Written by RowanCarver

Charlotte made breakfast and then forgot about it again, sitting by the window with a cup of coffee while a plate of eggs and toast went cold by the toaster. She rubbed her bloodshot eyes and sank into her chair, wondering if missing work again would be worth the consequences, and trying to figure out which imaginary illness would warrant a sick day. Strep throat, she thought. I've done the flu, food poisoning, chicken pox which was a little hard to sell...but I haven't done strep throat yet. That should be believable.

Her husband sat across from her, cradling a Star Wars mug against his chest. He wore a Hanes t-shirt with grass stains that no Tide stain remover could conquer. The silver cross necklace around his neck clinked against his coffee mug when he took a sip.

The two sat for a while without talking, enjoying each other's company almost as much as they were enjoying their mountain coffee, the beans plucked and roasted mere miles from their house. An Appalachian breeze came through the open window, throwing tufts of Charlotte's hair across her face. The breeze smelled of soil, pine trees, and a million more reasons why she didn't want to go to work. She shot a look of longing at the neglected pair of hiking boots by the door.

"You alright, Grey?" Charlotte asked.

He rubbed the side of his neck. "Tired."

"Same."

They shared silence a few moments more, which was interrupted at times by the clink of Greyson's cross against Darth Vader's mask.

Charlotte scratched at a water stain on the table. "I've been reading up on Appalachian fairy tales since moving here," she said.

Greyson raised a brow. Charlotte enjoyed Hallmark movies and the occasional trashy romance on Netflix. She was never much of a reader. "Really?" he asked.

"Just online, but maybe in a book later. I've been wanting to check out the library."

Greyson leaned forward. "Really?"

"I'm not illiterate, Grey."

"I'm not saying you are!"

"Then why are you so surprised?"

"How many books do you have?"
"I have some...comic books."

"I didn't know that."

"I left them in Atlanta."

He gave her the half grin she loved best because it put a light in his eyes. "Still counts."

"Yeah, still counts."

"Tell me about the fairy tales."

She hummed, staring at the first sun rays coming over the mountains, frustrated that all her research had suddenly left her brain. "I don't know, I just remember a lot of it was weird. People came up with a lot of weird stuff out here."

"Mushrooms?"

"Probably."

"Moonshine?"

"Uh, hell. It would've had to been super strong for them to come up with all this trippy shit. I'm going to guess ayahuasca."

"That grows out here? I thought that was just in South America."

"You can grow anything out here if you have the right attitude about it."

He considered the shriveled cactus on the windowsill.

Charlotte frowned. "Guess we didn't have the right attitude."

He laughed. "You think we can get it to come back?"

"No."

"Tell me about the stories, Charlie."

"I'm trying to remember. I learned that a lot of them came from British settlers who made up legends about things they saw in the woods. The stories mixed with Cherokee legends and African American legends, so now it's all confusing and mysterious...what?"

Greyson was beaming. "I genuinely didn't think you'd ever be interested in this stuff."

"I thought it'd help us blend in with the locals to know it."

"Blend in with the locals?" He looked at the blonde streaks in her hair, then the tan lines on her ankles from wearing Doc Martens all the time. "You're as city-girl as it gets."

She forced down a hot mouthful of coffee to keep from laughing it out of her nose. "You look like you work a desk job from home...oh right, you do."

He pushed up his sleeve to show her the slight change in skin tone-from white to also white-on his bicep. "I got this farmer's tan from working in the yard the other day."

"That does not make you a mountain boy. You don't have a beard. I can grow a better one than you."

"Deal."

Charlotte touched her cheek as if afraid she'd find stubble, and they laughed.

"Were there any bearded women in your fairy tales?" Greyson asked.

"Didn't get that far into the Wikipedia page. But I did read some creepy stories. Ghost lights in the Carolinas, mothmen in West Virginia, witches in Tennessee. The worst part is that there wasn't really a scientific explanation for a lot them? Usually creepy legends out here end with experts saying, 'oh, that monster was just a species of sloth that died out forever ago,' or 'oh, those ghost lights are just natural gasses.' But some of the stories ended with, "Yep, locals still see the witch!' What the actual hell? Thinking about that kind of kept me up last night...if any of those fairy tales end up being real, nothing could be worse."

Greyson puffed out his chest. "We have a bat in the garage."

"Maybe we should start sleeping with pitchforks by our bed."

He snapped his fingers. "Great idea. Did you read anything about Georgia, though? Do we even have a reason to be worried about Virginia mothmen if they don't come down here?"

"The one I found about Georgia wasn't a ghost story as much as it was an actual fairy tale. Like, with real fairies in it. Well, the story kind of changes. I read somewhere it happened in Virginia and then another article said it was definitely in Georgia."

"You read multiple articles?"

"Went down a rabbit hole. We have fairies out here. Real fairies with butterfly wings and magic wands and pointy ears...they like to play when it's sunny out and they roam through the Blue Ridge since they like these mountains in particular."

"What kind of fairies are they again?"

"Like Lisa Frank fairies. All neon rainbow colored."

He nodded. "So these Lisa Frank fairies were dancing pretty much in our backyard."
"Something like that. One day when they were having one of their parties, this Elf guy crashed it and told them about, you know, Jesus dying on the cross and everything. I guess this was a long time ago."

"B.C.?"

"Well, freshly A.D. I guess."

"I meant Before Columbus."

She pursed her lips, trying not to give him the satisfaction of laughing at such a dumb joke. "When the Elf told them about the whole ordeal, they started crying. Their tears made these perfect stone crosses." She pinched her fingers together, holding an imaginary rock. "People find the tears mostly in Virginia, but you can find them here, too."

"The stones are real?"

