The Witch of Belladonna Bay (29 page)

“Well, Byrdie … a boy needs a place of his own. And I love you. More than anything. But sometimes I needed to be alone. And I didn't want you followin' me neither, so I lied.”

He sounded sorrier to have lied to me than he was about killin' his mama. Such a strange boy, my prince.

“We have to tell someone,” I said when I felt he might be calming down.

“Who?”

“I don't know. Anyone? You're a little kid, you'd get off. And then my daddy could get outa jail. You can't let him stay in there for what you did. Not if you really love me.”

A look came into his eyes at that moment that I won't ever forget. Worse than a shadow, a stranger.

“Let's forget all this, Byrdie. Let me take you to my castle. I've been making it, working night and day, building it for you.” His voice was hollow. There was something very wrong with my prince after all. And my instinct, God love it, finally kicked in.

I went with him because I knew I didn't have a choice.

 

23

Wyn

 

It feels like the island itself is right there over the creek. Step on five or six large stones and you'd be there. That's how I'd always imagined it. It wasn't like that at all.

Most of the time we imagine things wrong, so it's stupid to even try to prepare yourself. Like, you can't prepare yourself to see a ghost. Especially one you knew alive first. It hums in your head, and there's a quick beat of fear, and then it just is what it is. Most people see them, you know. Only they don't want to, so they get a funny feeling on the stairs, or some air on the back of their neck. I'd blocked them out my whole life. But I couldn't do it anymore.

And there she was. Lottie.

She was balancing on a rock, with her arms stretched out for balance. I watched as she placed one foot on the side of her leg and lifted her arms up, turning her head to the sky. I'd forgotten how long her neck was. Then she did a pirouette.

A perfect one.

Lottie loved ballet. We used to make so much fun of her. But looking at her now, I realized too late what a wonderful ballerina she would have made. If we'd supported her, would she still have quit?

“No,” she said, her voice soft. “I wouldn't have. I may have even gotten out of Magnolia Creek.”

“I'm sorry, Charlotte,” I said. I didn't know what else to say.

She moved toward me, we must have been halfway through the mist by then. Meeting in the middle like we always had.

Meet you halfway …
halfway to the church, the beach, even school. Meet you halfway in friendship, too. Only I didn't meet her. She always held up her part of the bargain, and I was always late.

Her image crept lower the closer she got. The water was up to her calves, and her long gown, colorless yet glittery, was wet along the bottom.

“Come closer to me, Wyn. I won't bite you,” she said.

“I have to pass you, Lottie. I'm sorry. I have to move past you. Byrd is over there. You know her, right? And she's … well…”

“You love her.” Her voice hovered over the word
love,
dragging it around and hanging it inside the mist. Not an echo … a layer.

“Yes. I do. That's why I need to go to her.”

Charlotte raised herself up again, levitating for a moment before sitting down on a larger rock in the center of the creek. She patted the spot next to her. “Come sit by me for a little bit and let's us have an old-fashioned chat,” she said.

“Lottie, I have to go. I'll chat with you on the way back, okay?” That's when I tried to pass her, but I couldn't. I took two steps forward and felt a squeezing around my heart that wouldn't let go.
I'm having a heart attack.

“No, you aren't,” she said. “I won't let you by. You can try for hours. On all different sides of me, but I won't let you. You'll have to sit a bit and listen to me first. Or else that mist? I'll make it go right into you and you won't be able to breathe. Not one bit. Don't make me do that, Wyn. I don't want to make any more mistakes. I've made far too many already.”

I sat down, the pressure around my heart easing.

She took a long pause before she started speaking.

“Remember when all we did was sit like this, side by side? On your porch or my porch? Or the docks or—”

“The swing,” I finished.

She laughed, more watery sounds.

“Was that you? On the swing that day?” I asked.

