Devil's Ivy
A woman seeks answers from a mystic who claims she doesn't visit the dead—only the living before they die. | est. read time: ~15 minutes
Haven was split by two doors: a tall slab of dark oak on its far side and a glass entrance on the other, trembling under the weight of heavy rain—the kind of storm whose clouds made time indistinguishable.
Inside, the space basked in a low, warm light that could be smelled. Two plush red chairs sat opposite one another around a small circular table with an incense centerpiece, while ornate tapestries clung to the walls. Crystals of every shade lined the shelves—a symphony of amethyst, topaz, and quartz catching the light in fractured glints.
As Maeve prepared in the backroom beyond the oak, Anica stepped in from the glass.
The storm swallowed the chime of the entrance bell as Haven briefly opened to the elements, but the interior calm continued as the door shut behind her.
Though Anica was dripping, the room seemed to invite her to sit—to sink into one of the red chairs and rest—but she remained standing. Water trailed with each hesitant step. She searched for a reception desk, some sign that she was where she was supposed to be, but found none. Instead, a small plate on the oak door read:
PLACE PAYMENT IN DROPBOX AND WAIT FOR MYSTIC MAEVE.
Anica reached into her handbag and withdrew a sealed envelope whose contents she’d meticulously counted the night prior. A bronze slab with a black handle was set into the lower half of the oak door. As she fed the envelope into its fold, her stomach dropped with it.
Her breath grew shallow, but the lemongrass and mugwort infusion rising from the center table pressed gently against her senses and urged them to settle.
Perhaps she would sit.
As she sank into the chair, her wet bag had barely touched the floor when she caught her reflection in a framed full-length mirror in the corner, its edges dressed in devil’s ivy spilling from a pot below. Each leaf clung to the frame like an adornment.
Her calm unraveled.
For the first time, she saw how soaked she truly was. She raised her sleeves to wipe the rain from her cheeks, only to smear it further across her skin.
The oak door rattled before it finally opened, and Maeve emerged—poised, already holding out a towel. Anica accepted it without a word. She was younger than Anica expected, just barely thirty—if that. But Maeve’s demeanor hid her age well.
In the chair opposite Anica, Maeve crossed her legs, the fabric of her white pencil skirt pulling taut at the seams, and she unbuttoned her blazer. She opened a leatherbound padfolio and clicked her pen.
“I’m Maeve,” she said, not yet looking up. “You must be Anica.”
Anica nodded as she blotted her skin dry. She handed the towel back, her eyes lingering on Maeve’s pristine, professional attire.
“Not what I was expecting,” Anica said, a hint of uncertainty slipping through.
Maeve glanced up. “And what were you expecting?”
Anica gestured vaguely to Haven’s adorned tapestries and crystals, “I don’t know. Something a little more…mystic.”
Maeve held her gaze. “And what exactly does ‘mystic’ look like?”
Anica hesitated before resigning with a shrug. “I guess I don’t know. Never mind.”
Maeve returned her attention to the opened padfolio, her pen already moving. “Who are we visiting today?”
“Jorge. My husband,” Anica shifted. “Ex-husband. Former husband.”
“How would he describe himself when we speak?”
“Husband,” Anica said.
Maeve made a small note. “And what would you like me to tell him?”
Anica reached into her bag and slid a worn photograph across the table. A family portrait—husband and wife holding their laughing toddler between them, smiling, absorbed in each other. Her finger pressed against the woman’s necklace, a fine silver necklace with a sapphire pendant catching the camera’s flash.
“I need you to find out where he left this before he died.”
Maeve lifted the photo and studied it. “What is it?”
“A family heirloom,” Anica said. Her finger glided over the faces in the photo as she continued. “The little one is Jorge, and these are his parents. Ana—his mother—gave it to him before she passed. He was still in high school when she died.”
Maeve set the photo down. “Tell me about her.”
Anica shook her head as she dug to recall memories Jorge would share. “She died from cancer. She never had a daughter of her own and wanted him to give the necklace to ours on her wedding day.” Anica swallowed. “And the day’s finally come. She’s getting married next week, but I’ve been looking for the necklace for years.”
Her breath hitched, and Maeve’s pen paused.
“You don’t know where it is?”
