The Witch of Belladonna Bay Read online

  Before I knew it, we were making the drive up Main Street in Magnolia Creek.

  My mind took pictures. Click, click, click, until they all bled together like a choppy Super 8 film. Nothing had changed. I could almost see the sides of the filmstrip, frames bound in black, the negatives showing the dark underlight of it all.

  But I could not get drawn back into this place so quickly. It would be easy to drown in its beauty and forget that Lottie was dead, and my brother gone, too. Dead in another way altogether. Mermaids don’t drown, I thought.

  “Want to hear some music, Wyn?” asked Carter, as the filmstrip in my head sputtered and melted off the reel.

  “That would be nice,” I said absently. Looking out at the windows, I could almost feel myself back on my bike. Me and Paddy, Lottie and Grant, riding like wild children through town. When we got older, Grant and I would ditch them. Kids can be mean. What if I’d just stayed and married him? I wondered.

  You fill up my senses, drifted from the radio.

  John fuckin’ Denver. “Annie’s Song.” It was their song. Naomi’s and Jackson’s personal waltz. This hit so close to my heart that I could hear it beating in my ears. I wanted to jump out of the car and run.

  Breathe, I told myself. It’s just a song.

  “You okay back there?” asked Carter.

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. That song’s haunted me for years, and now that we’re close to home, there it is, playing. Doesn’t bode well for me, Carter.”

  Carter laughed a little then, and I hoped it was because he appreciated my candor. “Ain’t nothing like that, no spooky hoodoo voodoo about it. Jackson still owns most of this town, and the DJ at the radio station is told he’s gotta play it every hour on the hour. And you know somethin’? We don’t mind. It’s a pretty song, don’t you think?”

  Come let me love you, let me give my life to you …

  It was pretty, I guess. But the ache it brought on made my throat sore.

  It can’t hurt you if you own it, try to remember things on your own terms, you can do it, Ben would’ve said something like that to me, and he held the key to my “calm,” so I tried. I closed my eyes and let my mind drift back in time.

  The ballroom, mostly empty since Jackson’s father held massive parties when the mill was still in operation, made a haunting backdrop for my own mother and father who could waltz around the entire room at any hour of the day. They lived on whim, my parents. And their waltz of choice was to “Annie’s Song,” which has a distinct “one two three, one two three” rhythm that moved their feet as Paddy and I hid outside, peering in through the windows. I could almost feel them dancing, like I was the wind in Naomi’s hair.

  I can do this, I thought. I will do this.

  When the song was over, I felt more confident. I opened my eyes and realized we were already at the twisty iron gates of the Big House, right there where Main Street ends. Paddy and I used to love giving people directions. “Take forty-nine until you run outta road!” Then we’d laugh like crazy.

  The Big House sits on what a cartographer would surely call a peninsula. Edged by a forest on the west side, and then the Magnolia River all around the rest. Toward the right, the river dribbles into a creek. I didn’t want to look that way as we drove in, so of course, I looked. More out of curiosity than anything else … at first.

  Memories have a way of playing tricks on people, and I wondered if maybe I’d made up that misty piece of sour land in my mind. But there it was, Belladonna Bay, all shrouded in its signature fog. Then the car veered left and it was gone from sight.

  In front of me there was a finer view. Esther. Still as majestic as I remembered. And my mother’s garden too, blooming even in the “green season.” But Carter was driving straight up to the front of the house, so I had to keep looking ahead even if I didn’t want to.

  I was acutely aware of the sound of the gravel under the tires as the car came to a stop. I was afraid to look up. Afraid things would be different, and afraid they’d be the same. When I forced myself to glance at the house, I saw her.

  Byrd.

  Standing on the steps of my childhood home. Flanked by a huge German sheperd on one side and Jackson on the other.

  I let my eyes linger on that little girl. I knew her stance. Angry. Scared. Shy.

  Beautiful.

  Jackson wasn’t kidding. She looked just like my mother. Only not broken. Well, not so much. But her frown, and her arms crossed … that was pure Paddy. And that combination won my heart before my mind even had a chance to think otherwise.