“Yes. And it was me in my kitchen, too. But you couldn't see me yet. I wasn't sure you'd ever get up the courage to accept yourself. See, that's the key. I've just learned it myself. Dead and all. Just learned that in order to be free, we have to allow ourselves to be…”

“Is that why you can't cross over?”

“Maybe at first, but not now. Now I know what way to go. I see my path.” She looked to her left, longing filling her eyes. “I'll get there soon enough. I've seen it, you know. It's beautiful, Wyn. Really. But first I have to help my baby, and you have to help him, too.”

“How can I help him? I don't know him, and I don't know where he is.”

“And whose fault is that?” she asked, snapping her head around, seething. “
You
left.
You
ran away, leaving us all here to wade around in the chaos. It was like quicksand. You left Paddy all alone after you promised you'd never leave him. And Jackson was even more lost than ever. He still is. Not to mention Minerva. She shed a few tears, too. Does that surprise you? It shouldn't. But the worst? You know what the worst part of all of it was, Wyn?”

“What? I'm so sorry. I wish there was a bigger word. I didn't even realize … I ran, but I was lost, too.”

“I don't give a shit about that right now. Let me finish. The worst part was that you left Grant. And you left me. And I swear, though I missed you, damn did I ever … I was happy you'd gone. Because, I'm sure you've figured it all out, I wanted Grant to myself, and I thought if you were gone, I'd have a chance.

“But you took him with you, didn't you? Took his heart. That's when I started to hate you. I suppose I should ask you to forgive me for that. Who knows? Maybe it was my hate mixed up with your guilt that made some kind of alchemy, a witches' brew of staying away forever.”

“I'm starting to believe in all sorts of things, Lottie. I don't doubt a person can put up a wall around a place or a person and not let them inside,” I said.

“Well, hell. You just figured out this mist, didn't you? More than that, you just figured out your mama.”

Naomi.

“Have you seen her? She's here, isn't she?” I found myself looking wildly in the mist. Her presence was strong, close.

“Yes. I have. But that's another thing for another day. Today, I'm gonna take you down memory lane, and then you're gonna do me a favor, okay?”

“Okay,” I said quietly.

“Here we go: you're fifteen, and I'm fourteen. You've run off in the middle of the night after a fight with your mama. You're in that white cotton nightgown, you remember? You came up to my window and knocked at it. Looked like a ghost yourself.”

“I remember,” I said, and I did.

Naomi had come into my room and woken me up. She wanted to “talk,” this happened a lot as she used more and more. She'd get these “amazing ideas” and need to share them. I don't know if she only chose me, or if she made the rounds in the family, but that night, I wasn't having it.

“Get out of my room!” I'd screamed at her.

She put her hands over her face and said, “I'm not really a person at all, Wyn. I'm a ghost. I'm living in-between the walls. Not in the passages, in the plaster. I'm under the plaster. I can't see you, and you can't see me and I can't … talk because there's all this dust … in my throat.” She scratched at her throat, leaning against my door. This was the moment where I'd usually help her back to bed.

But not that night. That night I'd had enough.

“
Get out!
” I yelled again and reached out to my bedside table and took the crystal water glass that had been there since I was born, with its matching fancy water decanter, and threw it as hard as I could, straight at her. It shattered next to her head.

We were both shocked. Naomi's eyes got wide, and then she ran. She ran away from me, which is what I wanted all wrapped up in what I didn't want.

So I left the Big House and ran to the Masters. I wanted to see Lottie. And Susan, only I knew Susan would be sleeping, because … damn … she was sick, too.

Charlotte put her spirit hand on top of mine. And the chill brought me back from the past, back into the mist.

“I always wondered why it was my window and not Grant's that you came to that night, Wyn,”

“I needed you, not him. I needed my friend. And you loved Naomi. I wanted someone to be mad at me. To tell me I'd behaved badly.”

Fourteen-year-old Lottie had pressed her face against the screen. “What's the matter, Wyn? Everything okay?”

I just shook my head, crying.

You were crying.

