The Mirror (53 page)

But Jerry and the uncles had stopped quarreling and were already gaping at Brandy.

There followed a heated discussion on birth certificates, eye drops, inoculations, and "pediatricians."

"Shay, I'm surprised at you," Ruth said. "After all you've done to Marek and your poor mother. And now this."

Brandy was relieved when the Maddons departed.

"I haven't called Marek yet," Jerry said uncomfortably. "He knows you aren't Shay. I suppose he does have some rights here though." He stared into the cribs as if his grandsons were incriminating evidence.

He insisted on making an appointment with a doctor to examine the twins and his daughter's body.

When he'd gone Brandy saw to the infants, watched the television box and tried not to think.

The green diary sat on the low parlor table in front of the sofa.

The twins looked tiny, each in his own bed. Sometimes she resented them for the pain they'd caused her and for all they demanded of her days and nights. Brandy shocked herself with these unnatural feelings.

She prayed to God for forgiveness. She was beginning to resent him too. And that made her feel even worse. Brandy had pork chops for dinner, built up the fire and opened the diary.

She stopped reading only to nurse the twins and to cry.

When she finished, the fire had burned down.

Brandy huddled on the sofa, stared at the embers and saw memories.

The picnic beneath the Flatirons. Pa chasing a squealing Joshua across the mesa top where Marek's devil castle now stood. Joshua captured. His plump little body brought back over Pa's shoulder, dumped on a blanket and tickled till it could laugh and squirm no more . . .

Grandfather McCabe and Grandmother Euler sitting on the shaded porch of the Gingerbread House, discussing days long gone in the quivering voices of the old. Aunt Harriet sitting between them, translating because Grandmother Euler spoke no English . . . Sitting on the back step with Ma, their aprons filled with string beans to snap, peas to shell or apples to peel . . chatting pleasantly of nothing much while they worked ...

Canoeing on Weisenhorn Lake with Elton. Sunday train excursions to Mount Alto to pick wildflowers. Giggling over naughty phrases in the Latin grammar with Violet and Bessie in the cloakroom at preparatory school. Even Nora's scolding seemed dear to her now.

Brandy looked into the cribs. Joshua, Elton and a few gravestones seemed the only continuity left in her life.

She removed the gleaming diamond from her granddaughter's finger and placed it on the diary.

The next morning, while forcing down a breakfast she couldn't taste,
Brandy heard a familiar sound.

She opened the back door to see Ansel St. John's truck come to a stop by the lift pump. He carried a box filled with bottles of goat's milk.

"Better for a nursing mother than cow's milk," he said by way of greeting and tracked snow across the rug to the baby cribs. "Sure look comfortable here. Appears Mr. Garrett's keeping his promises. With that money he gave me for caring for you I can pay my taxes and put up a new barn."

Brandy spent the morning telling him the contents of the diary.

"She's lived your life, now you got to live hers. It's done, happened. Nothing you can do. Least you won't be cursed with knowin' things ahead of time like she was."

"But don't you see, Mr. St. John? It's all my fault. All these lives confused because I let the mirror--"

"All you can do now's to get rid of the mirror so it don't do this to somebody else. If your granddaughter's suspicions are right, it's even chalked up a score of killings."

"It was stolen when thieves broke into the Gingerbread House."

"Well, you'll just have to take good care of this little family here then. And I wouldn't worry over that bloody-hand business she writes about. Probably me delivering twins."

He refused to stay for lunch, saying he wanted to stop by and see Lottie while he was in town. "Surprised that Marek fellow hasn't stormed in here yet." The faint smell of goat lingered after he left.

Brandy drew thick curtains across the window wall to shut out a foreign world. But it invaded the cabin that afternoon in the form of Shay's parents.

Brandy was startled by the grim change in Rachael Garrett. She'd grown plump but the added flesh wasn't firm. Her skin was sallow. Thick hair had gone lifeless with patches of gray at the roots.

Dull eyes searched her daughter's face to find only Brandy, then turned to her grandchildren. "I'm glad they're not girls," she said listlessly. "Daughters are so . . .so much heartbreak."

Rachael held first one twin and then the other in shaky arms, Jerry hovering over her as if he feared she'd drop them.

"Maybe you could start a book about twins," he said hopefully.

She looked up from the babe in her arms, her cheeks wet but a sudden spark in her eyes. "Jerry, we've got to find the wedding mirror."

"What good would it do now? Shay's gone, and where would we look?"

"We owe it to Shay and to Joshua and Elton."

"We might drive around to the antique stores in the area on weekends and at least ask about it." His sudden interest had more to do with the spark in his wife's eyes, Brandy suspected, than any hope of finding the mirror.

"We could look for furniture for the Gingerbread House while we're at it, Rachael. Would you like that?"

Brandy donned Shay's puffy, slippery mackintosh and fur-lined boots. She left them with their plans and their grandsons, knowing the sight of her must be torture to them.

Standing on the concrete platform of the lift pump she stared at the A-shaped cabin, trying to visualize another cabin almost eighty years ago and the life her granddaughter must have lived there.

But the odd-angled roof and the narrow strip of cloud that crossed the sky from horizon to horizon now made any association with them difficult. Ansel'd explained such cloud trails were left by flying machines soaring too high above the earth to be seen.

How would it feel to be that far up looking down?

She turned to the trees across the clearing. The smell of pine would be the same forever.

A break between tall trees shaped the path where Shay'd walked to the spring on Brandy's legs. Scattered young pine, chest height or shorter, tried to fill in the disused walkway.

