Oh, and they’re cursed, too. Supposedly by a siren, although some accounts reference a sea witch. Depends on who’s telling the story.
Ask anyone in Tempest Cove, and they won’t so much as bat an eye at the mention of a sea witch, or siren. They believe in such things nearly as much as the God they insist will deliver them from the evils of the world.
Including the Blackthornes.
“What about an education?” Eyes on the road, she doesn’t bother to look at me, while she sucks in another drag of her cigarette. Good thing, because we’ve already gone over this, and I’d hate for her to see the exasperated look on my face. “You have a gift. One that shouldn’t go to waste.”
Since childhood, I’ve had an uncanny ability to play music by ear. Note for note, even though I can’t actually read a lick of music. My high school music teacher referred to me as lost potential before I graduated six months ago. A prodigious waste of talent, I believe were his exact words. Not that he ever believed I’d amount to anything if I did pursue my music. After all, kids in this town are cursed to follow in their parents’ footsteps.
Sons become fishermen. Daughters become their lonely wives. It’s been that way for generations.
It so happens, though, my mother has been, and still is, the reigning whore on this island who’s kept their husbands from becoming lonely, too. A somewhat colorful deviation from the town’s norm, I suppose. While my real father died when I was born, my mother insists it could’ve been any of the men who got her pregnant. She’s always made a point to tell me how lucky I am to have a whole damn town as a father. My own personal kingdom, she once called it.
As if that makes it easier to fit in here.
What I wouldn’t give to be ignorant to this town’s disapproving stares and whispers. The way the women shield their husbands and sons, as if I walk around with snakes wriggling about my head, ready to turn them to stone.
Unfortunately, I grew up as the daughter of a sinner, and as far as they’re concerned, that’s all I’ll ever be.
“Need money for an education,” I answer, drawing a dollar symbol in the nicotine stained film on the window beside me. “That’s the problem. I’m cursed with impractical potential. Just like you’re cursed to meddle where you shouldn’t.”
“And if I didn’t meddle, you’d be living under a viaduct right now.”
She’s not lying, although I haven’t visited my mom in weeks to know if she’s still camped out off the highway. Last I checked, she’d gone on another bender with one of her many junkie boyfriends.
“Your mother wasn’t always bad, for the record.”
Sometimes I forget that, if anyone is capable of understanding what it’s like to be the daughter of the town’s blacksheep, it’s the sister of said sheep. Maybe that’s why Aunt Midge is so hardened and jaded by life.
Could be that my mother made her that way, too. Or maybe it was having to raise me all these years.
Either way, we’re both cursed, just like the Blackthornes, so it doesn’t make sense that she’d side with the rumors.
A thick fog hovers over the road where the oceanside gives way to trees. An object ahead, off to the right, draws my attention, and I squint my eyes to focus through the white haze, only noticing the shape of a cross once we pass it. Another stands a few feet ahead of that.
I twist around in my seat and catch a third on the opposite side of the road, through the back window. “What’s with the crosses?”
“Churchy types like to come up here sometimes and remind us all how useless they are.” In spite of the crucifix around her neck, my aunt has always had a certain disdain for religion. All those years of catechism seem to have burned her out on it.
That, or the people who tried to cram it down her throat after finding out my uncle cheated on her.
“Have the Blackthornes always been hated this much?” I ask.
Flicking her cigarette out the window, she blows out the last of the smoke. “Thought you didn’t like the rumors?”
I don’t. I hate this town and its gossip, but something about this particular family intrigues me. “I’m just curious to know if it’s a generational thing, or if Lucian’s the only accused murderer.” Rolling my eyes, I turn in time to catch yet another cross at the side of the road.
“Roll your eyes, but you didn’t know Amelia. She was the princess of Tempest Cove. Everyone loved her. And when she started hanging around that man? Well, we just knew trouble would follow. Always does with a Blackthorne.”
“Amelia. That’s his wife?”
“Was. She ain’t around anymore, remember?” Staring through the windshield, she sighs and shakes her head. “Such a shame. But to answer your question, I suppose there’s always been something off about that family. Whether the older ones murdered their wives is unknown—to me, anyway. But who knows, with as much as they keep to themselves.”
The fact that they almost never venture into town has given rise to the mythological rumors about Lucian being some hungry creature that hunts the surrounding woods.
“Well, there’s a difference between suicide and homicide, and last I checked, he was never charged for murder.”
A squawk of laughter jerks her head back, before she flashes me a dubious look. “You think a man with as much money as he has, as much power, would ever be convicted?”
I think this town likes to make up stories when facts don’t quite line up the way they’d like. Take my mother, for example. They nicknamed her the Siren of Tempest Cove, simply because the women couldn’t deal with the fact that their husbands were just as guilty of adultery as she was.
“I think, no matter what, science is science. And evidence doesn’t favor the rich.”
Face washed in mirthless amusement, she shakes her head. “Beauty. Brains. But as naive as a seal pup in a pool of sharks.” When she glances toward me, I swear her eyes are rimmed in darker circles than before. “Evidence don’t always tell the whole story. Sometimes, we have to rely on instinct, Isa. Remember that?”
There’s a subtlety to my aunt’s words. Where she can be downright crass and rude, laying her personality on the table like tarnished silver that hasn’t been polished in decades, there are times I find her to be more shrewd than I am. Her comment is meant to give me pause, to remind me that, only a few months ago, I’d made the tragic mistake of ignoring my instincts.
A thought I cast aside. I don’t need those memories pulling me under and clouding a new start.
“You’re curious, too. That’s why you’re driving me.” I say, searching through the dark silhouettes of passing trees for distraction. Even with the sun cresting the horizon, the canopy of the forest still gives the impression of night here.
“I’m curious to know what would change your mind, yes.”
Inwardly groaning, I shake my head. “It’d take an act of God to make me turn down this cash.”
A black object swoops into my periphery, and aunt Midge slams on the breaks, sending me crashing forward into the dashboard. Hard vinyl thumps against my palms, and needles of electricity shoot up my unbent arms, as the car squeals to a stop.
“Son of a bitch!” Aunt Midge sits with her arms outstretched, both hands white-knuckling the steering wheel.