The Witch of Belladonna Bay (22 page)

“And what, exactly, were you supposed to be doing?”

“Helping you get home.”

We'd been together seven years and he hadn't once urged me to go home. If anything, he'd closed that option right out of my mind. Things he'd said were coming back to me.

When Stella died, I'd thought about coming back.

“I should go,” I said.

“Don't you think it would make matters worse? I mean, complicate things for them at a complicated time?”

“You didn't do that … you kept me away. On purpose. Damn, Ben, all those things you used to say … they're blossoming in my head like an oleander.”

He got up and started pacing.

“Well, I started to think that maybe this
wasn't
your home. You know? Maybe you were supposed to live with
me.
That
I
was your home.”

“So, you fell in love with me. I fell in love with you, and then you spent the next seven years … blocking me? Keeping me blind?”

“It doesn't sound good when you put it that way,” he said, sitting back down. Deflated.

There is nothing worse than an awkward silence between two people who've never experienced it before.

So he did what most people would do. He changed the subject.

“Do you think he did it?” he asked.

“Who did what?”

“Do you think Patrick killed them?”

“No,” I said.

“Peel back the layers, Wyn. Peel them back. He confessed. What do you really think?”

“Why don't you read my mind?”

“I've been trying. All that's in there is confusion. I can't get your real opinion.”

“My opinion. Fancy that. Here's what I think. I think that I don't really care if he
did
do it. I'm going to get him out of prison and back home where he belongs if it's the last thing I do.” I said. And saying it that way made me feel strong. Resolved.

Right.

Ben laughed. It rolled out from deep within his chest. Then he came over to me on the couch and held me close.

“You are becoming more like your own people every day, the Fairview ones,” he said.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“We don't ever judge the evil that people do. Bad things are measured the same way we measure good things. Individually. It's a gift, but most people don't understand it. Too much work, I guess, to figure out each person as a whole instead of parts of this and parts of that.”

He kept talking, but I was already falling asleep and had already heard everything I needed to hear.

I woke up a few hours later to the sounds of a drunken Jackson banging on my door. Ben had put me in bed next to Byrd. I hastily ran out into the living room, where Ben was sleeping soundly on the couch. He never did wake up for much.

“Shh!” I scolded Jackson, going out on the porch and quietly shutting the door behind me. “They're sleeping. And I don't feel like having it out with Ben again tonight.”

He was already getting himself comfortable, lighting a cigar.

“What's this? You and your beau have a fight?”

“No. Just too much truth all at once.”

“I hear you. But I came over here to tell you what I should have yesterday. I sure am glad you decided to come home, sugar. And I know it can't be easy.”

“I'm just crazy about that girl,” I said, sitting next to him.

“I know you are. I saw it in the way you looked at her today. She can be addictive. Makes you feel all warm inside, don't she? Like nothin' and no one can touch you.”

“Yeah, that's right. I don't think I could have come home and been this comfortable without her.”

“I don't think you would have ever come home at all if I hadn't bribed you with her,” he said.

“What do you mean, bribe?”

“Well, looky. There're those lights again, over Belladonna. You see 'em?”

They were beautiful, haunting.

“Jackson, answer me.”

When he spoke, he wouldn't look at me.

“She don't need no takin' care of. I do.”

My heart sank.

“Are you sick, Daddy?”

“Oh, now I get a ‘Daddy.' No, I ain't sick. I'm just … tired. The drinkin's catchin' up with me, and I needed you to come home and unravel this mess with Paddy.”

“But I thought you wanted to let it be?”

“Well, Wyn, I knew you wouldn't let it rest. And my fear is that if we don't do somethin' soon, poor Jamie's body is gonna turn up. And when it does, there ain't no amount of money or power in the world that's gonna keep my boy out of the chair.”

“They'd execute him?”

“You bet your ass they would.”

“So you used Byrd as a bribe to convince me to come home to do the work needed to exonerate Paddy?”

“Yep.” He sighed, taking a long puff on his cigar.

I'd never seen Jackson need anyone. Except Naomi. And that was a different kind of need altogether.

“Okay. I'll do the work,” I said, grabbing his hand and squeezing it briefly.

“It ain't that easy, sugar.”

“Why?”

“Well, if he did do it, and he might have, we don't know, we'd have to fabricate a murderer.”

“He didn't do it,” I said.

He put down the cigar on the end of a little side table and put his head in his hands.

“I shoulda never let him confess. I shoulda never let Stick take him that day without the proper people around … I…” His voice broke.

“Daddy, you can't blame yourself. What's done is done. Let's just try to fix it, okay?”

He didn't say anything. He talked a good game, my father, but when he was backed into a corner he'd go quiet. Invisible. I wasn't having it, not that night.

“You want the truth, Jackson?” I said harshly. “Truth is, you have a ‘give 'em what they want' problem.”

He sat up sharply and looked at me. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Mama wanted her opium. So you got it for her. No matter what the cost. And that price was high, Daddy. Then, when I was too young to know any better, I wanted to run away. So you let me. But not only did you let me, you funded the whole thing! Because that's what I wanted. And then yesterday you were saying Paddy wanted to be in jail. Because he confessed. Because he pled guilty. So, think about it. Maybe you just thought you were giving him what
he
wanted.”

My father sat back and closed his eyes.

“What would you like me to say, girl? I'm an old man now. Old on the inside. I'm a drunk, and I hate to tell you, but I'm not prepared to change. So you have to figure out if you want to forgive me and love me like I am, or run away again. Or hell, stay here and hate me. Just … know that I love you the best way I know how. I always have. I do the best I can.”

I'd never heard such honesty from my father. So I sat back with him and said nothing. Not one thing.

“Want a drink?” he asked.

