Beloved (6 page)

"
Dear me,
"
she answered with an ironic flip of her wrist.
"
I shall have to wear tea-length, I suppose.
"

Hell and damnation,
she thought, going into the cottage.
I don
'
t have time to socialize. I
just want to fix up the house, sell it, and get on with my life.

Her mother was right: She couldn
'
t afford to keep the place, so what was the point of getting to know the neighbors? Besides, now she
'
d have to go back home for dressy clothes.

"
Ah, well,
"
she said, sighing for the benefit of no one in particular.
"
If I go home, I can get my own car and turn in the rental.
"

****

Jane worked diligently through the morning on the Lysol/Tilex detail, and when she couldn
'
t stand it anymore, she went for a walk in fresh air. She had no clear remembrance of just how much land went with Lilac Cottage, and it seemed like a good time to find out.

There was hardly any. Lilac Cottage was shoehorned in between Bing
'
s more ge
n
erously sited house to the east, and a really grand parcel called Edgehill, bounding hers to the north and the west, which belonged to Phillip Harrow. Somewhere in the northeast corner lay the tiny old graveyard, and beyond that she saw a row of arborvitae that blocked off the view. That was where the green pickup truck kept heading in and out.

There was also a wet gully, from a spring perhaps, with a tiny and quite charming old footbridge over it, on Phillip Harrow
'
s land behind Lilac Cottage. As Jane drew near, some furry thing scampered out of the gully and waddled away.

Jane Drew was a city girl and proud of it; she knew the
New York
subway system like the back of her hand. But she was taking to this rural side of Nantucket like
—
like
that f
u
r
r
y thing to water,
she thought, smiling to herself as she picked her way through crunchy-cold brush toward the northeast end. Her breath came fast and frosty as she tramped on at a bracing pace. And yet, here it was, March, the worst month of the year
—
Hate Month, the islanders called it. What would a good month
—
a June, or a September, say
—
be like on
Nantucket
?

Oh no you don
'
t, girl
.
You are going to sell the house and use the money to start a new career. Boutique, yogurt bar, graduate schoo
l.
Whatever. Fortunes are built in times like these.
She could hear her father saying it. And he was absolutely right.

She almost missed the little graveyard that was snuggled between the adjacent properties; grasses and bushes obscured most of the dozen or so historic, crooked gravestones that stood like drunken sentries over their forgotten captives. It saddened her; somehow the neglect was less tolerable here than on her aunt
'
s property. She wondered who had the responsibility to maintain the burying g
round
—
surely, the town of
Nantucket
? Her recollection of the place was that it had been neat and well kept.

A wistful thought came to her.
Too bad Aunt Sylvia couldn
'
t have been buried here, almost in her own garden.
She wandered from gravestone to gravestone, wondering when the most recent burial was. But among the Obadiahs and Elizabeths, the Mitchells and the Whitsons, there was no end date later than 1854. Her aunt had died a century and a half too late.

One of the gravestones was half missing; but it, too, must have dated to the period.
JUDITH
,
it read, and
1802
.
But the last name was broken off, and the end date. Jane wondered about vandals; but the damage seemed to have been the work of a thorny, robust shrub rose that was growing atop the grave.

The roots have gone under the gravestone and broken it in two,
she decided. Part of the broken stone lay under the thorny canes. Jane reached in gingerly to turn it over. It was blank. Disappointed, she began to stand up, but she was careless: she suffered a sharp, long scratch through the sleeve of her sweatshirt. With a yelp of pain she fell back to her knees and carefully disengaged herself from the thorny cane.

Serves you right, stupid. You
'
re supposed to be cleaning house.
She took it as a sign that there was no place in her life just now for idle curiosity. So she returned to the cottage, took up her Tilex, and attacked yet another colony of mildew. By evening her hands looked like prunes and her lungs felt scalded; but the house was beginning to look and smell undeniably clean.

When the knock came at the door, her first instinct was not to answer. She was a mess, and she had no wish for distractions. But the drapes were still open, and it was obvious she was at home.

It was Cissy.
"
Have you seen my dog?
"
she asked with a hopeful smile.
"
He
'
s run away again.
"

"
I heard him bark not so long ago. The last time that green pickup drove past.
"

"
Oh, yeah; Buster really gets into it when he goes
through. So you can hear Buster barking?
"
she asked naively.

"
Seattle
can hear him,
"
Jane couldn
'
t help saying. When Cissy looked crestfallen she added,
"
But it
'
s not a problem. Really.
"

"
Oh, good. After a while you hardly notice.
"
She peeked around Jane at the horribly furnished parlor beyond.
"
I
'
ve never seen this place before,
"
she said, pretty much inviting herself in.

