The Accidental Witch Read Online Free Page B

ago.”
    “Be quiet!” Amy said. “The nurses’ jobs aren’t any of your business and you can’t say anything like that to anyone again.”
    “Or what?”
    “If this floor stops making money, Columbia Health Care will shut this wing down. If we get sued or have to hire more expensive staff, that will cost us money. Don’t you get it? We’ll all lose our jobs and the patients will lose the only psychiatric floor in the area. If you really care about the patients, you better realize that money is all that matters, because they’ll close us down the moment they think we cost them a cent more than we are worth.”
    I opened my mouth to say something and then shut it. I had lost control. I knew what I thought didn’t matter. My opinion didn’t matter. I was powerless and unimportant and two people had died and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. I couldn’t control the nurses or change the administration. I couldn’t make anyone care.
    “You’re right,” I said meekly. “You’re right. I just really thought I had gotten through to Kara.”
    “Maybe you should take the day off,” Amy said putting her hand on my shoulder. She was acting like she cared, but she really just wanted me and my radical opinions as far away from police and lawyers and administrators as she could get them. I’m not stupid enough to believe she would care one stitch about me if she didn’t see me as dangerous.
    I nodded. I needed the day off.
    “I’ll call Karen in to cover for you,” Amy said. Karen was a good choice. Karen had no opinions. Karen was all smiles and no brains.
    I stepped into my office and grabbed my bag and fled to the car. I cranked the engine up and let the air conditioner blow the heat off me. I wanted to cry. I wanted to sob for them, but it wasn’t in me. I had cried all the tears I had left to cry a long time ago. I put the car into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot. I drove straight home.
    Lawson and his crew were hard at work when I got back. He had ten men working with him. He was a general contractor and he had to subcontract out the plumbing, painting, etc. The house was filled with men. The old wallpaper in the foyer had been scraped away and a few men were putting down fresh paint. I turned around and walked away from the bedlam into the wilderness around The Black Magnolia.
    There were three cemeteries on my property. The first cemetery was just past the old barn. I walked through the tall grass down a path that used to be a road. An old stone fence marked the remains of cotton fields and animal enclosures. I stepped into the first cemetery. It was the nicest. A stone angel guarded over the tombstones of all the plantation owners and their families. The tombstones were gray and covered with moss. They were large and lovely. They represented all the wealth and glory that the owners of the house had possessed.
    I passed by these large, beautiful stones, and continued down a small trail, and over a wooden bridge. The woods grew thicker as I walked. Nature had reclaimed what had once been rich farmland. There were no signs of the old cotton fields. They’d all faded away. I kept walking deeper into the woods until I came to a ring of decaying wooden shacks. Just to the left of the shacks was the old slave cemetery. There were no epic stones or gothic angels in this tiny graveyard. In fact, the small hand-carved stones were hardly visible above the kudzu. I walked into the cemetery and cleared the kudzu away, exposing the stones. A cloud passed over the sun and a bird sang out in the distance. I shivered. I had one of my landscapers lug a stone bench out to the cemetery. He had looked at me like I was as crazy as a shit house rat. Maybe I was, but this place called to me. I had even cleared out the old slave cabins. I swept the wooden floors and pulled the weeds out of the spaces in-between the floorboards. I raked the ground and planted little yellow flowers in front of them.
    I sat