embarrassed for inserting herself into this meeting. She glanced at Mya, who rubbed her cheeks with both palms and then covered her mouth with her hands.
“Nothing?” Willow said. “You’ve got nothing to say to me?” Lucia couldn’t remember hearing her mother be so cross with Mya. With Lucia, yes, but not Mya, who had always planned to follow their mother’s career path. Clearly their roommate situation had strained their relationship. Willow turned the chair away from Mya and did the absolutely unthinkable. How many times had she put hot-pepper lacquer on Lucia’s nails to make her stop biting them? And there was Willow’s pointer fingernail resting on her lips, her lower jaw working back and forth.
Without facing Mya again, Willow said, “She’s contacting our other clients. How the hell she knows who they are and how to get in touch with them is beyond me at this point, but Jennifer said it’s true. Zoe’s blackmailing her too, so I believe her.” Willow took a sip of her coffee and cradled the mug in her hands. “Jennifer seems so lost.”
Mya raised her arm as if she sat in an elementary school classroom, but Willow put her hand up as if to shush her. “I’ve been informed of your little plan and you know we can’t; it goes against everything I’ve ever told you about the business, not that you seem to give a damn about what I say anymore. But we don’t change the formula. We haven’t for a hundred years. My mother adhered to that, and I promised her I would as well. You know this. Why would I need to remind you?”
“You don’t,” Mya said, “but—”
Willow said, “There are no exceptions.”
“There must be exceptions,” Mya said. “Life doesn’t operate without them.”
“Maybe,” Willow said, “but our business does. Don’t you want the company? Don’t you both want something to pass on?” And then Willow waved her hand in the air as if to brush away dust. “Well, not you, Lucia, I know, but, Mya, doesn’t that matter to you? The decisions we make here matter for the future. Deciding to alter the formula without consulting me and then telling clients that was the decision we’d made—just irresponsible. I never thought you’d do something so low.”
Mya shook her head and no one spoke.
“What about murder?” Lucia asked, and then smiled.
Her mother’s mouth dropped open.
“Seems like the surest solution,” Lucia said.
Willow pointed at Lucia and said, “Just stop. Or get out if you can’t be helpful,” and then she muttered something. All these years later and Lucia still knew how to fluster Willow. She couldn’t help herself.
Mya narrowed her eyes at Lucia, then turned to their mother and said, “How do you know, and I mean with a hundred percent certainty, that they wouldn’t have changed it if they had to, if they might lose the business altogether?”
Willow took a deep breath, her chest rising slowly. “No,” she said.
“It’s your fault you didn’t read the damn contract! Now you won’t compromise,” Mya blurted, her voice raised high suddenly, as though she needed a witness in the room to have the courage to utter it. Lucia placed her hand on Mya’s arm without realizing until Mya pulled away.
Willow turned her face away and placed her chin in her hand. This sign of contrition admitted all they needed to know. Mya settled back in her chair. In a soft voice Willow said, “You sent me out there alone so I’d have no other choice. Didn’t you?”
Lucia felt like she’d arrived to a new family where the past didn’t dictate who they were anymore.
“If it’s both your faults, can’t you just hear her out?” Lucia said to Willow, and braced herself by squeezing the armchair on both sides.
Mya’s eyebrows lifted in anticipation, and she looked over at Lucia as if to say “thank you.” Willow tucked flyaway hairs behind her ears and said, “Fine.”
Mya said, “What do you mean ‘fine’?”
Willow looked to the ceiling like she could make it collapse. “I mean fine, Mya, please don’t test my patience.”
“It’s just that—”
“It’s what?” Willow said.
Mya turned out her palms. “She comes home for a few hours and you agree to her suggestion even though I’ve been asking you to consider the possibility of a different formula for weeks?”
“Don’t be childish.”
“Agreed,” Lucia added. Only Mya would quarrel when Lucia was pretty sure she’d just helped her out.
“Butt out,” Mya said to Lucia. To Willow she said, “I’m glad you agree, I just don’t know why it took her to get you to do it.”
Willow placed a finger in the air. “I haven’t agreed to any changes. Just to hear you out, that’s all.”
“Same thing,” Mya said.
Their mother sighed. Willow finally said, “It’s not Lucia.”
“It’s not?” Mya said.
“I meant to read it over.”
“Thank you for finally saying that,” Mya said, and slapped the arms of her chair before jumping up. “Let’s go to my workshop, no time to waste.” Mya ushered Lucia up from her chair and waved for Willow to stand also. Mya led the way out of the office, through the reading room, and to the back of the cabin. The workshop had always been Mya’s sacred space, one she allowed Lucia to enter on select occasions, perhaps as a present for her birthday or for Valentine’s Day. Lucia stepped down into the room and the smell of deep earth, like a freshly dug grave, overpowered her.
“Is that musk?” Willow said as she glanced around the room, her face lifted upward to catch the scent on the air. “Musk. That’s what it is, but that’s not synthetic.”
“Nope,” Mya said as she uncovered her wall of dried flowers, “but it’s the solution.”
