The Sparrow Sisters (28 page)

Simon didn't have good news. He hadn't yet arranged bail. There was no standing bondsman; he was in Hayward, and one town banker made it clear no one wanted to deal with the Sparrows. As Simon and the Sisters met each other across the counter, all three were bereft in every way. When Simon's cell phone rang, they all jumped.

Simon listened in silence and then gave his location.

“That was Charlotte,” he said. “She's coming over here.”

Sorrel frowned, and Nettie asked why.

Simon shook his head. “She wouldn't say, just that she wanted to see all of us.”

It was not yet four o'clock, but the sky was so low that it felt like dusk. Charlotte had her headlights on, and they swept through the room, making Sorrel realize she should turn on the lights too.

Charlotte walked in with her usual purpose. Nettie shrank away; she couldn't help herself.

“Right,” Charlotte said and plopped her bag on the counter. “I'm taking over here.” She fished around for a minute before coming up with a cashier's check and handing it to Simon.

“Bail,” she said and looked at the Sisters. “Patience can be out tonight if you hurry.”

Here was another woman, and the most unexpected, to take Patience's side. If Charlotte surprised the Sisters, she stunned Simon. It wasn't the money, although she certainly had enough of her own to spend as she chose; it was the fact that Charlotte Parsons Mayo chose the Sparrow Sisters. She could easily have stood back as Simon did his job; she could even have made it clear that she did not agree with him. Instead, she not only took sides, she took a stand.

“I won't let this ridiculous little town repeat its own history,” she said. “There is no need for Granite Point to become some late night comic's joke. I won't watch any woman be victimized, and I will definitely do what I can to stop this deranged witch hunt.” Charlotte reached across the counter and took her husband's hand.

“We are all counting on you, Simon. If you ever loved Sorrel, save her sister.” Charlotte turned and left the shed, her little car humming as it sped up the sandy drive and back to town.

Simon stared at the check for all of thirty seconds before he too left. He wanted to get everything settled before nightfall. Mostly he wanted to get out of the Nursery without looking at Sorrel and before he started to cry. He almost made it. The Sisters politely turned their heads when he swallowed a sob.

Independently, quietly, subtly the women of Granite Point were marshaling their strength. It would be necessary for them to bind that strength together before the town tore itself apart.

S
ORREL AND
N
ETTIE
locked the shed and drove home in silence. There was nothing to say, really. Charlotte had said it all. Granite Point was convulsing around them, foaming at the mouth with the nastiness that had survived over three hundred years. During the Salem witch trials, the town's spasm of keeping up with the Joneses should have worn itself out on Eliza Howard. But she would become a Sparrow, so when Patience was arrested it didn't take much for the town to absorb the symmetry of the moment. Really, it was just too good to pass up, although there was no satisfaction in the death of a child. It was obvious to everyone that Patience's ingredients had to go. The vandals could have saved their energy; the Nursery would begin to truly fail the next day.

Sorrel went home to Ivy House to wait for Patience, and Nettie whipped through the supermarket with the idea that
dinner should be a comforting, healing thing. Simon went to the police station, and he and Chief Kelsey presented the check to the court clerk, who filed all the necessary paperwork while the two men stood over her. Cash was a beautiful thing, Simon thought. They both fairly ran back to the station, and Patience was in Simon's car within the hour. No one called Henry to tell him the news.

“Please take me to the Nursery,” Patience said.

Simon slowed the car. “Patience, that's the last place you should be seen. As your lawyer I cannot condone this and should take you straight home.”

“It is home.”

“There's been some trouble, P,” Simon said. “You might want to wait till your sisters are with you.”

But Patience didn't want to wait. She needed to be around the plants, hopeful that they could soothe her now. Although Simon warned her, she was unprepared for the devastation. After she asked him to collect her in an hour, Patience climbed over the gate. Ben and Simon had wrapped a heavy chain around it (the same one Ben had used to drag the oldest of the yews out of the ground after it had been nearly felled by someone's axe). He couldn't do anything else to help the Sisters, so the big lobsterman had shut the Nursery off from the town.

