"I am told you cure heartbreak," my neighbor says to me over the fence between our properties. It's the first time she's addressed me since moving into the vacant cottage next door. I don't glance up from mangling the forsythia bush with my pruning shears.

"There is no remedy for heartbreak. It diffuses into you, becomes part of your marrow. I can't excise it. Only dilute it." 

"Will you do that for me?" Her voice is a breath away from cracking. 

I pause and look at her. "Are you sure that's what you want?" 

"Yes." 

#

I invite her in, motion for her to sit in a chair at the kitchen table while I collect what I need for the procedure. She must have fled the city to escape whatever trauma haunts her. No one here wears designer brand jeans.

"Do you need to know the details of the break up? A crimson blush seeps up her throat and across her jaw line.

"I don't want to muddy the alchemy with my own empathy."  I gesture with my chin for her to follow me out as I head through the back door. 

The yard is chaotic. None of the specimens have been planted by design. 

"We don't know what will come of anyone's anguish, only that the potential of it is stored like a seed inside of them," my father explained long ago when he began to teach me blood cultivation. Mrs. George's turmoil over her divorce had become a variegated hosta. Grandma Peters' spite over not being invited to her granddaughter's wedding, nightshade. Rob Fick's highschool heartbreak, a fuchsia climbing rose anchored against the shed. I lead my neighbor to an empty plot and position myself so that I'm standing opposite her with a foot of dirt exposed between us. 

"Hold out your hand," I instruct. She complies. "Think about the conflict." She swallows and presses her lips together. The expression reads like the aftermath of a betrayal. "You must not move or flinch," I continue to explain as I unsheathe the sterilized knife I've brought with me from the kitchen. Fear flickers in her eyes. I grip her wrist firmly with my left hand. For a moment, I think she'll rip her hand away and bolt from my garden, but she stands firm. I slice the tip of the knife into the heartline on her palm. Her breath catches. The cut isn't deep, only an inch long. She trembles against the sting. When I've finished I squeeze her palm and let the blood drip into the dirt. She's crying. "Tears help," I tell her. I kneel and mix the blood into the earth with the blade while whispering the words my father passed down to me. We go back inside when I've finished. 

I clean her wound, slather it in an antibacterial salve and dress it. She grimaces but the fear in her eyes has dissolved into relief.

"What happens now?" She cocks her head while looking at me.

"Live your life. Come back in three months. You can see what's grown from it. Dig up the plant if you like then and put it in your own yard. Destroy it. Leave it here. It's your pain." 

"You're not what I expected a witch to look like." A slight smile touches her lips. 

"I am not a witch." I lead her to the door and open it for her. 

"What should I call you then?" She turns to face me.

"Ashley." She blinks when I offer nothing further.

"I'm Claire," she says as she steps over the threshold. I shut the door quickly behind her.  

#

Most people opt for therapy or rebound relationships rather than blood lettings these days. My father's practice was much busier than mine. 

"We have to be stoic for the magic to work, Ashley. Never cry in front of those you help. Our job is to comfort them, not to be comforted." He could listen to anyone's grief or remorse and it would leave him unscathed. Detachment didn't come naturally to me but I learned to numb myself over the years — compartmentalize my emotions by pinching them off like suckers on a tomato plant, so I could keep the family trade alive without losing myself in other people's turmoil.  

A month after Claire's bloodletting, I show Greg Larson to a vacant spot of earth near the back door. His face is shadowed with grief over his brother's death. I can help ease his burden but won't let myself cry with him. I catch Claire watching us over the fence. Red and green Coral Bells have shot up where we buried her blood. She disappears when I glare at her. I don't want her watching Greg break down. 

#

I bump into her a month later at Gordon B. White's convenience store. She's chatting with him like they're old pals. She smiles at me, finishes paying for her bread and eggs, and leaves. 

"She wants to be your friend," Gordon says. He reaches down to pat his good dog, Saucy, on the head. 

"Did she say that to you?" I narrow my eyes. Gordon's the only person I'll tolerate this kind of talk from. He's known me since before my mother left. 

"No, but she can't stop talking about how much your magic helped her." He gives a little shrug as he hands me my change. Then his brow furrows. "Rebecca's back in town visiting her parents with her wife. She stopped in here yesterday." My jaw clenches at the sound of the name.

"That's lovely for them." I pick up my bags and leave. Claire is loitering on the sidewalk outside. I ignore her. I don't want to talk or hang around. Accidentally bumping into Rebecca and the woman she left me for is the last thing I need.

"I thought we could walk back home together." 

"Sure," I say, but peel off ahead of her. I want to process Rebecca's unexpected return to town alone. 

"I've been doing a lot better since you performed that ritual on me." I grunt at her and keep walking. She matches my pace without skipping a beat. "I've met a lot of people you've helped. You don't associate with them. I—"

"I keep to myself. I've seen too much of their misery. It's easier on them, too. I'm a reminder of events they'd like to forget."

"But I heard your Dad—"

"I'm not my father." We reach our houses and I open my front gate. She lingers.

"I wanted to invite you over for dinner tonight." She's holding her groceries in front of her chest protectively. "T-to thank you." 

"For what?"

"Helping me heal?"

"You don't have to thank me." I look behind me at my front door and tap my foot. Why doesn't she get the hint that I don't want to chat?

"Come over around six. You're not a vegetarian are you?" 

