The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman (5)

It came on the wind, the way wicked things must, for they are most often weighted down with spite and haven’t the strength to lift themselves. On the first day of December 1969, the lottery was held. Men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six would be drafted to fight in Vietnam according to their birth dates. Lives were interrupted and fortunes were exchanged. A cold drizzle hung down and flurries of snow fell in swirls. There were no stones thrown or drownings, no pillories or burnings. Those chosen were computerized, their fates picked at random.

Life went on despite the lottery: traffic headed down Broadway, men and women showed up for work, children went to play. The world breathed and sighed and people fell in love and got married and fell out of love and never spoke to one another again. Still the numbers drawn had the weight of ruin and sorrow; they turned young men old in an instant. A breath in and a man was chosen to walk on a path he’d never expected to take. A breath out and he must make the decision of a lifetime. Some would leave the country, some went to jail, some were ready to take up arms and die for the country they loved despite the heartbreak of leaving families and friends. All were torn apart. It was said that fate could not be altered, except by one thing, and that was war.

Because Vincent was born on the fourteenth of September, his was the first number drawn, the 258th day of the year. He was in a bar on the Lower East Side when it happened, a no-name place for lost men where the drinks were cheap and the company was rough. He hadn’t wanted to be with William or his sisters on this day and see their shock and fear because he knew this would happen. He’d always known this was to be his lot, and he’d wanted to be alone when they called his number. He’d seen his fate when he was fourteen and had been foolish enough to gaze into the black mirror in the garden shed. His aunt had warned him not to look, but he’d wanted to know what his future held, and then, like anyone who can see what will be, he regretted his actions. Life is a mystery, and it should be so, for the sorrow that accompanies being human and the choices one will have to make are a burden, too heavy for most to know before their time comes.

He came home plastered, nearly unconscious, dragged to the front door by two somewhat less drunken men, who had decided to help when Vincent was booted onto the street. They were veterans and they pitied him the war of his time. Theirs had been terrible, but it had also been just and worth fighting. Franny gave them each a five-dollar bill, thanked them, and let Vincent sleep it off in the parlor. He looked cold and alone, his skin a faint blue color. The next step after being called up would be an order for a physical, and then, if he passed, induction by May of that same year.

Franny had little choice. After all this time, Haylin was still the only one to whom she could turn. She took a cab uptown, to Beth Israel, in a frantic state, urging the taxi driver to go faster, not caring as he skidded through changing stoplights.

“You’re going to get us killed, lady!” the driver cried.

Feeling guilty that she’d placed him in peril, Franny tipped the driver twenty dollars when he got her to the hospital in no time flat. In admissions she got the runaround until a nurse found her pacing outside the ER searching for Dr. Walker. Franny was clearly so distressed that the nurse pulled her aside in the corridor.

“He’s not here anymore, honey.”

The nurse handed Franny a tissue, for she clearly thought that tears were to come. “He did what a lot of our young interns and residents are doing. He joined the navy as a doctor in order not to be drafted.”

“What does his wife have to say about that?” Franny asked. Emily Flood. She could call up her image in an instant, so cheerful and friendly and so damned good-natured.

“The doctor’s not married,” the nurse informed her.

“Yes he is,” Franny insisted.

“I filed his records from personnel. Trust me, there’s no wife.”

Franny called from a pay phone. He was not in, the housekeeper said, but she could take a message.

“Tell him it’s urgent,” Franny pleaded, leaving her phone number and address. “I have to see him. Do you understand what urgent means?”

“I do,” the housekeeper responded. “It means you want what you want.”

Which was true, but for good reason. Franny went home and waited by the phone. When Jet came in with tea, Franny said simply, “We won’t let him go.”

“Of course not,” Jet said.

At dusk there was a knock at the door. The sisters exchanged a look. They knew who it was.

“He’ll help you,” Jet said. “All you have to do is let him.”

An icy drizzle was falling, but Haylin stood there without a hat or an umbrella. Franny threw open the door so swiftly she startled him, even though he was the one who had come to call. Harry had trotted after her and he now guarded the threshold protectively.

“May I come in?”

Hay was formal and he did not move to embrace her. It had been a long time, after all, and their last parting had been awful. When Franny nodded, he entered the vestibule and stomped the rain from his shoes, then took off his wet rain gear. Under his coat he was wearing a navy uniform. Stunned, Franny took a step backward. She knew he had joined up, yet the sheer reality that he was in the armed services threw her. The Hay she’d known would have fled to Canada, chained himself outside the Pentagon, perhaps even gone to jail. But this was a grown man before her, a doctor, and one she barely knew.

“Don’t say how could you,” he said when he saw her expression. “It’s the better option. Better than being drafted at any rate. I go as a doctor, and maybe I get to do some good.”

They went into the kitchen and Franny made her own recipe for Courage Tea, which they both needed.

“You didn’t marry her,” Franny said in as offhand a manner as she could manage. Color was rising in her face, but she forced herself to sound calm. “That Emily.”

Hay shrugged it off. “That Emily didn’t deserve marrying someone who didn’t love her.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry about her. She married someone else. Someone better.”

“I doubt that.”

“Do you want to discuss love and marriage? Is that why you phoned after all this time? Your message said it was urgent.”

“I don’t mind if I have to beg for your help if that’s the way things are between us,” she said. Then she added, “Do you want a slice of chocolate cake?” She had made it that very morning and the scent was intoxicating. They both felt mildly drunk just from the smell.

Hay laughed. “So it’s the kind of help that needs a bribe. Just tell me, Franny.”

“It’s Vincent. He was the first number in the lottery.”

“Shit.”

“Of course he can’t go.”

“Thousands of men are doing exactly that, Franny.”

“Not Vincent. It would break him.”

“Is he so different from everyone else?”

“Yes,” Franny said. She thought of the day the nurse had tried to kidnap him. How quiet he had been when he’d been found, how wide his eyes were. That was the first night she sat by his bedside, keeping watch.

“Because he’s a homosexual? Plenty of homosexuals serve this country, they’re braver than most.”

Franny was taken aback.

“Of course I know,” Hay said. “How could I not? You knew, so I knew, too. There was a time when I always knew what you thought. Or at least I believed I did.”

“So you’re a mind reader?”

“I’m a navy doctor with no power to help him.”

“Well, that is not the reason he can’t serve. Vincent cannot do harm to another. It’s out of the question.” It was the very first rule of magic. “And if he goes he won’t come back.” Anyone with sight could tell that her brother was a man whose fate was a brief life. “You can help him, and I know how. If there was any other way, I wouldn’t ask.”

“Will I wind up in jail if I do what you ask?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so? That’s rich. This is the way it always is. Do you care about me at all or am I just some pawn?”

She cried then, hands over her eyes.

“Not that,” he said, taking little comfort in how agitated she had become. She so rarely wept. “All right, fine. I’ll dive in. I’ll drown if that’s what you want.”

She went to sit in his lap. She didn’t care if she was supposed to stay away.

“Franny,” he groaned, as if in pain. “Let’s not start this all over again.”

“You’re still angry because I didn’t go after you into the pond. Because I wouldn’t steal you away from your engagement party.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said pointedly. “I’m likely going to wind up in jail doing whatever you want me to, so let’s not talk about the damned pond.”

“I want to explain! I physically can’t go underwater. I can’t be drowned. None of my family can, not unless they fill our boots with stones.”

Hay laughed. “You’re all witches?”

He likely didn’t believe anything she’d told him, but still he kissed her and told her he didn’t care if they were witches or warlocks or zombies or Republicans. He was a rational man, a doctor, ready to throw his life and career away for her, so what did it matter? They were entitled to do as they pleased, at least in bed. Eyes brimming, she now told him that what they did mattered greatly, for her family was afflicted and whomever they loved would be brought to ruin unless she could figure a way to break the curse.

“Is that why you were always running away?” Hay was moved to see her distress. “You should have told me, Franny. I have the answer. We’ll trick the curse. We won’t marry and we won’t live together. We’ll never speak of love. That’s how we’ll fight it. We’ll just outwit the damned thing. We’ll never say the word love aloud. We’ll never think or breathe it. If we do that, nothing can get in the way.” He shrugged then. “Well, almost nothing.”

They went upstairs to her room. Haylin took his deployment orders from his inner coat pocket before he got undressed. He would be leaving for Germany in a few weeks. His specialty was surgery, and there, where the worst of the wounded would be airlifted from Vietnam, he would get his share of practice.

Once in bed Franny knew that, despite the curse, she could no longer fight what she felt even if she never spoke of it aloud. She thought of one morning at Aunt Isabelle’s when she’d gone into the garden alone. The air was still and dark, the light just beginning to lift in the east. There was the rabbit in the grass. Franny went as close as she could to lay down a saucer of milk. I will never be you, she insisted. I won’t pretend to be something I’m not. At last it was true. It felt grand to be herself, a woman who knew how to love someone. They would simply pretend, to everyone except one another. Franny whispered to Haylin all that she ever was and had been. She told him that she had always known what the future would be, and he said that if what she said was true, then she should have known a very long time ago that this was meant to be.

All that winter Vincent refused to tell William the date of his induction. He didn’t want an emotional scene, so he began pulling back. He took to leaving Charles Street right after sex. He didn’t speak much. He often looked out into the street as if memorizing the view, in case he should never see it again. He did not wish to fight in a war he considered to be unfair. He was not a warrior and he hadn’t the skills to be a soldier.

“Are you angry with me?” William wanted to know.

“Of course not.” But Vincent sounded angry even to himself. Angry to be in this situation where he felt he was a traitor with no courage at all.

He began to slowly move his belongings out of William’s apartment. Each evening he went through the dresser where he kept his clothes and took a few shirts, a pair of jeans, some socks. He took a coffeepot, a hairbrush, his dog’s water bowl.

“Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing?” William asked.

“I’m getting rid of things I don’t need. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“You’re getting ready to leave. I can tell when a man is in denial. I grew up with one. I’m an expert. You won’t even stay the night anymore. You’re thinking of leaving me.”

Vincent leaned to kiss William, who backed away.

“You don’t trust me,” Vincent said.

“You have that so wrong,” William remarked. “It’s you who doesn’t trust me.”

Vincent refused to discuss the situation any further. He would not allow William to be shattered by sorrow that belonged to him alone. Was this the curse, succeeding at last in breaking him? He went down to the Lower East Side, returning to the building where he’d once set up shop. He had The Magus with him, tucked inside his coat. It was as if he had two beating hearts, one his own, the other belonging to the book. All this time, the book had been his closest companion. He hadn’t really needed anyone since the day he had found it, until now. Back in the abandoned apartment covered with graffiti, he brought from his shirt pocket the photograph William had taken of them when they were first together. Some love magic was brutal and quick and didn’t give the other person a choice in the matter. It was dark and irrevocable, but in Vincent’s opinion it was for the best if it would save his beloved from pain and grief. He tore William out of the picture. He had brought along the ingredients necessary to undo their attraction. His own blood, black paint, pins, a bird’s broken wing, a thin strand of lead. He could fix it so that William would never even see him. It was emotional camouflage. Whom you had loved, you would no longer recognize. He would not know his voice, his touch, their history. Without knowing why, William would throw out anything that might remind him of Vincent, letters he’d written, the tape of “I Walk at Night.” He would open a book Vincent had given him and not know where it had come from. He would toss out the second pillow on the bed.

But when Vincent imagined William no longer knowing him he found he could not proceed. What would he feel when they walked past each other on Bleecker Street and William gazed at him as though he were a stranger? What was this world without love?

As Vincent passed a sewer he tossed the magical ingredients down through the grate into the watery depths below the city. Then he took out the book that had been with him since he was fourteen. He went to Washington Square and left The Magus on a bench for the next person in need to find. It was wrenching to do this. He had so treasured the book; it had spoken to the darkness inside him, it had been his true voice when he’d had none. But that time was over, and what magic there was, was inside him.

Know yourself, Aunt Isabelle had told him. They had stood in the garden when he had been so lost. He hadn’t known how to reach the surface, all he knew was that he was drowning. Yet on the morning when his aunt tested him, he had chosen courage. So he walked on, to Charles Street, where William was waiting for him in his apartment, which overlooked the green plane trees and open sky right in the center of a city where anything was possible for those who were not afraid to try.

Before his appearance at Whitehall Street, Vincent called his sisters into the kitchen. “There’s something I need to say in case anything happens to me.”

“It won’t,” Jet assured him. “You’ll be fine.”

“But if something does happen,” Vincent went on, “you should know about me and April.”

Franny furrowed her brow. “Did you have an argument? I didn’t even know you were in touch with her.”

“No one can argue with April. She’s always right.” He paused. “We’re in touch on and off. We have to be.” When Franny gave him a look, he added, “Jet knows what I’m talking about.”

“Does she really?” Franny said, annoyed at having been left out. “She no longer has the sight, so you must have confided in her.”

“It was a long time ago,” Jet was quick to say.

“I didn’t confide in her,” Vincent told Franny. “April did. It happened the summer we first went to Aunt Isabelle’s. When I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted. For a brief moment I thought I wanted April.”

“Seriously?” Franny shook her head. “That’s hard to picture.”

“Well, picture that it ended up with Regina.”

Franny was stunned. “Really?” She looked over at Jet.

“Really,” Jet said.

“Well, I think that’s wonderful,” Franny concluded. “That’s a gift. I thought you were going to tell us something terrible, but this is actually good news. I dislike children, but I liked her. I still have her drawing.”

“Franny, I’m telling you about this now in case the worst comes to pass. April and I decided that if we should both die early, we want Regina to be with you.”

