Her Loving Husband's Curse (21 page)

Jennifer came out from her office and sat in the swivel chair beside Sarah. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Your witch’s intuition,” Sarah said. “When I first met you I always wondered how you knew what I needed before I knew I needed it.”

“My mother is better at it than I am.”

“I know.”

Jennifer followed Sarah’s gaze across the empty room. “Feeling nostalgic?” she asked.

Sarah nodded. “This library has been the center of my life as long as I’ve lived here.”

“Now the center of your life is in your home with your husband and daughter.”

Sarah felt the deep-seeded joy flush her cheeks hot. “Yes,” she said. But the joy fled and left her cold at the thought of what was happening in the world outside. “What’s going to happen, Jennifer? How is this going to end?”

Jennifer looked away, and for a flicker Sarah thought she saw fear in her friend’s hazel eyes.

“What is it?” Sarah asked. “What do you know?”

Jennifer shook her head. “I don’t know anything, Sarah. I’m as worried as you are.”

“Did Chandresh tell you something?”

“Chandresh hasn’t told me a thing. He’s as close-mouthed as your husband. Come on, Mrs. Wentworth.” She took Sarah’s hand and led her out from behind the librarians’s desk. “Cough up the keys. They’re no longer yours.”

Sarah took the blue and orange Salem State University lanyard from around her neck and handed it to Jennifer. She felt like she was giving away a piece of herself. Jennifer unhooked the keys and handed Sarah back the lanyard. “Keep this,” she said. “A memento.”

Sarah clasped the lanyard in her hands. “I’ll cherish it, but I do have other mementos. I have you, your mother…”

“And James.”

Sarah smiled. “And James.”

Jennifer looked at the time on the clock on the wall. “We better go. We don’t want to be late to your celebration.”

“Celebration?”

“Didn’t I tell you? We’re having a get-together at Jocelyn’s tonight. You know how we Wiccans like to celebrate the solstice and the equinox, the autumn harvest and the winter moon. Now we’re celebrating your New Spring, Sarah. This is your time.”

“My time for what?”

Jennifer flipped off the lights, set the alarm, and locked the door as they walked outside. “We’ll have to see,” she said.

They walked arm-in-arm down Lafayette into Marblehead toward the childcare center, their conversation dotted with the shrieks and giggles of girlfriends.

“I’ll never forget the look on your face when you saw James looking at you through the window in the library that first time. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

“I thought I had seen a ghost. Here I am minding my own business getting ready for a seminar and suddenly there he was staring right through me. I felt like he knew everything about me.”

“He did.”

“I didn’t understand it at the time. I only knew I felt drawn to him.”

Sarah clutched Jennifer’s arm tighter. She shivered in the evening air, the heavy breeze from the bay still adding a nip in March. There were buds and blooms ready to sprout, spots of color here, more green there. They crossed the street and walked up the short hill toward Primary Time Child Care and Preschool.

“Should I call James and tell him to meet us at Jocelyn’s?” Sarah asked.

“He already knows.”

“So everyone knew but me?”

“Exactly.”

“Is your mother cooking? I love your mother’s cooking.”

“You don’t think I’d let Jocelyn take care of the meal for us, do you? I don’t think she’s cooked in over fifty years.”

As Sarah opened the door to the Victorian-style house she saw Miss Nancy by the front bay window staring out as though she were looking for someone. When her eyes lit up Sarah realized Miss Nancy was waiting for her.

“Miss Candice,” Miss Nancy called, moving her eyes from Sarah to scan Jennifer. “Mrs. Wentworth is here. Bring Grace and her belongings, please.”

Miss Candice was a large woman with short arms and cascades of black hair who appeared with Grace in one arm and a pink backpack in the other. Grace wasn’t crying, but she looked upset somehow, or worried, or…Sarah wasn’t sure. She clutched Grace to her heart, stroking her daughter’s gold curls from her topaz eyes, kissing her forehead. Grace clutched Sarah’s neck and buried her face away. Miss Candice held the pink backpack out as though handing month-old laundry to the maid who didn’t do her job. Jennifer took the bag and wrinkled her nose at Sarah.

