The Witching Hour (24 page)

It was late last year, a full six months after Ellie’s death. Rowan was feeling the keenest loneliness she’d ever known. It seemed to her the great pattern called “our family” had been washed away overnight. Their life had been so good before Ellie’s illness. Even Graham’s affairs couldn’t spoil it, because Ellie pretended the affairs weren’t happening. And though Graham was not a man whom any human being would have called a good person, he possessed a relentless and infectious personal energy that maintained the family life in high gear.

And how Rowan had depended upon them both.

Her dedication to medicine had pretty much taken her away from her old college cronies. None of them had gone into the sciences. But the family was all that the three of them ever needed. From the time of Rowan’s earliest memories, they were an unshakable trio, whether cruising the Caribbean, or skiing in Aspen, or eating a midnight Christmas dinner on a room service table in a suite in the Plaza in New York.

Now the dream house on the Tiburon shore stood empty as a beached shell.

And Rowan had the odd feeling that the
Sweet Christine
did not belong so much to her and her various well-chosen love partners, but rather to the family who had left the more dominant impression over a decade of happy years.

One night after Ellie’s death, Rowan had stood alone in the
wide living room beneath the high-beamed ceiling, talking aloud to herself, laughing even, thinking there is no one, no one to know, no one to hear. The glass walls were dark and indistinct with reflected carpet, furniture. She couldn’t see the tide that lapped ceaselessly at the pilings. The fire was dying out. The eternal chill of the coastal night was moving slowly through the rooms. She had learnt a painful lesson, she thought—that as they die, the ones we love, we lose our witnesses, our watchers, those who know and understand the tiny little meaningless patterns, those words drawn in water with a stick. And there is nothing left but the endless flow.

It was shortly after that that the bizarre moment had come, when she had almost taken hold of this stranger and poured out her tale.

He was an elderly gentleman, white-haired—British, quite obviously from the first words he spoke. And they had met, in of all places, the cemetery where her adoptive parents had been laid to rest.

It was a quaint old graveyard, sprinkled with weathered monuments on the edge of the small northern California town where Graham’s family had once lived. These people, not related to her by blood, had been completely unknown to her. She’d gone back several times after Ellie’s funeral, though why she wasn’t quite sure. On that particular day her reason was simple: the gravestone had finally been completed and she wanted to see that the names and the dates were correct.

It had occurred to her several times on the drive north that this new gravestone would stand as long as she was living, and after that, it would tumble and crack and lie there in the weeds. The relatives of Graham Franklin had not even been notified about his funeral. Ellie’s people—far away in the dim South—had not been notified of her death. Even in ten years, no one would know or care then about Graham and Ellie Mayfair Franklin. And by the end of Rowan’s life, everyone who had ever known them or even heard of them would be dead.

Spiderwebs broken and torn in a wind that is indifferent to their beauty. Why bother with this at all? But Ellie had wanted her to bother. Ellie had wanted a headstone, flowers. That was the way they did it in New Orleans when Ellie was a little girl. Only on her deathbed had she spoken of her home finally, and to say the strangest things—that they had laid out Stella in the parlor, that people had come to see Stella and kiss her even though her brother had shot her, that Lonigan and Sons had closed up the wound in Stella’s head.

“And Stella’s face was so beautiful in the coffin. She had such
beautiful black hair, all in little waves, you know, and she was as pretty as her picture on the living room wall. I loved Stella! Stella let me hold the necklace. I sat on a chair by the coffin. I was kicking my feet and my Aunt Carlotta said to stop.”

Every word of that strange diatribe was engraved on Rowan’s memory. Stella, her brother, Aunt Carlotta. Even the name Lonigan. Because for a precious few seconds there had been a flash of color in the abyss.

These people were related to Rowan. Rowan was in fact Ellie’s third cousin. And of these people Rowan knew nothing, and must continue to know nothing, were her promises to Ellie to be kept.

Ellie had remembered herself, even in those painful hours. “Don’t you ever go back there, Rowan. Rowan, remember what you’ve promised. I burned all the pictures, the letters. Don’t go back there, Rowan, this is your home.”

