The Weight of Remembrance
“Wait! Come back!” The horn shatters the stillness. My body jerks at the sound as the peace of my garden splinters. A frantic hand waves from the station wagon’s window, chasing after Johnny’s retreating Firebird, but the car disappears in a cloud of dust.
“Stop that!” the driver shrieks. An old woman’s voice. Exasperated.
Either she’s nearly lost her voice or she’s been yelling at the two girls in her car for hours. She’s barely tall enough to see over the steering wheel, and all I can see of her from here is her perfectly coifed gray curls bouncing with each irate head shake.
“Leave the horn alone! I told you to behave or we aren’t stopping here.”
Her words are practically drowned out by the raucous laughter erupting from the passenger seat. Not both girls, not the girl in the back seat, but a single voice next to her.
“Hey, don’t punish me! Punish that bitchin’ guy in the Firebird!”
“Spirits, help me,” I murmur to myself. I haven’t heard that voice since I was seventeen, but I’ll never forget it—the volume, the tone, the vocabulary.
“Stop waving at that man!” the driver rasps. “And stop that yelling at him like you’re some common urchin instead of—”
“Oh, man, I’m gonna ask for a ride like that for my birthday when I turn sixteen. That’s such a dynamite car! And did you see that guy? Talk about a fox!”
Standing unnoticed in my flower garden, I can’t help but smirk at the girl’s brazen appreciation for Johnny’s youthful charm, though it seems lost on the prim elderly driver.
“Shhhh! I told you both to behave,” the old woman hisses, swatting the air dismissively.
“But I’m not doing anything,” the other passenger whines. The driver doesn’t seem to hear her.
“And stop being so boy crazy. Besides, that man was twice your age. Your mama would have my hide if she knew you were talking like that on this trip.” She twists in the driver’s seat to glare at them. Her voice drops to an ominous growl. “Now, listen here, both of you. .
.”
Too late.
The first girl bursts out of the car, all limbs and laughter, her bare feet stomping through my geraniums as though she owns the world. Carefree. Reckless. She twirls like a tornado, oblivious to the destruction she leaves behind.
Her wide, floppy straw hat casts shifting shadows across her face as she spins and laughs. Her bell-bottom jeans sway with each step, the frayed hems sweeping the crushed petals aside. Her red shirt hangs open except for a single button, the tails tied in a knot above her midriff, exposing an expanse of tanned skin and flat stomach. She can’t be over twelve or maybe fourteen.
The flowers bend beneath the first girl’s feet, their petals bruised, stems snapped. The scent of disturbed geraniums fills the air, sweet and pungent, with the faint tang of freshly watered soil. I bite back the urge to shout, feeling the tension build in my throat.
Another passenger, a girl with dark hair and a round face, emerges hesitantly from the back seat. The second girl lingers at the edge, as if she’s aware she’s trespassing. Her gaze stays low, shoulders hunched, as though the weight of the other girl’s exuberance is squashing her. Her movements are tentative, like treading on sacred ground.
I know the feeling.
Instead of joining her companion’s rampage, she stays rooted on the stone path, a silent observer. There’s a reverence in her gestures, a familiarity that tugs at the edges of my memory like a half-forgotten dream.
I remember her.
She seems vaguely familiar, like a long-lost friend, and somehow her presence feels right, as if she belongs here, in this moment. She’s quiet, her gaze downcast, her pudgy adolescent body straining against ill-fitting clothes. The buttons of her pale blue shirt threaten to pop apart at any moment.
Oh, I remember her!
Her shoulders droop—the posture of someone accustomed to fading into the background, to making room for the whirlwind of energy that is her beautiful, extraverted companion. She stands out of the way to make room for the only adult in the car.
The last to emerge from the station wagon is the driver, an elderly woman whose hunched back has shaped her body into the curved contour of a capital C, amplified by the impractical high heels she insists on wearing and a peacock-blue pantsuit that seems at odds with her advanced age.
I remember that shade of blue on her, long before Siobhan grew up to be the next Ranking High Priestess and introduced a new dress code for all the witches in the order, regardless of their age.
Even in bright colors rather than somber black, I’d know her anywhere: Miss Cora, my astrology teacher the year I took my vows to the Daeganean priesthood. The woman who guided me on that fateful trip to study the stars and the ley lines that would change the course of my life forever.
Oh, no. No…
I flatten my fingertips against my lips to keep from screaming. I’ve known for decades that this day would come, but it doesn’t look like I’d thought it would.
“Siobhan!” Miss Cora scolds from the walkway to the house. Her high heels click quickly on the stone path, but out of breath, she gives up entirely. Her shoulders sag even more, if possible, in defeat. “Siobhan, I told you to behave. You got to stop at the pizza place like you wanted and now it’s our turn to stop here to see the books. Let’s go inside and—Siobhan!” I can’t seem to exhale. All I can do is stare at them across my flowerbeds.
No wonder this is all so familiar. The last time I saw Siobhan, she’d been seventeen and had just given birth to Veronica the day before. Thanks to Siobhan’s failed power play, precious little Veronica had been deemed unworthy to be the next chosen one, and the High Council had handed off the baby to me to raise in secrecy while Siobhan was shipped off to Europe to be trained to lead the Order of Daegan.