Patience could now see how broken it was. The beds that had escaped the fear that swept across Granite Point along with the rain were no healthier. As Patience walked between them, she saw that disease was spreading. Rose petals were brown
with rot, the new buds black on their stems. Only the thorns were green: acid, poisonous green dripping with clear liquid. She knelt at a raised bed planted with cucumbers and radishes. Shriveled thumb-sized cucumbers ended in wilted, twisted blossoms. When Patience pulled on a radish clump, the leaves powdered in her hand and the roots ended in foul-smelling knobs. Darkness spread with the disease, and Patience began to cry. It was a low, howling sound that hurt as it left her chest. She barely made it to the meadow before she fell to the ground. Beneath her the grass was sharp as needles, blood spotted her clothes, tiny cuts covered her legs, her arms, the soft skin on her hips. All around her the ground hardened, and the black-eyed Susans rattled and cracked on their stems. The cornflowers curled up into gray balls before they sagged into the dirt.

Henry wouldn't find her for some thirty minutes. Ben told him Patience was out on bail, and when Henry made known his intention to go to Ivy House, to confront her about what was torturing him, Ben stopped him.

“Don't do that. You'll kill her,” he said. “Please don't hurt her anymore. We can't take it.”

Henry was surprised at the intensity of Ben's words. He had no idea Ben was so affected, and he told him so.

“Not me, all of us,” Ben said. “Can't you see what's happening here?”

But Henry just couldn't. The man of science was back. He felt distant from himself, as if the Henry of the last weeks was nothing more than a dream instead of a memory. He had come
to measure his life in the before-and-after of his wound, the death of a little girl in his arms. Now he found that he'd crossed yet another line. There was the Henry who tasted happiness in the blood and bone of Patience, and now there was the one who looked at his hands, certain he could see the blood and bone of Matty Short. If Patience coiled in hot, tearful agony as she measured her culpability in herbs and flowers, Henry had become cold and rigid with the knowledge that he'd watched, unmoving, as calamity had gathered.

But there was something else Henry Carlyle could not stop: the pull he felt from Patience. It was as subtle as the green tendrils of the sweet peas she'd planted along his porch, and just as insistent. Ben left, holding his scarred hand up in warning, but Henry was already gathering his keys, shoving his feet into his sneakers, pulling a sweatshirt over his head. He didn't think as he drove off and ended up at Calumet Landing; perhaps Patience was calling to him. One breath and he knew she was somewhere near. He climbed over the fence and bit down on a groan when pain burned its way up his leg as he landed on the other side. He followed the sandy drive in near darkness, the only light the small fixture on the shed. As Henry turned toward the greenhouses, looking for Patience, he acknowledged that he had no idea what he was doing.

Henry passed through the gardens. There was a rank smell, and he heard as well as felt the insects crunching under his feet. He didn't need to go into the greenhouse to see that the orchids were dying, papery and nearly transparent. They leaned
against the glass like drunken debutantes. He swung away, his hand to his mouth, and started toward the wildflower field. He noticed the buzz of crickets and the rumble of the bullfrogs in the duckweed around the pond, the absolute silence that surrounded their insistent drone. There was something very wrong, and Henry forced himself to stop and listen beneath the noise and the silence. That's when he heard Patience sobbing. He followed the sound, his head turned as if that would help him track her. And it did because he found her before she took her next gulping breath. Henry nearly fell over her. Stumbling back to avoid crushing her, he went down hard on his knees beside her.

“Shit,” Henry growled as he caught himself with both hands on Patience's arm. She stopped crying and looked up at him. He was frowning, and sweat stood out on his lip. Henry was in pain and Patience longed to help him, but now she was afraid of her own gift.

“I'm so sorry,” he said as he shifted back on his heels. He put one hand down and wobbled before giving up and landing on his ass. “Jesus, we're a mess,” he said.

Patience sat up and put her hand out to Henry. He found he couldn't refuse her. As much as his leg hurt, as gritty as his bones felt as they rubbed against each other with every step, he wanted only to gather her up and carry her out of this poisonous place. Henry took her hand and they dragged each other closer, the grass scraping sharply against their thighs.

