Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

As we stepped out of the car, Sawyer once again snug in my foraging bag, Aunt Hyacinth sucked in a deep inhale through her nose at the sight of the old forest, the little path into the trees to the clearing where Arthur's cottage nestled, the big green barn with its open bays, and the river just barely visible at the bottom of the hill, swollen and roaring.

"We'll get everything we need here," she announced triumphantly. "You can tell by the smell. This is a lush place. Perfect for foraging."

"This forest is old," Grandmother said, giving me an accusing look. "You said you've foraged here before? And nothing was amiss?"

I kept my mouth shut about the elm tree. Besides, she asked if anything was amiss, not that if anything had gone amiss. "No."

She gave the forest another suspicious look, mumbling something to herself about fae monsters lurking in its depths that I barely caught. I mean, she wasn't wrong, exactly, there was that demonic half-heart still buried in that tree in the Alders' part of the forest, but thistle thorns, she was more superstitious than a bog witch.

"Wood first," she then declared, marching off towards the barn.

No longer in fine black wool and leather, she wore dress slacks, heeled boots, and a form-fitting belted houndstooth coat. A green-and-ivory neck scarf tied in a French knot was just the boost of color she needed to bring out her eyes. She cut a fancy figure, like she was going out to a classy brunch in the Hamptons instead of buying wood at a carpenter's shop.

Aunt Hyacinth and I quickly followed, me breaking out into a jog to reach the open bay first and announce our arrival. "Hi, Cody!"

"He ain't here, Misty Fields," the old carpenter said, not bothering to look up from rubbing stain over one of his newest carvings. I didn't take any offense; it was delicate work he needed to finish. "The boy's over at Axel's getting his motorcycle fixed. Had to enlist other help this morning, but dontcha know that fella ran off too. Nobody wants to work these days," he muttered.

"The boy? Motorcycle?" Grandmother murmured. "Is he talking about the man-bear?"

I suppressed the image of man-bear that immediately came to mind—Arthur in my bedroom doorway, a scattering of buttons on the floor, along with his shirt—and murmured quickly, "Everybody's a boy or girl when you're Cody's age." Then, louder: "I'm actually here to see you, Cody."

"You are?" He looked up with delight then, eyes quickly narrowing in on the two other women with me.

It was impossible for him not to notice Aunt Hyacinth first, what with her plum-colored felt jacket and paisley-print skirt in autumn orange, turquoise, and more of that plum-purple color. She was a garish spot of color against the drab rainy backdrop of the day, but it was only when his eyes saw Grandmother did they widen.

Cody Beecham, for the first time since I'd known him, was speechless. Red tinged his cheeks and the tips of his ears first, working all the way down to his collar as he just stared and stared.

Grandmother's mouth twitched—was she suppressing a smile?—before she turned to the side and started perusing the salad bowls. Cody had carved another one with olives in the same style as the one Mr. Bensen's wife had broken with her Sasquatch hands, apparently to prove it and the other one weren't cursed. She picked it up, running her fingertip over the perfectly smooth edge of a blade-like leaf.

"Is he having a stroke?" Aunt Hyacinth murmured when the carpenter had yet to breathe and stop turning red.

" Cody ," I said loudly. I was one second away from snapping my fingers in front of his face when he returned to himself, blustering.

"Well it's about time you were here to see me again, Misty Fields. I do deliver on the goods, you know." Sniffing, he set aside his stain rag, hitched up his khaki pants in the manner all men do, and asked, "What'll it be this time? And don't you dare say you need more shelves. This is Cedar Haven, not Hammer & Nails."

"Cody, this is my grandmother, Irene. She, um, has the list. A-and this is my aunt Helena. Also, do you know if Arthur has any more honey for sale?"

The old carpenter didn't seem to hear me, his attention fixed on my grandmother as she moved to the decorative lintels hanging on the wall. Cody lifted his ball cap and smoothed his hair before replacing his cap. Then he adjusted his suspenders and actually gave his armpits a sniff, as if Aunt Hyacinth and I weren't right there watching him primp himself. Then, in that bold and down-to-business way of his: "Miss Irene, what can I do you for this fine afternoon?"

