“June,” she said softly, as if talking about her family even now brought up dormant emotions. “Her name was June, and she was born in rural Appalachia. Into a small mining community.”
Oh. He’d expected she came from near Philadelphia, like Riley.
“I’ve always found Appalachia fascinating.”
The bedrock of the mountains was 480 million years old. It was one of the most ancient and mysterious geological artifacts in the world.
“Do you know those mountains predate the dinosaurs?”
“Yeah.” Riley grinned. “My mom likes to remind people that her hometown is older than Saturn’s rings when they sass her about her accent.”
Clark had begun to recognize the particular kind of softness born of—he suspected—love and pride that entered her voice whenever she spoke of her mum.
“But she left?”
Riley nodded. “She moved away when she got a scholarship to go to college—that’s where she met my dad—but even though she never studied curse breaking, she did kind of go into the other branch of the family business.”
He raised his brows. “What’s that?”
“Midwifery.” Riley put the book back in the drawer. “My mom’s a nurse in obstetrics and gynecology, but my great-grandmother, and her mother before her, they served in a long line of midwives in the mountains. So much of the land out there is isolated, almost inaccessible, trapped as it is in valleys and ridges. It’s hard to get to a hospital.”
She sat on the bed, eyeing the spot beside her until Clark did likewise.
“Our family brought generations of children into the world. And because the women in the community trusted them so much, they began to show up asking for help with problems beyond babies. By the time she was nineteen, Gran was the person everyone in town came to with their troubles.”
Clark had never heard Riley talk like this—effusive but tender, almost shy.
She was quick to share stories about her clients or to defend her decisions, but he rarely heard her describe anything personal. This easy, reverent storytelling about her matrilineal line came in such sharp contrast to the stilted, painful way she’d revealed her father’s betrayal at the pub.
He found himself so hungry to know her in this way he physically stilled, terrified that if he moved too much, he’d spook her into stopping.
“At first”—Clark exhaled when Riley continued—“ she just listened, or if it made sense, she’d give them a tonic or balm like the salve I gave you, something simple with ingredients mixed to bring healing or comfort, to soothe or fortify. But then one day, the sheriff came knocking at her door.” Riley’s face grew somber. “There had been a terrible cave-in at the mine. And June’s sweetheart, the father of the child she was still carrying, he was one of the men down there, trapped.”
Riley twisted her hands together in her lap, the movement flowing like a current through the chain to Clark.
“For a long time, Gran wouldn’t tell me the story. But finally on my eighth birthday, she let me stay up until midnight, and we huddled together under a blanket as she explained.”
At the slight tremor in Riley’s voice, Clark had the terrifying impulse to close his hand around hers. But he knew the most he could offer her was his attention, so he merely nodded, encouraging her to go on.
“Twelve men, some of them still boys, really, were slowly suffocating under miles of rocks and soot. Helpless, they screamed into the earth their anguish, their anger. And as each of them perished, their pain became a curse—whether they’d meant to create one or not.”
Clark’s throat tightened. He could only imagine the complete horror—both for the men and for their families—knowing they were down there but unable to save them.
“The land around the mine began to change after they died,” Riley said. “The soil turned black, frozen. Nothing would grow. Soon after, the water in the streams dried up. Animals began to starve. Those who could packed their belongings and left, but Gran stayed. All those tunnels, the network of the mines—she was afraid of how far the curse could spread. Her community had nowhere to turn for answers. You can’t fight a curse with rifles or fists. So they did what they’d always done—came to Gran and begged her to fix it.”
To take on such an immense, oppressive force, especially believing its origins were supernatural . . . as much as Riley didn’t want to claim her hero complex, clearly it was inherited.
“Gran wrote a counter curse that she refused to repeat, said she couldn’t, not again, but she told me she’d gathered all the loved ones of the lost. Took them to the entrance of the mines, where they’d laid their joined hands upon the ground and repeated her chant. All the love those men had lost, the comfort they sought in their final moments, poured back into the earth—a ritual to mirror the curse’s origin. Gran said everyone felt it, the moment when the curse ended. It was a kind of quiet, she told me, a kind of peace.”
There had been so much confession between them in the last twenty-four hours. All of it felt tremulous, dangerous. A different kind of dare.
They were each trapped by fortune’s cage, the bars constructed of legacy and obligation, aptitude and determination. After tonight, Clark could see in her eyes the same heartsickness that he carried, the kind that came from tamping down and tamping down a longing to be accepted. Only unlike him, rather than courting approval, Riley spat in the face of societal norms. No one could reject her, because she existed in a singularity, isolated and enshrined by abilities others couldn’t access.
He’d thought at first that she relished that position, that she’d manufactured it, but after tonight, he knew he’d been wrong. She was born a curse breaker, and any further branding was an attempt to claw back agency from a calling that had stolen her chance at a more ordinary life.
Clark bowed his head. Riley had offered him something fragile here, a piece of her heart. He wanted to believe in the practice she’d dedicated her life to, but how could he?
They were at an impasse bigger than a contrast in temperament or working style. It was like she could see colors he couldn’t, and Clark only knew how to follow his own eyes.
“It’s a lot of responsibility, curse breaking.” He wanted to acknowledge the bravery, the commitment that she and her Gran both displayed, even if he couldn’t offer more. “And it’s impressive. People place control of their future in your hands.”
Riley shook her head. “Curse breaking isn’t about control.”
“What’s it about, then?”
The lingering happiness around her mouth turned gentle, secret. “Hope.”
“Hope?” The word caught in his chest—a concept that seemed flimsy only until you lost it.
For all Riley’s attachment to the occult, hope was an exceptionally mortal concept. A belief in better, knowing that your ability to effect change was limited. Clark, who had spent his whole life wanting—to be seen, to be special—found himself forced more often than not to use grimacing determination as a proxy.
Hope. It was the exact right word for Riley’s particular brand of determination and persistence.