Franny wouldn’t hear of it. “That’s a mistake. I wouldn’t be a good influence. Neither of us would be, really.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jet said primly.

“There’s no way out of it. April and I agreed on this some time ago. You’re Regina’s godmothers. You’ll be her guardians.”

They sat at the table and he brought forth the legal papers he’d had the family lawyer, Jonas Hardy, draw up. He’d already sent the document to April for signing, and now the sisters signed as well.

“This is all very official,” Franny said. “I happen to have something official as well, thanks to Haylin.”

She handed Vincent a note that he then scanned.

“I have asthma?” he said.

Jet handed him the vial they had prepared for him. “You do now.”

He explained to William that he had to go alone, but William wouldn’t hear of it. “I thought we were ruining our lives together.”

William hailed a taxi and they secretly held hands as they traveled downtown, and then on the corner of Whitehall Street, Vincent had the cabbie pull over. William was so honest and forthright, Vincent couldn’t share with him the plan his sisters had come up with. It was somewhat dangerous, and he knew William would disapprove of him putting himself at risk, which made Vincent love him all the more.

“You’re coming back,” William said, leaning in close. “I have the sight, too. I know we’ll be together.”

Vincent walked the rest of the way to the induction center. He had brought along the official letter written on the stationery of the chief pulmonologist at St. Vincent’s that stated that he had severe asthma and could not serve his country. The stationery was real, stolen from the chief’s desk while he was at lunch, but the letter itself was forgery, written by a resident whose last radical act had been to chain himself to a rack in the cafeteria of his high school. Vincent was wired and jumpy; he could barely stay seated when brought into the spare office of the MD who would examine him. He was such a good liar, the best of the best, so why was it that his tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth? Why, when the doctor walked into the room, did he fall silent?

Franny and Jet had decided to go to the induction center to wait outside for Vincent. They both were as nervous as birds. “Fuck Richard Nixon,” Jet said.

“Agreed,” Franny said.

“We’re doing the right thing, aren’t we?”

“Of course we are. He can’t go. I’ve always seen his life would end too early. It’s right there in the palm of his hand. We have to do everything we can to protect him.”

They’d given Vincent wolfsbane, grown in their tiny greenhouse. He’d been advised to consume it with great caution, for the herb was dangerous, and could affect the heart and lungs with lethal action, interfering with his breathing. Just a pinch, Franny had told him. We don’t want you to actually be dead. Unfortunately, his emotional good-bye with William had caused him to forget the vial in the backseat of the taxi, something he didn’t realize until he was already sitting in the doctor’s office.

His lungs seemed fine when the MD had him breathe in and out. “Clear as a bell,” he was told. “How long have you had the asthma?”

“At least five years,” Vincent said. Having been in a rush he didn’t bother to fully read the letter, which stated his asthma had begun at the age of ten.

“And what medications have you used?” the doctor asked.

“Various ones,” Vincent said. “Mostly organic.”

“But you don’t know the names of any of them?”

“You know, my sister takes care of my health. She’s the one who knows everything about my medications.”

“But your sister isn’t here, is she?” the doctor said.

Vincent waited in his underwear while the doctor went to confer. When he returned nearly half an hour later, a soldier in uniform accompanied him. The pulmonary specialist at St. Vincent’s Hospital had been phoned. He’d never heard of a Vincent Owens and the files at the hospital had no information about such a patient. Did Mr. Owens wish to recant his story? Or perhaps he’d prefer prison? Actually, Vincent said, he’d prefer a psychiatrist.

“Are you saying you’re mentally ill?” the doctor asked.

“That’s for others to decide,” Vincent responded, sick at heart but not seeing any other choice. He was desperate to get out of his service.

By now, hours had passed and Jet and Franny were freezing on the sidewalk. Men who had walked into Whitehall at the same time as Vincent had already left. They had no idea that their brother was being interviewed in the psychiatry department, where he explained that he was a homosexual, and that he couldn’t serve because he was also a wizard and he would do no harm to anyone if they tried to send him overseas.

Franny finally went inside at six that evening. Her footfalls echoed, for the building had emptied. It was a place of fate and the scent in the hall was that of fear and sorrow and courage. Outside, the sky was dark blue, threaded through with clouds. There was a chill in every breath you took. Jet stayed out on the street shivering. On this day she wished she still had the sight. She had developed a fear of crowds and stayed away from public spaces.

At the front desk, Franny was told there was no information. Her brother was no longer in the building and they were closing for the night.

“That’s not possible,” she declared. “I’ve been right outside waiting for him all day. If he had left I would have seen him.”

“Back entrance,” she was told, “used for expedited departures.”

The sisters and William were worried sick. It was as if Vincent had disappeared from the face of the earth. Franny went to the Jester to search for him, while William checked Washington Square and Jet stayed at home in case he should call.

“Maybe we should phone the police,” Jet said when they had all failed to find him.

William phoned his father, then came back with his report. “No police,” he said. “We just wait.”

The following week, an official letter finally arrived. The three sat around the kitchen table that had been in the family’s home, the one that had been tilted ever since Franny and Vincent first experimented with their powers. Jet was the one who finally opened the letter, and she read it aloud in a small voice that shook with emotion. Vincent had been examined and found to be psychotic and delusional. He had been admitted to Pilgrim State Hospital. There was no need to hear more. They needed a lawyer, and Franny called the only one she knew, Jonas Hardy in Boston, who had always handled the Owens family business. He would do the best he could, but once he acquired the hospital admission documents he conceded that getting Vincent released would be a problematic and lengthy process. Their brother had incriminated himself, signing a document that stated he was a homosexual and a wizard who had planned to defraud the U.S. government and avoid military service.

“First things first,” William said. “They won’t allow me to see him because I’m not family.” He turned to Franny. “You go. They’ll let you in.”

“Me?” Franny said.

“You’re straightforward and honest,” William insisted. “And you won’t burst into tears.”

“You’re right,” Jet agreed. “It has to be Franny.”

“When you come back, we’ll sit down with my father and put together a plan,” William said. “We’ll get him out.”

Franny took a cab to Long Island that same day. Before leaving she’d had to lock the dog in the bedroom and make sure the windows were shut, so Harry couldn’t leap out and search for Vincent. He’d been distressed ever since Vincent’s disappearance, pacing and whining and refusing to eat. “I’m going to find him,” Franny told the dog. “You just stay.”

It was a misty day, and the hospital was shrouded in fog. It was a dreadful looming place, built between two highways, made of brick, with the bleak look of an old factory. There was a great deal of fencing, and bars over the windows. The lights flickered and the hallways were painted a foreboding shade of green. Franny felt intimidated standing in the waiting room. She tasted metal, for this was a place that was dangerous, made of metal that diluted her power. There was no way anyone could make use of the sight here.

At last a social worker came to speak to her. She was a well-meaning woman, but there wasn’t much she could do. Vincent was in the wing the army used and no visitors were allowed.

“Why would that be?” Franny asked. “I only want to see my brother. What harm is there in doing so?”

“Only army or medical personnel,” the social worker said. She had a heart and patted Franny’s shaking hands. “Trust me, it would be too upsetting for you to see him.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

It meant he was no longer in a straitjacket, no longer fighting or banging his head against the wired-shut window, but viewing the effect of the drugs could be disturbing. He had been too uncontrollable to be in the dormitory with the other patients and had been taken to a single room. He was disheveled and hardly alert, suffering from confusion, trembling whenever there was a loud noise. There would be a report at the end of the month.

“You mean weeks?”

“Unfortunately, yes. We’re dealing with a bureaucracy here. Things take time. Sometimes months.”

Franny walked out knowing that her brother would not last that long.

They drove out to Sag Harbor. It was early spring and the trees were budding, but the air was still cool. It was a clear, bright, beautiful day, the air tinged with salt, the climbing roses blooming. They were in William’s car, and they all wore black. They barely spoke, especially when they drove on the Sagtikos Parkway, past Pilgrim State.

“It’s dreadful,” Jet did manage to say, and they all agreed.

Once in town, they stopped at the liquor store, thinking they would need the fortification. They needn’t have worried. Alan Grant had wine opened on the table, and took a whiskey for himself.

“My advice will set you against the laws of our country.” Mr. Grant’s expression was somber. “And I’m also afraid that in saving Vincent, I may endanger you,” he told his son. “You can be arrested if you aid a deserter.” He gestured to the sisters. “All of you can.”

“We’ll take that chance,” Franny said.

“Then my suggestion is that Vincent must run. He’s already made it clear he won’t serve. He needs a passport and a plane ticket.”

“Pardon me?” Franny said. “He’s in a hospital. He doesn’t have a passport.”

“Then find him one, and get him the hell out of that place,” Mr. Grant told them.

“And then what?” Jet wanted to know.

Mr. Grant smiled and shook his head. “Then, my dear, prepare to never see him again.”

When they left the sun was on the water and everything seemed to gleam as they walked across the wide lawn to the car. They were all saddened by this day, and by knowing what they must do. When they reached the car, they lingered, as if trying to avoid the inevitable return to real life.

“You cannot lose someone you love, even if he is no longer beside you,” William said. “So we’ll do as my father suggests. It’s the only logical choice.”

“Are you willing to?” Franny asked. “No matter the cost?”

Franny had her arm around William’s waist. Jet walked close beside them. They were in this together, this perilous, wonderful business of loving Vincent.

“We’ve already decided we would ruin our lives together,” William said. “So here we go.”

Franny phoned Haylin that same night. When he heard what had happened he left work before his shift was over, something he never did. He was committed to his patients, but this was different. It was urgent, it was Franny, the only one who could give him a feeling of recklessness. He got to Greenwich Avenue in no time, and she was waiting for him. She was so worried and so pale that he lifted her into his arms. They went upstairs, pulled off their clothes, then got under the quilt together. Haylin was too tall for the bed and he always banged his head against the wall. He had such long limbs it seemed he might fall onto the floor at any moment.

Whenever Hay was there, the crow made himself comfortable on the bureau. Otherwise he spent his time in the kitchen, near the radiator. Lewis preferred to stay in the house. Long flights were past him, still he seemed full of cheer when Haylin visited, flapping around joyously before he settled down. Hay always brought Ritz crackers, which were the crow’s favorites.

“I need your help again,” Franny admitted.

“I suppose once you start breaking the law, it gets easier and easier to do,” Hay said. “I could lose my medical license over the asthma incident. Now what?”

“Now we have to get Vincent out of Pilgrim State.”

Hay had always thought Franny smelled like lily of the valley, which grew in wild clutches in the woodlands in Central Park each spring. He missed the past, but now that they were together again, he missed it less. Franny stroked his torso and his broad back, always amazed to find that he was now a man rather than the boy she’d first fallen in love with. But this wasn’t love. They’d agreed to that. It was simply everything else.

“It’s a secure facility,” Haylin said. “Should we think about this?”

“There’s nothing to think about,” Franny said. “We have to get him out.”

“It’s we, is it? But isn’t this when I go to jail?” he asked with a grin.

“It’s when you rescue someone.” Franny entwined her legs with his. She understood why ancient monsters were often made of two creatures, with two hearts and minds. There was strength in such a combination of opposites.

“Not you, I gather,” he murmured. “Because I wouldn’t mind rescuing you.” He held her beautiful red hair in one hand and told himself this wasn’t love. He had to keep reminding himself of that. All the same, he knew he would step blindly forward to do whatever she asked. That had always been the case.

“Before you, I was the Maid of Thorns. I had no heart at all. You already rescued me,” Franny said right before she asked him to risk everything, unaware that she had been asking him to do so ever since they’d first met, and that he had been willing to do whatever she wished him to, even during the time they’d been apart.

In the hospital, Vincent’s thoughts were cloudy, fragile things. They’d shaved off his hair and had him wear a uniform that barely fit his tall frame. He was not allowed a belt or socks, lest he try to commit suicide with them by hanging. He had gone berserk in the dormitory and was then shot up with medication and plunged into a cold bath. Then they tied him up so they could carry him down the hall to this small room. There were mice, he could hear them. He could hear footsteps in the hall. Here were the things to stay away from: metal, ropes, water, fear. He felt himself weakening by the second.

His face was bruised from the altercation in the dormitory, and he had lost a good deal of weight. He was a wraith, a shadowy creature. He was thankful William couldn’t see him, didn’t know what he had become. They continued to feed him medication that caused him to be plodding; it was Thorazine, a wretched pill that made him descend into a woozy state of mind. The Vincent he had been previously had been banished to some distant part of the past, but not completely. He still knew how to play the game, and soon realized he could pretend to swallow the pills, even open his mouth to show they were gone, while keeping them tucked up along his gum. He would then spit them out when the nurse left him alone, then he’d hide them under the radiator. The first clear thought he had was a memory of an interview he had read with Jim Morrison, a singer and poet he admired for his rebellion.

Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

Freedom was the instinct of every mortal being, even those who thought they had no hope. This was his deepest fear, to be trapped and jailed, like his ancestors. If he hadn’t been surrounded by metal he could have willed his window to open and climbed out, then dropped to the ground. He then would have stopped traffic and hitchhiked to the city, slipping into a car with any stranger who would have deposited him on a city street, so that he might disappear into the crush of people at Forty-Second Street and call William from a pay phone. But he could not reach that part of himself. He had lost himself in this place, as had so many others before.

All he could do was keep his eyes closed and do his best to get through the day. I’ve tried before, I’ve locked the door, I’ve done it wrong, I’ve done it right. He did not eat or fight back. He shivered with cold even when the heat was turned up high, the old metal radiators pinging. He still had marks on his wrists from being bound when he’d thought he could fight his way out. At night he tried to get back the piece of his soul that had disappeared when they brought him here in irons.

