Spellcrossed (37 page)

A couple was strolling in the garden, their shadowy figures barely visible as they moved in and out of the small pools of light shed by the solar lanterns. I felt a
pang of regret that Rowan and I had never wandered through the moonlit garden. But there would be many nights for that after the season ended.

The couple turned to each other. I expected them to kiss, but after a moment, they moved apart and started toward the house. At which point I mentally scolded myself for spying and directed my gaze to the lower patio.

The guttering flames of the tiki torches revealed Daddy sitting atop a picnic table, feet planted on the bench, elbows resting on his knees. As I drew nearer, his head turned and he lifted his paper cup in salute. That’s when I noticed the champagne bottle lying on its side next to his thigh.

“How come you’re sitting out here all alone?”

“Got too noisy for me.”

His words were clear; maybe he hadn’t had as much to drink as I’d feared.

“Plus, I was enjoying the view.” He gestured toward the garden with his cup. “Did you see them?”

“It’s bad manners to spy,” I said primly.

“But you see some pretty interesting things. Want to know who it is?”

“I do not. They deserve their privacy.”

“Then how come you’re peering at them, trying to make out their faces?”

“I am not peering. I’m just…enjoying the view.”

As the couple passed one of the post lanterns on the drive, I caught my breath. There was no mistaking the coppery gleam of the man’s hair or the identity of the woman whose face was turned toward him.

Alex and Debra?

I froze as they mounted the steps to the patio, but they were too intent on each other to notice Daddy or me. When they were safely out of earshot, I whispered, “Oh. My. God.”

Daddy giggled like a naughty boy. “Who’da thunk it, huh?”

“Rowan must have. I’m going to kill him for not telling me.”

Was that why Debra needed to come to the Crossroads? To find Alex?

I reviewed every interaction I’d witnessed. They clearly liked each other and enjoyed working together. Debra joked with him. Alex teased her. But they did the same with me.

“Maybe they just wanted to take a walk,” I said.

Daddy snorted in disbelief.

“Let’s go back to the apartment. We’ll pump Rowan for info.”

“Sure you two wouldn’t rather be alone?”

“I’m too tired to do anything but sleep. And I won’t get much around here.”

As if to prove my point, a dreadful rap version of “Come to My Garden” floated down from the house.

Daddy sighed. “Time was I could perform in the evening, party till dawn, and rehearse all day. Not anymore. Must be getting old.”

It was a painful echo of my mother’s words, but Daddy seemed rueful rather than sad.

“One for the road?” he asked, reaching for the champagne bottle.

I tossed my carryall onto the table. “Okay.”

He righted the champagne bottle, poured a slug into his cup and handed it to me. Then he raised the bottle and said, “Here’s to my first Hell Week in a couple of decades.”

“The first of many.”

I tapped my cup against the bottle and took a small sip. Daddy lowered the bottle without drinking.

“What? No toast?”

“Can’t very well drink to that one.”

“Why not?”

“I think we both know my acting days are numbered.”

“We haven’t even opened yet and you’re throwing in the towel?”

“Oh, it’s been fun. And I appreciate you taking a chance on me.”

“There will be other shows, Jack. And better roles.”

“It’s not that.”

“You want to get back into teaching?”

“Teaching? Hell, no. I got bigger plans.” He glanced around the patio, then whispered, “Come on. You know.”

I shook my head.

“I’m going to Faerie, of course.”

The world became utterly silent, as if his words had swallowed the muted buzz of conversation from the upper patio and the ratchety chorus of night insects. From a great distance, I heard my croak of laughter. The hoarse caw of the crow in the maple tree. The jeers of the shapeshifters in the Borderlands, mocking me for imagining I could hold him here.

Daddy mistook my reaction for delight and laughed with me. If he had looked at my face, he would have realized his mistake, but his rapt gaze was fixed on the forest, a dark, formless mass barely visible in the light of the waning moon.

“Rowan said I shouldn’t tell anybody, but I knew you’d understand.”

Something wet on my hand. Champagne from the paper cup crushed between my fingers.

