The witch stays there, in that house by the jetty. All those oysters you see on the rocks belong to her, and all those scraped-out shells piled on the beach. She looks older than she is, with sawed-down fingernails, a pale neck looped with many strands of cabbage-colored pearls. A faded film-star decadence. She used to hire local boys to help her with groceries, but no one from town has gone near there for years, not since Will Culvert came back with a hook inside him.

Maybe you heard Will tell this story already, how he was in the kitchen putting up the fish oil, the firestarters, the rat poison, expected witchy things, and here she came, whispering his name in a strained and fragile voice, like a broken whistle, and when she lifted her hand, he saw the hook pinched in her fingers, and he thought she was giving him a gift when really she was sliding it deep into the flesh of his side, as smoothly as if she were putting it in his pocket. Will was so surprised he hardly felt the sting, and truly he didn't hurt at all until he'd fled back to town.

By the time he saw the doctor, his skin had sucked the hook under like quicksand, and all the doctor could do was swipe the reddened flesh with hydrogen peroxide and prod it with his finger and say it was probably best to leave it alone.

Will thought that was fine. He felt no shame about the hook; a lesser man probably would have, but he was one of those agile, sunny-natured boys, the kind who turned responsible and quiet after a tour of duty overseas. He married a girl who'd been sweet on him in high school—a pastor's daughter named Susan, also quiet. Will and Susan are the quietest couple at town meetings and church charity drives, but they're always together, sweetly attached.

You can imagine the two of them in bed, how Susan might slide her hand across Will's belly and feel for the sharpness under his skin. She would ask, Does it hurt?—and he would say no, though sometimes there is a tug of pain, usually in moments like this one. Let's imagine too that Susan never told Will about how she once met the witch when she was a teenager. She was idle and willful then. Her father had concerns. Too many aimless afternoons scavenging for oysters alone at the jetty and eating them raw on the beach.

But she remembers. How the witch leapt out of her house like a panther, how in a growling, trench-deep voice she called Susan a thief, and if she ever came back to this jetty she'd lose a tooth for every stolen oyster. Susan was so scared she spat. She spat into the sand one lustrous green pearl which contained all of her shame and desire, all of it sitting shiny and helpless at witch's sandaled feet. How did that happen? Her husband doesn't need to know. If he wonders anything about Susan, he's still content. Mysteries can sweeten marriage.

They have children now, two boys who inherited their father's agility and sunny nature. Often, the family visits the beach on Saturdays. This you might see, if you find them there: Will teaching the boys about the kind of shells and how not to touch the dead things that wash up with the tide because there might be poison in them, and Susan pointing out the different species of birds in the bright overcast, sandpipers and pelicans and killdeer. They love teaching their children. They love their children so much it hurts. Sometimes, Will can feel the bleak presence of the house by the jetty, but most of the time he doesn't even think about it. At the end of the day, his family is sandy and tired and happy, and he puts his arm around Susan's shoulder in the car. He kisses her freckled neck as he drives back to town.

In the backseat, the children laugh and make handprints on the window, their hair crazy and salt-curled. Alone in her house, the witch can hear them. She loves them so much it hurts. The thread that follows Will sends a shiver all the way from the car and down the unpaved road and across the dunes and the oystered rocks of the jetty and over the threshold of the witch's house. She lies in her bed and feels the hook as if it were in her own flesh, and she feels the crook of her elbow on the back of Susan's soft neck, and she kisses her neck and knows its freckles like the summer constellations, and she feels Susan's pulse and Will's pulse, his strong and generous heart. At night, the witch tucks in the children and brushes back their hair, freshly washed, and goes to be with Susan in the kitchen. They fix toast and honey and eat it in bed and lick the sweetness off each other. All the while, Susan's body emits the starry heat of love. Love on the walls and on the ceiling, in every corner and crevice of their house in town and the house by the jetty.

Sometimes Susan looks at the witch and winks sleepily with knowing, and sometimes she looks at Will and grins wide at a joke no one told. It scares him. There's an intensity to Susan's love that seems beyond him, but maybe that's because he's never known a woman like Susan, whose heart is so full, who has everything, everything she wanted.

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