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.

“We put children first at Primary Time, Mrs. Wentworth. We’re concerned for the welfare of the children.”

“What do you mean?”

Miss Nancy looked at Miss Candice, who nodded. Miss Nancy paused as she considered her words. “We think it would be best if Grace didn’t come back. We don’t believe we’re the best place for a…child of her kind.”

“How could you ask this little girl to leave your school?” Jennifer asked. “What has she done?”

“She hasn’t done anything. Yet.”

“Yet?” Jennifer was yelling now. “What do you mean yet?”

“She means,” Miss Candice said, “she may bite the other children.”

Sarah shielded Grace from the impossible women and backed toward the door. “My daughter doesn’t bite,” she said.

“Now you listen here…” Jennifer glared at the women, trying to cut them with the bilious look in her eyes, but they were haughty in their self-righteousness. Sarah touched Jennifer’s arm and shook her head. She knew they weren’t worth the energy it would take to find the right words, but even as she walked away she wanted to knock some sense into them. She wanted them to understand how special Grace was, how far she had come to find her way home. She wanted to make them feel as small as she felt. She wanted to scream. She wanted to rage. She wanted to bring the fury of the heavens down on them, but their smugness stopped her cold.

She held back the tears until they crossed the quiet road. Jennifer followed, holding the pink backpack, the anger still etching lines between her brows. At Jocelyn’s yellow house Sarah saw everyone through the window, and as soon as she saw them she knew something was wrong. At first, she thought they knew what happened to Grace, but that couldn’t be right—there was no way for them to know. Steve opened the door, and Sarah saw his red-rimmed eyes. Chandresh stood behind him, and he looked worried too.

“Oh no,” Jennifer said. “What’s wrong?”

“Come here, Grace,” Olivia said as she took the baby into her arms. “Let’s go into the next room and see Billy. He has a wonderful new ball we can play with.” As they walked away, Grace began babbling, nonsense syllables as babies do, but it sounded to Sarah like she was trying to tell Olivia what happened at Primary Time. Maybe Grace can explain it better than I can, she thought. Then she saw James’s shadow before she saw him. At first, she thought she was seeing things, a dark silhouette moving on its own accord with a life of its own, a blank space shaped like her husband only he wasn’t there. She shuddered at the thought of emptiness where her husband should be, and when he stepped into the light she sighed with stilted fear. He was there, it was all right, but she had a sudden fear that the next morning she would wake up in an empty bed, no dear and loving husband beside her. James took her into his arms, but even as she pressed herself into him she was afraid she was dreaming him. When her tears soaked his shirt through he bent down so he could see into her eyes.

“What is it, Sarah? What’s wrong?”

“They won’t watch Grace anymore.”

“Who won’t?”

“Primary Time. They said they’re afraid she’s going to bite someone.”

James looked at Jocelyn, who was sitting at the dining room table, her shoulders slumped, her head bowed. Sarah looked at the pretty red-haired vampire, a wife and mother who went nights to the poorer areas around Boston fixing the teeth of those who couldn’t afford dental work, and she realized her friend had been crying, her cheeks stained red with sadness. Steve held his wife’s hand while he brushed her heavy tears away with the back of his hand.

“Jocelyn,” Sarah said. “What happened?”

James shook his head. “Things are wrong all over.”

Olivia came into the kitchen with Grace on one hip and Billy on the other, her eyes watery. The coins of her gypsy-style earrings clinked, adding a dancing sound mismatched to the somber mood.

“Some horrible person threw a brick covered in blood through Jocelyn’s office window,” she said. “She was filling a patient’s cavity when the glass shattered and the brick landed at her feet.”

“Oh my God,” Jennifer said.

“I heard the footsteps outside, but I didn’t pay attention,” Jocelyn said. “There are restaurants nearby so there usually are people around at night. I had just turned the dental drill on when the brick crashed through and nearly hit me. It looked like a downpour of glass splinters.”

