At the Corner of King Street (19 page)

Margaret's eyes danced and I, too, was a little drawn into the mystery of the family. She dropped her gaze to the paper, transfixed by the scripted words.

“‘Dearest Mother,'” Margaret read, glancing up. “Regular stuff about farm and family and then, ‘I fear our former servant Faith cast a spell on me when I bade Dr. McDonald to sell her. Since she left, our luck has turned sour. I've lost two more children and miscarried another. My hope is to make my witch bottle, as you showed me when I was a child, and chase away her evil and the pain that consumes me daily. May God have mercy on my soul.'”

So Faith lived in the house with the stone hearth. Interesting.

Dr. McDonald fingered the pearls around her neck. “I was a bit curious about the reference to Faith. I didn't realize witches lived here in Alexandria.”

Margaret's eyes danced with interest. “Neither did I. Do you have any record to whom Michael McDonald sold Faith's contract?”

“No. But I will have a look. I shall keep you posted.”

Captain Smyth sets sail today for England. He has taken the profits from his last voyage and plans to invest in a second ship. Dr. Goodwin also invested heavily in the next voyage. The captain will return to England to oversee the construction and then return to the West Indies for more cargo. He has promised to pick up our new furniture and by late summer deliver it to our brick home.

A
fter I dropped Margaret off at her apartment, Carrie and I headed back to the warehouse. She woke as soon as I climbed the stairs, and we fell into our now-familiar routine. Clean diaper, bottle, burp. Rinse. Repeat.

By the time I settled her back into her cradle, it was close to six and the door downstairs opened. Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs and Grace appeared. She wore a long gray skirt, loose-fitting blouse, and her dark, silver-streaked hair up in a bun. She carried two sacks of groceries.

“You were gone awhile,” I said. “Have a nice break?”

A brow arched. “I'm bone-tired and every muscle in my body aches.”

Color rose in my cheeks. “Join the club!”

“Why can't you take the baby to the country? What's the big secret anyway?” She moved into the kitchen and began to unpack her purchases. “Why's this Scott fellow got to be kept in the dark? His wine launched just fine, otherwise you'd have really been dragging in here this morning.”

Patting Carrie gently on the back, I followed. “I still haven't told him much about my family.”

Grace grunted. “Much or anything?”

“Anything.”

She set the groceries on the counter and began to unpack them. “So he doesn't know about your mother or Janet?”

“No.”

She paused, a can of formula in her hand. “Why not?”

“You know how it is when you're related to a crazy person. Everyone thinks you might be a little crazy, or if you're not insane, they wonder when it's gonna happen.”

She set the can down slowly and, for a moment, didn't speak. “A man who loves you would take the good with the bad.” She set the oven to 425 degrees and pulled a frozen pizza from one of the grocery bags.

“Scott loves me. The silence is my fault, not his. I don't want all that madness in our lives.”

“In case you haven't noticed, the madness is in your life and mine, girl. No getting around it. Don't you think the universe is forcing your hand?”

“Not yet. I have a little more time to work this out and get my life back.”

She tore the pizza box open. “And Scott will never be the wiser.”

“That would be nice.”

“Would it ruin you two if he found out?”

“No. No. He would love me no matter what.” The words held conviction, but whispers of doubt puffed around me like an evil spell. I thought about the witch bottle and wondered if I should make one for myself.

Grace turned and settled her frozen pizza on a round pan. “I got a call for another job today.”

Practicality brushed the witch bottle to the sidelines. “Another job?”

“An old house on Prince Street in Alexandria, as a matter of fact. The new owners want to do a gut job of the basement. They want us to clear out the basement and sell what's there.”

“Since when did we become pickers? I thought we salvaged architecture.”

“Job sounds easy, and I hate to refuse money.”

“I'm not crazy about dragging Carrie to another jobsite. It's not safe or efficient.”

“I could watch the baby.”

“Again? Twice in one week?”

A lift of the shoulder was Grace's only concession to Addie's teasing. “We can use the money. If I were here alone, I'd say no to the job. Fact, I think the only reason we got the job was because you took the last.”

“I could call Margaret. She might be willing to work on commission like with the last job.”