It's like he hadn't heard a word I'd said after Irene . "Cody, the honey—"

"Is this made of ash wood?" Grandmother asked, pointing to a lintel with a windswept leaf motif.

"Good eye," he said, clearly having forgotten all about me and Aunt Hyacinth.

"And these are thistle leaves, if I'm not mistaken, instead of the classic acanthus?"

Cody looked genuinely impressed. "Even better eye."

"Misty," Grandmother prompted, and I moved forward to retrieve the lintel as she continued her examination of the others. "Did you carve these yourself?"

He placed his hands on his narrow hips. "You're looking at the finest woodcarver west of the Ohio River."

"Oh, really? I see none of these in oak, Mr. Beecham. Is that because you find it difficult to manage its coarse grain when doing intricate work?"

"I can manage anything, Miss Irene," he said, a smidge of the ornery old man I knew coming through at the challenge. "But part of that is knowing what wood is best for what application. You wouldn't burn mahogany for heat nor use knotty pine for furniture."

"Nor balsa wood for scaffolding."

He nodded approvingly. "You know your wood."

She gave him one of her assessing up-down glances, but there was a little glimmer in her eye. "I know a fair deal more than just about wood."

Oh my Green Mother, is Grandmother flirting ? That would mean she was an actual woman with feelings other than those of a militant-yet-benevolent dictator. And twiggy old Cody Beecham was her type?

"Now," she said, getting down to business, "I need to see any cherrywood you haven't wasted on girls' jewelry boxes, your oaken newel posts, any olivewood cutlery—specifically spatulas—and all of your rowan shillelaghs—or do you call them walking sticks here? Helena, I want that other ash lintel too, the one with the brown-eyed Susans."

Cody seemed shocked that a woman as done up and dignified as my grandmother would have such a detailed list and down-to-business air about her. She was here to buy , not meander, not ooh and ahh, not ask him a billion questions and then leave the store with nothing but a wave and a singsong, "Thank youuu!"

"Something the matter, Mr. Beecham?" she prompted.

I found it fascinating that she had called Emmett by his first name but wasn't extending the same familiarity with Cody. Nudging my aunt, I mouthed, "Are you seeing this?"

"I'm trying not to," was her reply.

"Just never met a woman who was so direct before," he answered.

"Mr. Beecham, I don't have time to bat my eyelashes and ask coyly after things I already know the answer to."

"You're quite the pistol, aren't you?"

Aunt Hyacinth and I froze. No one spoke so bluntly to Grandmother. I had at one point, in her office, and look where that had gotten me.

But Iris Hawthorne merely cocked a smug eyebrow. "The cherrywood?"

"I'll show you, but wait just a minute."

Aunt Hyacinth and I shared a look. Nobody told Grandmother to wait, just like nobody in town dared tell Ms. Charlotte Harris to wait.

Grandmother clasped her hands in front of her and raised both eyebrows expectantly. Challengingly.

"As a wood connoisseur yourself, you should know the oak, cherry, and ash are all local," Cody explained. "The rowan is imported from the Northeast. That gonna be a problem?"

"Why would it be a problem?"

"Someone like you doesn't come in here with a shopping list like that without taking their sources into account. You're a green witch, like your granddaughter, after all. I would expect such things to matter to you."

"They do. And it's not a problem. Now, the cherrywood?"

The carpenter adjusted his suspenders again, like he was strapping in for a rollercoaster of a ride. "Misty Fields, you've got the shop," he told me.

"I what now?"

"Oh come now. The boy isn't here, and he's smitten with you, so by the transitive property, you're now my assistant. And my assistant does what I say. You're helping anyone else who comes in here." He swaggered up to my grandmother, offering his elbow with the confidence of a man who knew the lady would take it. "Miss Irene is going to have my complete and undivided attention for the duration of her visit. Got it?"

"The transitive property doesn't work that way!"

"You heard him, Misty." After a pointed glance at his proffered elbow, Grandmother smirked and turned on her heel. She was not so easily impressed, but that smirk had Cody hastening after her deeper into his workshop.

"Here." Aunt Hyacinth sloughed her lintel off into my arms and quickened after her aunt. "Clearly I'm the fetcher. And chaperone."