  She was wearing an old-fashioned dress all covered up by one of my mother’s aprons. Naomi loved to wear fancy aprons with ruffles and big pockets. She’d wear them over pajamas, dresses, even jeans when she was feeling well and walked out in the gardens with Jackson.

  On Byrd the apron was oversized and all tied up like she’d rigged the thing herself. She had a mass of crazy black hair that looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in a month and a gaze that dared the world to just try and brush it.

  I wanted to rush to her and sweep her into a tight hug. But I knew better. I’d been in war-torn countries where children had no choice but to bear witness to terrible things. Even so, I’d have to coax them into letting me take their pictures. In their eyes I’d seen the same sort of despair. The same fearful longing.

  She was prepared to hate me but wanted to love me, even if she didn’t know it yet.

  Jackson came strolling down the stairs. But Byrd stood her ground with her dog (I just knew it was hers) by her side.

  “Sugar! Oh, hell. Just look at you! My girl!” said Jackson, opening the car door for me. “What a fine-lookin’ woman you make, Wyn! Welcome home, darlin’!” He held out his arms.

  The sun was shining behind him, bathing his features in shadow, but I saw enough to be amazed the boozing hadn’t treated him as badly as it should have. He was still handsome, charming Jackson Whalen … same as he ever was. A bit thicker around the waist, a few laugh lines by his shining blue eyes. Thinner hair, too, but still that white-yellow he’d passed down to Paddy and me. I suppose it never goes silver, just fades to white altogether.

  I leaned in for a hug, prepared to pretend everything was just fine. That way I wouldn’t have to deal with anything awkward. There’s a great deal of power in pretending. But no matter how I tried, my arms couldn’t come up around him. He held me for a few, stiff moments and then let me go. He cleared his throat.

  “Well, Byrd, darlin’, here she is!”

  He placed a strong hand on my lower back and began to guide me up the stairs to my niece.

  She was tiny for eleven. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought she was no older than seven. It was her eyes that gave her away. Naomi would have called her an “old soul.”

  “Hey, Byrd,” I said, as soft as I could, while holding out my hand. I made sure to stay a few steps below her. I knew she was the queen of this place now, and I needed to let her know I hadn’t come to hurt her or to take her place. I just wanted to … take her picture. That was all I could think about. I didn’t know what we’d be able to create in the middle of the silent, violent storm that was swirling around the people we both loved. All I knew for sure, at that very moment, was that I wanted to make her feel safe.

  “Hey there,” I tried again.

  “I heard ya the first time, I ain’t deaf,” she said. Her voice was lower than I’d imagined, but melodic. Strong, too. I liked it.

  This was no bird I was dealing with. This was a mountain lion. And I liked her.

  “Who’s this?” I asked, reaching my hand out for her dog to smell.

  Byrd put her fingers protectively inside the dog’s black leather collar. “Her name is Dolores.”

  “My,” I said, a bit of laughter slipping into my voice, “what a creative name.”

  “It means ‘sorrow,’” she said, her green eyes, my mother’s, staring right into me. Daring me to say one more thing about her dog or she’d sic it on me
.

  Then I noticed a book—my book—The Little Prince peeking out from the top of an oversized apron pocket and found the key to her heart.

  “Je suis heureux de vous rencontrer ainsi et je suis heureux d’être à la maison. Merci de prendre un tel bon soin de mon frère.”

  I watched her eyes soften slightly. A clue that the sharp edge of her guard was coming down.

  “De rien,” she responded, making a graceless curtsy. Then she was gone, skipping down the steps barefoot, and down the drive, with Dolores at her heels. She started muttering as she passed me. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed…”

  I turned to Jackson, confused, ready to ask what in the world she was doing, but he was already ahead of me.

  “It’s like a nervous tic or somethin’. She repeats it whenever she’s nervous. Seems your arrival has her a bit undone.” He smiled after her adoringly. I fought down an unexpected bit of jealousy.

  And then I watched as some redbirds flew down from the trees. Dolores snapped and jumped at them, but they kept flying up and down in loops around little Byrd. Ahead and then behind, a surreal game of tag.

