Never Been Witched (26 page)

Morgan started a fire in the fireplace and threw in the pictures of him as a priest.

His mother rose, but he stood in her path while the fire behind him did its job. “You’re harboring false memories,” he told her. “The place should be full of Meggie and me together. That was real. That’s the past to remember.”

The fall board on the piano went up with a crash, revealing the keys, which started moving slowly, and individually, in a one-fingered version of “Chopsticks,” the only thing Meggie had ever learned to play. His parents paled, but Morgan felt as if he could do anything with Meggie and Destiny beside him.

“Mother, Dad, I’m angry,” he said. “I have been for a long time. Years. Nearly my entire life. I’m mad that you erased Meggie from our lives after she died, except for the pictures I stole from the trash along with Samantha, her doll, all of which I still have, though you now have copies of the pictures. You can thank Destiny for that, though she asked my permission, and I gave it wholeheartedly. I’ve been angry for years that you wouldn’t let me talk about Meggie after she passed, and I hate that you sent her away to die.”

His mother shot from her chair.

“Olive,” his father warned.

His mother sat again.

“I’m mad/sad/furious that you made Meggie feel like a freak as a child.” Morgan
hated
that his voice cracked as he tried to keep his finger in the dike on the dam he’d built to keep his emotions at bay. The only thing keeping him sane was the strength of Destiny’s arm around his waist, her closed fist digging into his side with a kind of rhythm, a living reminder of her presence.

“Meghan loved life,” he said. “She loved people, and she wanted to help anyone whose sad future she saw in her psychic visions, but you shut her up, called her crazy, and hid her away.”

“Meghan was our punishment!” his mother snapped.

“No,” Destiny said. “Children are gifts. No child, especially Meggie, should be considered a punishment.”

His mother stiffened as she managed to look down her nose at Destiny even though she stood and his mother sat. “What do you know about Morgan’s twin?” she whispered.

Morgan exchanged a glance with Destiny, and they decided, without words, against going there—a form of communication he’d only ever employed with Meggie. “Her name was Meggie, Mother.”

The piano keys played the grand “Alleluia,” used during high mass, which Meggie must have learned at the abbey school.

“Meggie. She lived for twelve years, and she made my life better because she did.”

“Well, she made my life miserable!” His mother tore her handkerchief in half.

“No! Mother, take it back!” Morgan fisted his hands. “Meggie was nothing but laughter and sunshine. Miserable? Where did you get such a horrible notion?”

His father sat forward. “Her brother, Jim, put it into her head, and she’s never been the same since. That pompous old priest stole the bright lass I married and left a bitter woman in her place.”

“Gordon!”

“Meggie was a treat, Olive. A blessing, like our boy here.”

“What did you do to
deserve
punishment?” Destiny asked.

“She’ll never tell,” his father said. “But I will.”

“No!”

“Morgan, you and your sister were conceived before your mother and I were married. She never got over the shame.”

“I’ll bet Father Jim never let her.” He should have known.

His father nodded. “Twins come early, and you were small, so the secret stayed in the family.”

“Gordon, stop talking about such things.”

His crazy world started to make sense to Morgan, but the knowledge was breaking him.

Destiny caught his seeking hand, and he grasped it like a lifeline.

“That explains so much,” Destiny said.

“I can’t believe
that one’s
here for this,” his mother snapped.

“Who?” Morgan asked. “Destiny or Meggie?”

His father stood and looked around.

“Don’t be foolish, Gordon,” his mother said. “I mean the hussy hanging all over you, Morgan, of course.”

But his father’s eyes had widened as he looked toward the piano, up the stairs, and back at the piano, where “Chopsticks” played again. His father sat on the edge of the piano bench and watched every key.

His mother nodded toward Destiny. “I wish you’d put her in the car.”

Destiny chuckled. “I’m not a dog.”

“No, you look more like a country-western street-walker.”

“That’s better,” Destiny said. “Thank you.”

Morgan scratched his nose. Destiny was a light in the dark tunnel of his life. “Mother, I am no longer a priest, nor will I be one again, but this isn’t about me. Meggie had a gift. A God-given talent. She was psychic.”