He went over the spells he remembered from The Magus, doing his best to recall the magic that had once come to him so easily. He was convinced Aunt Isabelle’s story of Maggie the rabbit was meant for him when he was hiding from himself, denying who he was. Now in the glinting half-light of the hospital room he practiced spells he had memorized. Although the newspaper on a cabinet fluttered and fell off the shelf, and a bowl and a plate rattled when he muttered curses, the aura of the place soon overtook him. It affected his brain and his soul alike. He couldn’t even turn off the bright light that was kept on through the night. He was a rabbit in a cage. For most of the day he sat on a mattress on the floor. His feet were bare, long white feet that didn’t look at all familiar, the feet of the dead.

To make himself aware that he was still alive, to save himself in some small way, he made himself think of the lake in Massachusetts, how cold and green it was, and of the garden where he’d played his first songs, and of April Owens standing in the grass in California, hands on her hips, telling him not to make promises he couldn’t keep. He remembered Regina tagging after him, and the surprising swell of love he’d felt for her when she said she wanted to remember him. He transported himself to that moment, and he stayed there, in California. He no longer smelled the Lysol the janitors used to clean the floor, but rather there was the woodland scent of eucalyptus, so fragrant it made him dizzy.

He heard the door to his locked room open, but he was too far inside his head for it to matter. He had perfected the ability to hover somewhere outside of his own body, something he had learned from The Magus. He was in California and the grass was golden. Nothing else mattered. He could stay forever if he wished. Would you like some flowers? Regina was saying. All of the flowers were red, and in the center of each, a bee drowsed. Someone sat down on the chair. Likely a nurse with his medication. Best ignored. He stayed inside his mind, fading into the tall golden grass.

“Wake up, kid,” a man’s voice said. “You’d better pull yourself together.”

Vincent gazed across the room, his eyes slits. He glimpsed a man in a naval uniform. It was Haylin.

“Medical personnel are allowed in,” Haylin told him. “I have about twenty minutes, so you need to listen to everything I say.” He then tossed something to Vincent, and without thinking Vincent reached up and caught it. It was a set of car keys. It woke him up.

“What are these?” Vincent’s mouth felt like cotton when he spoke. His eyes hurt when he opened them wider. Light poured in and he rubbed at his eyes with his fists.

“They’re yours. You’re driving a Ford.” Hay stood to drape his jacket over the pane of glass cut into the door. “We don’t need the staff to know what we’re doing.” He took off his shoes and his shirt, then stopped and gestured when he took note of Vincent sitting there in shock, unmoving. “Can you hurry up? You leave for Germany tonight and trust me—you do not want to miss your flight. Your sisters and William will have my hide if something goes wrong.”

Vincent smiled. He remembered how to do that.

“Let’s go,” Haylin urged. “Step one. Get the hell out. But just know this. You can’t contact any of us. You have to make a clean break, otherwise we can be implicated and charged with abetting a federal offense.”

In the parking lot the car was exactly where Hay said it would be. A rented Ford. He was to drive directly to Kennedy Airport, renamed in 1963 for their fallen president. He had Hay’s ticket and passport and the two thousand dollars in cash Franny had sent along. She’d sold Maria’s sapphire and was glad to have done so for Vincent’s sake. Once safely in Germany, Vincent would be on his own, free to go where he pleased. Before leaving, though, he’d had to punch Hay.

“Right in the mouth,” Hay had advised. “It’s filled with blood vessels and will look much worse than it is.”

Vincent then was instructed to tie Hay up—Hay had obligingly handed over his tie and his belt—and then to cover Hay with a blanket so no one would notice the switch until it was too late. And it was already too late. He was gone. A navy man and a doctor, with proof of it in his pocket. He looked official, with his buzzed hair, his head nearly bald. He drove with the windows down. He could feel his abilities coming back to him. He passed lights on the parkway and they clicked off. He turned on the radio without touching it. It was dusk, his lucky hour, the hour when he’d met William, when he’d gone onstage in Monterey, when he made his way to freedom, knowing he could never come back, understanding that this was the way one life ended and another began.

There was no reason for the authorities to doubt that Dr. Walker had been beaten and robbed. After the investigation he was given another ticket to Germany and a new passport. He and Franny knew they could not see each other in case one or the other was being watched. Still they dared to meet one last time, in Central Park, at night. It was easy enough to disappear into the lilac-colored shadows on paths they knew so well. The leaves on the trees looked blue, the bark violet. Franny had Vincent’s dog with her. Harry walked slowly, for he had aged since Vincent’s disappearance. All the same Franny kept him on a leash, for fear he’d take off and search for his master. She tied the dog to a bench when Haylin came up the path in the dark. They climbed the rocks above Turtle Pond and sat with their bodies so close they were touching. The water was green and luminous.

“Should we swim?” Haylin said.

It was a joke, but neither laughed. They wished they could go back to that moment when Franny didn’t dive in and change what could never be changed. Franny rested her head on his chest. His heart seemed too loud. Lewis was in the tree above them. Looking down, he made a clacking sound.

“He’s a funny pet,” Haylin said. “He’s so aloof, yet he follows you everywhere.”

“I’ve told you before. He’s not a pet. He’s a familiar. And you’re the one he’s following. He’s never really liked me. We’re too much alike. Two crows in a pod.”

“I see.” Haylin threaded his fingers through her hair. “You’re a beautiful bird.”

He was still a drowning man every time he was with Franny, and now he had to give her up again. They would not be able to write or see each other, lest Hay’s involvement with Vincent’s disappearance be reexamined. He had done enough. Franny would not ruin him any more, although he very much wished that she would.

They did what they should have done years earlier; they took off their clothes and dove into the pond. Even in the shallows it was freezing, but once they went all the way in, they forgot the cold. The branches of the plane trees moved in the wind. There were snowbells, which bloomed for only ten days. Soon everything would be in leaf, a green bower as far as the eye could see. Tonight the city smelled of regret. Franny floated on her back, and Haylin came and took hold of her, pulling her to him. To want someone so much could be a terrible thing, or it could be the best hope a man could have.

“I can’t be drowned, so don’t even try,” Franny teased. She could feel his sex against her and she moved so that he could enter her. She gasped because she felt the loss of him even now when he was inside her.

“Yes you can,” he said, holding her closer. He would be going overseas and felt there was nothing to lose. To hell with the curse and the government and all the rest of the world. There were turtles below them and above them the firmament was starry. “Anyone can drown.”

He walked at night, in a black coat acquired at a flea market. His hair was cropped, his complexion pale. He knew enough French by now to manage, but in truth, he rarely spoke. He had stayed only a short time in Frankfurt, where he’d practiced magic in a lonely room, then tried West Berlin for a month before heading for France, where he’d instantly felt more at home. He lived in a small hotel in the Marais, a good place to hide out. In France, no one asked who you were or what you were doing there. They simply wrapped up the loaf of bread you bought, handed over the drink you ordered in a dive bar, and nodded when you bought cheese or meat. He was nervous when he saw Americans. He feared being caught for some ridiculous reason, a fan from Washington Square would recognize his face and bring attention to him in a public place. He’d forget to pay for an apple in a shop and be arrested and then found out.

What saddened him most was seeing people walking together in the hush that came to Paris only at certain dim hours of the day. He’d be wandering back to his hotel, having been out all night, eager to return to his room and sleep through till the late afternoon, but then he’d see lovers together and he’d feel a stab of loss cut through him. He couldn’t help himself from missing William, but in response he’d turn his back to the scene that troubled him and keep walking, any idea of sleep shattered. If he thought too much about all he’d lost, he wouldn’t be able to go on. Several times he’d come close to phoning William, but he couldn’t take the risk of incriminating him.

Many times he’d thought of Regina, who was already nine. Likely he would never see her again, and that was most surely in her best interest. He couldn’t ruin her with his love. The past seemed a distant thing, unreachable, as gone from him as ash. Once, in a bakery, he’d heard his own song, recorded at the Monterey Pop Festival. Someone other than William must have taped it and sent it out and now it had resurfaced. Vincent had turned and walked out. Soon the radio was muffled by street sounds and his frantic heart calmed down.

It was all so long ago, the golden hillsides in California, the dock where the sky was so blue. He was here, now, away from everyone he’d ever known in a place that also yielded beauty at every turn. He tried not to see that either; closing his eyes to the radiant light, and to the wood doves plummeting from the trees to the grass, and the lovers who didn’t bother to hide their passion. This is why he usually walked at night, when the world was rife with blue-black shadows and pools of lamplight turned the streets yellow.

On evenings when Vincent felt the need to escape his room earlier than usual, he didn’t bother to wait for nightfall. His hotel was musty, and there were times when he wanted freedom from his makeshift home. He went where no one knew him. It was dusk and he was having wine at a café in the Tuileries. The last of the daylight was sifting down in shades of orange. It was an illuminated world; one had to squint to see behind the paths. He knew William would have appreciated the beauty of the place; he would have enjoyed hearing the ringing of a bell tied around the neck of a goat there to eat grass, which was why Vincent himself could hardly tolerate any of it. Most of the young men in the city looked like Vincent: dark hair, bearded, dark coats and boots. He fit in well. He could be anonymous. He carried a newspaper, though he could not yet read French well enough to make much sense of the articles.

He was turning the pages when a woman sat across from him. She was older, extremely elegant, wearing sleek white-framed sunglasses despite the hour. She wore black, and took a cigarette and gold lighter from her leather purse.

“So here you are,” she said.

Vincent looked up and shrugged. “Je suis désolé, madame. Vous avez fait une erreur. Nous ne nous connaissons pas.”

“We don’t know each other, it’s true,” the woman remarked. “But I am not mistaking you for anyone else. I knew your mother. To tell the truth, I knew her extremely well. I’m the same as you and your family, you see. From a very long line here in France. When your mother lived here in Paris, Susanna didn’t deny who she was. That came later. We remained close, by long distance, and I know she would have wanted me to watch over you, which is what I’ve been doing.”

“I see.” Vincent put down his paper. So he was not anonymous after all. Because this was Paris and not New York, he did his best with the pleasantries of polite conversation when in truth he wished to merely storm off. “Perhaps I don’t wish to be looked after.”

“But you’re one of us, so you see I have no choice.”

Vincent shook his head. “I’m not anything.”

The woman looked at him sadly. “We never change who we are from the beginning. You still have your inheritance from your bloodline. We may have experience and loss, but who we are at the core, that never changes. You are something special, the same as you’ve always been.” She went on to introduce herself as Agnes Durant. “I have an apartment behind Place Vendôme. We often gather there. We’ve been here in Paris for so long we don’t have to hide as Americans do. No one sees us if we don’t wish them to. You think you’re in hiding, but your presence is quite evident.”

Vincent flicked down some money for the bill and stood, nodding courteously. “Then it’s best for me to go.”

“And keep running? That’s the coward’s way, isn’t it? Please. Don’t go.”

Something in her tone moved Vincent. He sat back down again. “Madame, I appreciate your offer of help. Really. I do. But there’s no point.”

“You have nothing worth living for?”

Vincent laughed. “Not so much. No, I don’t.”

“Because you can’t go back to America? Because the government will never let you be?”

“Because I lost the man I loved.”

“Oh.” Agnes nodded. That she understood. “Many of us lose the man we love. And it’s terrible. I know that for myself.”

Vincent heaved a sigh and leaned forward, his expression bleak. He saw that this woman was the age his mother would have been and he felt a connection despite himself. “I have nothing left.” He had always known his life would be over when he was still young.

Madame shook her head. “Vincent,” she said with emotion. She clearly had the sight. “One life may be over, but another can begin.”

Vincent gazed at the orange light. He could see every molecule of air, all of it infused with possibility. He picked up the scent of the sweet grass in the gardens, and heard the ringing of the goat’s bell and felt the chill of the evening as it approached.

“You’re in Paris,” Madame said. “You might as well live.”

So that he could live freely Madame Durant advised it would be best if he died. It must be public and final. He would no longer be a wanted man. His government would forget him, and so would everyone else. He could be himself, but with a new name and a new life, and what’s more, he could then avoid the Owens curse.

He checked out of the hotel in the Marais. He had very little with him, but there was enough cash left from Franny’s generous gift so that he could shop at a music store near the Sorbonne. There he spent the afternoon searching for an instrument that might replace his cherished Martin left behind in the States.

He found the guitar at the end of the day. A Selmer, the kind the brilliant gypsy musician Django Reinhardt had used. Reinhardt’s third and fourth fingers were paralyzed and became webbed after he suffered burns in a fire, but he continued on with a style that was his alone. The guitar Vincent chose was made of laminated rosewood with a walnut neck and an ebony fingerboard. It had been made in the early fifties, and had been banged around, but once Vincent picked it up he didn’t want to let it go. He hadn’t played since his fingers had been broken, and so he was tentative at first, but he thought of what Django had gone through, and how he’d managed to become one of the greatest jazz guitarists of all time, therefore he couldn’t feel sorry for himself.

He was not as skilled as he once was; all the same, strumming the guitar felt like sorcery. The tone was so singular, so nearly human in its trembling pitch, it was as though he’d found his soul in a dusty shop. He was in Paris and he felt alive. Perhaps Agnes had been right: you remained who you were. Vincent bargained, but not too much because he wanted it so. And then he saw a little record player in a corner, a clever little machine fit into a rose-colored leather traveling case. He bought it without bargaining, full price, and he took it with him, tucked under his arm.

