The Rules of Magic (19 page)

“We're here to pay our respects,” Isabelle said. “I'm sure you would do the same if the situation were reversed.”

The Reverend raised his eyes. Gray-green, just like Levi's. “But I don't have to, because my son is dead and she's alive,” he said, nodding to Jet. “This is the reason you've been cursed.”

“Your relative set that in motion, ours had no choice in the matter. And really, the truth is, because of them our fates and our histories are joined.”

Jet looked at her aunt, confused.

“And yet here I am,” the Reverend said. “At the grave of my son.”

Jet sank to the ground, dizzy. Isabelle did her best to get her back on her feet. The Reverend stood and watched, alarmed.

“Help us,” Isabelle commanded.

The Reverend took one of Jet's arms and Isabelle the other and they guided her to the chair.

“Breathe slowly and deeply,” Isabelle said. She went to stand beside the Reverend, her cousin, since his side of the family were direct descendants of the man who was the father of Maria Owens's daughter. “She's just a young girl who happened to have fallen in love,” she said to the cousin who denied their shared family lineage. “In what world is that a curse?”

The Reverend couldn't answer. He was broken and carried three hundred years of history and hatred.

“When we can forgive one another, we can begin to break the curse. You know that as well as I.”

The Reverend looked at Jet and Jet could see how he'd been devastated by what had happened. She managed to get to her feet. She stood before the grave, wishing she could be buried there as well, that her hands could be intertwined with Levi's, and she could live in this place beside him.

“We should go before they close the gates,” Isabelle said.

The Reverend followed them at a distance.

“He should hate me,” Jet said to her aunt. “He has every reason.”

“Hatred is what got us here in the first place,” Isabelle said.

When they reached the taxi, Isabelle told the driver to wait. As soon as the Reverend arrived at the gates, Isabelle asked the driver to get out and assist him and have him sit in the front seat so he could be driven home. The Reverend looked surprised, but he was exhausted, so he did as he was told. He got into the taxi and stared straight ahead and there was no talk of any kind until they reached his house on the far side of town. The taxi stopped and the Reverend got out without a word or a look back.

When they returned to Magnolia Street, Isabelle asked Franny and Vincent to join them in the garden. They would be leaving for Manhattan in the morning, so it was time. On some nights it was best to remember the past, and not shut it in a drawer. Three hundred years ago people believed in the devil. They believed if an incident could not be explained, then the cause was something wicked, and that cause was often a woman who was said to be a witch. Women who did as they pleased, women with property, women who had enemies, women who took lovers, women who knew about the mysteries of childbirth, all were suspect, especially to the fiercest and cruelest judge in the area, John Hathorne, a man so terrible that his great-great-grandson, the author of
The Scarlet Letter,
tried to deny his own heritage by changing the spelling of his name.

The affair happened when Maria was young, and it was unexpected for both of them. Hathorne showed her one side of him, for he was a brilliant man, a magistrate, a justice of the
peace in Essex County, and he had a soul, before it had been shattered by unhappiness and pride when he sent nineteen innocent people to their deaths and ruined the lives of many others. But when Maria met him none of this had happened, and she was enamored of him and perhaps he truly loved her. He was the one who gave her the sapphire and sent her away with a small bag of diamonds when the affair ended, hoping to ensure she would never be back, for he had a wife and a family and she was a young girl with whom he should never have tampered. Perhaps he felt he'd been enchanted, for from then on he looked for witchery in the world, and was the only magistrate associated with the trials who had never repented his actions.

They were therefore all descendants of a witch-finder and a witch, and therein lay the very heart of the curse's beginnings, for they were fated to try their best to deny who they were and to refute their true selves. The Willard side of the family was related through one of Hathorne's granddaughters, who had married a relation of John Proctor, hung as a witch when he tried to defend the innocent women being brought to trial.

“We were not there when these dreadful things happened, when women were accused of being crows and messengers from hell. We were neither the judge nor the accused, but we carry these things with us, and we have to fight them. The best way to do this is to be who you are, every part of you, the good and the bad, the sorrowful and the joyous. You can never run away. There is nowhere to run
to.
I think your mother knew that in the end, and that is why she came back here to be buried. We are who we are from the start.”

It was very late by now and the moon was red. Jet sat in the grass, her mouth set in a thin line. When you are young you are
looking forward and when you are old you are looking back. Jet was young but she was already looking back. On this evening, when the crickets were calling, when the birds were all sleeping in the thickets and even the rabbits were hushed, Jet didn't know how it was possible to forgive those who had wronged you or how it was possible to forgive yourself for those you had wronged.

