The Fall of the Year (31 page)

“I'm glad you did.”

She made that sibilant sound I loved, as I loved everything about her. “No doubt you'd rather be courting the make-believe apparition,” Chantal said. “Do you think she'd give you a kiss like the ones I just granted you? Or anything more besides?”

I laughed and stood up and went around the table and kissed her again. “Marry me,” I said.

“Ask the Fortuneteller's Daughter.”

I glanced at Louvia's gazing stone beside Father George's “Short History” on the table. “I'm not going to propose to a rock.”

“Listen to me,” Chantal said. “Ask the Fortuneteller's Daughter.”

Her eyes were as full of laughter and delighted irony now as they had been on the day I had first met her, in the patisserie in Little Quebec. And finally, as I looked deep into those laughing eyes, as blue and wise as Father George's, I recognized her beyond any doubt, and I understood at last all that I had been meant to understand.

The Fortuneteller's Daughter kissed me again, tenderly and fiercely and triumphantly, and said, “Yes, Frank Bennett. I have my father's eyes. And my mother's tongue.”

“And your own heart.”

“No,” she said. “That belongs to you. Now and forever.”

Then I blew out the candle and took Chantal by the hand and led her outside into the snow to return to our home in the Common and see what sort of match the fortuneteller and the unorthodox priest, the greatest scholar and third baseman in the history of Kingdom County, had made for us.

H
OWARD
F
RANK
M
OSHER
is the author of ten books, including
Waiting for Teddy Williams, The True Account,
and
A Stranger in the Kingdom,
which, along with
Disappearances,
was corecipient of the New England Book Award for fiction. He lives in Vermont.