Young Lottie took the pack of cigarettes by her bed and a lighter, too. Then she climbed right out of the window in her pajamas. White with yellow flowers, I remember.

“Come on!” she said, grabbing my arm, and we started running.

The two of us ran free and laughing into the night. Up Main Street and out onto county road 10 until we were smack in the middle of a red dirt road, illuminated by the full moon. The pecan trees ahead and the soybeans with their low green leaves covering the ground on either side of us.

We sat in the middle of that road. Neither of us able to wash that red stain out of what we were wearing again. We smoked and talked.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too,” I said. “You saved me tonight, Lottie. You always save me.”

We got up, attempting to brush the red dirt off.

“Yeah, you owe me for a lot of things. Things you don't even understand.”

Fifteen-year-old BitsyWyn never knew what she meant.

But I understood now.

She'd let me have Grant and still stayed my friend. I couldn't even imagine how hard that must have been, watching us all those years.

Then after I was gone, she was never able to get him to love her the way she wanted him to.

“You owe me one, remember?” said spirit Charlotte.

“I know.”

“Then go. You solve this whole thing. You have to figure out who killed me, and bring me my son. You have the rest of today and all of tomorrow. After that, I can't change fate. Do that for me, and then I can cross. You owe me.”

“Lottie, don't you remember who killed you?”

“Maybe I do. Maybe I don't. Maybe I just don't want to remember.
You
have to figure it out.”

“And you'll let me back over when I do?” I asked.

“I'll either let you back over or kick her butt back out, it don't make no difference to me. Now, at least.”

“Lottie? Why does it have to be so quick?”

“Because if it ain't done soon, Byrd won't be able to stay alive, you hear? There's things I already know, but you have to confirm them. I'm trying to save little Byrd, too. Get it straightened out in the land of the living so I can get it straightened out here on the dead side,” she said and then turned away, pirouetting back across the rocks until she was lost in the mist.

I made my way back out, but all I could think of was Byrd.

She felt so far away
. Is she cold? Does she feel safe inside? Does she walk knowing she's loved? Please don't die, please don't die, please don't die.

 

24

Naomi

 

That old magnolia, Esther, knows all my secrets. She watched me from the moment I set foot on the Big House property. She saw me change and then slip away. I love that tree. She never asks questions. She's the only tree I ever met who already knows the answers.

I watched my own funeral from her branches and noticed my family's absence then more than any letters or packages they never sent. Minerva always told me, “You can't measure love by the post office.”

Everyone wants to get rid of their pain. Smart people know they need to face pain so they can make good decisions. Pain is like a map, I guess. But I found a shortcut on my “map of the heart.” Shortcuts always take longer, don't they?

I always assumed I'd be the kind of mother I saw on TV. Grandma Catherine and the rest of the family purchased a television set for me when it became evident I wouldn't be able to participate much with anyone. So, they went off to school, parties, annual picnics, and I stayed in my room watching game shows or reruns of
Donna Reed.

I couldn't identify with anyone on those shows, and I couldn't lose myself in the entertainment, either. I began to hate it, television.

When I moved to Magnolia Creek, we got rid of them all.

My thoughts, they wander … aprons. Yes.

I wanted to be an apron-wearing, knowledgeable mother. Capable of all things domestic. I gave it a try. The only thing that stuck was the apron. I loved my aprons.

My grandmother used to wear them. I could have loved her, if she let me. Minerva said they were all
scared
of me. I believe that now. I was scared of my own children, and that's why I ran away from them.

Irony is becoming exactly who you told yourself you'd never be, and not knowing it until you're dead. My apron-wearing, mean-spirited grandmother's eyes were the most expressive I've ever seen. And she was terrified of me. Afraid I'd end up wielding the same kind of control over Fairview that her own aunt, Faith Green, had. More than that, though, she was afraid of loving me. Terrified that she'd lose me and not willing to take a chance. I did exacty the same thing with my children.