Water Witch Read Free

into the
house.
    “Hey!”
    The mutt ignored me, toenails ticking,
scritching on the kitchen linoleum as he ran across the room. I
watched dumbfounded as he finally slid to a stop, right beneath the
old telephone mounted on the far back wall. There he sat and
chuffed, looking up at the phone, then over at me, then up at the
phone again.
    I stood in the doorway, unsure of what to
make of the situation. Fritter had never come into the house
before. In fact, he’d never stayed in the yard longer than a day at
a time. When he wasn’t warning me of something, he came and went as
he pleased; usually taking advantage of the bowl of water and
occasional leftovers I placed near the tool shed out back. Although
he didn’t belong to me, I’d named him. I had to call him something
other than Dog, and Fritter just seemed appropriate. A sort of
commemoration of the first time we met.
    I closed the door and walked over to him,
settling my right hand on my hip. Fritter chuffed again, swiped his
tongue over his snout, then flopped onto his belly. He glanced up
at the phone, then over to me, and the inside of my chest suddenly
felt weighted with a thousand fluttering bats. Was he trying to
warn me that something was going to happen in this house? Or that
bad news was coming by way of the phone? My stomach churned again,
and I tried convincing myself, despite the other warnings, that I
was being paranoid. That Fritter was nothing but an old dog that
happened to be around in the wrong place at the right time. Nothing
but coincidence. But I couldn’t let it go.
    I pointed a finger at him. “Look, if you’re
trying to tell me something, you’re going to have to do better than
that.”
    Fritter glanced from me to the phone again,
yawned, then rested his muzzle between his front paws. His yawn
caused a few of the bats nesting in my chest to scatter. Maybe his
scratching wasn’t a warning this time. Maybe he just wanted a
warmer place to sleep tonight or a late snack. And even if he meant
to warn me about something, it couldn’t have been that urgent, he
looked too relaxed.
    I blew out a loud breath and headed for the
pantry to get a can of beef stew. “You make me crazy, you know
that?” Fritter rolled his eyes in my direction, as if I were the
nuisance.
    Shaking my head, I opened the pantry and
stepped inside. It was the size of a small, walk-in closet and
always smelled of fresh dug potatoes and onions, even though I
stored neither on its shelves. That scent had a way of bringing me
comfort, a sense of peace, home and family. I closed my eyes for a
moment and inhaled deeply, remembering. There was a lot to
remember.
    My paternal grandmother had stored potatoes
and onions, which had been harvested from my grandfather’s garden,
in this pantry for as long as I could recall . . .which was quite a
number of years. I’d lived here since I was five, along with my
younger sister, Angelle, after our mother and father died in a car
accident in El Paso. Mom and Pop Pollock had taken us in
immediately after the accident, and for years, they made sure we
never wanted for the basics in life or questioned whether or not we
were loved. When it came to food and shelter, love and protection,
especially protection from outsiders who wanted to know more about
my secret, Mom and Pop Pollock had given all they had. And they
continued to give even after they died, which had been about two
years ago. Mom passed on after a heart attack on Valentine’s Day,
and Pop followed a month later from a massive stroke. Their will
had been short and simple; everything was to go to Angelle and me.
The house, the land, a 1987 Ford pickup with only forty-one
thousand miles on the odometer, and a surprising amount of money
they’d managed to squirrel away in money market certificates.
    The money came from a pool of oil that had
been discovered on the south end of their property nearly sixteen
years ago. It had been large enough to plop them into the lap of
luxury for