  “Please tell me I’m imagining that,” I said.

  Jackson put his arm around me and laughed a little. “Isn’t that a prerequisite of bein’ a princess? Birds followin’ you all around? Besides, it’s been happenin’ since the day she was born. That’s why we call her Byrd. Used to be Bird with an i till she was big enough to change it herself. She revels in bein’ odd, that one.”

  I looked at the apron’s muddy hem and her unkempt black hair hanging down as she walked. “That’s one unlikely princess, Jackson. Gypsy queen, maybe, or queen of the wild things … but princess? I think not.”

  “You ain’t lookin’ hard enough, little darlin’. Princesses come in all shapes and sizes.” He squeezed my shoulder, and turned to walk back into the house. I knew he was holding back a tugging pain, because it was tugging at me too, making my eyes water.

  I’d been his princess a lifetime ago. Not Byrd’s kind. I was the tea party, dress-up kind of princess.

  “Jackson”—I turned around to follow him—“we really need to talk about Paddy.”

  He stopped on the steps but didn’t turn around. His hands tightened into fists at his sides. “Don’t call me that, Wyn. While you’re here, you call me daddy. You understand?”

  A small, defensive voice came out of my mouth, BitsyWyn Whalen’s voice, “You let Byrd call you Jackson.”

  He stayed with his back turned to me; he never could look at any of us when he was feeling sorrowful. “Byrd ain’t my daughter,” he said. “And Paddy’s in prison. Ain’t nothin’ we can do about that now.”

  “That can’t be true. I won’t believe that. And I’m going to get to the bottom of it, Jackson. I swear it.”

  “Good luck with that,” he said, walking into the Big House, letting the heavy door shut with a bang. It wasn’t long before I heard the ice clinking in the glass through the open windows of the front study. If my memory served, he’d be incoherent by noon, thank God.

  I’d never been able to find a “middle ground” of feelings for my father. It was desperate love or full-on rage … interchangeable and triggered by the smallest sigh or sidelong glance.

  I stood there not knowing what to do next. Plain awkward is what it was. My ward was gone, and it was too damn humid to look for her. So I sat down on the steps and took a deep breath. It felt good, breathing. “Breathe in, Bronwyn … that’s it … deep cleansing breaths,” Ben used to say as he taught me yoga in our old apartment, guiding me gently into each pose.

  Thinking about Ben turned on a worry I’d felt lurking ever since I got on the plane in New York. A tiny crack in the calm he’d fostered inside me. I’d grown so used to a steady hand, what would happen … who would I be without it?

  “Welcome home,” Minerva said from behind me. Her lavender and bleach scent hit me before her words did. A comfort from days long gone. She’d always sensed when I needed her, I guess some things never do change.

  “May I sit by you?” she asked.

  I stood up and gave her a real hug. It was so damn good to see her.

  She still had her signature red hair. Maybe she dyed it, it didn’t matter. I wanted to stare at it forever.

  We sat down side by side.

  “You look good, Min,” I said.

  And she did. Older, sure … thinner, too. But her eyes were still that same steel blue that always made me think she’d stared at a stormy northern sea too long.

  “Congratulations on your marriage.” I said, trying to sound light and airy. “Carter seems like a fine man.”

  That’s when I noticed that he’d slipped away at some point … quietly, like a cat.

  “He’s a good egg,” said Minerva. “And he’s been a godsend for Patrick. I guess you could say he’s ‘fine’ … for an old man, and a Southern cracker.”

  “Oh hell, Minerva, you still fancy yourself a Yankee?”

  “Sure I do. Nothing will ever change that. I’m too ornery to be one of these frolicky people.” Her eyes flicked to my left hand. I could feel her tense up next to me, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Yep, I’m engaged. I was going to tell everyone later,” I said softly.

  “Well, isn’t that nice. I mean wonderful! Never mind me. I’m just so happy to see you. We’ll talk about that pretty ring and your fiancé later.”

  “Minerva, are you all right? You seem upset.” She’d gotten colder, further away from me somehow, but I couldn’t understand why, when a minute before she’d seemed like the same old Minerva. Maybe she was harboring some anger against me for leaving, and it just found its way through cracks in our small talk.