“She knows the city better than anyone.”

Another inch toward this life. It didn't seem like much, but I feared one day I might look back and realize my old life was so far off in the distance that I couldn't find my way back. “Call them and tell them we'll take the job.”

“You're sure?”

“Yeah, let's do it. I'll call Margaret.”

I dialed Margaret and got her voice mail. “Margaret, it's Addie Morgan. I have another salvage job. A house on Prince Street. More like picking than dismantling. Interested? It's commission-based. In fact, I'll be on the phone today trying to sell the stones. Let me know. Thanks.”

*   *   *

I told myself that Janet and I both needed time. She needed to heal physically and mentally, and I needed to find my footing on ground that still remained as slippery as ever. But what I wanted didn't factor into the equation. I needed to see her and assess her status. When we were kids, I could always tell when Mom was on the mend or falling into a spiral. I suppose
my method was never scientific, but there was always something about the way she spoke and held my gaze that told me more than any doctor.

I called her doctor and left him a voice mail message. When he called me back an hour later, his voice sounded upbeat. “Your sister wants to see you,” he said in his soft accent.

“Great. I can bring the baby.”

“She doesn't want to see the baby. Only you.”

“Why doesn't she want to see the baby?”

“She's fragile. It's a good sign she wants to see you.”

She didn't want to see Eric and now Carrie. Maybe the new combinations of medicines would help balance her thinking and she'd change her mind.

I fed the baby, settled her in her bed for a nap, and with Grace babysitting, I headed to the mental health facility. I arrived at the hospital just after seven. The lost sleep was catching up to me, and my legs and arms weighed heavy with fatigue. At the registration desk I was redirected to the second floor, where I checked in with another nurse. She escorted me to Janet's room.

My sister lay in bed, her eyes closed and her hands resting in an almost angelic fold across her chest. Easy to look at her now and think she was on the mend, but like the eye of a hurricane, the calmness she enjoyed was simply a break between storms.

At the side of her bed, I let my purse drop to the floor as I sat. Memories of visiting Mom in the hospital tugged at me, and before I could stop the clock from ticking back it was twenty years ago.

*   *   *

Mom shared a room with two other women. One of the women lay in her bed, rocking her head from side to side, moaning softly. Another chatted wildly to a son who looked lost and scared.

Mom sat in her bed, her hands neatly folded in her lap. Her brown hair was brushed straight and flowed around her shoulders. She wasn't wearing makeup but, like Janet, was a natural beauty.

I was fourteen and Janet seventeen but I entered the room first. I always took the lead when Mom was sick because her illness shook Janet to the core.

Mom smiled when we entered. “My girls have come to see me. I love my girls.”

Janet rushed to the bed and hugged Mom, desperate for any bit of normalcy. “Mom, you look so good.”

Mom gently stroked Janet's long blond hair. Her smile was tentative, as if she understood this moment, which was as close to normal as she could now manage, wouldn't last forever. “Are you getting along okay at the apartment?”

“It's all good,” I said.

Janet nodded her agreement. “All good, Mommy.”

Mom started to jabber about how much better she felt. She said she'd return soon to our apartment and we would be a family again. She'd talked on and on about her grand plans, but as much as I wanted to believe it would be fine, this time I didn't.

*   *   *

Now, as I stood in Janet's room, I couldn't conjure up the rest of that day.

As I sat, Janet's eyelids fluttered open. Crystal blue eyes remained vacant as she looked at me, searching for the identity attached to my face.

“Janet,” I said gently. “It's Addie. Your sister. Addie Morgan.”

A cock of her head signaled some recognition, and then a long blink as her brain adjusted. “Addie.”

Not a question but a statement. Progress. “Addie. Your sister. You called me the other day, remember?”

A slow, slow nodding. “You didn't call me back.”

“No.”

“You never call me back.”

“No.” I shifted in my chair. Her thinking might be fuzzy but she clearly remembered I stopped taking her calls a long time ago.

“Why?”

“Because I got tired of dealing with your problems, Janet.”

“I have a lot of problems.” Her voice sounded far-off and lost. “But I never asked for them.”