Anica shook her head. “Never have.”
“And she intended it for your daughter—not you?”
Anica’s head dipped toward her chest. Heat rose beneath her skin as the memory settled in, reminding her of the space the necklace occupied in their marriage. She had never seen it, but it was always there.
“I never understood,” she said, her voice tightening, “why that thing meant so much to him.” Her eyes welled. “Or why he never wanted me to have it.”
Maeve leaned forward, forearms resting lightly on the table. “Tell me about Jorge—about his passing.” She set a box of tissues between them, beside the lemongrass and mugwort incense.
Anica blotted her eyes. “He killed himself. I caught him cheating on me, and he killed himself.”
“When?”
“About a week after.” She swallowed. “I was a mess. I threatened to leave him—to take everything. Said some awful things I didn’t mean.” She regarded the glass door, tracing the rain as it crawled downward. “I tried to fix it. Told him we could go to counseling and start over. He agreed.”
Her voice faltered. “He was gone the next week. He shot—”
“When did he kill himself?” Maeve asked.
The question landed flat. Anica blinked, thrown.
“Fifteen years ago...2019.”
“What date?”
“Why does it matter?” Heat flared again in Anica’s chest.
Maeve didn’t look away. “If you want me to find the necklace, I need to know the exact date.”
Anica hesitated, then exhaled. Her shoulders sank. “March 30th.”
Maeve resumed writing in her notebook. “What can you tell me about the affair?”
“No,” Anica said, sharper now. She rocked slightly in her seat. “It’s too painful. Can’t you ask him?”
Maeve didn’t look up. “I don’t speak to the dead.”
Anica stiffened. “Then what am I doing here? What am I paying you for?”
Maeve lifted a hand, silencing her without effort. “I don’t speak to the dead,” she repeated. Then, finally, she looked up. ”I speak to them before they die.”
The room went still.
Anica blinked. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I won’t be able to find the necklace without context,” Maeve’s pen tapped once against the page. “I need to know who Jorge was—what he did. What mattered to him.” Her eyes locked onto Anica’s. “Including the affair.”
Maeve held her stare a moment longer. “Do you understand?”
Anica nodded.
“So,” Maeve’s pen lowered back to the page, “tell me about it.”
Years of context left Anica tongue-tied. “Where do I start?”
“Wherever you want.”
Anica shook her head, flushing as she looked back. “I should have known something was going on. Anyone who’s ever watched a movie with cheating would have picked up the signs. Later nights at the office. Early mornings. More travel—for work, he’d say. He said he reconnected with old college friends. Started taking these ‘guys’ trips’ he never used to.”
She caught her reflection in the corner mirror.
“The craziest thing, though?” She hesitated. “When we were together, he seemed… happy.”
Maeve’s pen paused. “In what way?”
“More put together. He dressed better—even on weekends. He wasn’t as irritable. We weren’t fighting like we used to.” A conflicted smile impressed itself upon her lips. “Before I found out… I would’ve said we were the best we’d ever been. I had always thought it was because we were good. But it was because of the bitch he was seeing.”
“The woman he was sleeping with?” Maeve asked. “What do you know about her?”
“Barely anything, but more than I wish I did.”
Maeve didn’t respond; her silence engineered space for Anica to continue.
“I know she was younger than me,” Anica gestured vaguely toward Maeve. “Probably around your age. Young enough to be exciting but old enough to be interesting.”
Maeve tilted her head and smiled through the assertion, urging Anica to continue.
“He’d been cheating on me with her for over a year before I found out.”
“How did you find out?”
Anica filled her lungs to the brim and slowly exhaled, slightly shuddering in place. “I noticed one thing, which led to me noticing another.” She drew a quick breath, sniffing the air between them. “It started with the smell.”
“The smell?” Maeve asked.
“His laundry smelled different, that’s all. Aromatic,” she shut her eyes in disdain. “And I slowly noticed more and more. After later days at ‘the office,’ he was never in the mood for sex. He used to keep his phone out in the open, but he began to keep it in his pocket all of a sudden.” Anica shook her head. “He was just different. I knew something was up.”
“I had him followed,” she continued. “I did the ‘crazy paranoid wife’ thing and hired a private investigator—it only took a week for him to get back to me with pictures of them at one of those shitty extended-stay hotels.” Silence washed over as Anica recalled the exact moment denial was no longer an option.