Not even knowing how to use the cash register, I slipped behind the counter and eased onto the stool, settling my foraging bag on the counter. Sawyer wiggled his head free of the canvas and watched as the carpenter and the witch picked this and that off the shelves, loading up Aunt Hyacinth's arms. Overhead, more rain drummed on the tin roof. The little tomcat was quick to tuck his head back in when all three of them returned to the checkout counter and Cody shooed me aside.

"Just like the boy," he chastised. "Thinking he can just look pretty and do nothing else around here."

"There were literally no customers!"

He sniffed, his knobby fingers dancing over a calculator as he tallied the purchases. Then he paused, as if an idea had just occurred to him. Springing spryly to his feet, Cody strutted to where the salad bowls were and retrieved the big one with the olives carved into it and added it to the pile.

Grandmother was quick to protest. "I didn't—"

"These other things are what you need, though I see no rhyme or reason to them." Cody tapped the bowl. "But this is something you want. You looked twice at it. You didn't give any other piece in here the same attention."

"You're very shrewd, Mr. Beecham. But—"

"Eh," he interrupted. "It's on the house. The least I could do for all your business."

Indeed, Grandmother was about to drop over a thousand dollars for this seemingly random assortment of lintels, shillelaghs, and decorative carvings.

"You treat all your paying customers this way?"

"Never," I mouthed to Aunt Hyacinth.

"Not a chance. They pay full price. I know my worth."

"Hmm." Grandmother traced one of the carved olives with her finger, considering. All of them were almond-shaped, clearly Kalamata olives if you knew what you were looking at, and they certainly were her favorite.

"Grandmother," I said quietly. "Just accept it. Otherwise the Redbud Curse—"

"What curse?" she and Aunt Hyacinth demanded in the same shrill voice.

"Local superstition," I informed quickly. "If you reject a gift given with a generous heart, you'll be cursed with a year's worth of bad luck."

"Hmm," Grandmother said again, lips quirking. "How quaint." Louder, she told Cody, "I accept."

"Sensible," he grunted, as if whether or not Grandmother accepted his gift was of no consequence to him.

It wasn't like he was going to get the bad luck, after all. Except rumor would fly that yet another salad bowl carved with olives had been rejected for no good reason, though likely because it was cursed just like the other one. Even so, there was a definite upturn to his pursed lips as he removed the price tag and set the bowl with the other pieces to be wrapped up.

I helped Cody wrap everything in brown paper and twine then left with Aunt Hyacinth to back the car up to the open bay. I wasn't to be left alone, ever, and the two of us hurried back into the deluge of rain. Sawyer wisely stayed in the car when we got back out to load up the trunk.

"Mr. Beecham," Grandmother said as she let Aunt Hyacinth and me take care of all the manual labor, "my granddaughter tells me you allowed her to forage on your land not too long ago. I have need of some of the same plants she collected and would like your permission to do the same. Immediately."

The request caught him off guard, and he looked pointedly at the veritable sheets of rain that were shrouding everything in gloom. "What? Like, now ?"

"I'm not made out of sugar, Mr. Beecham. I won't melt in this rain."

"Maybe not, but you'll twist an ankle and probably your neck getting down the sawmill path. You'll be off to the hospital at the same time I'm slapped with a lawsuit. No, ma'am."

Grandmother's ivy-green eyes glittered. "Mr. Beecham—"

"'Sides, the area she was in is all flooded out. See how that river's roarin'? We've had some hard frosts and the water's got nowhere to go with the ground pinched up tighter than a horse's eyes in black fly season. They don't call it ‘wetlands' for nothing, you know."

Grandmother surveyed the river, glaring at the water for having the audacity to throw a wrench in her agenda. Even a green witch as powerful as Grandmother couldn't redirect a river. An irritated sigh shot past her teeth. "Another time, then? Tomorrow."

"Weather report says this'll all be gone tonight," he said. "You can probably risk it tomorrow afternoon. I'll have the boy check it out for you. He's as big and sturdy as a bear, that one."

Grandmother's gaze slid over to me, and I refused to blush. "Yes. We've met. Well, tomorrow then, Mr. Beecham."

He touched the brim of his ball cap to us and gave the car a wave as we drove off into the rain, quickly disappearing from sight as the wet November day swallowed us whole.