It wasn’t Fran who told me about her.

It was a guy I worked with at Burger Chef. One afternoon, in that offhand way people sometimes reveal the strangest things, he handed me a slip of paper with an address and a name.

“She’s the real thing,” he said. “Proven results.”

I didn’t ask what that meant. I didn’t ask how he knew. I just folded the paper and put it in my pocket.

The building was in a low-rent part of North Providence, the kind of place that felt tired before you even stepped inside. Three stories, narrow, a little worn down at the edges. The stairwell to the upper floors didn’t feel like it belonged to the building so much as clung to it—tight, slightly tilted, as if it had been added later without much care.

As I climbed, I remember thinking, I shouldn’t be doing this.

She opened the door with a smile that immediately let me breathe again. Not theatrical, not mysterious—just warm, almost ordinary. For a moment, I thought maybe this had all been exaggerated.

Then she turned and led me through the kitchen.

That’s when the feeling came back.

In the center of a butcher block table sat a slab of raw steak—three pounds at least, thick, filling most of the surface. And driven straight into its center was the largest butcher’s knife I had ever seen. Not resting there. Embedded. As if it belonged.

It wasn’t preparation. It wasn’t cooking.

She didn’t acknowledge it. Just kept walking.

We moved into the living room, and she motioned for me to sit on the couch. The apartment itself was cluttered, layered with things that didn’t quite fit together. I remember thinking I wished I had a camera—not because it was beautiful, but because it was so completely its own.

She was in her thirties, maybe. Attractive in a simple, unassuming way. No drama. No costume. And when she spoke, it was almost disarming.

“So,” she said, like someone discussing a classified ad. “What can I do for you?”

I told her a little about Regina. Not everything. Just enough to explain why I was there.

She listened for a moment, then cut gently through it.

“You want to get her back, right?”

I nodded.

“No problem.”

She said it the way someone might quote a price for a chair.

“Thirty-five dollars. She’ll be back in your life.”

I said yes immediately—before I could think, before I could question it. Trying not to show how surprised I was that this was all it cost.

She didn’t react. Just stood up and walked to a small desk.

I had expected something else. Something ceremonial. A bottle pulled from a hidden shelf. A gesture, a chant, something to match the feeling of that kitchen.

Instead, she tore a piece of paper from an old pad and began to write.

A formula. Ingredients. Instructions.

Most of it was ordinary. Things you could find without much effort. But the scent—she emphasized that.

Wintergreen oil. That was the base.

“Mix it,” she said, handing me the paper. “Wear it like cologne. Then call her. Ask if you can visit.”

She looked at me directly.

“Trust me. It will work.”

As I walked back down those narrow stairs, the confidence I had felt began to fade. I was left holding a slip of paper.

Over the next few days, I found what I needed. A small bottle—the kind that felt right for something like this. I mixed it carefully, exactly as she had written. No improvisation.

At some point, I stopped asking whether it made sense—like the night with Fran and the birds.

This wasn’t the first time I had stepped into something I didn’t fully understand.

When it was ready, I did what she said.

I wore it.

And I called.

Six months had passed.

When she answered, I asked if I could come by.

She said yes.

She was in the sunroom, just as she always had been. The light falling the same way. The air holding that same quiet intimacy.

When she saw me, she greeted me as if no time had passed.

No distance. No hesitation.

As if I had just stepped out and come back.

We sat together, and at some point she picked up a book she had just begun—Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse—and started to read aloud.

It’s not a long book.

We finished it that night.

The last half of it, I listened from within her arms, the words moving through both of us, dissolving whatever space had been between us.

We never spoke about the six months apart.

There was nothing to explain.

And whatever had been broken… wasn’t anymore.

Whether it was the potion, or something in me that had shifted, or something that had simply found its way back—I couldn’t say.