Free The Gilly Salt Sisters by Tiffany Baker

came to Joanna Gilly. There was something about her that rubbed a person the wrong way. “Sure,” she said, taking her hand out of her pocket.
    Jo nodded. “I thought so. That’s a good child.”
    Dee scowled. If there was anything she hated more than being caught red-handed, it was being called a child. All her life she’d had features rounded with puppy fat that inspired old women to squeeze her cheeks and boys to grab her ass. She just didn’t have the kind of looks that anyone took seriously.
    She lifted one of the bags of salt now. It felt heavier than she expected it to, and lumpier as well. Jo watched while Dee opened the sack and stuck her finger in. The substance was coarse and grayish, like gravel crushed with quartz. It reminded Dee of the stone dust from the quarries at home. She brought her finger to her mouth, sucked the salt onto her tongue, and a wave of longing immediately swept over her for all the things she’d left cradled in the Green Mountains: her mother’s memory, her childhood bedroom with the dotted-swiss curtains, the heart-shaped pond where she’d learned to swim. She closed her eyes to keep her tears pressed in. “The taste of it takes me back to something,” she choked.
    Joanna’s voice was as gravelly as the salt. “Everybody says that.”
    Dee opened her eyes. “What is it?”
    Jo scowled. “Everybody asks that, too. How would I know? You’re the one who put it in your mouth. You be the judge.” And before Dee could ask her anything else, Jo sailed out the diner door, slamming it so hard that the little bell almost choked itself, with ringing.

Chapter Three

    I f Claire Gilly Turner hated the salt, she had her reasons. As far back as she could remember, it had eaten up everything precious in her existence: her mother’s attention and her older sister’s time. It had stolen her brother and driven away her father. In fact, Claire’s first proper recollection was simply the color white—but not an ordinary, peaceful white. She was talking a sizzling white like the tail of a rocket or the bubbly meat of a fried egg. A white that was so frothy and rich she craved its very touch even while she knew she couldn’t have it.
    She must have been about four. She was standing in the marsh, staring at the water, and it was high summer and high noon both at once, and in front of her the salt crystals were shining pure and loud. At the far edge of their property—so far that she looked like a wading bird—Claire could see Jo carefully swiping a long wooden paddle across the surface of one of the basins, a wooden bowl tucked next to her feet.
    The rows of shallow evaporating pools had looked like tombs to her, Claire remembered—dead mineral pockets that froze in the winter, turned swampy in the heat, and became totally indeterminable in the spring. She only liked water that tumbled and thrashed, water that was free. Her favorite treat was to be allowed to scamper wild on Drake’s Beach, dipping her toes in the icy froth of the Atlantic, then squealing when the ocean watergurgled over her ankles. She loved to fill a bucket with all manner of sea creatures she’d plucked from the rocks. She was fascinated with their alien biology, the slimier the better.
    It had been so hot that day. Claire picked up a pebble from the ground and tossed it into the pond in front of her, sending a ripple under the crust of fine white salt and wetting it, something she was never supposed to do, for that commodity was precious. It came only a few weeks in the year, and while it was there, they were supposed to make the most of it. Claire’s mother and sister worked long hours pulling those crystals in with their rakes, their faces turning into pink strawberries under their hat brims, their hands puckering inside their gloves, sweat drying in broad rings across their backs. Claire was too small to sweat, but she was sticky that day nonetheless. It was always sticky on the best salt days, the air so warm