He went to a stationery store, where he bought an airmail letter. He then sat at a café, ordered a coffee, and composed a message to his sisters. He told Jet that one of the best days of his life was when they arrived at the hospital after the accident to find she was alive. He reminded Franny of the story she had told about the minstrel who lost his voice.

He wrote that when he thought of the past he envisioned the three of them lying on the kitchen floor, eavesdropping on their father’s therapy sessions. There they were, children trapped in a house they couldn’t wait to get away from, but which he now missed every day.

You both rescued me every time I needed you. I hope I’m worthy of such kindness.

We were wrong about Maria’s curse. It is simply the way of the world to lose everything you have ever loved. In this, we are like everyone else.

When he went to post the letter, he also had the record player boxed up and sent to April’s address in California. He jotted a note on a piece of thin, white paper. To my dear Regina, to whom I made a promise that I kept.

He did not need to write to William. Mrs. Durant had already taken care of that.

He tossed his backpack into a trash bin in the park where it could be discovered after he was gone. Everything he had, other than his guitar, was folded inside, including the key to 44 Greenwich Avenue. It was a portion of his life he would never get back. Friends of Madame Durant’s were stationed in the Tuileries. They had hung posters on lampposts and a crowd was already gathering. There was an atmosphere of expectation in the streets. Vincent’s music was known in France and his underground tape often played.

Vincent wore a black suit. He kept a photograph of William in his shirt pocket, the one taken in California when the world was open to them. They had been standing on the dock in San Francisco and had persuaded a stranger to snap them together, arms entwined, the sky behind them a vivid blue. Tonight he had sipped a tincture of dogwood Madame had given him, so that his voice would come back to him.

For the date of the concert he’d chosen Samhain, All Hallows’ Eve, the night of death and transformation. The sky was black and filled with stars and the leaves on the chestnut trees curled up as a sudden flash of cold descended upon the city. He stood on an overpass near the Louvre facing the crowd. The lamps in the park blinked as though they were fireflies. This was the moment he had seen in the three-sided mirror when he was fourteen. When a hush fell he sang the songs he had written in New York, beginning and ending with “I Walk at Night.” He had his fans, but most in the crowd had never heard of him. The last song was a river in which he would have happily drowned.

Isn’t that what love makes you do? Go on trying, even when you’re through, Go on even when you’re made of ash, when there’s nothing inside you but the past.

He felt the wolfsbane he had ingested earlier in the evening spreading through him. He was sinking into it as the herb slowed his heart and his breathing became shallow in his chest. He could see everything he’d never seen before as time slowed down. The glimmering of the world. Those he’d loved who’d loved him in return. The gifts he’d been given. The years he’d had. He was so beautiful in that moment. Those who watched him gasped and forgot where they were. An enchantment took over and people stood in silence. White moths appeared from the grass. They spun past, higher all the time, until they disappeared into the sky.

Vincent was grateful this was the way he was able to leave behind everything he had known before. He collapsed, and when he could not be revived, a doctor who was a friend of Madame Durant’s signed the death certificate at 11:58. It was still All Hallows’ Eve. The temperature had dropped. Raindrops fell and splattered on the sidewalks. A private ambulance was sent for. Reporters had been called so they might witness his death. The leaves were curling in the cold and no one seemed to have the ability to speak. All was still, except for the siren as the ambulance pulled away, and then, at a little after midnight, the sound of the falling rain turned hard as it became ice striking against the sidewalks and the brown leaves of the chestnut trees.

Madame Durant was the one who made the funeral arrangements, acting swiftly so no questions would be asked. She had placed a very old disappearing spell over Vincent as he’d lain prone. L’homme invisible. From that moment on no one would ever figure out the private details of his life. All the same, the newspapers were filled with reports of his strange death. There were insinuations, with some convinced he had taken his own life and others vowing there had been foul play. A small vigil had begun outside the hotel where he had stayed in the Marais, with flowers deposited in a fragrant muddy pile and white candles lit so that wax flowed into the gutter. The radio stations played “I Walk at Night” and people who didn’t know Vincent’s name found themselves singing the lyrics as they walked home from work.

The burial was at Père-Lachaise, the cemetery opened by Napoleon in 1804. Jet and Franny’s plane was hours late, delayed by a storm in New York. William had traveled with them, wearing a black suit, carrying only a leather backpack. He spoke very little, and seemed so distant the sisters wondered if because he had the sight he had known this was to be his fate all along, to be traveling to France for a funeral.

They took a taxi to the main entrance of the cemetery on Boulevard de Ménilmontant, with William telling the driver that if he ignored stoplights they would pay him double his fare.

“We must be there,” William said.

“We will,” Jet assured him.

Franny simply stared out the window. She had barely spoken since the news had come. She was meant to protect him, and she had failed. Her plans had gone awry, and now he was lost to them. Once at the cemetery, they had soon become disoriented among the angels and monuments until a young man sent by Agnes Durant to search for the missing Americans guided them to the freshly turned grave.

“It can be very confusing here,” the young man said, as he led them down the gravel paths.

“Yes,” the sisters agreed. They had never been more confused in their lives. Why did their thoughts become blurry when they tried to think of their brother?

“This place is very old, and there are so many dead people,” explained their guide, who dressed much as Vincent might have, in a dark coat, with black Levi’s from America and suede boots.

For Vincent to have had a heart attack at such a young age was unthinkable, but such was the doctor’s report. The sisters could not conceive of a world in which he was gone. They had decided to wear white dresses that Jet had found in the resale shop next to the Chelsea Hotel. They refused to wear black on this day. It was only now that Franny realized what Jet had chosen.

“These are wedding dresses!” she whispered, annoyed.

“You said white. These were all they had on the rack,” Jet said apologetically.

Though it was November and chilly, they slipped off their shoes out of respect. The other guests were friends of Agnes’s and, as it turned out, of their mother’s. The brevity of the service was fitting. Vincent did not like an excess of emotion, unless it was real love, and then nothing was too much. Agnes hugged the sisters, then kissed William twice. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said to him warmly. “I’ve heard so much about you and now here you are.”

The mourners went to a restaurant nearby for a light dinner. The place was small, lit by candles even in the daylight hours, decorated with trompe l’oeil wallpaper and velvet couches to sit on while they dined.

“Susanna and I came here often when we were young,” Agnes Durant said. “And we often went to the cafés in the Tuileries, where I first met Vincent. Susanna and I looked so alike people thought we were sisters.”

“Well, we look nothing alike and we are sisters,” Jet said, taking Franny’s hand in hers. She felt as though they had somehow lost Vincent to this stranger who gazed at them with curious dark eyes.

“I only meant, I feel that I’m family to you,” Madame Durant said, trying to soothe Jet’s ruffled feathers.

“Thank you,” Franny said. “Please understand we have lost an actual member of our family.”

“Of course. I would never intrude. I have your best interests at heart.”

Franny found that difficult to believe but she was distracted by the presentation of their supper, which included hors d’oeuvres of oysters and cheeses. The restaurant owner had a little dachshund that lounged on one of the velvet couches.

It was only then Franny realized that William wasn’t among them. She imagined he was still at the cemetery, unwilling to leave his beloved. How horrid they had forgotten him in his hour of need.

“I’ll be right back,” Franny told Jet as she dashed out, hoping she would find her way back to the burial site. The hour was late and night was falling. She felt panic rising in the back of her throat as she darted along the streets in the evening light, finally finding the pedestrian gate of the cemetery at Porte du Respos and hurrying inside.

There was ice on the paths and her breath came out in cold puffs and the white dress was much too sheer and flimsy for the chill of the day. Gravediggers were flinging clods of earth over the open grave. Franny stopped. Her heart felt too heavy for her chest.

There was the shadow of a tall man.

“William!” she called, but if it was he, he did not respond.

Franny held one hand over her eyes as the sun went down, and the orange light made it difficult to see. The leaves on the trees were rustling and swirls of earth rose up from the ground.

“Is it you?” Franny cried.

She couldn’t tell if she saw one man’s shadow or two. And then she knew. She felt her brother near, just as she had when they played hide-and-seek in the basement and their mother could never find them. She followed the path, but the orange light was blinding, and she bumped into a woman bringing flowers to a grave and had to apologize. She didn’t realize that she was crying until she spoke to the other mourner. Her apology was accepted with a shrug, and then she was alone. She stopped and watched as the light grew darker and the shadows longer, and then, when it was clear she would not find her way, she returned the way she’d come.

She went back to the restaurant, arriving as Haylin was getting out of a taxi. He’d flown from Frankfurt, where he’d been stationed, and now he embraced Franny on the sidewalk. He kissed her and could not stop. It was Paris so no one looked at them twice.

“I should have been here sooner,” he said.

“You’re here now.” Franny seemed more in shock than grief-stricken.

She barely spoke that evening. As the dinner was ending, with aperitifs and small cakes, Franny went to Agnes and asked if she could call on her the next day. “I want to thank you and perhaps get to know you better, as my mother did. I was rude before, and I apologize.”

“I’m so sorry,” Agnes demurred. “I’m closing up my apartment. I really won’t have time. I’m going out to my country house.”

“So that’s it? Vincent is gone and we don’t speak about it?”

Agnes shrugged. “How can we understand life? It’s impossible. To the world, Vincent is dead and buried. Let’s leave it that way, my dear.”

“And we don’t speak of William either? I’m not even sure where he is. What do I do when his father calls me and asks where he is?”

“William is where he wants to be. How many among us can lay claim to that?”

Franny rushed back to the hotel and Jet’s room.

“William lied to us,” she told her sister. “He let us go through that charade of a funeral. All the while, that Madame Durant had placed a disappearing spell on Vincent so we wouldn’t know the truth. He’s alive, Jetty.”

“If William lied, he did it for Vincent. You knew we were going to lose him. I suppose this was the best way.”

“To make us think he had died?” Even for a few hours it had been horrible.

“He has died. For us. And we must keep it that way if we want him to be safe.”

At the hotel, Jet was happy to leave Franny and Haylin to each other. She preferred to be alone to grieve. The loss of her brother affected her deeply. She went to her room and when she took off the hat she’d been wearing all day, she found that her hair had gone white all at once. It had happened at the funeral. Her best feature, her long black hair, gone. She gazed into a mirror above the bureau and spied the woman she had seen in their aunt’s black mirror. She wondered what Levi would have thought if he was with her. Perhaps he would have lain down beside her and told her she was still beautiful, even if it wasn’t true. He would have read to her from a book of poems, then perhaps planned where they would go for a drink, someplace somber, but warm, where they could sit close together. But now, without him, she had stepped into her future, and, like it or not, this was who she’d turned out to be. He was a boy, and she was now a woman who had lost nearly everyone she’d ever loved. She thought of what she’d told April once. This was what happened when you were alive. She called the desk and asked for some coffee, since she already knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Paris was too noisy, the room was too cold, the injury of losing Vincent too fresh. She did not mind being alone. She sat beside the window and wrote a postcard to Rafael. She always wrote him postcards, even when they were both in New York City, and then when they got together they would read the postcards in bed. She wished he were here with her now. Just as a friend, of course. The friend she wanted to be with more than any other.

It had begun to rain, a thin green drizzle that made the sidewalks shine.

Paris is sad, she wrote, but beautiful enough to make you not care about sadness.

Franny fell asleep beside Haylin, exhausted. When she woke he was sitting on the edge of the bed watching the rain falling. They were supposed to stay away from each other, but their pact didn’t need to apply yesterday, nor today. The sky outside was thick with rain clouds. Paris was so gray in November. Wood doves were gathering on the small balcony. Franny held out her hands to them and they pecked at the glass. She wished they never had to leave this room, but they did. Haylin had told her he was being transferred to the field. He would be leaving in less than eight hours for Vietnam. They spent those eight hours in bed, telling each other they didn’t love each other; they did so for luck and to do their best to ensure they would one day see each other again.

The sisters packed up and called a taxi. They went to the Tuileries and walked down the gravel paths. The leaves were turning brown. They had their suitcases with them, so they stopped at the first café they came to in the park. They ordered white wine, but they didn’t drink much. They were thinking about their mother when she was young, and the rules she’d made up to protect them. They had their own rules now. Franny cast a circle in the gravel beside their table. Then she took one of Lewis’s feathers that she had in her pocket. She let the feather fall. Outside the circle, and their brother was gone. But it landed inside, right in the center. Jet let out a sob. Franny reached for her hand. It was good news. He was somewhere close by, but when the feather blew away they knew the other side of the truth. He was lost to them now.

When the sisters returned to New York, Franny took to spending the night in Vincent’s room. From here she could hear the echo of children in the school yard in the mornings. She let the crow remain inside. He was aging and he liked to perch on the desk near the heater, where he dozed in fits and starts. The dog followed Franny around, but she was a poor substitute for Vincent, and he began sleeping at the front door, waiting for his master to reappear.

Both sisters slept uneasily upon their return, disturbed by sounds of the city, the rumble of buses, the shrill sirens, the ever-present traffic on Seventh Avenue. When Franny opened the window she found that New York City had only one scent now and it never changed. It was the sharp tang of regret. She longed for something darker and greener, for a silence that might allow her to find some peace.

One night she dreamed that Isabelle was sitting on the window seat of the old house in Massachusetts.

You know the answer, Isabelle said. Fate is what you make it.

When Franny awoke, she realized she was homesick. She was at the kitchen table when Jet came downstairs. To Franny, Jet seemed even more beautiful with her white hair, for her beauty was rooted inside of her now.

“I’m ready to go,” Franny told her sister. In fact, she had already packed up her room.

