Just keep moving.
She walked through the thickets of cypress and pine, tupelo trees and thorny blackberries, and tried not to notice the Spanish moss that floated, ghostlike, from the huge branches of the live oaks surrounding a small clearing.
She wouldn’t let her imagination get the better of her, she told herself, as she noticed the cottage, if that’s what you’d call it, and several smaller buildings surrounding the open area. All of the structures were dark, no light showing in any of the windows. A rocker moved on the porch of the cottage, pushed by the wind that stole through the surrounding trees and caused the hairs on the back of Chalice’s neck to lift.
Just get on with this. Meet the fortune-teller, have her read your palm or look into a crystal ball or whatever, and get the hell out. You’ve come this far; no backing out now.
With more than a little trepidation, Chalice walked up to the door of the cottage and knocked sharply.
No answer.
“Hello?” she called, the sound of her own voice raising goose pimples on her skin.
She heard a few cackles and peeps from a small chicken coop, then answering low snorts and grunts near a long, low building that, she guessed, housed pigs.
Awesome.
Just freaking awesome.
A deserted pig and chicken farm in the near dark.
What the hell was she doing here?
She was about to turn around when she saw the faintest of lights past the shimmer of a waterline, and with the setting sun as a guide, she followed a well-worn path that led to the swamp’s edge.
Ancient-looking boards formed a rickety bridge that spanned the brackish water to a small island of sorts, where a hut had been constructed. She heard the swoop of bats and told herself to keep calm as she stepped onto the bridge.
Don’t go there. This is too weird.
So what if Jaiden never proposes?
Do you think talking to some witchy woman in the middle of the Georgia swamp is gonna change anything?
“No,” she said aloud, but continued to move forward. She hadn’t come all this way for nothing. She’d better just keep going. Finish what she started.
The old boards creaked under her weight, reminding her, like almost everything did, that she should lose twenty pounds—well, maybe thirty—but it wasn’t happening tonight as the last, dying rays of sunlight pierced the branches of the thick cypress and tupelo trees growing right out of the water.
She heard a splash and nearly jumped out of her skin, only to realize it was a fish that had risen to the surface, trying to feed on the myriad of insects that were flying and buzzing around her.
If Dotty hadn’t paid for her visit in advance, Chalice would never have come.
“You’ll love it,” Dotty had insisted. “I’m not kidding you. And you’ll love Madam Jeanne. She’s fantastic.”
“Madam,” Chalice had repeated. “Like the madam of a whorehouse?”
Dotty had laughed, throwing back her head. “Nothing quite so salacious.”
“Just weird as shit.” At that point, Chalice had taken a long puff off her e-cigarette and ignored her sister’s wrinkling of her nose.
“I’m telling you, she’s the real deal. Predicted I was gonna have a baby girl before I even knew I was pregnant with Marie! And then there was the time I won the lottery—remember that thousand-dollarscratch-off ticket? Well, Madam Jeanne had told me not three weeks before that I was gonna have some good luck! And that I was coming into some money, and oh, right before Mama died, you know? Maybe like a week or two before, Madam Jeanne said she sensed a dark cloud coming my way.”
Chalice hadn’t bought it. “How can you, a woman of faith, a Christian, believe all that nonsense, Dorothea?” she’d asked using Dotty’s given name to add weight to the conversation.
“Because I think Madam Jeanne is touched by the hand of God,” Dotty had answered sincerely. “There are all kinds of things we can’t explain on this earth, Chalice, but we all know they’re God’s doing. He knows all.”
Chalice had let out a huge cloud of vapor, and for once Dotty hadn’t waved the mist away. “Is she God-fearing? Madam Jeanne, I mean.”
“I don’t know what she is, or what she calls herself.”