"No." I leave her standing at the gate. I don't owe her or anyone politeness or explanations. I put the milk and butter in the fridge when I'm inside. I go out to the shed, get a hack saw and amputate two branches from the forthysia bush. You're not supposed to cut them back this late in the spring but I've kept my father's wishes of letting the plant remain in the yard. He never said I couldn't hurt it. 

#

At six p.m. there's a knock at the door. Claire is standing there in a crimson dress. 

"Dinner's ready!" A goofy smile animates her face. As much as I don't want to leave my house, I haven't eaten since before lunch and my stomach is growling like an angry bear. 

"I'm not changing," I say, slipping on my flip-flops.

She surveys my dirt-stained pants and sweat-stained t-shirt. "You look great." She bounces and turns on her heel. I roll my eyes and follow her next door.

 A red table cloth the exact hue as her dress covers her table. There are two formal place settings across from each other and crystal candle holders set between them. I sit and she begins dishing out an oversized portion of linguine and meatballs. She pours us both a glass of red wine. 

"Is...is...this a date?" I blurt out. I want to claw back the words immediately. Claire almost drops the serving spoon.

"I—"

"I'm not used to this kind of treatment." I take my napkin and put it on my lap.

"I hope you aren't uncomfortable," she says, sitting down. "You've helped so many people. You don't ask for anything in return."

"Not needing anything prevents a person from getting hurt." I take a bite of one of the meatballs. They are moist and delicious. She's blended just the right ratio of garlic, cheese, parsley and salt. 

"I was in a dark place before I moved here." She looks directly at me. I gulp the wine instead of answering. I can feel myself warming up to her — edging close to apologizing for being prickly and standoffish. I need to leave. I shovel the rest of the food in my mouth and eat silently. I push my chair back abruptly when I've finished, startling her.

"Thank you very much for the meal. It was good." She follows me back to her front door.

"Any time. I enjoy your company," she says. I give her a close-lipped smile and hurry back to my dark, empty house without looking back. She's only being polite, I tell myself as I close my front door.

#

My father's grave is tucked into the corner of the cemetery next to a stone wall. I've told the groundskeepers not to maintain the surrounding turf — to let whatever wants to grow above him run amuck. I visit him the next morning and find wild raspberries on the bushes braced against the wall. They fall apart on my tongue, their sweetness clashing with my bitter thoughts. I sit next to him. We never talked about what we felt when he was alive. He said nothing after mom left. Barely explained to me why he performed the ritual for Rebecca after she broke up with me. 

"Mom was right," I say to his headstone. "This is a cold lonely life." 

#

There's another knock at the door that afternoon. I shouldn't have had dinner with Claire. It's given her the leeway to think she can drop by whenever she wants. I open it and Rebecca's standing there with the same brown curly hair and easy smile she faked the day she left. 

"I'm in town and I thought I would drop by to look at the transplant your dad did for me. I never did come back for it." Her voice is breezy, belying none of the heartbreak between us.

"You know your way around the yard." I step aside to let her walk through the house. She waltzes in past me and out the back door. I trail behind, stopping a few feet away from the wounded forsythia bush. Claire is watching over the fence. I don't want her to witness this but I don't trust myself to look at her. Rebecca's hand goes up to her mouth. 

"Your father said it would be taken care of."

My face flashes hot. "People say a lot of things and don't keep their promises." The words leave my mouth in a rush. 

She looks at me like I've cursed her. "This wasn't the deal." 

"You convinced my father to do the ritual before you left. You knew he wouldn't say no to you or anyone. You wanted to ease your guilt or whatever heartless people feel. He never performed another transplant for the rest of his life because he knew how upset he'd made me. I've kept it for you. That's more than you did for me. You didn't even message when he died." 

She holds up her palm. The scar from the ritual is longer and wider than my father would have made. It's pink, inflamed and impossibly fresh. "It didn't work. He messed it up."

"What do you want me to do about it? You're the one who messed everything up." 

"Kill it. So I can get over it." She pushes past me and heads back through the house. Leaving me. Like she did the first time. I stifle the urge to yell: You mean get over me. I go over to the shed and get my heavy shears and a shovel. 

"Can I help?" Claire is in my yard. If I tell her to leave, I'll fall apart. 

"You can bundle up the branches." She piles them up against the fence as I cut them off. Then, watches me dig up the rootball of the bush. 

"What do we do now?" she asks after I've destroyed it.

"Bring me one of the sheaved knives from the kitchen counter." I keep my voice flat. While I wait, I think of my father. How in the end he hadn't been able to shut his heart off completely.  

"Cut me the way I cut you." I instruct Claire when she returns with the knife.

"I can't." She recoils.

"You wanted me to open up and share. I'm too close the pain. I'll taint it." I press my lips together They quirk upwards. She nods and unsheathes the knife. She grips my wrist steadily and makes an incision along the heart line. I watch my blood drip into the space where my father bled Rebecca.

I kneel and mix the blood into the soil then stand.

"Someone once told me tears help," Claire says. I laugh in spite of myself.

"That person should learn to take her own advice." She follows me back to the house and helps me bandage my hand. 

"I'm not going to ask you what happened between you and your...friend." She swallows. "I am going to ask you if you'd like to come over and have dinner again." There's an earnest, vulnerable shine in her eyes as she speaks.

I chew on the inside of my cheek. The word, "No" is heavy at the back of my throat. But she isn't Rebecca and I've just killed my last reminder of the past. 

"Yes. I would like that," I say. The surprised goofy smile lights up her face. It makes me think, perhaps something could grow from this.

© 2024 Suzan Palumbo