“I know, Ellie. I’ll remember.”

And there was no more talk of Stella. Of her brother. Of Aunt Carlotta. Of the picture on the living room wall. Only the shock of the document presented to Rowan after Ellie’s death by her executor—a carefully worded pledge, with absolutely no legal validity whatever, that Rowan would never return to the city of New Orleans, never seek to know who her people were.

Yet in those last days, Ellie had spoken of them. Of Stella on the wall.

And because Ellie had talked too of headstones and flowers, of being remembered by her adopted daughter, Rowan had gone north that afternoon to keep that promise, and in the little hillside graveyard, she had met the Englishman with the white hair.

He’d been down on one knee before Ellie’s grave as if genuflecting, copying the very names which had only just been cut into the stone.

He seemed a little flustered when she interrupted him, though she had not spoken a word. In fact, for one second he looked at her as if she were a ghost. It had almost made her laugh. After all she was a slightly built woman, in spite of her height, wearing her usual boat clothes—a navy blue peacoat and jeans. And he himself seemed such an anachronism in his elegant three-piece suit of gray tweed.

But that special sense of hers told her he was a man of only good intentions, and when he explained that he had known Ellie’s people in New Orleans, she believed him. She felt a great confusion, however. Because she wanted to know these people too.

After all, there was no one left in the world for her but those people! And what an ungrateful and disloyal thought that was.

She said nothing to him as he chatted on in a lovely lyrical British fashion about the heat of the sun and the beauty of this little cemetery. Silence was her inveterate response to things, even when it confused others and made them uncomfortable. And so, out of habit, she gave back nothing, no matter what her inner thoughts.
Knew my people? People of my blood?

“My name is Aaron Lightner,” the man said as he placed a small white card in her hand. “If ever you want to know about the Mayfair family in New Orleans, then by all means, please do give me a call. You can reach me in London, if you like. Please do reverse the charges. I’ll be happy to tell you what I know about the Mayfair family. Quite a history, you see.”

Numbing these words, so unintentionally hurtful in her loneliness, so unexpected on this strange deserted little hill. Had she looked helpless, standing there, unable to answer, unable to give the smallest nod in response? She hoped so. She didn’t want to think that she seemed cold or rude.

But it was quite out of the question to explain to him that she’d been adopted, taken away from New Orleans the day she was born. Impossible to explain she’d made a promise never to return there, never to seek the slightest knowledge about the woman who’d given her up. Why, she did not even know her mother’s first name. And she’d found herself wondering suddenly, did
he
know it? Know perhaps the identity of the Mayfair who had been pregnant out of wedlock and given away her child?

Best, certainly, not to say anything, lest he carry back with him some gossip. After all, perhaps her real mother had gone on to marry and have seven children. And talk now could only do the woman harm. Over the miles and the years, Rowan felt no malice for this faceless, nameless creature, only a dreary hopeless longing. No, she had not said a word.

He had studied her for a long moment, quite unruffled by her impassive face, her inevitable quiet. When she gave him back the card, he took it graciously, but he held it out tentatively as if he hoped she would take it again.

“I should so like to talk to you,” he continued. “I should like to discover how life has been for the transplanted one, so very far from the home soil.” He had hesitated, then: “I knew your mother years ago—”

He stopped, as if he sensed the effect of his words. Maybe their sheer impropriety disturbed him. Rowan didn’t know. The moment could not have been more excruciating if he had struck
her. Yet she hadn’t turned away. She had merely remained there motionless, hands shoved in her coat pockets.
Knew my mother?

How ghastly it had been. And this man with cheerful blue eyes regarding her so patiently, and the silence as it always was, a shroud binding her in. For the truth was, she could not make herself speak.

“I do wish you’d join me for a lunch, or only for a drink if there isn’t time for that. I’m really not a dreadful person, you see. There is a long history … ”

And the special sense told her he was telling the truth!