Jet looked at her surprised. “Go where?”

“The place we feel most at home.”

“All right. We’ll shut down the store.”

“I’ll call the attorney. He can manage selling this place. It was temporary for us. Now the rightful tenant can have it.”

Jet understood her sister’s wish to leave New York. 44 Greenwich Avenue was already becoming the past as they sat there. It was disappearing in front of their eyes. It had been a home for the three of them, but they were three no longer. She thought of Vincent playing “I Walk at Night” for the first time, of April visiting with Regina and eating chocolate cake in the kitchen, of the plumber who did work for them in exchange for a love spell, and of the night when Vincent came home and told them he was in love. As for Franny, what she remembered most was standing outside on the sidewalk, looking up at the windows, knowing that lilacs grew here and that she would buy this house and that for a while they would live here and try to be happy, and, in a way, they were.

During the course of two years Franny collected 120 letters from Haylin, all wrapped in string, kept in the bureau in the dining room. The house on Greenwich Avenue had been sold and divided into offices. A literary agent had taken the rooms on the third floor, and her desk was now in the space where Vincent’s room had been. She was a lovely woman with a beautiful smile who filled up her bookshelves along the wall where his bed had been. For a while the shop was a mystery bookstore and occasionally the owners found red thread and wishbones in unexpected places. The ramshackle greenhouse Vincent had built was pulled down and carted away, but some of the seeds scattered through the neighborhood so that foxgloves and sunflowers grew in the alleys for several seasons. They took the tilted kitchen table that had been in their family house on Eighty-Ninth Street, and they took Edgar, the stuffed heron, whom they kept in the parlor of Aunt Isabelle’s house and decorated every Yule with silver trimmings and gold tinsel.

The sisters settled into the Owens house on Magnolia Street. It felt like home in no time. Franny took Aunt Isabelle’s room, where Lewis, now so aged his feathers had begun to turn white, nested on the bureau. Jet was happy to have the guest room where April Owens had stayed when they refused to share a room with her. The attic, where they’d spent their first summer, was a place for young girls, not for grown women who needed more comfortable beds, so they used it for storage. Harry still slept by the door, waiting for his master, while Wren kept to the garden, where she chased off rabbits and mice.

They had an entire winter in which to restore everything that had been ignored for so long. Charlie came to clear out the gutters, cut back the vines on the porch, and deliver a cord of wood for the fireplace. He said it was grand to see people in the house again.

“I miss your aunt,” he told the sisters. “She was one of a kind for certain.”

On days when the sky was spitting out snow, Jet took possession of the window seat to read from one of her beloved novels. Magic came back to her slowly, like a long-forgotten dream that hovered nearby.

Now that she lived in town, she visited the cemetery every Sunday. She walked no matter the weather. Some children called her the Daffodil Lady, because she always carried a bunch of the blooms. Sometimes the Reverend gave her a ride home, especially if it was raining hard. He was there every Sunday as well. In nice weather he brought two lawn chairs, and when the sky was overcast he brought a large black umbrella.

They didn’t talk very much, although the Reverend noticed that Jet still wore the moonstone ring Levi had given her, and Jet saw that the Reverend kept one of Levi’s swimming medals pinned to his jacket. When they talked, they talked about the weather, as people in Massachusetts often do.

“Cold,” he would say.

And she would agree with a word or two, and then one day she brought mittens she had knitted for him out of soft gray wool. The next time he brought the scarf she had made for Levi, which made her cry. She ducked her head so that the Reverend wouldn’t see, although he could tell all the same. He carried a handkerchief, and gave it to her, and gently said, “This comes in handy.”

In the spring he handed her a new business card he’d had printed. He had gone back to work and was now a justice of the peace. He had already married six couples. He told her that one couple had phoned him in the middle of the night, desperate to marry, so he had performed the service in his living room dressed in his pajamas.

One day he said, “Maybe you should move on with your life.”

Jet was grateful for his kind thought. Years had passed. She still met Rafael in the city several times a year. For a while he saw another woman, and thinking he wanted a family, he was married briefly. But in the end he divorced. His wife didn’t know him the way Jet did. They could talk with each other in a way they couldn’t with anyone else, and so they began to see each other again.

Rafael was the principal of a school in Queens and several times a year they went to the Oak Bar at the Plaza Hotel for old times’ sake. They often spent the night together in his apartment. Once he had suggested marriage, but Jet told him she thought it was a bad idea. It would get in the way of things. The truth was she still worried about the curse; even though she hoped such things could be broken, she didn’t want to chance its ill effects. She thought it best if Rafael was only a dear friend. He agreed to this, even though he was in love with her. He didn’t tell her so, but she knew, just as he knew what her intentions had been that night at the Plaza Hotel. They didn’t need the sight to know how one another felt.

“I’m fine,” she told the Reverend on the day he told her to get on with her life.

And she was. She did not discuss her grief with anyone, but she could share it with the Reverend. But then one Sunday, Jet failed to appear. The Reverend scanned the field, waiting for her to arrive, but she didn’t. It felt strange without her there, not right somehow, so he drove over to Magnolia Street and parked outside the house. He sat there in his idling car, until Franny came outside. The Reverend rolled down his window. He’d never spoken to Franny, he’d only see her walking through town in her black coat, her red hair piled on top of her head. People were afraid of her. They said she was not one to cross. Up close, she was taller than he had expected, and prettier.

“She has pneumonia,” Franny said. “I wouldn’t let her go to the cemetery.”

It was a damp, drizzly day and the Reverend more than understood. He nodded. “Tell her I’ll see her next week.”

“Tell her yourself,” Franny said.

They looked at each other, then the Reverend got out of his car and followed Franny into the house. He noticed that the wisteria was blooming, always the first in town to do so. This was the house that had been built with money his ancestor had given to a woman he had loved, then had called a witch. He wondered how often that had happened both then and now. He carried the burden of his family with him and was weighed down by the wrong they’d done in the world.

The Reverend had arthritis so Franny slowed her usually quick gait. Jet was in the parlor, a blanket around her, drinking tea, reading Sense and Sensibility, which she could happily reread time and again. When she saw the Reverend she was so startled she dropped her book, then quickly bent to retrieve it. She felt fluttery having him in the house, as if something momentous was happening even though everything was so very quiet.

“Sorry to hear you’re not well,” the Reverend said.

“I’ll be better by next week,” Jet said.

“I expect you will be,” the Reverend said. “The weather will be better then, too. So they say.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that, too. No rain.”

“Good,” the Reverend said. He looked around. “The woodwork is nice.”

“Yes. It is. It doesn’t need much care. But I use a little olive oil on the dustcloth every once in a while.”

“Olive oil,” he murmured. “I never would have thought of that.”

“It’s natural. No chemicals,” Jet said.

“I’ll try that sometime,” the Reverend said, even though he hadn’t dusted the woodwork in his house for years.

The next week was sunny and dry, and on Sunday Jet went back to the cemetery. She wore boots and a sweater and woolen slacks. She still had a cough, but she’d had a cup of licorice tea before she left the house that would quiet it. She didn’t want Levi’s father to worry. When he did there was a line across his forehead, the same line that Levi had across his forehead when he was concerned. The Reverend looked relieved when he saw Jet walking across the grass and he waved. Jet thought perhaps she was fine, considering everything that had happened, and that by coming here each week, she had made her own fate. She was a woman a person could depend on, in fair weather and foul.

The sky was very blue and the Reverend said this was because in Massachusetts if you waited a few minutes the weather was sure to change, and she agreed and said that in her experience that had always been true.

On the harshest days of the year Franny could be seen stalking through town on her way to Leech Lake without use of a hat or gloves. She had discovered that the woods circling the lake fell into the pattern of migration of scarlet tanagers. On the grayest days, the nearby bushes were bright red, as if each branch had a heart, and each heart could fly away in an instant. All Franny had to do was hold out her hands, and they came to her. She laughed and fed them seed. She knew they would be far away in no time, to warmer climates near the Mexican border. She herself no longer had the urge to fly away. She was happy to be where she was.

That first winter Franny walked to the library on the day the board convened. There was muffled shock when she arrived. The president of the board shook Franny’s hand and offered her a cup of tea, which she declined. The members of the board didn’t know whether to be flattered or terrified when Franny then stood to announce her intention to serve on the board, and all raised their hands to vote yea to include her.

When Franny’s first request was permission to have the rare book room dedicated to Maria Owens, assuring them that in return she would make a donation to the library, the members of the board were relieved. As that room had been Maria’s jail cell, it was only right that she be remembered here. Pages from Maria’s journal were framed and hung on the wall. Teenage girls, especially those who considered themselves outcasts and were interested in the town’s history of witchcraft, often came to study the pages. They didn’t understand why a brave, independent woman had been so brutally treated. Many of them began to wonder why they themselves often feigned opinions rather than speak their minds, no matter how clever they were, for fear they’d be thought of as difficult. Some of these girls came to stand at the fence so they could gaze into the garden. At dusk, everything looked blue, even the leaves on the lilacs.

When spring came around, and the lilacs bloomed, Franny began to leave blank journals on the bureau in Maria’s room in the library, and every week they were taken home by girls who questioned their worth in the modern world. Walking past Leech Lake, Franny often spied one or two perched on a rock, writing furiously in their journals, clearly convinced that words could save them.

Summer came and with it the sparrow. This time, however, the bird that could bring a year’s worth of bad luck was met by Lewis, who had perched on the dining room mantel. The poor hapless sparrow swiftly flew out the window.

“Good work,” Franny said to the crow.

Despite her flattery, he eyed her with suspicion. They were wary allies who both happened to adore the same person.

“Even if you don’t like me, come have a cookie,” Franny said, for she knew the crow liked anise biscuits and she’d just made some. She had been thinking of various ways for them to earn money. The house had its own trust to support its upkeep, but without the shop, the sisters had no regular employment. Franny had made the rash donation to the library and there was no shop to help them pay the bills. She thought of baking for profit, but it was so time-consuming. Her biscuits were chewy and probably wouldn’t sell, and the ingredients of the tipsy cake were so costly—the bars of chocolate, the extrafine, aged rum—they’d never bring in a cent.

Franny put in an application at the dress shop, but when the owner saw her name, she quickly said the job was filled, a blister already forming on her tongue as she spoke. So much the better, really, as Franny had no interest in clothes and wore the same black dress and red boots, which were mud-caked and in need of new heels. Her rejections continued at the pharmacy and the grocery store. The baker looked positively terrified when she walked in the door. His customers didn’t favor anise, he said, and as for rum in a cake, well that would never do. The shopkeepers did their best to be pleasant enough, though they all had a frantic look in their eyes when she came into their shops, the bells over their doors refusing to ring. She had that effect. She stopped things with her chilly manner.

“It’s really not a job for you,” the bookshop owner had said when she went to ask for a job. “Perhaps your sister?”

Of course people would prefer Jet. She was kinder and much more well mannered, and Franny did look savage with her wild red hair and her threadbare black coat. She had lost weight and was gawky, as she’d been when she was a girl. Even when she dabbed powder on her freckled skin she looked sulky and unkempt. And those boots, well, they gave her away. Red as heartbreak. An Owens woman, through and through.

In the summertime, Franny missed Vincent more than ever. She went to Leech Lake, where she stood on the grassy bank to strip off her clothes, then she waded in to float in the cold, green water. No leeches came near. There were only dragonflies skimming over the surface of the lake.

You know who we are, Vincent had said to her that first summer, and she had, but she hadn’t wanted to admit it. She didn’t want to be condemned because of her family history or be pigeonholed as an Owens. She longed to be free, a bird in the sky over Central Park, unconnected to the fragile world. None of that seemed to matter anymore. In the shallows of the lake, she closed her eyes and floated through the cattails. The water turned jewel-blue once she reached the depths, which were said to be bottomless. There were rumors of ancient fish living in the deepest parts of the lake, creatures that hadn’t been seen for a hundred years, but all Franny saw were frogs in the shallows, and occasionally an eel slipping through the reeds.

One day she noticed some girls watching her. She swam to shore, where she ducked behind some thornbushes and swiftly dressed.

“You’re a good floater,” one of the girls said to her.

“Thanks,” Franny said, wringing out her hair. The water that fell onto the ground was red. The other girls all took off, but one stayed behind. The one who had spoken.

“Is that blood?” the girl now asked.

“Not at all. It’s hair dye.” It was neither, it was simply the way her hair reacted to water, but Franny wasn’t about to explain that to a ten-year-old. She’d never cared for children. She hadn’t much liked herself when she was one.

The other girls had scattered to climb up the rocks.

“That’s dangerous,” Franny called. No one paid attention to her, except for the one girl who was still staring at her. “Not that it’s any of my business,” Franny said brusquely.

“Is it true that you can’t be drowned?” the girl asked.

“Anyone can be drowned. Given the right circumstances.” The girl was plain but had a bright spark of intelligence in her eyes. “Why do you ask?”

“I thought you were a witch.”

“Really?” By now Franny was slipping on her boots. She wore them in every season. Even in summer. They were so much better than shoes for gardening. “Who told you that?”

“Everyone says so.”

“Well, everyone doesn’t know everything,” Franny responded. She sounded crotchety, even to herself. The girl was carrying a backpack. A blue journal peeking out caught Franny’s attention. It was one of the notebooks she’d left in the library. “Are you writing?” she asked.

“Trying to,” the girl said.

“Don’t try, do.” She realized she sounded exactly like Aunt Isabelle when she was irritated. She hadn’t meant to be a wet blanket and had no wish to discourage this clever little girl, so she changed her tone. “But trying is a start. What is your story?”