The girl stomping through my geraniums flips off her straw hat and heads for the rose bushes. Her white-blonde braid bounces on her shoulders. I’d recognize that shade of hair anywhere, in any decade, in any century.
Even as a young teenager, she possesses the same striking beauty and icy demeanor I remember. A disdainful pout accentuates her flawless complexion, her sharp gaze already scanning the surroundings with an air of entitlement.
She plucks the roses carelessly, barely glancing at the blooms she’s destroying. Her hand moves with a practiced arrogance, as though she’s done this a thousand times before— taking what she wants without a second thought. She tries to secure one in her hair, but the rose promptly falls to the ground. She steps on it as she reaches for another.
The other girl watches her nervously, biting her already-raw fingernails, but she says nothing. Just waits for the storm.
“Siobhan, you really shouldn’t be picking those roses without asking,” the brown-haired girl says finally, timidly. She wrings her hands. I may be invisible to Siobhan—I always was—but not to the other girl. I can’t tell if she’s trying to warn Siobhan of my presence or if she thinks it’ll do any good.
Siobhan whips around, eyes blazing. “Shut up. Who asked your opinion, Pig Nose?” She jabs a finger toward the girl’s slightly rounded nose even though Siobhan is too far away to make contact. “Maybe if you did a love spell instead of obsessing over musty old books, a boy might actually look at you twice. Ha! Or once!”
Cora notices me and clears her throat. “Girls, please mind your manners.”
“Mind your manners?” Siobhan scoffs, tossing her braid over her shoulder. “What would you know about manners, you old crone? With those wrinkles and that hump on your back, it’s no wonder your husband ran off.”
Cora recoils as if struck. Hurt flickers across her face. The other girl’s eyes well with tears that she blinks back furiously.
Siobhan’s lips curl into a cruel smile as she plucks another rose, reveling in her power over them. “That’s what I thought. Now be quiet while I gather what I need to make every boy in Florida fall desperately in love with me.”
A love potion? Is that what she used to seduce Spencer when we were kids in high school?
I cringe, lost between the present in front of me and the echo of a memory from some other angle. Her words cut like thorns. The wounds seemed invisible to others back then but from where I stand now, I see the brunt of every hateful syllable. If I can see it now, surely others saw it back then, and could have stopped it. In this moment, the contrast between the two girls is laid bare—one radiating beauty and cruelty, the other desperately trying to fade into the background to avoid Siobhan’s wrath.
I watch Siobhan tear through my flowers, the same way she tore through my life all those years ago. There’s no remorse in her movements, no hesitation. Even as a child, she was the same—ruthless, beautiful, and utterly without empathy. I’d thought I could escape her. But no one escapes the past.
As I watch Siobhan now, a wave of memories washes over me. I recall her relentless bullying, her cruel words, and how I often became her target, protecting others from her wrath and taking the blame myself. Witnessing it now, from a detached perspective, the extent of her meanness is even more apparent. Back then, everyone excused it because of her mother’s position as leader of the priesthood and because they knew Siobhan would take her place as their leader.
Me, I excused it back then because I’d been convinced she was my friend. Probably my only friend.
But this plump girl with brown hair. . .
I’ve always known, yet seeing it now, I find it hard to wrap my head around it.
I remember this trip across Florida to study astrology and visit historical landmarks. I remember the station wagon. I remember stopping here on the way to southern Florida and on the way back. And I remember my beloved Miss Cora, who was in tears before the end of the first hour on the road.
Siobhan hasn’t changed, still that same bright, burning force, reckless and cruel. But me? I’m older, slower, and no longer willing to fight her battles. I watch her with the weariness of someone who has already lost, and yet. . .there’s peace in that loss. The peace that comes from knowing there’s nothing left to prove. Only my duty to her daughter—my daughter.
My gaze shifts to the other girl, the one who seems so familiar. As she sticks politely to the path and picks nervously at her fingernail—bloody, bitten to the quick—a gasp escapes my lips. The realization hits me like a bolt of lightning: it’s me. I knew and yet, my brain couldn’t make sense of it until I saw her fingernails. A younger, less weathered version of myself, with the same mousy brown hair and hesitant demeanor. The same defeated posture. Awkward. Insecure. Belittled regularly.
My breath catches. I knew. But seeing it is something else entirely.
I’ve seen Siobhan a thousand times from every angle, but I’ve never seen myself that way, only in a mirror. Her unlined face. Something I’d forgotten.
“I remember you,” I whisper to myself. “I’ve missed you.”
In this moment, surrounded by the ghosts of my past, my future is finally certain. Today, the countdown begins for me. We have two weeks. That’s all. Two weeks to make sure Veronica has everything she needs for after the apocalypse. Two weeks.
Because once that time runs out, so do we.
As I watch the scene unfold, the air around me seems to shimmer with an otherworldly energy. The birds have gone silent, and even the cicadas’ incessant buzz has faded. It’s as if nature itself is holding its breath, waiting for the inevitable.
You’re reading Turn of Earth free, right here in the Library. Want a copy to keep on your Kindle or e-reader? Buy the e-book direct from me →
© 2024 Lorna Tedder. All rights reserved. Free to read here — please don’t repost elsewhere.