Orla fled, not down the driveway, but into the dense forest that butted it. She fought the branches away as they snagged her hair and face. She’d barely gone a few steps when her legs gave out and she fell into a tree, wrapped her arms around the trunk, but could not hold herself up.
Darkness descended like a wave. It fled down the sky, erasing the trickle of sunlit blue. It washed over the trees and swept Orla away.
Chapter 8
Hazel
Hazel shuffled her tarot deck. She spread the cards fan-like on the dark blanket beneath her and gazed at the sparse early morning traffic from her front porch. It was her morning ritual. Draw four cards, one for each girl in the house, and slip them under everyone’s respective coffee mugs.
For herself, she drew the six of cups. The card was not a surprise. Her mother’s birthday was less than a week away. She would have been forty-six that year, but she’d never seen forty-three. Ovarian cancer had stolen her from the world, not quietly, but with a roar after months of near-constant pain. In her final days, a drugged haze was the only existence her mother could tolerate. The cups were cards of emotions; the six of cups spoke of nostalgia, romanticizing the past. Since her mother’s death, Hazel had found herself weepy-eyed in July, wanting to do things she and her mother used to do, hoping to keep her memory alive.
She pulled the second card for Bethany - the ten of wands. Bethany occupied the room across the hall from Hazel. She was two years her junior at eighteen, newly graduated from high school, and intent on living independently from her parents. She worked two jobs, one as a waitress, the other babysitting a family down the street. The card made sense. Bethany was pushing to stay ahead of things, falling into bed exhausted most nights.
The third card went to Jayne, the wanderer. At twenty-one, she’d already lived in Thailand, California, and a series of cities along the East Coast. She’d left home at fifteen years old with nothing but a backpack and hitched her way around the world. She was a restless spirit and had a lot in common with Orla, their fourth roommate, who occupied the attic room at the top of the house. Jayne received the Hermit card - part of the high arcana. Hazel laughed and shook her head.
“Not likely,” she murmured. The card implied that Jayne needed to fold in, spend time at home, deepen into silence and stillness. Hazel drew the Hermit card for Jayne at least twice a week, but Jayne never heeded its call. She said she intended to embody the hermit when she reached ninety and settled into a farmhouse filled with cats and marijuana plants.
Hazel shuffled and drew the fourth and final card, studying the image of the half-man, half-goat with black wings. It was the Devil card, a strange harbinger for Orla, who genuinely lived in the light. The Devil represented the shadow - a darker side of the self, or of another. Hazel sensed the card did not represent Orla at all. An omen, perhaps.
Hazel tried to remember if Orla mentioned any conflicts at work, anyone who might be deceiving her. She didn’t think so.
The morning before, Orla had given Hazel a quick wave goodbye as she pulled her bike from the shed. She’d pedaled off, her canvas bag of library books slung over her shoulder. Hazel hadn’t asked where she was headed.
Usually, the four roommates reconnected over dinner. They took turns cooking each night, but Hazel went out to dinner with her boyfriend, Calvin, the night before and missed their communal meal.
Hazel carried the cards into the kitchen, made a pot of coffee, and pulled each girl’s mug from the cupboard. Orla drank from a brown mug decorated in orange and green flowers. Hazel’s eye lingered on the card as she slid it halfway beneath the mug. She took her own coffee and returned to the porch.
“No Orla?” Hazel called, watching Bethany and Jayne on the porch swing, drinking their coffee and talking.
Hazel stood in her garden, pulling handfuls of weeds up by the roots and tossing them to the side.
Orla typically woke up before the other two girls, shortly after Hazel. It was nearly ten a.m., and no sign of her.
“Nope,” Jayne said. “She wasn’t here for dinner last night, either.”
“I haven’t seen her since breakfast yesterday morning,” Bethany added.
“Did she say where she was going?” Hazel asked, brushing her dirty hands on the skirt she wore in the garden. It was a light, cottony fabric, dark-colored with big pockets to drop vegetables into. Orla had made it for her.
“Nope, I slept late yesterday,” Jayne said.
Bethany nodded her head.
“We talked in the morning about the book she was returning. God’s eyes or something,” Bethany said. “But I didn’t ask about the rest of her day.”
“Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Hazel corrected. She had recommended the book to Orla. “I think I’ll run up and check on her,” Hazel told them, walking to the house and taking the stairs two at a time.
The doorway to the attic lay at the bottom of a second, narrow stairwell. The door was ajar - strange, since Orla closed it when she went to bed.
Hazel knocked on the door before calling her friend’s name.
“Orla?”
No answer.
She crept up the stairs, not wanting to wake her on the chance she’d been out late and decided to sleep in.
Orla’s bed stood beneath a window overlooking the garden. Her bed was rumpled; typical. She only made her bed once a week, after she’d stripped and washed the sheets and replaced them with clean.
It was obvious Orla had not come home the night before. Hazel gazed around the room. A book lay spine-up on Orla’s bedside table next to a half-glass of water. On one side of the room, her sewing table stood beneath the slanted ceiling, a swath of olive fabric next to the machine. The room was neither messy nor clean, a certain organized chaos that Orla thrived in.
Orla had moved into the house a year and a half earlier. She attended Northwest Michigan College, taking general studies courses but had little interest in school.
Orla had moved into the house a year and a half earlier. She attended Northwest Michigan College, taking general studies courses but had little interest in school.
Hazel picked up a yellow bandana on Orla’s nightstand.
In white stitching, she read Memory Keeper.
She had her own bandana with those words sewn along the edge. Orla had made them a year earlier, in July, as they approached the dual anniversaries of Hazel’s mother’s birthday and death-day.
It was a pact they’d made just months after Orla moved into Hazels house. They’d been awake long into the night often those first few months. It was like dating someone knew; they wanted to discover everything about one another. For the first time since her mother’s death, Hazel had found someone she could genuinely confide in. She and Orla clicked.
Hazel remembered that balmy summer night, sitting on the porch, crying into a glass of raspberry wine, as she revealed the story of her mother’s death to Orla. Orla, in turn, revealed her strange gift.
Hazel had slipped her mother’s wedding ring into Orla’s hand and she had cried when she held it.
“Your father bought this in Scotland when he was stationed there…” Orla had murmured. A little smile played on her lips and then her mouth turned down. She touched her belly and winced. “The pain, your mother was in such terrible pain, but,” she looked up at Hazel, her eyes shining, “you brought her the most indescribable joy, Hazel. She was not afraid in the end, but she despaired to leave you behind.”