We sit on a stack of cut logs watching the fires burn for nearly an hour.
“I heard your mom used to read tea leaves,” Bo says, blowing on his tea to cool it.
“Where did you hear that?”
“In town, when I was looking for work and found the flyer. I had asked someone how to get to the island, and they thought I was looking to have my fortune read.”
“She doesn’t do it anymore, not since my dad left.” I lean forward and pull up a clump of brittle beach grass at my feet then roll it between my palms to crush it, feeling the broken fibers before I scatter the fragments back across the ground. I have a memory of my dad walking across the island, kneeling down occasionally to pull up a gathering of dandelions or clover or moss, then rubbing them between his worn hands. He liked the way the world felt. Loam and green. The earth giving up things we often ignored. I wipe the memory away with a quick closing of my eyes. It hurts to think of him. Pain skipping through my chest.
“Do you read tea leaves?” He asks with a quirk of an eyebrow.
“Not really.” A short laugh escapes my throat. “So don’t get your hopes up. I won’t be revealing your future any time soon.”
“But youcando it?”
“Used to. But I’m out of practice.”
He holds out his mug for me to take.
“You don’t fully believe in the Swan sisters, but you believe that fortunes can be seen in tea leaves?” I ask, not accepting his mug.
“I’m unpredictable.”
I smile and raise both eyebrows at him. “I can’t read the leaves with liquid still in the cup. You have to finish it and then the pattern of leaves left inside is where your fortune lives.”
He looks down into his mug like he might be able to read his own future. “Spoken like a true witch.”
I shake my head and smile. It’s hardly witchcraft. It doesn’t involve spells or potions or anything quite so intriguing. But I don’t correct him.
He takes a long drink of his tea and finishes it in one gulp, then extends it out to me.
I hesitate. I really don’t want to do this. But he’s looking at me with such anticipation that I take the cup and hold it between both palms. I tilt it to one side, then the other, examining the whirl of leaves around the edges. “Hmm,” I say, as if I were considering something important, then peek at him from the corner of my eye. He looks like he’s moved closer to the edge of the log, about to fall off if I don’t tell him immediately what I see. I lift my head and look at him fully. “Long life, true love, piles of gold,” I say, then set the mug on the log between us.
One of his eyebrows lifts. He glances at the mug then at me. I try to keep a straight face, but my lips start to tug upward. “Very astute reading,” he says, smiling back then laughing. “Perhaps you shouldn’t make a career of reading tea leaves,” he says. “But I do hope you’re right about my future on all accounts.”
“Oh, I’m right,” I say, still grinning. “The leaves don’t lie.”
He laughs again, and I take a sip of my own tea.
Sparks dance and writhe up into the sky. And I realize how at ease I am sitting here with Bo. How normal it feels. As if this were something we do each evening: set trees on fire and laugh together in the dark.
I don’t feel the gnawing at the base of my skull that usually plagues me each summer—a ticking clock counting down the days until the summer solstice and the end of the Swan season. Bo has distracted me from all the awful things lurking in this town, in the harbor, and in my mind.
“People used to say that the apples and pears that grew on the island had magical healing properties,” I tell him, tilting my head back to watch the waves of smoke spiral upward like mini tornados. “They thought they could heal ailments like a bee sting or hay fever or even a broken heart. They would sell for twice the normal price in town.”
“Did your family used to sell them?” he asks.
“No. This was long before my family lived here. But if the orchards could produce edible fruit again, maybe we could sell it.”
“By next summer, you should be able to harvest ten to twenty pounds from each tree. It’ll be a lot of work, so you’ll probably need to hire more help.”
He says “you,” like he won’t be around to see it.
“Thank you for doing this,” I say, “for bringing them back to life.”
He nods and I touch my index finger, now wrapped with a Band-Aid. The stinging is gone, the cut almost healed. But it will probably leave a tiny scar. My gaze slides to Bo, to the scar beneath his left eye, and I have to ask, “How did you get that?” I nod to the smooth, waxy line of skin.
He blinks, the scar puckering together, as if he feels the pain of it again. “I jumped out of a tree when I was nine. A branch cut me open.”
