Page 58 of Cackle

“You’re welcome. Come by the store anytime!” she says. Rose is still cowering behind her.

“Do we need anything else?” Sophie asks me.

“I don’t think so,” I say. I shrug.

Sophie shrugs. “Let’s go home and eat treats and run around like maniacs.”

“Let’s do it!”

I follow her through the woods. This time, when we get to the well, to the graves, to the hut, Sophie explains them to me.

“I used to get my water from that well,” she says. “They were always threatening to throw me down it. And they did a few times! But I could always get back up. That’s the thing about me. I’m quite resilient.

“I didn’t mind the hut,” she says. “Would be hard to go back now, though.”

At the circle of headstones, she simply says, “Old friends.”

I leave it alone.

When we get to her house, it looks even bigger than I remember. Like there’s an extra turret or an extra wing. Sophie holds the door open for me, then leads me into the dining room.

“Let’s eat our donuts on fine china,” she says, “like proper adults.”

The dining room is distinctly medieval. There’s a behemoth wooden table surrounded by too many chairs to count. Intricate tapestries hang on the stone walls, and there’s a fireplace at the other end of the room. Actually, there are two fireplaces, identical twins, standing side by side. Above the table, chandeliers hang from long chains. Each one is wrought iron with multiple tiers holding what I assume are fake candles. Maybe not. I stand around for a moment bewildered by the room’s extravagance.

Sophie sets the table with porcelain plates, linen napkins and large glass goblets etched with roses. She fills the goblets from a decanter that looks like a snake.

“It’s cider,” she says as she pours. She sets the decanter aside and pulls out a chair for me.

“You sure know how to treat a lady.”

She raises an eyebrow. She sits across from me, then offers me the box of baked goods. I select a blueberry donut.

“Our first course,” Sophie says, choosing a muffin.

Just as I’m about to take a bite, my phone dings.

Text message.

I take it out of my pocket to check.

“No,” Sophie says. The phone is plucked from my grasp by an invisible hand and set screen down on the table. “It’ll spoil our fun.”

“I want to see who it’s from,” I say. I flip my phone over. It’s a text from Sam. It reads Hey.

I go to unlock my phone with my thumb, but before I can, it slides across the table out of my reach.

“Annie,” Sophie says with a reprimanding intonation, “I told you.”

“It’s Sam,” I say.

“I know,” she says. “Here you are having a perfectly lovely Saturday morning, and here he is ruining it.”

“He didn’t ruin it,” I say. “It was just a text.”

“Reminding you of his existence and the pain he caused you. Continues to cause you,” she says. “Look, pet, I understand it must be hard to sever ties with someone you loved for so long. But he’s not in your life anymore. You’re building a new life. Why let him poison the well? Take it from me, who has actually poisoned a well. From inside that well.”

I don’t like the way she’s looking at me. I turn away, shoving some donut into my mouth.