“Everybody thought I was crazy. My wife. The doctors. But I found a way in. Took me years, but I found it.”

He rocked back and forth, hands gripping his knees, as if to restrain himself from racing into the forest.

“If only I’d come to Rowan in the beginning. It kills me to think of the time I wasted. Not that I regret reaching the Borderlands. I saw things you can only imagine. But I knew I’d only touched the tip of Faerie. Sometimes, I glimpsed it through the mist. And heard that music.”

High-pitched and silvery, like the rippling glissando of a harp.

I must have made some sound because my father peered at me. “Don’t worry. Rowan already told me he
wouldn’t leave. But he doesn’t have to, see? That’s the beauty part. He just has to open a portal and bam! I march out of this world and into the other one. Piece of cake. In a way, I owe it all to you.”

All I could do was stare at him.

“Well, Lee helped. His lighting, anyway.”

When I just continued staring, Daddy exclaimed, “
The Secret Garden
! The storm at the end of Act One. It was like Lee had been there that night.”

His gaze returned to the forest. “For years, it was just bits and pieces. Like a dream you half recall the next morning. The leaves rustling in the breeze. The thunder rumbling off in the distance like timpani. The sky shuddering with heat lightning. The whole forest seemed to shimmer. But that wasn’t the lightning.”

He drew in a deep, trembling breath and let it out on a sigh.

“Oh, Maggie, if you could have seen them. You can’t judge by Rowan. He’s trying to pass as human. It was like they carried the light of the sun and the moon and the stars inside. And when they came gliding through the trees—like a cloud of fireflies…”

Just like that other Midsummer. The fireflies dancing in the meadow. The glowing ball of light vanishing into the woods. The night Caren and I had come so close to discovering the secret of the Crossroads and glimpsing what my father had seen decades earlier.

“I’d forgotten most of it until opening night. But with the lights and the music and the Dreamers drifting onstage, circling around that little girl…that’s when all the bits and pieces finally fit together. And when the Dreamers left…” His voice caught. “It was like I was losing
them
all over again.”

My father leaping out of his seat. His desperate shout. That frail figure tottering down the aisle, arms outstretched.

It was not me he’d seen on that stage. It was not me he wanted.

He was reaching for them.

He had spent half his life pursuing them. Why had I been stupid enough to imagine he would stop?

“I begged Rowan to open a portal that night. But he wouldn’t. He said I’d promised to do the Follies and
Into the Woods
and told me I had to honor my commitments. And he was right. It would have been wrong to walk out. But after the season’s over…”

I sank onto the bench. Daddy slid down beside me.

“He’ll open a portal if
you
ask him. I know he will.”

I forced myself to look into his eager face. “So you’re just going to turn your back on this world?”

The steadiness of my voice astonished me. Even more astonishing was my calm—as if I’d always known I would face this moment and had been preparing for it since the night he had crept out of the theatre.

Daddy drew back, frowning. “Look, I’m grateful for everything you and Rowan have done. But there’s nothing for me here.”

“There’s your wife.”

“My ex-wife.”

“And your daughter.”

He shifted uncomfortably on the bench and stared off into the darkness. “She’s better off without me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know Allie. My ex.”

My calm shattered. He was only one who had ever called her by that nickname. Mom had always hated it.

“She’d have taken good care of her. Brought her up right.”

“You don’t even want to see her? To find out?”

“I’d just screw her up. Again. Besides, she’s a grown woman now.”

“Thirty-four.”

“Something like that.”

“Not ‘something like that.’ Exactly that.”

“So she’s thirty-four. And I’m a crappy father for not remembering, okay?”

“No, Jack, it’s not okay.”

I slowly rose and stared down at him. I was shaking with anger and had to take a moment to regain control of my voice.

“Maybe your life got turned upside down because of what happened here. Maybe any man would have fallen apart. And maybe your wife had no choice but to divorce you. But you had a child. And you abandoned her.”

“I did what I thought was best,” my father mumbled.

“For you! You always did what was best for Jack Sinclair. A couple of visits after your wife kicked you out. A couple of postcards saying ‘Daddy will always love you.’ How many birthdays passed before she stopped hoping for a card? How many times did she cry herself to sleep, wondering why you had forgotten her?”