Mental illness was not her fault. She was cursed, like our mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. But it was easy to forget her illness when she lobbed a grenade in my life, shattering what I built.

“How are they treating you here?”

“Good, I guess. I've been sleeping a lot.” Her fingers unfurled and her hands went absently to her belly. A heartbeat or two passed. “I had a baby.”

“You did.”

“Boy or girl?”

“A girl, remember? I'm calling her Carrie, but if you don't like the name you can change it.”

“A girl.” The word carried with it painful undercurrents. “How is she?”

“Physically she's fine.”

Janet shook her head. “Is she like me?”

“She looks like you.”

“That's not what I mean.” Fingers gripped the blanket until her knuckles whitened.

“It's too early to tell about that. She cries unless I hold her.”

“She cries?”

“Yes. But when I pick her up she stops.”

Janet smiled, nodding. “She knows.”

“Knows what?”

“That only you can save her.”

I leaned forward, gripping my purse. “That's not true, Janet. You can save her. You are her mother.”

“I can't.” Eyes drifted shut as she tried to collect and organize her thoughts. “Mom couldn't save us.”

Lies could sound sweet and soothe tension, but the relief was temporary and we needed more than my stand-in-mother kind of temporary fix. “No. Mom couldn't save us. But you are different than Mom. The meds today are different than what she took.”

“I am Mom,” she whispered. “I have it, the curse, just like she did.”

“Curses aren't real, Janet.”

“Mom said the witch cursed our family over two hundred years ago. She said the curse would always be with us.”

“Mom was just making that up,” I said.

“She wasn't. Her mother told her about the curse. And the witch.”

“What witch?”

She raised trembling fingers to her brow. “I don't remember. But she's real. Sometimes I hear her.”

“She's one of the voices.”

Her eyes widened. “She's not like the other voices. I always hear her clearly.”

“How do the other voices sound?”

“Like they come out of an old radio. But not her. She's clear.”

Arguing over what was real or not real wasn't important. What was important was that Janet believed the voices were real. “What did the witch say?”

“She won't break the curse. Only we can break it.”

“How?” I thought about Faith, accused of witchcraft so long ago.

Her head turned toward me and she looked at me for long tense
seconds. “I don't know how to break it. I don't know how.” Tears welled in her gaze and a tear trickled down her cheek. “Do you know how?”

“No, I don't.” And for the first time in a long time I wished Janet's talk about witches and curses was real. Without the curse, we all might have a shot at normal.

But witches and curses weren't real. And like it or not, neither of us was destined for normal.

Fresh tension banded my shoulders. “You should rest, Janet. Sleep.”

A slow nod. “I'm tired. So tired.”

“I saw Eric.”

“Eric?”

“Your son.”

Her eyes drifted closed. “Son. A boy. No curse.”

“He seems to be fine. He's strong and healthy like his father.”

“Good.”

“Janet, who's Carrie's father?”

“Carrie?”

“Your daughter. The baby you just gave birth to. Who is her father, Janet?”

She shook her head. “A knight in shining armor.”

“Janet.” My tone sharpened the edges of her name. “Who is the father? I need a real name. He needs to be contacted.”

“I don't know his name. He was a charming prince.”

“Janet, do you know his real name?”

“No.” Her voice drifted. “I never ask for names.”

As if she slipped under the surface of the water, she was gone, sleeping. Her face lost the stress and was now beautifully relaxed.

Leaning back in my chair, I rolled my head from side to side. “You cannot do this to me, Janet. You cannot dump your life on me. I have a life.”

My words were lost, gobbled up by the empty space between us.
Rising, I reached for my purse and slung it over my shoulder. “We're going to fix this.”

Out in the hallway, I leaned against the wall, fearful that the weight of Janet and Carrie and this life would bring me to my knees.

“Are you all right?”

At the sound of Zeb's familiar masculine voice I stood straighter and turned. He wore jeans, construction boots, and a clean gray T-shirt. His dark hair was brushed off his face, accentuating deep lines around his mouth and eyes. Too much frowning, I wanted to say. Janet made you frown too much. I knew, because I saw the same lines forming in my face.