This wall was where Mya had always come to gather supplies for the love spells they’d cast. When Mya unveiled the dried herbs Lucia felt nine years old again. Mya had promised it would take many, many years for those spells to come true, and Lucia had believed Mya because she could tame deer and see the future in the clouds. For a while Lucia had believed Jonah had come from those love spells. How very wrong she’d been. Many, many years had passed and Lucia and Mya were both still alone. Their mother too. Maybe something about Lenore women couldn’t be sustained with a partner. Lucia wanted a healthy relationship—she didn’t want to end up alone like her mother, with her career as her only companion.
Willow said, “Is that it?” and walked to the wall of flowers.
Lucia stood behind them. A tiny ball hung there: Was it a rock covered with dried moss, or a fig?
Mya removed it and said, “Watch this,” and she took it to the butcher’s block in the middle of the room. She sliced slowly down the middle and removed a dark and ruddy substance from the inside. It looked like dark sand from a faraway coast. Mya gently placed it into a small glass bowl. She took out a pastry brush and painstakingly wiped out the cavity to make sure nothing was left behind. Lucia wanted to know what she was looking at, but both her mother and Mya were concentrating so hard that Lucia couldn’t step in with a question. She sensed she’d already have known the answer if she’d studied the business as well as they had.
Willow picked up the sliced-open pod and said, “The last time I held one of these I was in Paris with Mother.”
Mya took it back from her and cradled it in her palm. “My musk deer died.”
Mya finished working and put down her tools. “I’ll wash the grains in water I got from the natural spring and let it sit overnight.”
She pulled up a handle of Cold Creek Appalachian moonshine, made by men who probably still sat at the barbershop in Quartz Hollow all day long waiting for a local to place an order. The Lenore family had always been the largest buyer, as it was the best way to dilute the flower’s essence. The boys kept a cold creek and a storage cave devoted to just their family’s supply. Mya continued, “Tomorrow I’ll dilute it with this. Then I’ll have a musk base unlike anything you can get on the market. Zoe wants to focus on her sensuality, so I’ll add the essence of Gardenia potentiae, orange blossom, patchouli, and Bulgarian rose.”
“That’s all?” Willow said.
Mya lifted a small amber bottle and said, “And a few drops of this.”
Willow took the bottle from her.
“Don’t smell it,” Mya said, and reached out, but Willow deflected her pass.
“And why not?” Willow said, and began to remove the top.
“It’s my hair.”
Willow stopped and placed the glass bottle on the table. “Excuse me?”
Mya picked it up as if to guard it. “Well, not anymore. I used the enfleurage method we learned in Paris. Got beef fat from two farms over and spread it on those glass plates and pressed my hair. Took forever to capture, but I got it.”
Lucia vaguely recalled the technique Mya had used, but those summer days in Paris were very long ago. Willow’s head continued to shake from side to side, and Lucia wanted to command her to speak. Any time Mya involved hair she was up to no good; Lucia knew that all too well.
When Lucia was in the second grade and Mya was in the fifth, they’d begun a potion with the leftover rainwater from a spring storm that morning, and they’d spent almost all of recess perfecting it. With one more handful of honeysuckle blossoms, the healing potion for a dying robin would have been complete. Marta Mitchell and her group of friends from the fifth grade asked to play, and when Mya said, “Not right now,” Marta pushed Lucia out of the way and took the stick Lucia was using to stir the potion.
Mya said, “Give it back, Marta, or I’ll tell,” and Marta said, “No,” and drove the stick into the water and splashed it around until none of the potion remained. “Next time let us play,” Marta said, and threw the stick back to Lucia, hitting her directly in the eye. It stung and she cried. Lucia held one hand over that left eye, but with her good eye she watched Mya ball her fists. She said, “Tell my little sister you’re sorry.”
Marta said, “Stupid little voodoo girls. Nobody even likes you.” Mya’s face and neck turned red like a tomato. It was the first time Lucia had seen Mya’s anger so visible on her body, and that was frightening enough, but then she walked straight up to Marta and a crowd of kids gathered around them and shouted for a fight.
Lucia was sure Mya would gift Marta two black eyes and a bloody lip. Instead she remained calm, slowly reached out to Marta’s face, and plucked out a few of her hairs. Mya tucked the hair in her pocket and said, “Just you wait.” Marta laughed all the way back to the swings. Mya never told Lucia what she did with those coarse brown hairs from Marta’s head, but three days later Marta’s beloved Jack Russell terrier jumped in a well and drowned, her parents lost their jobs at the factory, and the family moved out of town immediately.
As far as anyone on the playground was concerned, Mya had made Marta Mitchell disappear forever. Lucia and Mya were never again called voodoo girls, to their faces anyway. Lucia felt protected by Mya but afraid of her too. What would keep Mya from turning on Lucia? The bond of love? Lucia spent years thereafter offering to do Mya’s chores just to stay in her good graces. Mya probably assumed Lucia liked to clean. Lucia didn’t want to feel this nervous again, but she couldn’t help it, not with returning to this place and seeing Mya’s hair captured in that bottle, soon to be added to a perfume for a client who threatened the business.
