Page 11 of We Already Dug the Grave

The Sight had sparked awake in me for the first time when I was a little girl, but it had taken an entire childhood of focused work to get to a place where I could use it at will. Anyone could drink tea and look up shapes on a tasseomancy book. Hell, there was probably an app for it.

What we did—what I did—was more. What once felt like drowning, after Hattie-May and Ruth’s teachings, came as simple as breathing. Or it had, once upon a time.

My aunts had taught me to ease open the internal door and focus the chaos of fate into a conduit. Some used cards or palms or roots or any number of things. But for the Robbins women, the conduit was tea. Always tea.

Hattie-May liked to say it was because the tea was of the earth and nourished the body. Ruth would grumble that we used tea because it was four dollars a tin down at the market. I didn’t care so much why we’d used it. It only mattered that it worked.

Or at least, it had worked, once upon a time.

If something is happening, the leaves will show me. They must. I could hear the lie in my head but I pushed forward, working with frenzied fingers. The pomp and ceremony had fallen away a long time ago. On the surface, the process was simple. Boil water. Add leaves. Steep. Drink.

Of course there was more than that. There were rules that had been drilled into me since before I’d lost all my baby teeth.

The first was the easiest. Focus. Everything means something, but not everything means something to you. Fate is wild and connected, and you must focus your intention on the matter at hand, not get distracted by the rest. Pulling on loose threads that “could be” helped no one.

The second was obvious. Consent. Or as Aunt Ruth said, Don’t put your nose where it ain’t welcome. Divining a future without consent is a violation, even graver if the other person doesn’t have the Sight themselves. Doing so is committing violence. And that is never okay.

When I was a kid, Frances and I had gotten into an argument, and I’d threatened to read her leaves to prove her wrong. Ruth overheard and lost her shit. She warned me that if I crossed that line, she’d throw out every last bit of tea in our home and stop my teaching altogether.

I didn’t know if she meant it, but I’d never made that threat again.

The third and the most menacing is the curse. I remember sitting cross-legged at the shabby coffee table in the living room, my aunts perched on the sofa, hands folded. Frances playing on the front porch. Milly, we have to tell you something important, something you cannot ignore.

And so they explained. Balance is delicate. Those gifted with the Sight are one step ahead of fate, and fate liked to even the score. Which meant there’s a price to pay. If a Robbins woman looks into the fate of her beloved, she will always, without question, see some impending doom. Aunt Ruth had smacked her palm against her thigh as she’d explained. “Once that train’s left the station, there’s no stopping it.”

I asked if either of them had ever been dealt the curse, and they’d looked at each other somberly before telling me stories of how the Robbins line is riddled with stories of lost love and heartbreak. Of fates read. Of beloveds doomed to becoming cursed things. I didn’t realize until much later that they’d never actually answered my question. And thinking of this lesson now, knowing how I’d played fast and loose with the rules, made me sick.

I shook off the memory and brought my favorite mug—thrifted, ceramic, and in the shape of Garfield—to the sofa and drained the brew. It was bitter, but no worse than the wine. The dregs clumped and scattered in the bottom of Garfield’s hollow body. The Sight, that awareness—that place, that thing—inside me seemed to cock its head, paying attention. And for a moment, as I always did, wine-drunk and staring into my own leaves, I allowed hope to slip in. Hope that the Sight hadn’t completely abandoned me when I abandoned Tennessee.

With my eyes shut, I focused on reaching into that thrumming maw of everything, the tug guiding me to the internal door. I willed it to throw itself open with abandon and drown me, as it once had so willingly. I’d settle for a whisper. A scream. Anything. I could feel it there, in my chest. I just needed to access it.

The noise of the world fell away and…

Nothing.

I tried again, focused harder. Still, no flash of vision, no new divination in my teacup. No thrum or surge or drowning. No ache.

My eyes fluttered open and I raked a hand over my face, prepared for the inevitable shame. I’m an idiot. How could I truly think—hope believe wish—that after ten years, tonight would be different. Why would it?

Inside my cup there were no new secrets. No new truths. Only the same thing—the same cruel thing—that appeared ever since I’d ran away.

I sat Garfield on Carla’s Ikea coffee table hard enough to chip away part of his orange tail and leaned back into the sofa.

Sister. That’s what the leaves said. Every single time since leaving Tennessee.

Sister, sister, sister.

Taunting me. Cursing from behind that still-shut door.

Fine. I sat down on the sofa and waited for her to appear.

Because we were tethered, and the leaves had a way of summoning her that I couldn’t understand.

When I’d first seen sister in my fate, I’d grown teary-eyed. Two weeks after I’d ran away, I’d ripped open a tea bag I’d stolen from the diner, pouring the grainy leaves into a cup of tap water. The thing inside me barely stirred. There was no vision, no drowning, behind the internal door. Yet, I was so relieved to be shown the thing I missed most that I’d barely noticed.

Sister.

It would be impossible to explain the depth of soul-shattering hope I felt in that moment, thinking I’d be reunited with Frances soon.