She followed it to a heap of weather-gray boards that poked through a low drift. Kicking aside snow, Brandy found a rotting plank with a smooth-edged hole. It broke along an old crack at the touch of her boot. The seat to an outdoor privy.

Wind fingered her skirt as she lifted it to traverse a drift. Snow trickled cold into the tops of her granddaughter's boots.

What use was there in seeking connection to a past she'd never reach? But Brandy continued to the cave in the mountainside where the couple in the cabin had discovered the wedding mirror and a grisly result of its deeds.

Snow and juniper bush covered the lower half of the entrance. The door Shay'd spoken of in the diary was gone but a piece of its frame hung across a hole that looked like black pitch against the snow.

There'd apparently been no more glimpses between the two lives after the birth of the twins. Did it mean the Garretts would succeed in finding and destroying the mirror? Or merely that it would be removed too far to have power over those lives it had tampered with?

When she returned to the clearing the Garretts' automobile was gone, in its place a familiar silver-green vehicle.

Marek Weir bent over Joshua's crib with his hands clasped behind him as if afraid to touch his tiny son.

He must have heard her enter but didn't turn as she removed the coat and boots.

"They have my mother's chin," he said defensively when she stood beside him, the intimacy gone from his voice and expression.

"I'm deeply sorry for what happened to your fiancee."

"I can't believe you're Shay's grandmother. It's impossible."

"Yes. I know. Nevertheless--"

"But if you are, it must have been strange having twins by a man you'd never slept with. Must have been damned strange."

Brandy closed her eyes on the hard stare and shivered even though burning with embarrassment. "Would you care for some coffee, Mr. Weir?"

"Yes, please,
Miss
McCabe." He was right behind her. "Oh, shit. I don't believe this. It's not ... I just can't ... in my world things like this don't. . ." He made a choking sound and flopped into a chair.

By the time she had the coffee measured and brewing, milk was soaking through her granddaughter's bra and dribbling down her rib cage.

Brandy excused herself to carry Joshua and Elton up to the balcony, wishing she could escape the angry frustration of the man who paced and cursed below.

"If you're not Shay . . . even if you are, what are we going to do about them?" He watched her zip the twins into soft blankets ingeniously made into pajamas complete with feet. He still hadn't held or touched them, as if by doing so he would commit himself.

The twins chose not to sleep.

"I mean if you are Brandy McCabe, how will you raise them? You'll have all you can do to learn the ways of this world yourself."

Elton drooled happily. Joshua cried. Brandy took Joshua in her arms to comfort him. Elton began to cry.

"Why don't you answer me?"

"Here." Brandy pushed Joshua at him and picked up Elton.

Marek and his son looked at each other for a surprised second. The son puckered up his face and screamed.

By the time both babies slept, Marek had lost his bluster and the coffee'd sat warming in the pot so long it was too bitter to drink.

"Are they always like that?" Marek whispered as Brandy stirred batter for cornbread.

"Several times a day at least. One seems to give the other the idea."

"People should be married awhile before they have children."

"That thought came to you rather late, I think."

They made a meal of sausage, cornbread and stewed tomatoes.

When she'd served him fresh coffee he lit a pipe without bothering to ask her permission. The smell of it brought back memories of her grandfather, James McCabe, and the time he spilled hot ash from his pipe, starting a fire in his beard. She began to tell Marek the story but fell silent at his look of suspicion.

"I don't believe that diary." He tilted his head and stared at her but seemed to be looking inward. "It's just that it explains so much." His knee touched hers under the table.

Brandy hurried to gather the dishes and take them to the sink. But he was at her side, shelving each in the dishwasher as she rinsed it.

"And I wouldn't know what to do with a good old-fashioned . . . prim . . . simpering . . . Victorian girl."

"I have no idea what you mean by Victorian, Mr. Weir, but I do not simper."

"Victoria. Queen Victoria. She set moral standards for years. She--"

"Is a foreigner, and worse, an Englishwoman. The Queen of England has nothing to do with . . ." Brandy saw the kiss coming and was fascinated at Marek's power to immobilize her with a look. Or was it her curiosity again?
Si fueris Romae,
she thought.

She couldn't blame her granddaughter's body for the rash feelings touching him set in motion. She knew she should pull away. But she didn't.

Marek did.

Brandy held to the edge of the sink to keep upright with the suddenness of his release.

He moved around the door of the dishwashing machine and the shelves of rinsed dishes. "You can't be Shay. She never . . ." His eyelids narrowed over eyes as drained of color as his skin. "Do you know how long it's been since I've screwed a--"

Brandy gulped air. "Screwed?"

Marek Weir walked to the door.

"Please . . . don't go. It's so lonely being Shay."

"I'm going to go think . . . drink . . . run . . . jog. I'll be back, but...

Automobile lanterns swept light over the window above the sink, as he backed the Porsche to drive away. She'd been foolish to think he could love her when he found she wasn't Shay.

One of the twins fussed behind her. Brandy McCabe turned to see Shays diamond was gone from atop the diary.

Cindy Wilson held onto her husband's arm in the storeroom of Wilson Antiques, Ltd. "But, Ned, just let me try rubbing the frame again. Maybe it'll-"

"I don't want to hear any more about that damn mirror, and we're not taking it out to the house. It's no more magic than I am."

"Then why does it never need dusting? Never tarnish? And when it's going to show pictures it makes a sound."

"What kind of sound?"

"Sort of an electrical buzzing ... or hum like . . . like power lines make sometimes. And it seems to work on electricity ... or static electricity if you move it or rub it or--I wish there was some way we could plug it into a wall socket."

"Has Myrtle seen these pictures?"