“And that’s when you confronted him?” Maeve leaned back in her chair.
“No,” Anica said. “That’s when I tried to confront her.”
“How?”
“One night, after Jorge crawled into bed smelling like essential oils, I crawled out and drove to the hotel.” Anica’s voice dropped. “But I never made it in.”
“Why not?”
Anica shuddered, “I froze. I couldn’t get out of my car. I had all these things I wanted to say, but couldn’t figure out where to start. Eventually, I left.”
Maeve clicked her pen and leaned back in her seat. Her brow furrowed above pursed lips. “What sort of things would you have said?”
“What wouldn’t I have said to that bitch?” Anica spat.
“Pretend I’m her,” Maeve blinked. “What would you have said if you confronted her that night?”
“I…” Anica shifted in her seat and locked eyes with Maeve. “Who are you? How do you know Jorge? How did you meet him? Did you start fucking him before or after you found out he has a family? Do you give a shit?” her voice rose with each question. “How long have you been at this? How could you do this to another woman? Do you have kids or a family of your own? Or are you just a single twenty-something who’d fuck any married man who gives her attention because she knows it’ll never get serious? Do you care? Do you—”
“Why,” Maeve raised a finger, “did you go to her?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were in bed with Jorge,” Maeve said. “Why go to her at all?
Anica shook her head, confused and heating up. “Because she was fucking my husband? Because she was breaking apart my family?”
“And he wasn’t?”
“You don’t understand,” Anica said. “You didn’t know Jorge. He was a great husband and an even better father. He was kind, gentle, consistent…But he was so fragile,” she returned her gaze to the corner mirror, her eyes tracing the devil’s ivy cascading down its frame.
Maeve leaned forward and clicked her pen shut, her hazel eyes urging Anica to refocus. “Tell me more about that.”
“Jorge was…exactly what you expect of him. He’d bend over backwards to help others and give you the shirt off his back if you asked for it. But under all that kindness, he had no self-confidence; he’d apologize for things that had nothing to do with him.”
“He sounded gentle,” Maeve said. “But to his own detriment. People like that tend to carry too much.”
“He did,” Anica said. “I remember being in the car together on our way to a restaurant for Valentine’s Day when we passed a bus stop. Jorge went quiet all of a sudden.” A faint smile crossed her face as she looked back on it. “I’m talking to him from the passenger seat, but he’s barely listening to me—just squinting through the windshield at this guy sitting alone on the bench.”
She paused as the memory took form. “The man was missing a leg—cut clean at the knee. I remember seeing wooden crutches right beside him.”
Maeve listened, barely moving an inch.
“Without saying a word to me, Jorge rolled down the window and asked if he needed a ride.” Anica let out a small breath through her nose. “And of course, the guy gets in without hesitation, and Jorge immediately starts chatting him up. Where are you from? How long have you lived here? Where are you headed? You got any kids?”
Anica’s smile faded. “It became obvious pretty quickly that something was off with him. Maybe drugs. Maybe mental illness. I don’t know,” she shrugged. “The ‘five-minute drive down the road’ ended up taking twenty.”
Maeve remained quiet, her pen resting loosely between her fingers.
“We missed our reservation,” Anica continued. “And when we finally dropped the guy off, he asked if we had any cash for food.” She shook her head softly. “Jorge gave some to him without thinking twice.”
A silence settled between the two women before Anica continued.
“He called Jorge ‘a real one’ before shutting the door.” Her eyes lost focus as she drifted again, somewhere beyond Haven. “And Jorge just sat there, smiling and waving goodbye.”
“What’d you think then?” Maeve asked.
“That he was naive and reckless, and I was furious,” Anica laughed bitterly. “We were late, he’d let a complete stranger into our car, and now he was handing out money we barely had to spare.”
“And Jorge?”
“He just looked at me and said,” Anica’s voice softened, “that it was better to give to someone who doesn’t need it than not give to someone who does.”
Maeve’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly.
“I called him stupid,” Anica admitted. “I kept telling him he cared more about strangers than his own family. That he never thought things through,” her eyes lowered to her lap. “The whole drive afterward, he just kept apologizing for making us late, for upsetting me, for putting us in that situation…”
Anica swallowed. “Everywhere else was packed by then, so we ended up getting burgers from a drive-thru and going home.”
