“That’s not what I hear.”
The gossip had already bubbled through the town about the newest glass pumpkins in the Bonners’ fields, deep and bright as topaz and bloodstone.
“Are they saying I did it?” Miel asked.
“No.” Aracely poured the hot water. “Why would they?”
Miel felt the tension in her fingers pulling back toward her heart. No one but the Bonner sisters knew they had brought the stained glass coffin back from its distant place in their family’s stories. No one but the Bonner sisters knew they had locked Miel inside it.
No one but Miel saw those jewel-glass pumpkins as the threat they were.
Miel handed Aracely the hard cone of piloncillo she always grated into Ms. Owens’ tea.
“I can do this,” she said.
Aracely took the piloncillo. “Are you sure?”
“I always help you,” Miel said.
“I’ve cured her more times than I can count. I know her heart better than mine. If there’s one you had to miss, this isn’t a bad one.”
“But it’s important,” Miel said. “You’re always saying keep the repeat customers happy.”
Aracely eyed the door Ms. Owens was behind. The sound of the sink running came through.
“Fine,” Aracely said. “But take it slow. You don’t have to get me what I ask for so fast you throw it at me. I can wait. So can Emma. If it takes an hour, so what? I don’t want you handing me a pink egg when I want a green one.”
“Deal,” Miel said.
So they spread a sheet over the table in the indigo room, and Ms. Owens came in, clutching a pocket square that must have belonged to whatever man she had last fallen in love with. It looked like it cost more than any dress Miel owned. The candles turned the silk the color of Aracely’s Spanish rice.
Aracely tried to take the pocket square.
Ms. Owens held on.
Aracely ran her fine-boned fingers through a lock of Ms. Owens’ hair. “Let go,” she whispered, her voice warm with the assurance that everything was good and right, that it was the golden hour of afternoon and not night, that there was no fear in the world.
Ms. Owens shut her eyes, and opened her hands, and Aracely took the pocket square.
Miel folded her elbows, hands gripping her upper arms. All the heat in her body pulled to her wrist. She could almost feel the weight of Ms. Owens’ heart, how she wore her disappointment like wet clothes.
“Lie down,” Aracely said.
Ms. Owens did. The almost-white blond of her curls fanned out from her head. Flakes of mascara clung to her cheeks like ash, and tears trembled at her lash line.
Aracely tore a scrap from the pocket square. Ms. Owens winced as though she felt it. Aracely burned the cloth in a glass jar and said the prayer of Santa Rita de Cascia. The edges of the satin blackened and curled in on themselves.
Miel handed Aracely a purple onion, the green stalk still on. Aracely always knew which color egg, which orange, which herb. She swept the onion over Ms. Owens as she said the prayer again, her whisper softening the air in the room.
Ms. Owens kept her eyes shut tight enough to wring tears into her hairline.
Miel stood, waiting for Aracely to tell her what to do. She waited long enough that she thought she saw ribbons of faint light shining along the floor. They snaked and twirled, skimming the baseboards. They wrapped around the legs of the wooden table.
At first they looked like tiny streams, bands of water no thicker than her wrist. Then they looked solid, their glint a hard edge.
Like glass. Like vines of glass, not just deep green but dark blue and red and violet. They spun up the indigo walls. They reached out toward Miel, trying to wrap her forearms. She felt them without them touching her, a cord of pain from each elbow to each wrist.
They pricked her like thorns and leaves growing under her skin, and she felt the ache of a glass vine caging her forearm. They would crack, and the jagged pieces would cut into her wrists. Her blood would tint the glass. It would splinter and cut deeper into her.
A bump against the window, like a bird hitting the pane, cut through the room. A sharp scream followed it. It streamed into the air, skittering along the walls.
“Dammit, Miel,” Aracely said, her hands on Ms. Owens’ shoulders. “Did you hear me? Open the window!”
Ms. Owens sat up, clutching for the pocket square she no longer had. She looked down, startled to find her hands empty.
Miel hadn’t even heard Aracely ask the first time. But she could see the startled look in Ms. Owens’ face, the way her eyes looked almost white.
Aracely had taken out her lovesickness.
And because Miel hadn’t opened the window fast enough, it had struck the glass, and then rushed back into Ms. Owens.
Miel leapt toward the window, pushing up the sash as wide as it went.
“It’s okay,” Aracely said to the trembling woman on the table. “It’s okay.”
But Ms. Owens’ breathing fluttered, and she broke into screaming again.
But Aracely kept her hands on Ms. Owens.