Jennifer took a cloth from a drawer, ran it under the tap, and wiped the blood from Jocelyn’s face.

“I’ve been a dentist here for four years,” Jocelyn said. “Patients who hadn’t been to the dentist in decades came to me, frightened, but they came because someone told them I would take care of them. Maureen was the first client I’ve had in two weeks. After the brick nearly hit her she jumped out of the chair, grabbed her bag, and ran away.” The fresh blood tears streaked her white complexion pink. Steve smoothed his wife’s hair and kissed her cheek.

“Steve said there was a message taped to the brick,” James said. “What did it say?”

Jocelyn shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Did they threaten you?”

Steve forced a smile that looked wrong on his unshaven cheeks. “‘No vamps allowed,’” he said. “Not so bad, right?”

Chandresh hovered near James, whispering, intent. As James listened he paced the floor of the narrow kitchen, the rubber soles of his black Converse shoes squeaking on the hard wood floor. Sarah watched his fingers tap a quick-time tune on his blue jeans while he nodded in response to Chandresh’s words.

“What will you do, Jocelyn?” Olivia asked.

Jocelyn shook her head. “Leave Salem?”

“And go where?” James asked. The overtone in his voice made Sarah think he had considered the question himself and hadn’t found a suitable answer.

And go where, Sarah wondered? To Boston? California? Singapore? Brazil? Where could they go to make a new home if they couldn’t stay in this one any more?

They walked home in silence, James and Sarah holding hands while James clutched Grace close with his other arm. The final winter chills were finally blowing away from the bay. It was a clear night, the sky black, the stars white, the neighborhood silent, the houses dark. The grass, the bushes, the leaves were budding every shade of green again, but nothing looked real to Sarah. She looked at the familiar surroundings, and the historic buildings, the museums, the restaurants were unreal, like she was dreaming them too. She felt the strength of James’s heatless hand as it wrapped tightly around hers. He must have sensed she needed to walk, or he needed to walk too, and he led her past Derby Street toward the Essex Street Pedestrian Mall, past the Artists Row, long closed for the night, down the small streets of gift shops, the pharmacy, the center for the Peabody-Essex Museum, the main stop for the red trolley car she took around town when she first moved there. This was where she visited the Farmer’s Market on Thursdays during the warmer months to buy her produce and bread. This was where she stopped for frozen yogurt with her mother when she visited from Boston. Across the street, on the other side of Route 114 was Lappin Park, the landscaped corner where the bronze statue of Elizabeth Montgomery as the Bewitched Samantha sat. That was where she had walked with James on the first steps of their journey together.

She needed to hear the soothing tones of his voice, so just as she had always done, she asked him questions to get him talking. “What was Chandresh saying to you at Jocelyn’s?” she asked.

“He said this situation reminds him of the Trail of Tears.”

“How?”

“Whatever story is repeated most often, that’s the story people believe. People wanted to believe the Cherokee were bad because that made it all right to take their land. The Cherokee assimilated to American ways, and they did it successfully, but no matter what they did the propaganda against them was so strong there was little they could do to sway public opinion.”

“Does Chandresh think public opinion is going to sway against the vampires?”

“It already has, honey.” Grace stirred, opened one eye, saw her father, and went back to sleep. James pressed her jacket closer around her little face. “I want to show you something when we get home,” he said. “You might find it interesting.”

They continued through the Pedestrian Mall, then crossed New Liberty Street, passed the houses of the Peabody-Essex Museum and Armory Park, turned around the imposing statue of Roger Conant standing tall in the intersection between Brown Street and Washington Square North as he stared over Salem Town like the proud Puritan he was when he founded Salem in 1626. His squinting eyes and his set mouth reminded Sarah of a strict schoolmaster eyeing a classroom of unruly boys. She hadn’t known Conant himself, he was seventy years before her time, but there was something about his condescending look that made her shudder. Sarah peeked at Grace, who was still sleeping, oblivious to her parents’ midnight jaunt.