She had almost accepted his invitation—to everything, to talk about herself, and to ask him all about them. After all, she had not sought him out. He had come to her with his offer of information. And then, at that moment, had come the compulsion to reveal all, even the story of her strange power, as if he were inviting her to do it silently, exerting some force upon her mind so that she would open its innermost chambers. For he really did want to know about her! And that interest, so keenly personal, from one devoid of the slightest malicious taint, had warmed her as surely as a winter fire.

Patterns, witnesses, all her far-flung thoughts of these things flashed suddenly to the fore.

I have killed three people in my life. I can kill with anger. I know that I can. That is what has happened with the transplanted one as you called me. Is there any place in the family history for such a thing?

Had he flinched slightly as he looked at her? Or was it merely the slanting sun in his eyes?

But this could not happen. They were standing over the grave of the woman to whom she’d made the promise. “No, I will never go back to New Orleans. I will never try to find out.” The woman who had cared for her and loved her, and given her more perhaps than her real mother ever could. The mood of the sickroom had come back, the sound of soft, near inhuman cries of pain. “Promise me, Rowan, even if they write to you. Never … never … ”

“You are my mother, Ellie, my only mother. How could I ask for more?”

In those last agonizing weeks, she had feared her awful destructive power most keenly, for what if in her rage and grief she turned it on Ellie’s weakened body, and thereby ended this stupid, useless suffering once and for all?
I could kill you, Ellie, I could deliver you. I know I could. I can feel it inside me, just waiting to be put to that test.

What am I? A witch, for the love of God! I am a healer, not a destroyer. I have a choice as all human beings have a choice!

And there the Englishman had stood, studying her as if fascinated, as if she had been speaking when she hadn’t been at all. It was almost as if he said I understand. But of course that was only an illusion. He had said nothing.

Tormented, confused, she’d turned on her heel and left him there. He must have thought her hostile, or mad even. But what did it matter? Aaron Lightner. She’d never even glanced at the card before she’d given it back to him. She did not know why she remembered the name, except that she remembered him and the strange things he’d said.

Months had passed since that awful day when she had driven home, opened the wall safe, and taken out the paper which Ellie’s executor had had her sign.

“I, Rowan Mayfair, do solemnly swear before God, and in the presence of the undersigned witness, that I shall never return to the city of New Orleans where I was born, that I shall never seek to know the identity of my biological parents, and that I shall eschew all contact with the family called Mayfair should any member approach me for any reason whatsoever, or on any pretext … ”

On and on it went in that near hysterical language, attempting to cover every foreseeable contingency, so many words to have so little meaning. No wonder Rowan distrusted language. It was Ellie’s wish that carried all the weight.

But Rowan had signed it. The lawyer, Milton Kramer, had witnessed it. Into his files the executed copy had gone.

Had Michael Curry’s life passed before his eyes like this, Rowan sometimes wondered, the way that my life is passing before my eyes now? Often she had stared at his smiling face, torn from a magazine and pasted to her mirror.

And she knew that if she saw him this dam might surely break. She dreamed of it, talking to Michael Curry, as if it might happen, as if she might bring him home with her to the house in Tiburon, as if they might drink coffee together, as if she might touch his gloved hand.

Ah, such a romantic notion. A tough guy who loved beautiful houses, drew beautiful pictures. Maybe he listened to Vivaldi, this tough guy, maybe he really read Dickens. And what would it be like to have such a man in her bed, naked except for his soft black leather gloves?

Ah, fantasy. Rather like imagining that the fire fighters she
brought home would turn out to be poets, that the policemen she had seduced would reveal themselves to be great novelists, that the forest ranger she’d met in the bar in Bolinas was truly a great painter, and that the husky Vietnam veteran who’d taken her to his cabin in the woods was a great motion picture director hiding from a demanding and worshipful world.

She did imagine those things, and they were entirely possible, of course. But it was the body that commanded preeminence—the bulge in the jeans had to be big enough, the neck powerful, the voice deep, and the coarsely shaven chin rough enough to cut her.