The Rules of Magic (Practical Magic #2)(39)
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?