My father leaped to his feet. “I didn’t forget! I never forgot!”

His breath was coming as hard and fast as mine, his eyes glaring with the same anger, his chin stuck out with the same belligerence. And he was blind to the resemblance.

“Even now, you can’t see it, can you?”

His anger shifted into something else—wariness, perhaps. Or fear.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

From the direction of the house, I heard someone shout my name. Dully, I realized it was Rowan. Well, he’d started this tangled chain of events by calling my father to the Crossroads. It seemed only fitting for him to be here for the big climax.

“Let me help you put the bits and pieces together, Jack. Just like opening night of
The Secret Garden
. Alison reverted to her maiden name after the divorce. And she changed little Maggie’s name, too.”

His eyes flew wide. He shook his head and stepped back, only to bump into the picnic bench and collapse gracelessly onto it. And all the while, his eyes remained fixed on my face, scanning my features the way I had cataloged his that first night.

“Oh, Christ…” he whispered.

The footsteps pounding toward us abruptly halted. Then they resumed, much more slowly. They stopped again, so close behind me that I could feel the heat of Rowan’s body.

I wasn’t aware of edging away until I discovered that I was standing much farther from the picnic table. Nor was I sure if I had unconsciously tried to distance myself from them or if I was trying to preserve the strange bubble of calm that surrounded me again.

Not calm, really. Emptiness.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t either of you tell me the truth?”

He seemed strangely insubstantial—as if part of him had already left this world.

Rowan’s gaze remained fixed on me as he quietly explained: Jack’s fragile mental state, the shock, waiting for the right time. The same words he had offered when Jack discovered how much time had passed. Always, it seemed, we kept circling back, revisiting the links in the endless chain of spells and curses, explanations and excuses. Yet nothing ever really changed.

“I should have realized. There were so many clues.”

I had been just as blind. Longing for the transformational ending of
The Secret Garden
, I had created the same kind of fantasy that Mary imagines in “The Girl I Mean to Be:” the characters in a picture-perfect setting, all wounds healed, all wrongs forgiven.

If I had been less caught up in that fantasy, I might have recognized the clues Rowan had given me: his fear that I would be disillusioned, his plea to postpone Mom’s meeting with Jack, his quiet warning that I needed to let him go.

So many clues—and I had ignored them all.

Like father, like daughter.

“I’m sorry, Maggie. If I had known…”

“Would it really have made a difference?”

Although I’d spoken gently, he winced.

“Would you honestly give up Faerie for me? For anyone?”

His hesitation answered me more clearly than any words.

I nodded and began walking toward the steps.

“Magpie…”

My breath whooshed out like I’d been punched in the stomach. Rowan’s anxiety stabbed me. I flung up my hands, warding off Jack’s words and Rowan’s power. Then I slowly turned.

“I will always be your daughter, Jack. But I am not your Magpie. I’m Maggie Graham. The executive director of the Crossroads Theatre. Call tomorrow is at one o’clock.”

I started up the steps, only to discover Alex hurrying down them and Janet watching from the upper patio. As Rowan started toward me, I shook my head.

“No.”

Although my voice was little more than a whisper, both men stopped short.

Such a tiny word to hold such power.

Rowan spoke my name, his voice low and urgent, his power pleading with me to stay.

“No,” I repeated.

I took the only escape route available and hurried down the steps to the drive.

T
OO LATE, I REMEMBERED THAT I HAD PARKED MY CAR at the theatre after my morning trip to the grocery store. Not that I could have reached the garage anyway. I barely made it to the drive before I heard Rowan’s footsteps behind me.

I veered up the hill toward the side of the house.

“Maggie!”

The ground was terraced, each level connected by a short series of steps. But it was a steep climb and I was panting before I reached the halfway point.

“Wait!”

The light streaming from the windows flung bands of illumination across the level ground at the top, but here, I had only my memory and the unpredictable moonlight to guide me. Twice, I stumbled, but managed to regain my balance and keep moving.