The room fell quiet again, save for the rain against the glass.
Anica closed her eyes tightly. “If I could do that night over again, I would.” Her voice nearly disappeared. “It was only Valentine’s Day.”
Maeve sat up in her chair, slightly shaking her head as her attention returned to her notes, pen clicking open. “Take me back to when you confronted him about the affair.”
The memory shift gave Anica whiplash; it took her a moment to reorient.
“It must have been two in the morning when I came back from the hotel,” Anica said. “But I couldn’t let it sit. I shook him awake and asked the first question that came to my mind: ‘How long have you been cheating on me?’”
“What did he say?” Maeve asked.
“Nothing at first,” Anica said. “He just stared at me. But the thing that still drives me crazy: he didn’t deny or fight it at all.”
Maeve cocked her head, her expression tightening.
“No ‘that’s not what it looked like.’ No ‘it was a mistake.’ He just dropped his head low and went on an apology tour with no excuses. He’d been seeing her for a year. He was selfish and dishonest.” A tear welled up in Anica’s eye. “And that I deserved better than him.”
Maeve frowned as she closed her pen again. “What happened then?”
“I was mad. So I called him all sorts of things I probably shouldn’t have: a selfish asshole, a shitty husband, a shitty father. I told him I’d take everything—the house, our money… even our daughter. And then I left.”
“You left?” Maeve asked.
Anica nodded. “I thought he might go back to the hotel if I kicked him out, and I wanted him to sit in the shit and feel just a piece of the pain I was in. I stayed with my parents.”
“With your daughter?”
“No,” Anica said. “I couldn’t make sure he stayed home if I did.”
Maeve resumed her scribbled note-taking, but Anica interrupted it mere seconds in. “But I took it all back.”
“Took it back?”
“I met with him later that week and told him I didn’t mean any of it—told him we could go to counseling and make things right.”
“And what did Jorge say?” Maeve asked.
Anica looked toward the ceiling, a broken smile pulling at her lips. “He didn’t say anything; he didn’t have to—just hugged me tight and said he’d see me soon.” Her smile faded, and her gaze fell. “But he never did. He shot himself in his car the next day.”
Maeve instinctively extended the box of tissues to Anica, only to realize that her own eyes were damp—one expelled a tear before she could dab it herself.
“That must have been really hard,” Maeve said. “For you and your daughter.”
Anica nodded, remaining silent.
“And that was the week of March 30th?” Maeve asked.
“2019,” Anica said.
Maeve sat back in her chair, carefully timing her next question.
“Did you remember to bring the totem?”
“Can’t you use the picture I showed you earlier?” Anica asked. “With him with his parents?”
“Not unless you want me to speak with him when he was a toddler,” Maeve said.
Anica rolled her eyes and shuffled through the contents of her sopping leather bag on the floor. A puddle spread around it, kissing the legs of the chair and table, and she procured a Polaroid, hesitantly sliding it to Maeve.
“That’s Jorge and Anabelle—our daughter,” Anica said.
“Anabelle?” Maeve asked, her thumb tracing the contour of Jorge’s jaw. The two were sitting atop cobblestone steps, and beaded necklaces of purple, green, and gold draped over them. “Named after his mother?”
“Yes,” Anica said, “and myself, I suppose. But mostly his mother.”
“When was this photo taken?”
Anica closed her eyes in thought. “At a Mardi Gras festival—we’d go every year. But this was one of the last ones before he died.”
“What year?” Maeve asked.
Anica shrugged. “2018? 2019?”
“Which one?” Maeve’s eyes narrowed.
“It couldn’t have been 2020, could it?” Anica said. Her voice cracked at Jorge’s memory. “Does it matter?”
Maeve blinked, silent.
“2019,” Anica said.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Anica said. “We got Anabelle the sundress she’s wearing the Christmas after she turned nine, and she wore it until she was practically bursting out of its seams.” She looked back at Maeve. “Why does it matter?” she reiterated.
“Like I said: I don’t speak to the dead,” Maeve said. “I go back and speak to the living before they die. Dates matter.”
