“I . . . don’t think so.” Ida’s expression was bemused.
The girl stared at me. “Someone who looks just like you, then. Tall, red hair. The same gray eyes.”
“Oh,” I breathed. “Mandy.”
The girl’s own eyes were large and so dark I could hardly distinguish the iris from the pupil. Speaking was suddenly difficult.
“Is that her name?” the girl asked. “Mandy? She seemed really familiar, but maybe that was some weird sense of déjà vu. She looked like you two. Stormy eyes.”
“My sister,” I whispered to the girl. “Ida’s mother.”
The girl made an ah face, nodded like that somehow made sense.
“Mandy was here?” Ida twisted her head around, searching. “When? How long ago? What did she look like? What did she say?”
“She passed by here. We can tell the ones passing by. She liked our cider.” The girl stared straight at me. “I knew there was something about her. Some reason she stuck in my head. You’re trying to find her. How come?” She tilted her head, clearly sensing a story. I couldn’t explain, felt my sister’s presence too keenly to talk about anything but the possibility of another letter, another clue, another step closer to her.
“Did she leave something for us?” I asked, my tongue still too heavy for my mouth.
“What would she have left?” the girl asked.
“A letter,” I said, too fast. “No stamp or return address. It would be thick, full of pages.” Full of secrets, I thought.
“When was she here?” Ida asked again.
The girl’s eyebrows were raised. “About a week ago? Just passing through. Said she needed some luck, some liquid courage.” From behind the bar, she produced a bottle of pale, cloudy liquid without a label. She pushed it toward us, her mouth a small, knowing smile. “Something tells me you’ll need a little courage tonight too.”
“Are you allowed to serve us cider?” I asked, staring stupidly at the bottle.
“I’m not serving you,” the girl said, grinning. “It’s a present. Just don’t tell my grandparents. They own this place.”
Ida put her hands palm down on the bar. “About a week ago, you said? Did Mandy say anything? Did she look . . . I dunno, how did she seem?”
The girl kept her gaze fixed on me as she spoke. “She seemed . . . like you. Like both of you. Like she was searching for something.”
“Searching for a place to hide a letter,” I whispered.
The girl leaned on the bar, her necklace—long, some kind of jagged stone wrapped in gold wire—clinking against the glasses, the bottle of cloudy cider. “Why would she leave a letter here for you to find?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But there has to be a reason.” I turned to Ida. “The last one brought me to you.”
The girl behind the bar smiled and said, “Maybe this one brought you to me.”
My insides were suddenly uncomfortably warm.
“You mind if we look around?” Ida asked.
“Of course,” the girl said, dark eyes still on me. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Ida and I split up, moved around the bar. Outside, the evening was calm and still. The pub owners propped open the doors. A breeze sighed in like a breath and on it a church bell sounded out its call to evening mass. Several of the pub patrons paused what they were doing, crossed themselves, and went on as if no interruption had taken place.
I went from table to table, muttering excuse mes to the people seated, looking for any trace of white, of paper, but finding only napkins, receipts, forgotten shopping lists. Ida met me back at the bar.
“Nothing,” she said.
The girl behind the bar poured us all—herself included—a glass of cloudy cider. She pushed the glasses toward us and said, “Maybe this will help.”
It was sweet, crisp, strange. Pooled inside me like honey. I could feel the tension in my shoulders lifting. I could almost feel myself trust that we were exactly where we were meant to be.
Ida took a sip, eyed the glass suspiciously. “What’s in this besides cider?” she asked.
The girl laughed. “Secret family recipe,” she said. “Passed down to my grandparents from previous generations. We infuse each batch with herbs. Some for calm, some for clarity, some for finding what you seek. Some for love. Some for death even. My granda says there’s nothing like fine apple cider for masking the taste of poison. But he won’t teach me that recipe.”
The second sip warmed me; it rose like a small fire in my chest, tasted like courage.
“So,” the girl said, when each of us had been soothed by her cider. “Tell me about your sister. Tell me why you’ve lost her and how come you thought you’d find her here.”
It took almost an entire glass of that strange cider to explain our story to this stranger and she didn’t for a moment look like anything we said was difficult to believe.
Cale, we learned in turn, was seventeen, and also entirely unafraid of oversharing with strangers. Her parents were currently protesting against oil companies in the Amazon and had invited Cale to come with them, but she’d been in a relationship at the time (that had since ended, I was embarrassingly relieved to hear) and had elected instead to finish the school year living with her grandparents.
“They’re just happy I want to learn the family recipes,” she said. “Plus they pay me for working here.”
Finn walked into the bar as Cale finished speaking, breathless, shirt rumpled from the bus. The first thing he did was grab me and bundle me into a hug. “Are you okay?” Concern swam in his brown eyes and an unexpected lump formed in my throat.
“Peachy keen,” I said around it, and moved aside to introduce him to Ida. When he saw her, his eyes went wide.
“Holy shit,” he said. “That is Mandy’s daughter.”
Ida raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “Yep.”
Finn shook his head, still slightly stunned. “Deena,” he said. “Your life is like a soap opera.”
Rachel chose that moment to call. I watched my phone vibrate slowly across the bar in front of me, but only picked it up when it was still. The voicemail lasted a few seconds, just enough time for Rachel to hitch a sigh, change her mind, hang up, call again.
I couldn’t reply. I wasn’t ready to talk to her yet, and I didn’t want her to ask where I was.
Her second voicemail was longer.
“Deena,” she said. “I wanted. I just wanted to check in. After this morning. Things are tense—can be tense—at times like these and I want you to know I’m still here for you, even if I said some things I shouldn’t. You were right to be angry. But— And, I mean. And it’s okay if you need some time. I know you’ve got Finn, and his family.” Here her voice grew thick with the kind of vines that wrap around you, steal the air from your lungs. “But I’m here for you if you need me. I’m not going anywhere. And I love you. Okay, bye. Call me if you want. Okay, bye. I’ll be here when you get back. Okay, bye. Bye, bye-bye, bye.”