They sat in the garden where Maria Owens had planted seeds so long ago. Life was short, it was over in an instant, but some things lasted. Hate and love, kindness and cruelty, all lingered and, in their case, all had been passed on. When they finally straggled inside, rain had begun to fall. It was a green, fresh rain, the sort most needed in summer, when everything is burning hot and thirsty. Usually the sisters shared the attic, but on this night Jet said she was too hot to go upstairs. Instead she sat in the parlor, waiting for the sun to rise, her suitcase packed. In the morning she told everyone she was perfectly fine, even though she wasn't, even though she wished she was still on that green hill where Levi had been buried, where the grass smelled so sweet, where there was no beginning and no end.

The limo drove them back to Manhattan through a gray drizzle. The streets were empty and hot. They piled out onto Eighty-Ninth Street and stood on the sidewalk. They'd lived here all their lives, yet it didn't feel like home. Franny found she couldn't bring herself to go inside. Vincent helped Jet out of the car, then looked at Franny, wanting to know what was to happen next.

“Go on,” she told him. It was now thundering but Franny wouldn't budge. “Go,” she insisted, and so they did while she remained where she was, though soon enough the clouds opened, leaving her soaking.

She had lost not only her parents but her future as well. Cambridge was no longer a possibility. How could she leave Jet and Vincent and go off to school? Though she was eighteen, little more than a girl, she, too, had begun to look backward.

When it came to the future she was certain she would never get what she wanted.

When Haylin didn't hear from her as promised, he sprinted to Eighty-Ninth Street. He spied her standing in the driving rain and ran faster. When he reached her, he pulled her close and bent to kiss her. There was no need to say anything. The weather was still hot and pavements steamed as raindrops hit the cement. All of Manhattan smelled of hyacinths. “I'm always going to love you,” Hay said.

He came upstairs with her. They slipped through the parlor and went to the cook's bedroom. They could hear the wet gusts of rain as the windows rattled. Hay took off Franny's sopping clothes. She was shivering and couldn't stop. The sky outside was murky and black with yellow heat waves rising from the pavement. Haylin kissed her, and when he grabbed off his own clothes they fell onto the bed together and neither thought about anything but each other. It was a single bed covered with the white coverlet that Susanna Owens had bought in Paris when she was a young woman mourning her lost love. The more
Haylin loved her, the more Franny broke apart. Was this what had happened to her mother in Paris?

She told Hay that she wanted his hands all over her, and he was happy to oblige. She yearned to forget everything that had ever occurred in the past and only be in this moment.

“Oh, Franny,” Haylin said. This was his first time, too, which was what he had always wanted. To only be with Franny. When they were done, Haylin was lying on the floor on his back, naked and exhausted, terrified that he had already lost her as she drifted away. He watched Franny where she was poised on a chair by the window. The rain had stopped and Lewis was outside, his plumage gleaming wet as he pecked at the glass. Franny let him in and toweled off his slick feathers.

“Come back,” Haylin called to her.

Franny shook her head. She was naked except for Haylin's T-shirt. She had exquisite long legs.

“Franny!”

She ignored him, for she had already decided what was between them must end. After what had happened to Levi, she no longer had the courage to take the chance of ruining Hay.

“We'll be all right,” Hay said as if he knew her thoughts. “We'll be happy in Cambridge.”

But it wouldn't be all right. Franny went to lie down beside him. She stroked his shoulders and torso. He was so beautiful and young. “Where did we meet?” she asked. She wanted to remember everything when it was over.

“Third grade. The lunchroom. You had a tomato sandwich, which I thought was very strange. Who eats a plain tomato sandwich?”

Tomatoes were in the nightshade family and Franny had
always adored them. “How do you recall these things?” She kissed his cheek, which was rough with stubble.

“I remember everything about you. I was waiting all that time for you to love me.”

They could hear music from the living room. The night had passed for them without sleep, in a dream of heat and longing. It was already noon. Vincent was playing guitar. They could hear him singing “Stand by Me” in a haunting voice.

Franny had no choice but to tell him. “I can't leave Jet and Vincent.” She'd known it ever since the hospital.

Hay had no intention of letting go. “They'll be fine. You have to go forward with your life.”

Franny kissed him and didn't stop. Let him remember only this. The softness of her mouth, how her thighs opened to him when he wanted to be inside her. Maybe then he would forgive her more easily on the day her gray eyes turned to ice, when she appeared not to care, because she knew that was her fate, to avoid love at all costs and then to pretend it didn't break her apart when she finally told him they were through.