Willow picked up Mya’s bottle again, but timidly, like it might be hot. She said, “And your hair is necessary because . . . ?”
“Zoe lied to us,” Mya said, “and now she wants to ruin us.”
“But technically she wasn’t contracted,” Lucia said to add some reason to the conversation, since their mother wasn’t objecting as much as Lucia had expected.
Both Willow and Mya turned around and shot her a terrible look, one that made Lucia glance to the door, looking for an escape route. Willow said, “Just so you know, Lucia, I was in those interviews with Mya and we made it clear to Zoe.”
“But not in the contract,” Lucia said.
Willow turned back around and ignored Lucia’s statement. “What will it do?”
“I told you,” Mya said. “Fix our problems.”
“But how?” Willow persisted.
Mya said, “Zoe wanted more sensuality, right? So it’s sexual, but to the point of madness. There’ll be a huge backlash, one she won’t be able to anticipate.”
“Is that even remotely safe?” Lucia asked.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
Willow continued to stare at Mya like she didn’t believe her. Mya said, “It is, I promise. She’ll need a new career, that’s all. Bartending or something.”
“Could it be linked to us?” Willow asked.
Lucia turned away from them, walked to the wall of flowers, and covered them with the curtain. She couldn’t believe where this conversation was headed.
Mya said, “She’ll self-destruct. There’ll be no one to blame but herself. And her PR person, I guess.”
Willow made a long humming noise.
“As in yes?” Mya said, and Lucia turned around, just as shocked as Mya to see their mother nodding. Just like that. Lucia had never thought her mother would actually agree. She just figured that if Willow listened to Mya, at least Mya couldn’t complain about being marginalized.
“I see no other option,” Willow said. “She can’t expose us.”
“Exactly,” Mya said.
“But swear to me that as soon as it’s done you’ll destroy this and stick to the original formula,” Willow said, and touched the bottle of Mya’s dissolved hair. “I think if we make this small adjustment just once, for the sake of the business’s longevity, then the curse won’t have a reason to come down on us.”
Mya jumped up and down and then hugged Willow and said, “Thank you for letting me fix this. I’ll never let it happen again, I swear.”
She opened the jar of spring water and used the dropper to add the ingredient to the musk pod grains. Hunched over the glass bowl, Mya watched each drop fall, and then she began to swirl the mixture together. Directly above Mya’s head, a dark, watery substance formed like a gathering tornado. Lucia closed and opened her eyes just to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. But it was still there. The dark substance lengthened and expanded, and Lucia caught her breath as she watched what no one else in the room seemed to notice. Mya hugged their mother tightly again, and the darkness moved with her and hovered over them both for a moment. Then Mya let go and moved back to her table, and the darkness followed her. As she handled her materials, the ethereal substance grew larger and took the shape of a single stormy cloud floating just a foot above the crown of Mya’s head. In a flash within the cloud, Lucia saw her sister’s bloody face. Lucia felt her own face go pale.
She shook her head. The earthy, animalistic smell that invaded the room during the musk wash had to be the reason Lucia was going crazy. She felt certain she might faint if she stayed any longer. She said, “I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Are you okay?” Mya’s brow furrowed.
“Fine,” Lucia said, continuing to stare at the bruised cloud bobbing above Mya’s head. It looked like thunder and lightning would issue forth at any moment. Lucia’s entire body went cold, like she’d learned a damning family secret kept thirty-three years too long.
“You sure?” Willow said. “You look a little peaked.” Lucia’s face must’ve looked as drained as it felt. She stared at Mya, certain that if she walked toward her and reached out her hand she could insert it inside the cloud.
“I—I think I need to go outside,” Lucia stammered, bracing herself on the doorframe of the workshop. “Just out for a bit, to get some stuff.”
“Can you pick up sour cherries? Lots of them,” Mya said, and smiled, the cloud bobbing up and down. “I have a craving for cherry pie and I used all the ripe ones from our trees.”
Lucia nodded and tripped on the top step of the workshop stairs. She turned from the room and hurried out the back door of the cabin to their white truck, the keys already in the ignition, the engine running like it expected her. “What the hell?” Lucia leaned over the seat and took many deep breaths. She knew this feeling—it had happened on the Acorn Theater stage, and now she was experiencing the exact same panic attack for a very different reason. Lucia wanted that cloud to disappear; it made her feel so terrible, almost like she had the flu. She’d have to tell her sister about it and convince her, even though she had no proof and no history of visions. All she had was this burning, awful feeling.
Like spotting a cracked tree limb right before it fell.
Lucia hoped that by the time she came home, whatever hung over Mya’s head would have vanished, and that the truck’s being on was just a fluke. Maybe one of the land-maintenance workers had used it and forgot to shut it off. People did forgetful things like that sometimes, right? Her world couldn’t shift so completely in an instant, could it?