The Rules of Magic (Practical Magic 0)(95)

As the wedding service was about to begin, the Reverend nodded to Jet, who was the maid of honor, dressed in a pale green shift. She nodded back, and in that quiet way they shared the grief the feud between their families had caused as well as the joy of the day.

Unable are the Loved to die, for Love is Immortality, the Reverend quoted when he ended the service, a blessing not only for the husband and wife but for Jet as well, who understood his meaning in his choice of Emily Dickinson. Levi would always be with them.

When the happy couple walked out of town hall there were wild cheers. Franny hadn’t even known there were so many people in their town. She hunched down, unused to all the attention. The doctor’s patients threw rice and the children’s chorus from the elementary school sang “All You Need Is Love.” Franny carried a bunch of long-stemmed red roses. Hay was slowed down a bit by the problems with his leg and by the pain he was suffering, but he grinned and waved as if he had won a race, his arm around his bride, who was crying too much, right there in public, to notice much of anything other than how crowded the street was on this day. Even people who had always disliked the Owenses, and blamed them for every misfortune in town, had to agree that Frances Owens made a beautiful bride, even at her age, even though she dressed in black.

Dr. Walker moved into the old house, for he had no fear of curses, just of the pains and suffering of real life, and anyone could tell he was happy. People would see him watering the garden. He weeded between the rows of lettuce while singing to himself. He had to close down his office, but he’d talked a young doctor from Boston into taking over his practice, which was fortunate for him and even more fortunate for the town. These days Haylin wanted to spend as much time as he could with Franny, who liked to tease him about his new gardening mania. He’d put out a wooden box just inside the fence, filled it with lettuce, and urged their neighbors to take as much as they’d like.

“The best lettuce in the commonwealth, if we can keep the rabbits away,” he told people passing by.

“They’re never going to walk through the gate,” Franny insisted.

And then the oddest thing happened, they did. His patients and her neighbors all came past the gate, and although some appeared to be nervous, they gratefully took the lettuce, heads of all varieties, each so good that people who made salads of the stuff dreamed of rabbits and of their own childhood gardens.

Charlie Merrill was now deceased, so Franny had asked his sons to bring over a bench so Hay could sit and rest out on the porch, which he had begun to do. He had slowed down, but not completely. He let Jet water the garden now and Franny weed, but all that summer he set out lettuce for his friends and patients.

“Aren’t I lucky,” he said one evening when he and Franny were sitting on the bench holding hands, watching the dusk sift down. Hay remembered walking through Central Park, lying on the grass looking at stars, swimming in the cold pond just before he went away. He remembered Franny with her red hair pinned up haphazardly lying on the floor with him in the cook’s room at her parents’ house, naked and beautiful.

He tried not to take painkillers because he didn’t want to spend any of his time with Franny in a haze. “I might have drowned long ago, and then we wouldn’t have had all of this.”

Franny had no idea how it was possible to love him more, but she did. She thought perhaps that was the curse, to love someone so much when you knew he would leave you. But Hay was right.

“We are lucky,” she said.

“It was all because of third grade. When you walked into the classroom in a black coat, looking pissed off.”

Franny laughed. “I was not pissed off.” She looked at him. “Was I?”

“You most certainly were. Until I sat next to you.”

Haylin grinned, which undid her, as always. She leaned her head against his chest and wondered how on earth she could ever let him go.

“Was it fate?” she asked.

“Do we care?” he answered.

The truth was, they had managed to get what they wanted. It just wasn’t lasting long enough, not that it ever could. When he passed, the doctor was sitting on the porch on an autumn night. The lilacs were blooming out of season. There were so many stars in the sky it was impossible to count them all. They had turned off the light on the back porch, the better to see the swirling show above them.

Oh, how beautiful was the last thing he said.

There was no warning when it happened, and no pain, he just was there one moment and then he was gone. Franny sat outside with him all night. She was so cold in the morning that Jet brought her a pair of gloves. Charlie’s sons took him to the funeral parlor in their new truck, with Franny insisting she go. She sat in the bed of the pickup with the doctor, who had been covered by a woolen blanket. She did not notice what roads they took or that the sky was piercingly blue. They made sure he was dressed in a black suit, with no shoes on, for that was the way people were buried in their family, in a plain pine coffin. Franny sat in the funeral parlor all night. Near midnight Jet came with a thermos of tea and a blanket for her sister and they sat together, not speaking, but holding hands, as they had when they were girls sitting on the roof that first summer they visited Aunt Isabelle’s house, wondering where life would lead them.



The Walkers did not argue or protest Haylin’s final resting place in the Owens cemetery. They were all buried in Bedford, New York, but they understood his place was not with them. His family came up to Massachusetts in three long, black cars. The Reverend performed the service. It was brief, and allowed time for patients and friends to stand up and say their piece or give a blessing. The youngest speaker was nine. Dr. Walker had cared for him when he had appendicitis, and the speaker, who had been bought his first suit for the occasion, wanted to say that he had decided to become a doctor because of Dr. Walker.