Charlotte sat up tall. "They're cool! There was a scientific explanation for them but I got bored and didn't read that part of the article. But the library here has some on display."

"That's why you wanted to go."

"Mhm, it has an exhibit section with all this old creepy stuff people've found out here. Be a fun date."

"And when did you do all this research?"

"Work is boring sometimes."

Charlotte's alarm went off on her phone. Bird sounds, which she'd chosen in the hopes they'd be relaxing, exploded from the speaker. A gray bubble on the screen screamed LEAVE FOR WORK IN TEN MINUTES in panic-inducing text. She jabbed the cancel button and tossed it on the table, then rubbed her face, staring at the empty chair across from her through her fingers, which she'd been talking to for nearly twenty minutes. She never got to tell Greyson about the fairy crosses.

She sighed and started picking at the threads in her shirt like she did when she was sitting in Dr. William's office confessing she'd been talking to ghosts. "It's very common for people to talk to a loved one after they've died," Williams said. "It's a healthy coping mechanism and can be very comforting."

Charlotte glanced at the picture above the doctor's desk: a stock image of a family laughing together. "I'm just afraid I'm going to do it with other people around," she said.

Dr. Williams tapped the end of her pen against her notebook, ready to scribble a prescription for another antidepressant that wouldn't work. "So what if you do? Be patient with yourself and how you're grieving. Try not to control it."

Charlotte accepted her prescription slip, filled it, and then never opened the bottle. It still sat on her bed table propping up a picture of her and Greyson from Christmas two years ago. The pair had worn red flannel shirts and beanies, and it was the first time Greyson wore a size smaller than Charlotte's. He was so thin that he could've hidden behind a few branches of the Christmas tree. She had shaved her head when he lost his hair around Thanksgiving. They wore matching hats all the time because it was funny to them and because they were always cold.

She moved a box of hats that she didn't have the heart to unpack, searching for a clean pair of clothes in the boxes beneath it and grunting with the effort. Her entire body ached like she had the flu. She hadn't been sick other than a common cold a few months prior.

She settled for a gray pair of pants that she hadn't worn since junior high. She didn't like how easily she could feel her hip bones, but liked the idea of forcing down more meals even less. She found a white shirt in the laundry pile with yellow stains under the arms, threw on a black blazer, threw her laptop in a tote bag, and rushed toward the door while silencing the second warning alarm on her phone. Her phone teased her with a call as she struggled to lock the house.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," she said. An impressive string of profanities followed as she inched her phone between her shoulder and her ear, switching to a sweet-toned, "Hi, Dad," after many instances of angry "god damn it's" and "I'm going to be so fucking late's." Please tell me you didn't hear any of that, she thought.

Like most retired parents, her dad's responses were unhurried since he had all day to give them."Hey, Charlie. I wanted to check on you." His backwoods Georgia drawl wasn't helping. His words came slower than honey out of a jar.

The storm door swung and banged against her heels. She gritted another curse between her teeth, yanked the key out of the lock, and stumbled down the porch steps. "I'm okay, Dad. Off to work."

"I won't keep you too long, then. Just wanted to see how you were holding up."

She paused at the bottom step to catch her breath and shuffle her things. "Yeah, I'm doing fine. I like my new job."

"That's great!"

"It's different, but I'm getting the hang of it. I finished training...the other office manager isn't much older than me and we've made pretty good friends."

"I know you wouldn't have too much trouble. You're a smart girl." She could feel him smiling through the phone.

"Thanks, Dad," She took her phone from her ear to check the time. 8:55. She was going to be late, but so was the rest of her team. She was still getting used to how "mountain time" worked. The residual pressures of working in a city office made her feel like every minute she was late was one minute closer to losing her job. Out here, people showed up once the coffee pot was empty and the grits were gone.

"Your Mom and I would like to hear from you more," her dad said while she crunched across the gravel driveway to her Honda: a resilient bastard from 1997 that enjoyed overheating at red lights. "Come see us sometime. Greyson's family wants to see you, too, especially Shelby."

She reached through the window, which she'd left open by accident, and plopped her laptop in the passenger seat. The thought of seeing her mother-in-law, who, as southern in-laws tend to be, was just as motherly and kind to her as her own mom, made her stomach clench. It'd just be too much. "I'm kind of busy with my new job and getting settled right now."

"Well, when you're ready, we'd love to have you home."

She balanced her phone between her ear and shoulder again to fight with the car lock, forcing the key in the slot and begging the handle to catch. "Stupid door," she muttered. Her phone slipped, bounced on the gravel, and skidded to the oak tree that shaded her driveway with over a hundred years of branches, landing between its roots. Her Dad's muffled "I guess I better let you go," came through the receiver.

Charlotte crouched beside it and turned the phone over, wincing with the expectation that the screen would be cracked. Thankfully, the case had done its job, although it had added a few more battle scars to its already-impressive collection. She wiped the dirt off the screen and put the phone to her ear again.

"Are you okay?" her dad asked. "What was that?"

She meant to explain that it was nothing, but was busy picking up a rock where her phone had been. The rock was unremarkable at first glance: light gray, smooth, and easily mistaken for a piece of gravel, but the perfect cross in its center made her catch her breath. The design was drawn so carefully in black, it was like someone had chiseled it into the stone.

"No way," she said.

"Charlie?" her dad demanded.

"Charlie, are you alright?"

"Yeah, I just dropped my phone. Sorry." She pocketed the rock and returned to the car door, which opened on the first turn of the key this time. She slid behind the wheel, saying, "I have to go, but I love you. I'll talk to you later."

"Love you too, princess. Drive safe."
She drove down the mountain road while the sun rose over the pine trees, a silver cross necklace swinging from her rearview mirror.

WC: 2381