But with all that Ruby had told her, there had been two things Ruby had failed to share. The first was that the effect of the charms was fleeting. She could get any married man who was attracted to her to leave his wife and marry her, but she couldn’t make him stay. Five years was the upper limit, though there was a rumor among their kind that one of them had managed seventeen years on a single charm. Information was hard to come by. While they instinctively knew one another when they crossed paths, women like her didn’t share their secrets easily.

Selma went to the window in her cabin and watched Kate walk away. Kate threw a look back over her shoulder. Selma knew that look very well. Hundreds of women had given her that look over the years. She wasn’t immune to it.

That was the second thing Ruby had failed to tell her. That those looks would always hurt.

And that, by choosing to be the woman she was, she would never again have female friends.

Chapter 10

10

“Lisette and I brought in the rest of the groceries. Can I go down to the lake?” Devin asked her mother, running up the path toward Kate as soon as she came out of Selma’s cabin. That heavy, beautiful-lady scent hung in the air around her. Selma’s cabin was surrounded by it, like a force field. Devin imagined that if she threw rocks at it, they would just ricochet off.

“No,” Kate said, shifting the towels in her arms. “Stick with me for a little while. I don’t think Eby has done any laundry lately. It might be backing up.”

From behind them on the path, someone said, “I’ll watch over her.”

It was Bulahdeen. Devin liked her. She wasn’t much taller than Devin, so Devin had a weird impression of her being a very old little girl. She was wearing dark sunglasses that took up half of her sweet, wrinkled face.

“Please, please, please?” Devin said, jumping up and down.

Kate smiled. “Okay. You two keep an eye on each other. Thanks, Bulahdeen.”

Kate walked into the main house, and Devin turned to Bulahdeen. She held up the root the alligator had given her and said, “To the cypress knees!”

“You want to see the cypress knees? Okay, this way,” Bulahdeen said, directing her to a trail that led around the lake, so close that the water nearly reached the bank in places. Cypress trees leaned over it, draping moss to the water like a curtain.