“My life.”

“Ah.”

“If you write it all down, it doesn’t hurt as much.”

“Yes, I can imagine,” Franny said.

The girl scampered onto the rocks to join her friends. She waved and Franny waved back.

As she walked home Franny thought that the girl at the lake had been perfectly right. It helped to write things down. It ordered your thoughts and if you were lucky revealed feelings you didn’t know you had. That same afternoon Franny wrote a long letter to Haylin. She had never told anyone what her aunt had whispered with her last breath. But now she wrote it down, and when she did she realized it was what she believed, despite the curse.

Love more, her aunt had said. Not less.

Jet remembered how much she had enjoyed puttering in the garden when she began working there again. Everything flourished under her touch. She planted spring onions and mint and cabbages and rue and basil and Spanish garlic. She put in lemon thyme, lemon balm, lemon verbena, foxgloves, and zinnias, making sure to plant rosemary and lavender by the back door, where it had grown when Isabelle was there. The Reverend gave her some of his bulbs so she could grow clutches of daffodils and bring her own flowers to the cemetery on her visits. Some were white with orange centers, some were golden, some were butter yellow. When they bloomed she cried because she knew another year had gone by and it was all happening so fast.

The more dangerous plants were ordered from the Owens farm in Rockport, Maine, and these Jet grew in the greenhouse, still locked with an old iron key. No reason to take a chance that teenagers who could easily mistake wolfsbane for marijuana might manage to get inside and binge on poison. There, behind glass, she kept belladonna; hemlock; nightshade, which could induce visions and was said to be in the ointment that allowed witches to fly; henbane, known as black nightshade, used by men to attract women and by women to bring rain; mandrake, an herb said to scream when plucked from the ground by its roots; thorn apple, used for healing and for breaking hexes, but only in tiny amounts, otherwise death might result.

One day she saw the old rabbit, Maggie, near the greenhouse, hiding from the cat. Franny had come out and they stood there together. It was definitely Maggie, with her black whiskers and sad eyes.

“Let’s set her free,” Jet said.

Franny went over and grabbed the rabbit before it could hop away. “Now what?” she asked.

Jet went to open the gate, and Franny followed.

“She’ll just wind up in someone else’s yard,” Franny said.

“Yes, but it will be her choice.”

Franny put the rabbit down on the sidewalk. For a minute it huddled there, staring at them.

“You’re free,” Franny said, waving her hands. “Go on!”

Maggie took off down the street, running so fast they never saw her again.

“Good riddance,” Franny said.

“Good luck,” Jet called after the creature.

The cat always followed Jet about, but one day Wren disappeared and when she returned home another black cat, soon called Sparrow, followed. After that there was another named Goose, and then yet another enormous long-haired cat, whom they called Crow, since he seemed far more interested in Lewis than he did in the other cats, even though the bird did little more than spend his days drowsing in a sunny spot on the porch. As it turned out, Wren was bringing home cats from an animal shelter on the other side of town, climbing in through a broken window, then leading them to Magnolia Street.

“You’re becoming a cat lady,” Franny observed.

“They chase away the rabbits,” Jet responded.

“Yes,” Franny said with a grin. “But they never catch them. I’ll bet old Harry could. If he wanted to. Which he clearly does not.”

The dog was usually up on the porch with Lewis. Two old creatures who never were pets, and who now needed their food to be mixed with water, which was easier on the digestion. She wondered if the old dog dreamed of Vincent, as she did. She liked to imagine her brother in a village in France, strolling through the dusk with William, past fields and woods. Occasionally his song came on the radio. Jet always turned it off. Vincent’s voice was too painful a reminder for her. But Franny would take the radio into the garden. She loved to listen to Vincent and was glad that people remembered him. Sometimes cards would arrive in the mail, postmarked from Paris. She kept these and tied blue ribbon around the stack she had collected. Only their address was written out, but the message was clear. I’m still here.

The light on the porch was broken. Charlie Merrill had tried his best to fix it, but to no avail. “Circuits are shot,” he said. “It will cost a fortune to rewire. I recommend leaving it be.”

Franny, nervous as ever about money, was quick to agree. So what if their doorway was dark? They certainly didn’t expect visitors. It was fall, their favorite time of the year, and the evenings grew dark at an earlier hour. Jet had visited New York, as she did once a month, keeping her destination to herself, meeting Rafael at the Oak Bar. He was by far her oldest and best friend.

“You look different,” he had told her the last time she saw him. “Happy.”

Indeed, Jet had the feeling something was about to happen. And then one day when she was collecting the last of the rosemary that grew beside the door, thinking about Aunt Isabelle’s clients who often arrived at this hour, the porch light switched on.

Jet stood up, holding the rosemary. It was wilted brown, but as she watched, it became green in her hands. Her gray eyes rimmed with tears. What she had lost had returned. When two girls passed by the fence she knew what they were thinking, although she was too well mannered to ever tell.

She had the sight once more.

It was Samhain, the last day in October, when doors between worlds are open and impossible things are accomplished.

She began to work from Isabelle’s Grimoire, starting with the easy recipes: chamomile for blessing, hyssop and holly to dispel negative energy, and after a few weeks she progressed to one of the most complex spells, the dove’s heart love charm. She went to the butcher’s for the heart, and afterward there was all sorts of chatter on Main Street. People peered out their windows as she walked home with a bloody paper bag. She was to prick the heart she had carefully prepared for a client who was to say, My lover’s heart will feel this pin and his devotion I will win. There’ll be no way for him to rest nor sleep, until he comes to me to speak. Only when he loves me best will he find peace and with peace rest.

That night the porch light was on.

No trick-or-treaters ever came to the Owens house on Halloween. They were warned away by their parents and by tradition. But there were other people who were desperate to walk through the gate. The first woman came at dusk, knocking tentatively at the door.

“It’s probably someone trying to sell us something,” Franny said. “Ignore it.”

All the same, Jet opened the door. There was the woman who had bought Mrs. Russell’s house, the one Franny had run into years back when Isabelle had fallen ill.

“What on earth are you doing here?” Franny wanted to know.

“Your light was on.” The woman was unsure as to whether she should cross the threshold or back away. “I know what that means.”

Franny tossed her sister a dark look. Still Jet motioned to their neighbor, who after a glance around, proceeded to enter the kitchen.

“I suppose she wants something,” Franny groused.

“Everyone wants something,” Jet responded. “Even you.”

“It’s about my husband,” the woman said.

“Oh, God, not this again.” Franny groaned.

“What about him?” Jet had already put the kettle up for tea.

Their neighbor began to cry. Her husband was unfaithful, and it was tearing their family apart. It was then Franny realized that the girl she had met at the lake with the blue notebook was this woman’s daughter. Franny now wondered if that was why the girl had asked if she was a witch, if she’d been in search of a spell to set things right in her family. Perhaps she’d been the one to suggest her mother come to them.

“I may be able to help you,” Jet said.

“Really?” Franny said to Jet. “Are we going to do this?”

“Go to the refrigerator,” Jet told her sister. “It’s on the second shelf.”

For once Franny did as she was told. When she spied the dove’s heart on a blue willowware plate she laughed out loud. Here it was, their future and their fate. She had often found such unsavory items in the pantry or in the fridge where their aunt had stored away the more questionable ingredients. It might also be a way for them to survive their dismal financial state.

Franny turned to her sister, who was pouring cups of chamomile tea, good for the nerves. “Remember,” she told her sister. “There’s a charge for these things.”

“I’ll pay anything,” their neighbor told them.

Franny brightened then. Perhaps this wasn’t a completely worthless endeavor.

Jet went to the cabinet. There was the jar of engagement rings they’d forgotten all about. “Do you have one of these?”

The neighbor slipped off her diamond ring and handed it over.

“All right,” Jet said. “Let’s begin.”

When Haylin was wounded he was posted in a makeshift hospital in the delta, where the air was so hot it turned liquid. He had been there so long he no longer counted days. He no longer counted patients. One man after another was injured, some so dreadfully he would go outside and throw up into the dense greenery after he cared for them. When he himself was injured, he felt nothing at first. Only a rush of cold air, as if the wind had cut through him, and then the heat of his blood. He was immediately airlifted to the hospital in Frankfurt where he had previously worked, and, after surgery and intensive rehab, he was transferred to the American Hospital in Paris, on the Boulevard Victor Hugo. His father had insisted he be sent to the best private hospital in Europe, and the navy had relented. It no longer mattered; Hay was done with his service. He had read all of Franny’s letters, three times over, but he didn’t wish to upset her by informing her of the magnitude of his medical situation. Instead he called the last person anyone would have expected him to contact. His father. Later Franny would always say, “So if you had died your father would have been the one to contact me?” And he would always answer, “I wasn’t ready to die.”

Months had passed and she hadn’t heard from him. She was dizzy with worry, writing on a daily basis to the navy. She called and got no information. She phoned the Walker residence and was told there was no one there who wished to speak to her. Well, that was nothing new.

At last, Haylin wrote.

This is one thing I didn’t wish to share with you. The human body is so fragile, but more and more I think the soul has real possibilities.

She flew to Paris immediately and took a room at a small hotel near the hospital. She didn’t even take note of the name of the place. She left her suitcase and quickly showered and changed. She’d packed real clothes, not the raggedy stuff she usually wore. A Dior suit that had belonged to her mother. A pair of black heels. A purse her parents had given her one Christmas, purchased at Saks, which she had never before used. She didn’t intend to spend much time at her hotel, perhaps not even to sleep. It was merely a place to leave her suitcase.

At the hospital, the nurses were very kind, too kind. She had been alarmed, and now her worry intensified. People spoke in hushed voices, and although Franny had excelled at the French language at school, everyone talked too fast for her to follow. They spoke to her in English then, slowly, as if she were a child. She was told she must see the doctor before she could see Haylin and was brought to a well-appointed office. She was offered a coffee, and then a drink, both of which she rejected.

“There’s really no need for this,” she said, pacing the room. Then the doctor arrived and she saw his expression and she understood the news wasn’t good. She sat down and kept quiet.

The unit where Haylin had been posted could not be called a hospital; it was a surgical tent. It was hidden by greenery, but on windy days it was possible to see their location and there was a wind when it happened. During times of war, no one is immune, the doctor told her, not even those who are there to heal the wounded. When the medical tent was bombed, Dr. Walker had thrown himself across the patient he was working on. He did so without thinking, because it was in his nature, because he had always thought of others before himself. And so it had come to pass that he was the injured party.

“He’s lost a leg,” the doctor told her.

Franny made him repeat himself so she could be sure she hadn’t imagined what he’d said. And there were burns, he informed her, now not as severe.

She stood then and thanked the doctor for his time and asked if he could excuse her for a moment. She went into the hall, where she turned to the wall and sobbed. She felt a rushing in her ears, as if she had lost her hearing, as if the doctor had never said anything to her, as if none of it had happened. A nurse pulled her into a washroom so she could dash water on her face and compose herself. When she had, Franny reached into her purse for a comb and tidied her unruly hair, which the nurse pinned up so that it chicly framed her face. It was barely possible to see that she had broken down.

“Much better,” the nurse said. “Let’s not upset Dr. Walker. He doesn’t like anyone to fuss. When you visit, you’ll be calm.”

Franny nodded and was taken upstairs. Hay had a private room overlooking the leafy street. His father had spared no expense and made sure there was always a private nurse on duty. Her name was Pauline and she was quite beautiful. When Franny shook the nurse’s hand she was terribly jealous that this stranger had been here to watch over Hay and care for him so intimately while she, herself, had been clueless, worrying about the library and the garden and all manner of frivolous things.

Hay was usually in constant motion, always at work in some way, so it was a shock to see him trapped in bed. Franny was reminded of the time she went to Cambridge to visit him at Mass General and Emily Flood came in, beautiful and young and windblown, there to ruin Franny’s plan to win him back. She had had the same lump in her throat then, the same tumble into fear. She could not lose him now. It was unthinkable, for how could anything happen to Haylin, who was so confident and sure of himself and of the world?

“There you are,” he said, his face breaking into a grin when he saw her. He reached for her and she went to take his hand. She leaned to kiss him, then drew back and said, “Is this okay?”

He pulled her to him and growled, “This is the most okay thing that’s happened in eighteen months.”

When the nurse found them in bed, Franny was made to wait in the hall while Haylin was bathed. She was jealous yet again. But he was still Haylin, and still hers, no matter what had happened. All the same, he refused to talk about the bombing to her or anyone else. He had seen too much as a doctor to ask for pity or even compassion. He would be in France for some time, to be fitted with a prosthetic leg and learn how to deal with his medical reality and care for himself.

“Good thing I’m a doctor,” he said.

He had no need to tell her what had happened. She had the sight. She saw everything in his eyes, the grief and horror he had seen. She saw that he was still worried over patients he had known, men he’d worked on, but never saw again, whose fates he would never know. Franny had been so worried about Vincent serving in Vietnam, but had always imagined Haylin would be safe, especially if she stayed away from him.

He saw her regret and said, “This is not the curse. This is fucking war, Franny. This is what happens to people.”

She stayed late that first day, until at last the staff asked her to leave and return in the morning. She had not eaten and went to a café where she cried as she ate, but it was Paris, and no one seemed to notice. She wished that Vincent were with her; he was the one who had always best understood her. She was not as tough as she seemed. She wished she could speak with her brother. As she had no idea where he was, she went to the place where she had last had a glimpse of him and William. She took a taxi to the cemetery, but found it was closed for the evening.

“You can climb over the far wall,” the taxi driver told her. “Everyone does. There’s a stepladder to help you. Run if you see the guard.”