Anica pursed her lips as she looked back at Maeve. “It was 2019.”
“Then let’s get started,” Maeve said.
Anica presented her hands to Maeve across the table, expectantly, her palms facing upward.
“What are you doing?” Maeve asked.
“I…” Anica retracted, embarrassed. “I thought…”
“That’s not how this works,” Maeve said. “You wait here. I’ll be a moment.” She rose from her chair and approached the devil’s ivy along the corner mirror.
“What are you doing?” Anica asked. Her hand twitched toward the photograph.
Maeve raised the Polaroid of Jorge and Anabelle. “I use this totem to reach Jorge,” she clipped the smallest leaf of devil’s ivy from the vine, “and I use this totem to get back.”
Anica cocked her head, confused.
“Just wait here,” Maeve said, smiling. “Don’t overcomplicate it. To you, it’ll only be a moment.”
Before Anica could protest further, Maeve disappeared behind the oak door, leaving her alone in Haven with her spiraling thoughts.
Anica listened as Maeve’s muffled steps slowly grew silent, snuffed out by distance and the pattering rain.
While the seconds slipped into minutes, Anica slipped deeper into her chair, waiting.
At first, she made large, calculated breaths.
Five seconds in.
Eight seconds out.
Repeat.
The lemongrass and mugwort settled in her lungs, but time weakened their embrace, and each breath grew shallower than the last.
She thought of Jorge and her trip to the morgue to identify his body.
She thought of the life she was supposed to have with him, the one she said ‘goodbye’ to.
She thought of the crescent imprints her fingernails left in the steering wheel the night she drove to the hotel.
She thought of Ana.
She thought of Anabelle.
She thought of the envelope of cash on the other side of the oak door.
Finally, she thought of how it had been more than fifteen minutes since Maeve said she’d ‘only be a moment.’
Anica locked eyes with her reflection in the corner mirror just as lightning flashed across its reflection. She counted the seconds before the thunder that inevitably followed shook Haven in its entirety.
She jumped at the thunder—and jumped again as the glass entrance swung open and the sound of the storm momentarily consumed the space.
A woman in a turquoise jumper entered, dripping. At first glance, she seemed older than Anica, but a second glance made her impossible to place.
“Who are you?” Anica asked, brow furrowed and mouth agape.
The woman said nothing. She passed Anica without another glance and continued toward the oak door, disappearing behind it.
A moment later, she reemerged with Anica’s envelope.
“We can’t help you,” she said, placing it on the center table.
Anica’s eyes darted back and forth from the envelope to the woman, perplexed. “I’m waiting for Maeve. She said she’d be right back.”
“I work with Maeve,” the woman said. “And we can’t help you. You can go.”
She opened the glass door and waited expectantly.
Anica stood from her seat, blood rising to her cheeks, and barely able to feel her legs. “I’ve sacrificed a lot to be here. Maeve said she’d be right back, and I don’t plan on going anywhere until she returns.”
The woman stared at Anica, unimpressed. “Maeve will be ‘right back’ from where?”
Anica faltered, “...to see my husband.”
“And where’s that?”
“He’s dead…” Anica’s voice trailed off.
“Do you hear yourself?” the woman said. “You’re lucky to get your money back at all.” Her eyes bore into Anica’s. “Go home.”
Anica slowly gathered her things. She regarded the woman one last time, mustering all the disdain she could in a single glance before finally disappearing into the storm, leaving Haven behind.
The woman’s fingertips grazed the mahogany shelves beneath rows of crystals as she wandered along Haven’s perimeter before she stopped at the corner mirror, tracing the devil’s ivy curling around its frame. She ran her fingers through her graying hair and expelled over a decade of grief in a single breath.
It had been fifteen years since Maeve last stood at this very mirror—since Anica’s mistaken date sent her to Jorge earlier than intended.
And since his death, she returned to the same thought: her one year with him was worth all the years without.
Maeve reached deep into her pocket and pulled out a fine silver necklace with a sapphire pendant—the same one Anica charged her to find—and fastened it around her neck.
She turned the sapphire slowly between her fingers. When its glint found her eyes, she closed them.
Throughout their year of sleepless nights, Jorge had always been clear with her: he wanted Maeve to have the pendant.