“I don't think I've ever wanted one more than I do right now,” I said.

“That's my girl.” Jackson patted my shoulder.

“I want to see Grant,” I said abruptly.

“Do you think that's the best idea right now?”

“No, I don't. But I need to see him. I think he might know something about this whole mess.”

“I don't know that Grant is in any kinda shape to help us with this, sugar.”

“Why? What's he been doing?”

“Well, now … Grant's in New Orleans, Wyn. Living the dream. Which should tell you all you need to know about what he's been up to for the last fourteen years. Which is nothin'.”

“Thank you, Daddy.”

“You are most welcome, my daughter.”

That July Fourth ended with my father's arm over my shoulder and a bottle of bourbon we finished off while quietly watching the strange lights play in the sky over Belladonna Bay. The two of us finally realizing that we didn't have to be afraid of each other. That our love could live quietly and without reproach.

It was a damn fine evening.

 

16

Byrd

It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.

—The Little Prince

I thought long and hard about how I felt about Ben. It distracted me for the whole damn parade.

He had such lonesome thoughts goin' on inside his head. I told him that he blocked me. Which was true. But as soon as he was convinced I was done trying to read him, he let his guard down. It's so easy to make grown-ups do the things you want 'em to do.

I like him. Don't get me wrong. He's one of us. And he's handsome and not sweaty. I don't like people who sweat too much.

I could tell how much he loved my aunt. Too much.

And he was
worried
.

And I could feel her. Even if I couldn't read her mind anymore. I could feel her pulling away from him. Or bein' torn, at least.

And then later? They thought I was asleep, but I was listening to their conversation.

There were three things I noticed.

ONE:
There was no hankey-pankey. (Later, Ben slept on the couch and Aunt Wyn slept with me.)

TWO:
Ben was havin' trouble understanding that he'd broken her trust. And trust is downright important. How can you even begin to enjoy a person if you don't trust 'em?

THREE:
Well, actually, there wasn't a third thing. I just can't stand even numbers.

Then I started thinkin' 'bout Jamie and crawled back into my aunt's bed 'cause I got lonely all over again.

*   *   *

I know babies aren't supposed to remember things, but they do. Normal babies remember it deep down in who they are. Because I ain't normal, I remember everything right up front. Even bein' inside my own mama's belly, God rest her gypsy soul.

But what I remember best is the first time I saw Jamie.

He don't recall it like I do. He remembers things like normal people. He felt a tug toward me. He don't remember how it felt when our hands first touched. But I do. And boy, was I frustrated with that baby body of mine that couldn't just get on up and play with him. I'd been so lonesome without my mother, without her heartbeat whooshing in my ear. And that's what happened when I touched my hand to his. I heard his heart beat. And you know what it said? “Byrd, Byrd, Byrd, Byrd, Byrd.”

I found my safe place. And it was inside of Jamie.

But now Jamie's gone. Luckily I found a whole other safe place inside of Aunt Wyn. It's scary, to love like that. I already knew what it felt like to lose all the safe around me.

Loving my aunt like a kid loves a mama was starting to look better and better.

A child can't simply go through life with
no one.

And though I liked Ben, I wanted to tell him that he could go straight on home to where he came from. And that he wasn't gonna take her.

He'd have her over my dead body.

*   *   *

The mornin' after the parade, I got up and shook Aunt Wyn awake. She looked a mess. Ben was still asleep on the couch.

“You been drinkin' with Jackson?”

“Sure have,” she said, squinting at the morning sun.

“I'll close the blinds,” I said.

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

The “sweetheart” made all the worries come right on out of me.

“If I didn't do it, and my daddy didn't do it, who could it have been?” I asked in a rush.

That sure as heck woke her up.

“Shh! Baby! I don't want Ben to hear. These walls are thin and he's only just on the couch! It's ridiculous. Let it go. You didn't do anything, and your daddy didn't do it, either.”

“Do you really think it was Grant?”

“Did I tell you about that?”

I shrugged.

“I guess I did, even if I didn't, right? Well, it's possible. That message he left on Charlotte's answering machine was strange. But I'm not too crazy about that idea, either, Byrd. To tell you the truth.”

She didn't want it to be Grant. I could
feel
it. But he was the best way to get my daddy out of jail.

“Him and Charlotte had some sort of parting of ways a few weeks before she was found … maybe … maybe she told him something that upset him. So, even if he didn't do the killin', maybe he knows something about who did?”

“They had a fight? What about?”

“Jamie.”

“Why would they fight about Jamie?” she asked.

“Got me,” I said, but I knew. Sort of. Only that information belonged to Jamie. I'm a loyal friend.

“Well,” she said. “That settles it. Time to get up. Jackson and I had a good long talk last night, and I have to get busy today. I'll go see Stick, then your daddy, and then I'll go find Grant.”

The smell of chicory coffee, bitter and strong, wafted in from the great room.

“Ben's up, I guess.” I muttered.

“Do you like him, Byrd?” she asked.

“Sure! I think he's great. A nice fellow.”
He just ain't takin' you anywhere.

She laughed. “Has anyone ever told you you're a card?”

“Nope. Mostly I just get called crazy.”

Then she grabbed me and tickled me right down into the pillows. “You are, you are, you are!” she said. “And I wouldn't want you any other way!”

We laughed like loons, then we caught our breath there, together all wound up around each other.

“Let's get up,” she said. “I need some of that coffee. It's gonna be a long day.”

“I'm comin' with you,” I said.

“No, Byrd, this is grown-up stuff.”

“I'm comin'!” I felt a rage well up inside of me. I stomped around the words and huffed and puffed.

“You done?” she asked. And you know somethin', she didn't look mad or frustrated or nothin', she looked downright amused.