  “Don’t worry. I’m just happy to see you. Getting used to looking at your face all grown up. We need to readjust, that’s all,” she said, patting my arm.

  “Minerva?” I asked, taking her hand.

  “What, honey?”

  “Why didn’t you write to me? I mean, I know I didn’t write to you, either. But why not drop a line when you were getting married? Or when Paddy first got in trouble? For Lottie’s funeral? Or even just to try and convince me to come home after Byrd’s mother died?”

  I thought she’d pull her hand from mine. No one likes to be accused of anything, but she didn’t.

  “Well, I should have. So why don’t we just chalk it up to ‘out of sight out of mind.’ I hope that doesn’t sound cruel, Bronwyn. I just think my whole family—the Greens—we’re wired that way. It’s not that I ever stopped loving you or thinking about you. It’s just that if you aren’t here in front of me, it’s hard to remember to sew you into the quilt of the present. No one should understand that better than you, sitting here, right now.”

  Minerva always had a way with words. And she sure loved the hell out of that quilt analogy. She always told Paddy and me that each new day in our lives was a new story square for the quilt that would be the history of us when we were gone.

  I pulled her hand to my face and rested on it for a bit. Sometimes a grown woman needs to feel like a little girl again.

  “And anyway,” she continued, rubbing my cheek with her thumb, “I wasn’t sure you wanted to be found. Or called on, even. You left. Sometimes that’s the best thing for a person. No one was going to convince you to come back until you were ready. And now?” She pulled my face up, cupped my chin in her hands, and looked at me. “Now I know you want to be here.”

  “There’s so much to talk about, Minny. I have so many questions. What happened that night Lottie was killed? Why did Paddy confess? Was her funeral nice? Did anyone bring sunflowers? Lottie loved sunflowers.” My voice broke.

  She patted me on the head and rose from the steps.

  “Why don’t you just sit here for a while, and then, when you’re ready, you come in and I’ll make some tea and we can have a nice long chat, okay? Lost people always need a moment or tw
o before they decide to be found. It happens all the time … where I come from, that is.”

  I nodded but couldn’t seem to speak. Reciting the Declaration of Independence was starting to sound like a mighty fine idea.

  “I’m sorry that I used to call you names when I was little” was what decided to come out of my mouth. Mouths can be so unpredictable.

  “Old and ugly if I recall correctly,” she said.

  “I was somethin’ back then, wasn’t I?”

  “That’s one way to put it. You come inside on your own time.”

  She went back into the house but didn’t let the door bang the way Jackson had. It wasn’t her style. We’d had a lot of fights when I was growing up. That woman could yell without even having to raise her voice.

  I knew from experience that arguments with Minerva were like small firecrackers. Fierce, then over in a second. I loved her absolute readiness to forgive. Her loyalty, too.

  It was always obvious Minerva missed Fairview. But she wouldn’t return. Not even after Naomi died. She’d said, “Her body’s in the ground here, so it’s by this ground I stay.”

  It was an angry statement because Naomi wasn’t supposed to be buried. She was supposed to be burned. There were an awful lot of rules and regulations regarding the Green family of Fairview, Massachusetts. All families have their traditions, but the Green family’s were the oddest I’d ever run across. Especially the one I witnessed the night my mother died.

  Most of those strange Green Ways were hard to carry out in a place so far removed, both culturally and spiritually.

  Though I couldn’t remember much of the fight Naomi and I had mere hours before she died, I did recall the scene that took place after she was dead.

  It was night, and Minerva thought Paddy and I were fast asleep. She’d given us sleeping medicine (a mix of herbs: valerian root, chamomile, and cannabis) “to calm us,” but it didn’t work on me. Jackson was passed out drunk, with good reason for a change.

  A soft singing floated up the stairs from the kitchen that night. I’ll never forget coming down into the dark foyer. I’d never felt smaller. I was seventeen but felt like I was six years old. I crept down the hall and peered into the kitchen. The air was heavy with “you’re not supposed to be here.”