“That’s
her
kind of talk,” his mother said, pointing at Destiny.

“No,” Morgan said. “It’s
my
kind. I’m psychic, too. I always have been, just like Meggie, but I hid it, even from myself, coward that I am. As a kid, Meggie was smarter than me in every way but one. I knew enough to keep my visions to myself, including the vision I got of Maggie’s tower, the one where she slept in that boarding school, getting hit by lightning, burning, and falling to the ground. I wanted to tell you that Meggie was in danger. I made myself sick over it. But I knew you’d never believe me. It’s
my
fault that my sister died.” His voice cracked again, which he hated.

His father wiped his eyes. “Not your fault, Son.” He touched Morgan’s hand. “It’s mine. All of it.”

His mother pursed her lips in that way she had, only harder, her eyes cold and dark. Lost.

Destiny laid her head on his shoulder, a blessing, and Morgan raised her hand to kiss her knuckles.

“So,” his mother said, standing. “Now I have two more heathen believers on my hands. You and your father both, not to mention this one.”

Destiny shrugged. “I feel like what the cat dragged in.”

For an instant, Morgan almost wanted to tell his mother that it was her fanatical fault Meggie died, but she wouldn’t believe him. “Mother, I’ve been trapped all my life inside my head, filtering every word. Then I trapped myself at the seminary. Destiny,” he said, turning to her. “I’ve remembered something else. Father Jim said that if I became a priest, I could atone for my parents’ sins. I didn’t know what sins, but he said that the parents of priests always get into heaven.”

“That’s not true!” His father looked at his mother and realized that she knew about her son’s sacrifice for their sakes. He took out his handkerchief. “I swear, Son, that I thought you were happy as a priest.”

“I don’t blame you, Dad. I didn’t know how to be happy until a little girl named Meggie set me straight. That night, I went to the lighthouse and took off my cassock. It didn’t fit anymore.”

Morgan brought Destiny kissing close. “I’ve known Destiny for four months, and now I’m no longer lost in the dark. She pulled me into the light, and we’re taking it one beautiful day at a time.”

He led Destiny to the door, his father behind them.

His mother got up and went to look at the new pictures on the wall, her shoulders a little less rigid than when they’d arrived.

His father hesitated then embraced him. “I loved you and your sister the same.”

“Meggie knows that, Dad.”

“Are you sure? Make certain she knows.”

Morgan nodded. “Meggie and I, we still have that twin connection going. Take it from me, she does.”

His father cleared his throat. “I think she might have been here tonight, hey? I think she might have kissed my cheek.”

“I think you might be right, Dad.”

“I won’t see you anymore, will I?” his father asked, tears coursing down his face, sorrow lining his cheeks.

“I’ll call next Wednesday as always.”

“I’ll be answering the phone myself. I’d like to see your lighthouse someday.”

“Then see it you will.” Morgan took Destiny’s hand as they walked down the brick path. He felt drained yet elated.

A life door closing.

Another opening.

Maybe.

Chapter Forty-two

MORGAN leaned against his seat and closed his eyes. “What a relief to get that off my chest.”

Destiny put an arm around his neck and rubbed his temple. “Your aura is always dim and red-hazed when we leave here.”

He sighed and closed his eyes at the pleasure of her touch. “I’m not sure I ever want to come back.” He turned to her, her head on the seat back, near his, facing him, kissing close. “You wouldn’t mind if my dad came to visit, would you?”

“Over the next two weeks? Of course not.”

Wake-up call. He’d meant over the course of their lives.

“What about your mother?” Destiny asked, distracting him.

“Oh, she’ll never come.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

Morgan groaned. “Tell me that is
not
your psychic knowledge talking.”

“It’s just a hunch.”

“I can’t believe Meggie heard what Mother said about her.”

“Morgan, after your mother said it, Meggie kissed her cheek and whispered something in her ear, and your mother heard her. I could tell by her reaction.”

“Good reaction or bad reaction?” Morgan asked.

“More like a revelation of a reaction.”

“Is Meggie all right?”