“What is that?” Henry asked as he pulled his torn pant leg
around for a look. “Has someone thrown a bottle?” Could the town have turned that ugly? He turned Patience's hand palm up and saw that the heel of it was speckled with blood. “What's happened to you?”

“It's the ground, it's gone sharp, the grass has died, everything's died,” Patience said. “I've killed it all.”

He looked around at the dead and dying. “You haven't done this any more than you killed Matty.” If he had said those words before, he believed them now. Watching Patience weep, Henry let go of every sliver of anger. “Whatever is happening in these gardens, it's because you were taken away from them.”

Patience laughed weakly. “Oh dear,” she said, “I'm in jail a couple of days and you go all mystical on me.” Henry dropped his head. “Wait till I tell my sisters,” Patience said, and she brushed at the blood drying on her hand.

“Oh, I think they've heard enough from me already,” Henry said. “Let me take you home.”

“Yes, let's go away,” Patience said as if Henry could transport her.

They stood together and with her arm through Henry's, Patience walked lightly over the gravel and the hundreds of insects that fluttered or spun or flapped at her feet, each of them helpless to stop the end. Henry was unnerved by the bugs and tried his best to step around them. But for every one he missed, another fell onto the path with a snapping, clapping sound. He pulled a little harder on Patience's arm, but she'd paused and was leaning over a tall clump of pink flowers.

“What's happened to those?” Henry asked.

“Nothing. That's just it,” Patience said. “It's the foxglove plants. They're alive. I'd planned to pull them out before Matty because they're full of earwigs, pretty toxic, and I never used them. I never did believe all the Eliza Howard stories so why keep them around? Now I never want to see them again. Still, these”— she stopped short of touching them—“these are perfectly fine, which is all wrong. I should bag them before they screw up the soil.”

“I think that ship has sailed, Patience. This place is a graveyard.” Henry pulled Patience again. “Please, let's get out of here. We need to talk.”

“This is all we have. I've got to try to save it.” She gestured at the gardens. “Maybe I should stay.”

“You know what? This is the part where you have no choice,” Henry said. “I almost lost you this week. Then I almost threw you away. I won't do that again.” He lunged at Patience and picked her up. She offered no resistance, and Henry limped toward the gate.

“You really don't have to do this,” Patience said as he ducked under a willow tree whose long branches bowed too deep, their leaves already lacy and yellow.

“Yeah, well, I may have to put you down in a sec.” Henry grimaced. “Okay, now, actually,” he said as he lowered Patience. He rubbed at his thigh and swore. “Whatever you did to me, you need to do it again,” he said.

Patience put her hand over his as he rubbed. “How bad is it?”

“Very.” Henry hated saying so, but the absence of pain for even those few weeks had spoiled him. He put his head down and bent at the waist, breathing slowly as the pain swelled and faded in waves. He saw stars and swallowed the saliva that gathered in his mouth along with the nausea.

“Poor Henry,” Patience murmured. This time she led him and helped him to sit on the shed steps. The door was locked, and the new dead bolt was shiny even in the dusk.

“I'd get something for you if I could,” Patience said and tilted her head to the door.

Henry fished around in his pocket until he came up with a linty Vicodin. “This'll do,” he said and swallowed it dry. “Have you seen your sisters yet?”

“No, I came here.”

“Then I should tell you that I kind of blew up at them the other day.” Henry put his hands on his knee and pressed down. Sometimes he could shift the pain around a little. Not tonight. “If I accept your ability, Patience, then I have to accept that you could have hurt Matty.”

Patience nodded. “That's what I've said from the beginning. I haven't hidden anything.”

“That quilt you left with me. I thought it was just an old blanket.”

“It was. I upgraded it.”

“That's what I mean,” Henry said. “The herbs, the flowers, your touch . . .” He trailed off.

“I was only trying to help,” Patience said and carefully
placed her hand on Henry's leg. He felt the warmth under her palm and inhaled. He tried to maintain a professional distance, to analyze what was happening as the heat traveled into his hip and down to his thigh. He felt the pain retreat, a cool wave replacing the heat, a softening of the muscle and nerve beneath her hand. Finally, Henry let go and in a moment of near grace he arched into Patience with a deep sigh.