And so she entered the cemetery after hours. Inside it wasn’t as dark as she expected. There was a moon, and lamplight. She took note of some shadowy figures. Not grave robbers, but fans, there to pay homage at Jim Morrison’s grave. They had left flowers and candles. She asked the group if they knew the way to Vincent Owens’s grave. One of the girls, an American who wore a torn T-shirt, said, “Who?” and the young man with her said, “You know the guy. ‘I Walk at Night.’ ”

He then turned to Franny with a map he allowed her to use. After she found Vincent’s grave listed she made her way to it, past Marcel Proust’s grave site; past the site of Adolphe Thiers, the prime minister under King Louis-Philippe whose nineteenth-century ghost was rumored to tug on visitors’ clothing if they came close; past the lipstick-kiss-covered grave of Oscar Wilde.

There at last was Vincent’s headstone. Agnes Durant had ordered it, since Franny and Jet had been too distressed to do so at the time. It was very stark and beautiful. A white stone with his name and the dates of his birth and death. Franny leaned down and kissed the stone. She stayed until it was pitch dark. Perhaps she thought if she waited long enough he would manage to find her. But the place was deserted, and at last she went back to where the taxi was waiting. Vincent had always known his life would end young, but she was thankful that somewhere a new one had begun. She asked to return to the hospital. She would sleep in a chair in the lounge until visiting hours began.

She had become jealous of Paris. Haylin had fallen in love with the hospital. Every day that he was stronger he seemed more at home. He had begun to meet with the doctors not just about his own case but also to discuss the histories of other patients. He’d been an excellent surgeon and would be again. Rather than stand during an operation, he could sit in a chair that rose up so there would not be pressure on his good leg.

On days when Hay was busy, Franny walked through the city. She liked to go to the café in the Tuileries, a place Madame Durant had told her Vincent had frequented, and to the Ile de la Cité, where she sat on a wall near the cathedral so she might watch the river, and to the garden of the Rodin Museum, where the budding roses were impossibly large. One day she found herself in the Place Vendôme. She had been following a crow, aimless, with no particular destination in mind, until the bird had led her here.

She went into the Ritz and asked if she might use the telephone. Allowed to do so, she called Madame Durant, who lived around the corner, on the Boulevard de la Madeleine. She was invited to tea. Just a short visit, that was all that could be managed, for Madame was preoccupied with plans to leave the city for her country house. The housekeeper was waiting at the door, poised to show her in. It was a very beautiful tall house, covered with vines. The shutters were painted black, but the light was so glorious who would ever want to try to shut it out?

“Well, here you are,” Madame Durant said, kissing Franny lightly. “What a surprise.”

But the truth was, she knew Franny would arrive someday. It was difficult to keep the truth from someone with the sight. Every once in a while Franny thought she could see Vincent in a field of yellow flowers. Now, she and Madame Durant sat by the window at a marble table. The light fell through the room in bright bands, illuminating some things, and leaving other items in the dark. The furniture was upholstered in apricot silk and the walls were fabric, gold brocade. The woodwork was all painted a pale blue that might have been white, but wasn’t. Franny thought her mother would have loved the room.

“We were roommates during her time here. We had a small apartment that we adored. But Susanna thought everything was beautiful,” Agnes said. “When she was in love.”

“Yes, the man she ruined.”

“She didn’t ruin him, dear. He drowned. They were on a sailboat and she, being one of us, couldn’t save him because she could not dive underwater. She tried. She was hospitalized after because of the cold. But it did no good.”

Franny was stunned by the idea that she and her mother were so alike. She remembered waking from a deep sleep as a child to find her mother sitting in a chair by her bed, watching over her.

“She was crushed, but she went on with her life in New York. When she gave birth to you she wrote me a long letter about how perfect you were.”

“You must be mistaken,” Franny said. “I was her problem child.”

“Oh, no. With your red hair and your curiosity you were perfect to her. She said she knew you would grow up to be a beauty and to be difficult. Which I see has come to be true.”

“Difficult, yes,” Franny said, embarrassed not to have known anything about her mother’s true feelings.

“Well, we can’t really know our parents, can we?” Agnes said, reading her thoughts. “Even for those with the sight, parents are unfathomable creatures.”

After the maid came in with tea in bone china cups, Franny took note of a photograph of Vincent on the mantel. He was wearing a white shirt, sitting under a striped umbrella, the blue sky behind him.

“When was that taken?” she asked.

“When he first arrived in Paris. We met in the park.”

“He was here in autumn. That looks like the height of summer.”

Madame changed the subject to more current issues. They spoke a little of Haylin and his interest in the hospital. Then Madame glanced at her watch. Her car had arrived. It was time to go. Madame Durant walked Franny to the door.

“Can I not see him? Or know where he is?” Franny asked.

“It’s best to let go,” she told Franny. “That way he stays safe. In truth it is easier to let your old life disappear in order to start anew. And there’s the matter of the curse. Now it can’t find him either. He has a new name and a new life. Therefore love is possible.”

They were at the door when something overtook Franny and she simply couldn’t leave. Without a word to her hostess, she turned and took the staircase to the second floor. The carpet was plush, cream-colored. The walls were a lacquered red. Off the hallway was a bedroom, and then a sitting room, and then a plush bath tiled with marble. The last door in the hallway was closed. Franny hastily pushed it open, her heart thudding. The room, however, was empty.

“Please, Franny, I have to leave,” Madame Durant called from the front hall.

And then Franny saw it. A guitar, propped up against the bookcase.

Madame came up the stairs after Franny. They met in the hallway. She wasn’t young, and chasing after Franny was an effort. “My car is here.”

“To take you to the country?”

“Yes.”

The yellow flowers. When Franny concentrated she could see two men walking in the pale sunlight. “Is that where he is? And William?”

Madame shrugged. “What do you want me to say? He is not here. You’ve looked for yourself. He’ll never go back, Franny. You must know that.”

“That is his guitar, isn’t it?” Franny asked.

Madame looked at Franny and Franny could see it was true.

“Do they stay here when in Paris?” she asked.

“Occasionally. Paris wouldn’t have suited Vincent in the long run. There are fields of sunflowers out in the country. It’s beautiful and peaceful. And, you must understand, Franny, he’s safe.”

“Considering who he is?” Franny said.

“Considering what the world is like.”

Franny took a taxi to her hotel and sat looking out the window of her room, watching the darkness fall. She felt Vincent’s presence in the world, in the beauty of the evening and in the sunflowers Madame Durant had had sent over in a glass vase. That was the message, that bouquet, the most Madame would tell her.

Franny telephoned Mr. Grant at his home in Sag Harbor. It was early in the morning, but he was glad to hear from her.

“They live in the countryside,” she said.

“That would be William to live someplace that reminded him of home. Do you still get the postcards?” he asked.

“Yes,” Franny said.

“They’re happy,” Mr. Grant said. “So we must be happy for them, dear girl.”

They made plans for Franny to visit Sag Harbor. She would bring Jet and they would sit on the porch and have lunch and look out at the sea and the island William used to row toward even in high seas. She had been in Paris six weeks. Soon it would turn cold and the paths where Franny liked to walk would be covered with ice. In the countryside the sunflowers would be cut down and their stalks would turn brown. Birds in the hedges would rise, twittering, to fly over the meadows in the last of the daylight.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Let’s be happy.”

Now when Franny came to see Haylin he was no longer in his bed or at physical therapy, but in consultations. The nurses shrugged. A doctor was a doctor, they said. A man’s situation might change, but the man himself never did. Such was Haylin’s character. He was more interested in the well-being of others than he was in himself.

One day she took him to the Tuileries on an outing from the hospital. He struggled with his walking at first, and called himself a damned peg leg, but by the time they reached a café, he had caught a second wind and his stride was fine. His French was impeccable, hers merely good, so Franny let him order for her. They had white wine and salads with goat cheese and everything was cold and delicious. He spoke about a surgery that had been very successful earlier that day. A sergeant who had taken a bullet to the spine. It was a delicate operation, one Hay excelled at, so the patient had been sent from Germany so that Hay might supervise. He was taking measures to get his French medical license so he would be able do the surgeries himself. He was excited to be helping servicemen who had lost limbs, as he had. He thought he would use some of his father’s money to bring these patients here to France to be treated. He lit up when he spoke of his work, and Franny recalled the way he would speak about science when they were young, the way a lover might speak of his beloved.

He poured more wine. It was a perfect afternoon, one Franny would think about often. He would be in the hospital another six months.

“Just promise me you won’t fall in love with anyone else when I go,” Franny said. “That’s all I’m asking. You can take them home, do whatever you want, sleep with whomever you want, just don’t fall in love.”

“I never would.”

“What about Emily Flood?”

“Emily who?”

They laughed and finished their drinks. “What about the nurse?”

Haylin gave her a look.

“Aha.” Franny made a face. “She’s your type.”

“You’re my type,” Haylin said. He took her hand and brought it to his mouth so he might kiss her. “You’re leaving, aren’t you? Why? Because you think it’s safer for me if we’re apart? After everything that’s happened to me do you think I give a damn about being safe? I’m coming back to wherever you are.”

He refused to listen to any arguments against his plan. They walked back to the Rue de Rivoli, where they found a taxi. It was still difficult for Haylin to shift his leg into a car. “I’ll get better at this,” he vowed. Once inside the taxi, Haylin drew her to him so that she was on his lap. The driver didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention, no matter how heated their kisses became. “We’ll outwit the curse,” he told her. “Wait and see.”

Franny liked to sit in the yard wearing her black coat and her old red boots no matter the weather. These days she kept to a schedule. Every morning, she wrote a long letter to Haylin. She ate the same diet, noodles and apple tart for dessert, or beans and toast and soup. Simple, practical things. She loved the garden: the bats flickering over the pine trees as they devoured insects, the frogs that came to sing in the spring. On most evenings, women arrived, in search of remedies. But tonight was different. She spied a girl standing inside the gate.

Nearly everyone in town was too afraid to walk into the yard. Even the ones who came to the back porch to knock on the door felt they were taking a risk. They remembered the boys who had been struck by lightning and the stories their grandparents told about the women who could turn a hair into a snake and call birds to them and change the weather if they had a mind to. People still crossed the street when they saw the sisters coming, and at the library no one dared to defy Franny when she made suggestions. The grocery boy who made deliveries wouldn’t set foot in the kitchen even when offered a ten-dollar tip. But here was a girl, utterly unafraid, staring at Franny.

She thought it was her neighbor’s child at first, the one who was writing her life story in a blue notebook, but as the girl came closer Franny recognized her. It appeared to be Regina Owens. Franny still had the drawing of the black dog and the cat. It hung in the kitchen in its original frame. The girl resembled Vincent, with her long black hair and her confidence. She had bloomed and was a true beauty, but then she would be, considering who her parents were.

“You’re in California,” Franny said. “You can’t be here.”

The girl gazed at her and Franny was reminded of the time when she saw Isabelle on the window seat, or the essence of Isabelle at any rate, when their aunt was actually up in her bed. It was a spirit that had come before her, a wisp composed of thought rather than deed.

“My mother will be bitten by a spider. I’ll run away with the man I’ll marry. You should have told me to stay away from love. Not that I would have listened.”

“Well, why don’t you listen now?” Franny asked.

“Because I’m not here, silly. Remember one day you must do as you promised. And then you’ll get a big surprise.”

“Really? What’s that?”

The image of Regina had already begun to fade into transparency. It was possible to see right through her to the leaves of the lilacs.

“Wait,” Franny called.

Regina shook her head and smiled and then there were only the lilacs in the garden, no girl at all.

That night Franny phoned April in California.

“I wondered if you were ever going to call me,” April said. “I read about Vincent in the newspaper, and then Jet called me to tell me he was still alive.”

“Did she?”

April laughed. “He was always too alive. Anyway, I knew. He sent Regina a record player of all things. And she always gets a box of her favorite cookies from Paris on her birthday. No note. But it’s him.”

“Were you bitten by a spider?” Franny asked.

“Are you mad? I don’t even work with spiders anymore.”

“And how is Regina?” Franny wanted to know.

“She’s fine. What’s all this about?”

“I had a vision, I suppose. Regina was beautiful. She looked like him.”

“She does,” April said sadly. For all this time she had never been in love with anyone else. “It could have been different.”

“No,” Franny said. “We were who we were. No more, no less.”

“He told me we could depend on you.”

“Of course.” Talking to April now, Franny wondered why they hadn’t been friends all along. Perhaps they were too much alike. Headstrong, willing to do anything for Vincent, refusing to accept certain aspects of their upbringing and their fate. She looked out the window and saw a fleck of white in the garden. A single rose bloomed.

Dusk was falling. Vincent always said it was the best time of the day. Half in one world, half in another.

“Always,” Franny said.

Haylin came back the following year. He rented a small house near the town green, saying the curse would never be able to figure out where he was, since he slept there on some nights and at Magnolia Street on others. Whenever he came for dinner, he would ask for a salad, since their garden was so marvelous, and of course Franny always obliged. They went out together at dusk. It always smelled the same here, the green scent of weeds, and lilacs, and rosemary. They had several rows of lettuce, the best in the commonwealth. Butterhead, red leaf, Boston, looseleaf, curly oak leaf, Red Riding Hood, escarole. They were both reminded of the evenings when they would meet in the park, when they were sixteen. In all that time Franny had never loved anyone else. He’d kept his promise and she’d kept hers. They pretended that they meant nothing to each other to keep the curse at bay, but everybody knew the doctor had come here for her.