With a silent sigh Jane stepped aside for her to come in.
"
It
'
s not much to look at right now.
"

"
My God; I
guess,
"
Cissy
blurted
, looking around her.
"
Who would
'
ve thought a place like this could be located right next to my brother
'
s?
"

"
Gee. Go figure,
"
said Jane laconically.

"
I didn
'
t mean that the way it sounded,
"
Cissy said quickly.
"
It
'
s just that I
'
ve heard such
weird
stories about this place and the lady
—
your great
-aunt Sylvia
— who lived here. Like how one of her cats only had three legs because she needed the fourth one for a spell. Whereas my brother is just so, you know,
normal.
Like
you
,
"
she added brightly.
"
You
'
re normal.
"

Jane laughed out loud. Cissy seemed so young. She made Jane feel so old.
"
I
'
m sure you mean that in the very best way, Cissy; but it
'
s late and I have an awful lot of work to do.
"

"
Oh, okay,
"
she answered, taking no offense.
"
I
'
ll just take a quick peek around and go. I really should find Buster before he ends up at the shelter; he
'
s been there twice this month already.
"

She went through the rooms with Jane in quick succession, finishing up in the fireplace room, which in the soft glow of lamplight looked warm and cozy. Almost immediately Cissy spied the tarot cards spread out on the inlaid table.

"
Tarot! Cool!
"
She ran over to the table and said with real enthusiasm,
"
This is a beautiful deck; I
'
ve never seen one this old before. Will you give me a reading sometime?
"

"
I wouldn
'
t know how,
"
Jane said simply.
"
Those cards were there, arranged just like that, when I arrived.
"

"
Really! So you don
'
t know what the question was that was put to them.
"
Cissy lifted a card from the center one on which it lay.
"Hmmm ...
the sig
nificator card is the Lovers ...
I wonder if your aunt was doing a reading for someone.
"

"
You understand the cards?
"
Jane asked, surprised.

"
Well, no; but one of my sorority sisters used to do readings for us.
"

Cissy pored over the layout of cards attentively, sweeping her blond hair away from her face, drawing her brows together in concentration. Finally she shook her pretty head.
"
Nope. Without knowing what
'
s called the
'
situation,
'
I couldn
'
t tell you.
"

She looked up; the expression in her blue eyes was uncharacteristically serious.
"
But I can tell you one thing. If this was a random spread, it
'
s a very powerful one.
"

She motioned Jane to the inlaid table and said,
"
Out of seventy-eight tarot cards, only twenty-two are what
'
re called the Greater Arcana
—
somewhere I heard that that works out to two out of seven. But look at the ten cards dealt here:
Seven
are from the Greater Arcana. That
'
s really rare. Here
'
s the High Priestess, here
's the Moon ... Temperance ... Judgment ... the Charioteer ..
. and
—
anyone would recognize this one
— Death.
"

Jane studied the beautifully illustrated antique cards at length. Their rich colors and intricate designs seemed to blend perfectly with the worn Persian rug in the room. Part of her wanted to believe that the cards were nothing more than her aunt
'
s decorative arrangement of
objets d
'
art.

The other part of her wanted to know how long her aunt had been a witch.

Cissy left and Jane, suddenly unable to keep her eyes open, decided to wash up and call it a day. She was changing in front of the old, beveled mirror that hung in a simple frame in the bathroom when she saw the scratch she
'
d got on her left shoulder from the rosebush. All day long she
'
d been bothered by a stinging, burning sensation. Now she knew why: the scratch had gone deep, drawing blood. The blood had smeared across a broad section of her shoulder and breast, making the wound look much worse than it was. Jane had no antiseptic, of course; so she cleaned the scratch with soap and water, slipped into a warm flannel nightgown, and went to bed.

As she dropped off into a troubled sleep, the last image to flit through her mind was of richly designed tarot cards smeared with blood.

****

It was pitch black out, wild and wet and frightening. She was hovering over a precipice, inches away from a drop that she knew fell thirty feet. She didn
'
t care. She had been there many times before, straining to see into the blackness, over the precipice, into the distance beyond. It was impossible, of course. She knew that. She always went there when the weather was foul, but when the weather was foul, she could not see. It was an infuriating, agonizing conundrum.

Her hands gripped the rough and weathered wood railing as she leaned into the fury of the wind, squinting into nothingness. Tomorrow morning her hands would once again be filled with splinters. She knew that, too, but it made no difference. Nothing could change her behavior, because her actions were driven by fear
—
fear that this time, he would not come back. How could he possibly come back? She brought both hands up against her mouth, warding off a vomit of terror. He
would
come back; he
'
d done it before. He knew she couldn
'
t live without him. He
must
come back.