The Rules of Magic (Practical Magic #2)(40)

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.



Now that they had their freedom, they didn’t know what to do with it. No one put out the garbage. There were piles of trash in the kitchen that had begun to stink. Before long two rats had taken up residence in the broom closet, creatures Franny dealt with by flinging blocks of Swiss cheese inside for them. All at once she noticed how dilapidated everything was: the paint was chipped, the lights flickered, only one burner on the stove worked, and then not until Franny blew on it to light the flame. The town house had been deteriorating for some time, with no funds for repairs. As it turned out, the family was in debt and had borrowed heavily from the bank. So many of their father’s patients had been seen gratis, and their mother had spent whatever small inheritance she’d had years ago. The house would have to be put on the market. Jet hated the idea, and barely left her room. It therefore fell to Vincent and Franny to attend a meeting at their parents’ attorney’s office and listen to the lawyer address their dismal financial situation until Vincent said roughly, “Who the fuck cares?” storming out when he realized how broke they were.

“I believe the meeting is over,” Franny said. Before she departed, she signed all the necessary paperwork. As the eldest she was assigned to be her brother and sister’s legal guardian. It was up to her to make decisions. And, without a word to the others, she’d already made several of them.



Occasionally, their father’s patients would leave bouquets of flowers at the back door, which Franny immediately threw in the trash barrel. Several members of the psychoanalytic society had sent sympathy cards, which were burned in the fireplace. What was done was done and could not be undone. How much Franny missed her parents was unexpected. She wished she could sit down and talk to her mother, whom she discovered had convinced the local shopkeepers into giving them credit. She wished she could ask her father how to get rid of the flying ants in his office and how he had found time to write his book early in the morning before anyone else in the family was yet awake. She now understood why they had chased after Jet that night. It was fear of the Willards and their shared history of judges and victims. If only, Franny thought, but the list of what she wished she could have changed was too long and there was no way to rewrite their history.

Vincent spent most days sleeping, then he crept out in the evenings, not saying where he was headed, although they all knew the only place that currently interested him was the Jester. He didn’t come home till the wee morning hours, clearly having been up to no good, smelling of whiskey. He’d stopped going to school, and perhaps that was just as well; they could no longer afford Starling’s high tuition. When Vincent was at home, he wasn’t alone. He brought home countless girls, including Kathy Stern, the nymphomaniac, kleptomaniac patient of their father’s. Once she was ensconced in Vincent’s bedroom, she refused to leave. From listening in through the heat vents during Kathy’s therapy sessions, Franny knew Kathy had a wicked fear of birds. She let Lewis into the room, and before long Kathy ran screaming out the door in her underwear as the crow pulled on her hair, fistfuls of which were left on the floor. Later they realized Kathy had stolen their mother’s gold and pearl Chanel necklace.