So that was how it started. I put the outward pieces of my life together in pretty short order, as much as I cared to, anyway. A couple of trips to Target and Ikea in my brother’s pickup did all that I could bother to refurbish the house. The house that no longer seemed mine. I was working on a divorce case at the time, which I wrapped up shortly, and for which the irony was not lost on me, in that it hit me on the head like an anvil. I turned down a couple of jobs after that, but after two weeks slumming, and bored with myself, and with dodging the flip-flop hordes every time I got the urge to leave the house, I went back to work. The truth is, I never found being a private investigator that taxing. Or even that interesting. Not like on the force. Which I quit because of her. Because it made her nervous. But then, what didn’t? You might be getting the impression at this point that I regret it all. It’s not true. I loved her dearly. Dearly enough to give up so many things I loved. But apparently it wasn’t enough. Maybe nothing could have been.

For a while I went to hard liquor, just because I could, but I soon settled back on beer. We get along so much better. That summer sailed by like an ocean liner creeping carefully out of harbor. Slowly, and too much to take in with one glance. But when it was over, when the streets, the pier, the sands, the cliffs were cleansed of the flip-flop hordes that I loved to hate so much, I found myself very alone. And there it was again. I was completely back to work by then. I enjoyed having something to do. But then there was the down time. The days when I was working nights. Sometimes, the mornings before an afternoon surveillance, or the afternoon after a morning court appearance. Or just the days between jobs. Or the days between days, which slipped from sunset to sunset like a weathered dirty dollar from one wallet to another. I tried to resist at first. But always, sooner or later, I ended up there. Sometimes it was beer, others, coffee and no sleep, sometimes sleep, sometimes coffee after a long nights sleep and a restful walk by the cliffs, sometimes a little of it all, all mixed together in some cocktail of day after day that failed to fill the empty gaping hole where my heart used to be. But I ended up there. At first I just wandered through. Then, I bought little things. Some incense, a bundle of sage that I didn’t know what to do with, and when I felt more adventurous, a candle for cleansing, which I burned when I was sure no one was watching. One day, after I’d been in maybe eight or nine times, she said, and it wasn’t always her, she had other girls that worked there for her, but this time it was her,

“A book might help.”

“Excuse me?”

“A book. A book on basic witchcraft. If you’re interested. I could recommend one.”

“ I …I… I’m not sure I need one. I mean...I’m not sure...I don’t know...what’s witchcraft? I mean….I just like it here.” There it was. I asked it. I couldn’t believe it. I was becoming some new-age freak, but I kept falling, tumbling, over the edge of the cliff, down the jagged rocks, bereft of balance. But she caught me.

“Come any time you like. If you ever want to know anything more, let me know.”

And so I came. At first I was a bit shy, just walking through, lingering, occasionally breathing in the otherworldly peace, dodging carefully between the wisps of incense, dancing lightly around a hint of balance, but then I became more comfortable, got to know the other girls by name. And her. I learned her name.

“Willow,” she said.

“You mean, like ‘weeping’?” I asked.

“Except you’re the one that looks like they might cry.”

“Yeah.” That tore it. Or it should have. I couldn’t believe I said it. I just stood there. I was never someone who couldn’t say what he was feeling if I needed to, but I never just burst out with it with strangers, either. Or at least not until then.

“Here,” she said. She walked out from behind the desk. I stood there, uncharacteristically frozen, completely without my usual easy sense of what to do, or the use of my feet. She graced over to the far wall and picked up a candle and a small bottle of dark liquid, turned around, took a step, and handed them to me. I still was without the ability to move, but luckily, she had adeptly bridged the distance between us and there was no need to move in order to make the exchange safely. Fortunately, I had not lost the ability to speak.

“What do I do with these?”

“Put four drops of liquid around the candle, burn the candle until it is completely burned, wishing for closure. When it is done, bury the remains of the candle near a tree that is pure of intention.”

Pure of what? I reeled. About as far as you could in her gaze. With her looking at you. About as far as you could with a foot of slack to spare two feet from the cliff. Not far. But I can think on my feet. “What if I put it in the ocean?”

“That might work, if you do it with the right intention.”

I almost said, “What’s the right intention?” unable to get my feet under me for a second, but stopped myself, maybe for the better. She was looking at me. All light. All good. All beauty. All right, I give.

“That’ll be seven-fifty.”

CHAPTER 3 COMING 11/1!!