Destiny looked in the backseat. “She’s smiling. She thanks you for defending her. She says that you’re her hero.”

“Yeah, well the two of you are my heroes. I’m proud of her—of you, Sis,” he added looking in the rearview mirror at an empty backseat. “For letting them know how you feel.”

“I feel for them both,” Destiny said. “Your father’s filled with guilt, and your mother’s a broken woman.”

Morgan started the Mustang. “For a minute, I actually wanted to strike her,” he said. “I don’t think I love my own mother.”

Destiny reached for his hand. “You might wish you didn’t, but you do.”

“The kicker is that she’ll deny her guilt quickly enough. She’s aces at that.” He grasped Destiny’s hand, and with his over hers, he shifted into second gear.

Her exclamation of delight washed over him like a healing mist.

“Will you teach me to drive this?” she asked.

His heart expanded. “You bet your flying buttress, I will.” She’d become everything to him. He cared deeply for her. She’d become the focus of his life, for now, except that he didn’t want that
now
to end.

He drove to the Rockport art colony, where they walked hand in hand in the Indian summer sun and shared a paper cone of cotton candy. He bought Destiny an antique painting of a whaling ship with their own lighthouse—his, he supposed, not theirs—all lit up in the background.

On the way back home, they stopped at Meggie’s grave and left a bouquet of Chinese lanterns, bittersweet, and silver dollars, which Destiny had bundled with a big white bow before they left.

“Meggie says she loves it,” Destiny said, butterflies marking the circle Meggie ran around her own gravestone. It hit him hard, then, that she was gone. She would never be an aunt to their—

God, he was screwed up today.

They later stopped at the same nursery for butterfly plants, and between them they picked garden stones for hope and love.

Did he want to spend his life with Destiny? Swell, yes. But why? Because he hated living on his own, or because he couldn’t live without her?

Since she’d come to the lighthouse, he no longer felt that awful need to fly the earth screaming for something he didn’t understand. He could finally land safely in her sheltering arms.

But who would shelter Destiny? Would a woman who needed a center as much as he did, a woman both as strong and goal-seeking as him—a kindred spirit—feel comfortable depending on him?

He thought he’d be comfortable depending on her. But permanently?

When they got home, Meggie disappeared right away, or so Destiny said, probably because he and Destiny were so filled with each other.

They went to bed that way, their emotions so fragile, sex had no place. Kisses, strokes, touches graced with reverence. Their gazes locked, they drifted into sleep entwined in comfort, support, tenderness . . . and love?

Morgan woke early, his need for her so enormous—his need, not his—well yes, his boner, too. But he wanted a spiritual, emotional, and all-encompassing relationship with Destiny. He wanted her beside him whether paddling a kayak, planting crazy-named asters, painting a door, or facing his parents.

He might be joking with himself, especially about his parents, but the whole loving Destiny thing scared the breath out of him, punched him in the solar plexus, and nearly brought him to his knees, because logic didn’t enter into it. For a man like him, mistakes made more logical sense than an emotion as elusive and life-altering as love. He got up quietly, grabbed his sweats, and took the kayak out to think.

He would not run from love, but he did need to figure it out. He didn’t fear it so much as he didn’t understand it.

Maybe he was as mad as his mother thought. Maybe, maybe not.

Unsure how long he’d been on the water, he looked up at the sky and thought that dawn might not make as sunny a debut this morning as it had yesterday.

Eventually, dark clouds scuttled overhead, as if a storm might be brewing. Made him think of spending a rainy day in bed making lo—yes, making love with Destiny.

He heard the fog bell calling to him, and a great abiding forever love for the woman who sounded it welled up in him. Joyfulness infused him. He turned the kayak toward home—his
home
, if Destiny was there—surprised he’d come so far. Facing shore, the wind whipped at his jacket, and sea spray lashed like ice picks at his face and hands.

As if Destiny sensed his trouble, the Fresnel light went on, like a candle in the window leading him back to her. She must have awakened alone and gone looking for him. He waved, assuming she’d brought the binoculars up there. “I’m coming,” he shouted, grinning like a fool.