Hay’s favorite season was August. He and Franny always swam in Leech Lake, and he never drowned and Franny never had to rescue him. They didn’t wear bathing suits, though he had that leg he had to unhook before hopping in, which could make for precarious going over the flat rocks. All the same, they swam on a daily basis even though half the town knew and was scandalized. People avoided the place and privately called it Lovers Lake and rumors grew up around it. A dip in the water could bring the man or woman who’d broken your heart back to you, and some women took to wearing vials of lake water around their necks on a string to ward off evil and bring luck to their families.

For several years Hay commuted to Boston, where he was on the orthopedic surgery team at Mass General, the hospital where he was treated when he was a student. He continued to be on staff and often consulted, but he decided to open a practice, setting up the first floor of his house as an office and hiring a nurse and an assistant, local women Jet had suggested, as they were clients of hers and in need of jobs. Haylin was the only doctor in town, which was a blessing to everyone. When a child was sick he always made himself available to make a house call. He impressed everyone with his pet crow, and he let well-behaved children feed it a cracker or give it a pat on its gleaming head.

“Shall I tell you a story about a rabbit?” the doctor would say, and the children would always say yes because they all knew the story by heart. It was the one about a rabbit who had once been a witch. They knew that a witch must never deny who she is, and that no matter what happens it’s always best to be true to oneself. Hay also gave out lollipops, which the children liked, especially when they had scratchy throats, and black bars of soap for their mothers, which were very much appreciated.

Folks often saw Dr. Walker leaving the house on Magnolia Street early in the morning, whistling, followed by that old dog of theirs, which had taken a liking to him. Frankly, people wondered what a wonderful man like Haylin Walker was doing associating with the Owens sisters, he was so kindhearted after all. He knew everyone’s name, and all of their ailments, and when walking with Franny to the library for board meetings he reminded his patients to stop eating salt and take their medications. At night he came up to Franny’s room. After she undressed he sometimes brushed her hair. He said there had never been a more beautiful color on earth, or a more beautiful woman, even though she knew that if that had ever been true, it wasn’t anymore, except to him. She always wanted him in her bed, even though he was so tall and took up so much room. Even after all this time, when he kissed her everything left her mind except for the moment in time they were in, and the heat went through her, slowly, and she fell for him all over again, as if it were the first time.

Hay was still a whirlwind, working all hours, though Franny did her best to slow him down. With every step they took time was passing, spring was ending, summer was gone, ice was covering the windowpanes. Vincent’s old dog passed away, the vines grew taller, Haylin’s young patients grew up and began to bring their own children to him. Before they knew it, twenty years had gone by. They didn’t know how time had moved so quickly, but these were, by far, the best twenty years of their lives. For all that time they had managed to avoid the curse, meeting at midnight, then sneaking into each other’s beds, saying their good-byes at dawn.

“The curse will never find us,” Hay always said.

“Is that possible?” Franny would then ask.

“Isn’t that what we’ve done? We’re here together, darling.”

“You two are like teenagers,” Jet teased them when she came upon them kissing in the parlor or the kitchen.

“But aren’t we still?” Hay said with a grin.

“Oh, yes,” Franny said. “And you’re still refusing to eat a tomato sandwich.”

“And you’re still difficult.”

There was that grin, so how could she be annoyed? Still, she protested. “I was never difficult.”

“No,” Hay said, linking his arms around her, pulling her near. “Never once.”

As most doctors do, Haylin diagnosed himself. He had cancer and he knew enough to know it was too late. He conferred with an old friend at Mass General, a specialist in oncology and hematology, but he already knew what the advice would be. Live now.

He told Franny at the lake, where she wept in his arms. Still, he insisted there was always some good to come out of every circumstance. Now the curse could not touch him. They’d held it off with trickery. He was dying and nothing more could bring him to ruin. They could finally be husband and wife. It was too late for many things, but it was not too late for that. Jet had been right. Whenever they looked at each other they saw the people they had first fallen in love with. She was a gawky, beautiful freckled girl with long red hair who liked tomato sandwiches for lunch and had shivered when he first kissed her. He was a tall boy who cared more about other people than about himself, one who had almost died of appendicitis at Harvard and who had refused to stop loving her, no matter what fate decreed.

That same afternoon when he told her he was dying, he went out and bought her an engagement ring, an emerald, which some people say is much preferable to a diamond, for it causes love to last. In certain lights it was the gray-green of her eyes, and in full sun it reminded her of the garden, a deep, lush green.

Haylin went to Jet for her permission to ask Reverend Willard if he would officiate at the service. Jet telephoned the Reverend, who said he would be honored to do so. Haylin then went over to his house and the men drank glasses of whiskey. The Reverend said he liked to get to know the people he would be marrying; it was more personal that way.

“We’ve been together since we were kids, sometimes more so and sometimes less so,” Haylin told him.

The Reverend congratulated Dr. Walker and said he was a lucky man. Franny was waiting for him at home. He walked so slowly now, it broke her heart to see it, but she waved and rushed out to meet him. She worried that the Reverend had changed his mind, and that Hay would be disappointed, but instead the men had wound up having several drinks.

“I told him it was the end of the curse,” Haylin assured Franny. “At least for us. If we’re choosing anything, let’s choose love.”

On the day the doctor married Frances Owens the whole town came out to stand on the sidewalk and watch through the window of town hall, moved by the power of love. Some of the children had never even seen a member of the Owens family, for they weren’t allowed to walk down Magnolia Street, and they wondered now why their parents had always been nervous about the tall lady with red hair. The Reverend wore his old black coat and his thin black tie. He had aged greatly, and was now quite stooped. His arthritis made it difficult for him to drive, so on Sundays, Jet often picked him up in the station wagon she and Franny had bought and she would drive the Reverend to the cemetery. They usually brought plastic lawn chairs so they might stay awhile, especially in fair weather. When the daffodils were blooming they brought armfuls along. They remembered Levi better than anyone, and because of this they often didn’t need to speak. Jet still wore the moonstone. She had never once taken it off, not even to bathe.

As the wedding service was about to begin, the Reverend nodded to Jet, who was the maid of honor, dressed in a pale green shift. She nodded back, and in that quiet way they shared the grief the feud between their families had caused as well as the joy of the day.

Unable are the Loved to die, for Love is Immortality, the Reverend quoted when he ended the service, a blessing not only for the husband and wife but for Jet as well, who understood his meaning in his choice of Emily Dickinson. Levi would always be with them.

When the happy couple walked out of town hall there were wild cheers. Franny hadn’t even known there were so many people in their town. She hunched down, unused to all the attention. The doctor’s patients threw rice and the children’s chorus from the elementary school sang “All You Need Is Love.” Franny carried a bunch of long-stemmed red roses. Hay was slowed down a bit by the problems with his leg and by the pain he was suffering, but he grinned and waved as if he had won a race, his arm around his bride, who was crying too much, right there in public, to notice much of anything other than how crowded the street was on this day. Even people who had always disliked the Owenses, and blamed them for every misfortune in town, had to agree that Frances Owens made a beautiful bride, even at her age, even though she dressed in black.

Dr. Walker moved into the old house, for he had no fear of curses, just of the pains and suffering of real life, and anyone could tell he was happy. People would see him watering the garden. He weeded between the rows of lettuce while singing to himself. He had to close down his office, but he’d talked a young doctor from Boston into taking over his practice, which was fortunate for him and even more fortunate for the town. These days Haylin wanted to spend as much time as he could with Franny, who liked to tease him about his new gardening mania. He’d put out a wooden box just inside the fence, filled it with lettuce, and urged their neighbors to take as much as they’d like.

“The best lettuce in the commonwealth, if we can keep the rabbits away,” he told people passing by.

“They’re never going to walk through the gate,” Franny insisted.

And then the oddest thing happened, they did. His patients and her neighbors all came past the gate, and although some appeared to be nervous, they gratefully took the lettuce, heads of all varieties, each so good that people who made salads of the stuff dreamed of rabbits and of their own childhood gardens.

Charlie Merrill was now deceased, so Franny had asked his sons to bring over a bench so Hay could sit and rest out on the porch, which he had begun to do. He had slowed down, but not completely. He let Jet water the garden now and Franny weed, but all that summer he set out lettuce for his friends and patients.

“Aren’t I lucky,” he said one evening when he and Franny were sitting on the bench holding hands, watching the dusk sift down. Hay remembered walking through Central Park, lying on the grass looking at stars, swimming in the cold pond just before he went away. He remembered Franny with her red hair pinned up haphazardly lying on the floor with him in the cook’s room at her parents’ house, naked and beautiful.

He tried not to take painkillers because he didn’t want to spend any of his time with Franny in a haze. “I might have drowned long ago, and then we wouldn’t have had all of this.”

Franny had no idea how it was possible to love him more, but she did. She thought perhaps that was the curse, to love someone so much when you knew he would leave you. But Hay was right.

“We are lucky,” she said.

“It was all because of third grade. When you walked into the classroom in a black coat, looking pissed off.”

Franny laughed. “I was not pissed off.” She looked at him. “Was I?”

“You most certainly were. Until I sat next to you.”

Haylin grinned, which undid her, as always. She leaned her head against his chest and wondered how on earth she could ever let him go.

“Was it fate?” she asked.

“Do we care?” he answered.

The truth was, they had managed to get what they wanted. It just wasn’t lasting long enough, not that it ever could. When he passed, the doctor was sitting on the porch on an autumn night. The lilacs were blooming out of season. There were so many stars in the sky it was impossible to count them all. They had turned off the light on the back porch, the better to see the swirling show above them.

Oh, how beautiful was the last thing he said.

There was no warning when it happened, and no pain, he just was there one moment and then he was gone. Franny sat outside with him all night. She was so cold in the morning that Jet brought her a pair of gloves. Charlie’s sons took him to the funeral parlor in their new truck, with Franny insisting she go. She sat in the bed of the pickup with the doctor, who had been covered by a woolen blanket. She did not notice what roads they took or that the sky was piercingly blue. They made sure he was dressed in a black suit, with no shoes on, for that was the way people were buried in their family, in a plain pine coffin. Franny sat in the funeral parlor all night. Near midnight Jet came with a thermos of tea and a blanket for her sister and they sat together, not speaking, but holding hands, as they had when they were girls sitting on the roof that first summer they visited Aunt Isabelle’s house, wondering where life would lead them.

The Walkers did not argue or protest Haylin’s final resting place in the Owens cemetery. They were all buried in Bedford, New York, but they understood his place was not with them. His family came up to Massachusetts in three long, black cars. The Reverend performed the service. It was brief, and allowed time for patients and friends to stand up and say their piece or give a blessing. The youngest speaker was nine. Dr. Walker had cared for him when he had appendicitis, and the speaker, who had been bought his first suit for the occasion, wanted to say that he had decided to become a doctor because of Dr. Walker.

Mr. Walker was old by then, and he had lost his only son. His wife had been gone for some time. Even though he was rich and had a new wife, even though Haylin had spent a lifetime quarreling with him, Mr. Walker was bereft. Franny made sure Haylin’s father sat next to her, with Jet on his other side.

“It was always you,” he said to Franny. “That sort of thing doesn’t happen very often. It was never going to be Emily Flood. Even I knew that.”

Love of my life, Franny thought.

The day Haylin was buried was beautiful and clear. The crow was in the tree, old Lewis, who was going blind, his eyes filmy and white. Seeing him broke Franny’s heart. The bird cried, even though crows are said not to have tear ducts. Afterward Franny called Lewis to her and she carried him home, where she wrapped him in a blanket, for he coughed and fretted. He died the following day and one of the Merrill boys buried him behind the shed. He had never belonged to Franny, and had always preferred Haylin, and she’d never once blamed him for that.

Franny stayed out on the porch for seven nights. The vines began to grow over the bench where Haylin liked to sit. They grew and grew until passersby could no longer see Franny Owens in mourning. The bin where Dr. Walker had offered lettuce to passersby was empty. Children asked for him when the new doctor in town made a house call. They wanted the story about the rabbit and the kind, tall man who had lollipops in his pockets.

People in town pitied Frances Owens her grief, and many felt bereaved themselves by the loss of such a good man. They brought casseroles and salads, pies and cakes, all of which Jet accepted gratefully. But Franny did not try a bite and she left it to her sister to send thank-you cards. People in town had lost a doctor and a friend, she had lost her life. She looked at the trees and they grew taller, and the vines covered the fence and the gate, and people stayed away, the way they used to, before Haylin Walker came to town.

For seven days Franny Owens did not brush her hair or wash her face or have a meal. The birds in the thickets came to nest in the vines, but she couldn’t even hear them sing and they wouldn’t come to her when she held out her hands. She had lost some of who she was when she lost her beloved. Though Jet had draped sheets over the furniture and drawn all of the curtains, Franny couldn’t bear to go inside and leave the place where she had last been with her husband. The man Haylin had been lingered in the dark. All she wanted was to hold his hand. To see the way he smiled at her. She saw bits and pieces of him out of the corner of her eye, or maybe it was the fireflies. He was a man of integrity, a man of honor, the boy who had chained himself up in the school cafeteria for the rights of others, the doctor who kept lollipops and bars of soap in his pockets, who had helped five hundred men learn how to walk, who had known how to make her shiver with a kiss when she was a seventeen-year-old girl. She had loved one person in her lifetime, and for that she would always be grateful.

On the eighth night she came inside and got into bed beside Jet. She was shivering and still wearing her coat. Haylin was gone and there was nothing she could do about it.

“How will I ever love anyone again?” she said to her sister.

That was when the telephone rang.