Free Tiger's Eye by Barbra Annino

safe where the dried herbs were stashed. She fumbled around in there for a minute or so, removing jars and shelves until she emerged with a bouquet of crinkled white roses fastened with a brittle gold ribbon.
    Lolly held the flowers in her hand briefly, then bent to sniff them, murmuring to the buds. As she did, the petals perked up and the ribbon that held them together gained some luster.
    In fact, so did Lolly.
    She smiled first at Birdie, then Fiona, before she looked at me. That’s when her smile faltered and a cloud passed over her face.
    Fiona jumped up in front of me and said, “Lolly, since I did your makeup, why doesn’t Birdie help fix your hair?”
    Lolly nodded and gushed, “That would be lovely! My two sisters standing at my side on this most precious day.” She hummed a melody unfamiliar to me as she drifted up the back stairwell, Birdie close behind.
    What. The. Hell. Lolly’s cheese had slid off her pizza long before I could remember, but this was more than just a loose bolt. This was downright creepy.
    Fiona got up to refill her iced tea and said, “Now, where were we?”
    “No, no.” I shook my forefinger. “First, what was that?”
    “What?”
    “Lolly. What’s wrong with her? That isn’t the usual mind slippage.”
    “It’s June nineteenth, dear. It’s Lolly’s wedding day.”
    My jaw dropped. “She’s getting married?”
    Fiona chuckled. “No, of course not. This was the day she was to be wed to her sweet Jack forty-nine years ago.”
    I racked my brain, but for the life of me I could not remember learning that Lolly had ever been engaged.
    Fiona tilted her head. “You know, I don’t suppose we ever told you about him.”
    I shook my head. “I don’t suppose you did.”
    Fiona launched into the story as I let Thor outside.
    Apparently Jack Moriarty had been quite the catch. “He had piercing blue eyes and sunny hair. He was lean and tall and very funny. He had us all in stitches all the time. Mother and Daddy adored him,” Fiona said.
    “He grew up here? In Amethyst?”
    Fiona nodded. “Lolly and Jack were like two peas in a pod right from the start. They played together, helped each other with their homework, stood up for each other on the playground, that sort of thing. As they got older, their fondness blossomed into love. They could finish each other’s sentences, read each other’s thoughts. It was amazing how connected they were.”
    Fiona sighed and peered out the window as if the secrets of the past were just beyond the pane.
    I waited for her to continue.
    “Jack asked Lolly to marry him when he graduated high school, but Mother wanted them to wait. She had plans for us all to continue our…studies.” She stumbled over that last word. “So after a few years, Jack had gone into his father’s brewery business and he was doing quite well for himself. Lolly was all grown up and our parents gave them their blessing.” Fiona took a long pull of her cold tea. “The wedding was to be right here, in the back garden, and nearly the entire town was invited. I had never seen my big sister so happy.”
    Fiona paused.
    “What happened?” I asked, gently.
    She looked at me. “He never arrived.”
    I sucked in my breath. “Oh. How awful. Poor Lolly.”
    Fiona rose and took her glass to the sink. The ice rattled around the drain as she dumped it out. “To this day, we don’t know what happened to him.” She turned toward me. “And we tried everything .”
    I nodded, knowing she meant magic. How awful it must be to find someone you connect with so deeply only to lose him without a trace. How horrible it must be just not knowing his fate.
    I knew that feeling. I lived that feeling for half of my life when my mother disappeared.
    How odd, I thought, to have this raw, open wound in common with Lolly.
    Except I knew now what had happened with my mother and where she was. Lolly didn’t have that luxury.
    I asked, “So the dress, the bouquet?”
    Fiona nodded. “We