“Olive, we’re all family here.”
“It’s me, Mr. Jarvis. I don’t think Mrs. Jarvis considers me family.”
His mother gave a tight-lipped nod. “If the miniskirt fits.”
Chapter Thirty
MORGAN coughed. What was he supposed to say to that? To the devil with being careful; his mother could stand the truth for once. “I like Destiny’s skirt. I especially like looking at her legs in it.”
His mother regarded Destiny with deep dislike then—an understatement. “I won’t let you destroy him,” she snapped.
“Did you just threaten my friend? It sounded like you threatened her,” he said. “Mother, Destiny is our guest. You taught me to be gracious to guests in this house.”
Destiny elbowed him. “It’s okay, Morgan. Your mother has a right to her own opinion. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
He pulled Destiny down to the sofa and slipped his arm around her, brought her close, lifted his legs, and crossed his ankles on the coffee table, a rebellious act that he wouldn’t get called on, because
he
was the chosen child. “I’m playing your knight in shining armor, Kismet.”
“I’ll let you,” Destiny said. “
If and when
I ever have an enemy who needs vanquishing.”
Saints alive, he couldn’t fight them both. “Mother?” Morgan sat forward. “Is lunch ready yet? We’ve got a long ride back.”
Conversation at the table became stilted when all avenues, also known as “the third degree,” led to the undeniable and unspoken conclusion that he and Destiny were both staying at the lighthouse.
“I thought the lighthouse had only one bedroom,” his father said.
Destiny rubbed her nose. “It has four bedrooms, Mr. Jarvis.”
Morgan cleared his throat. “But only one bed. That’s why I’m glad that you taught me to share, Mother.”
His father coughed into his napkin, his mother sucked lemons, and Destiny kicked him under the table. “Quit poking the tiger,” she whispered. “Seriously, Mrs. Jarvis,” Destiny said. “Why
aren’t
there any pictures of Meggie in the house?”
His father now choked on the coffee he’d sipped to stop coughing.
Destiny stood and poured Morgan’s father a glass of water from the pitcher on the table. “Should you be having coffee, Mr. Jarvis,” she asked, “if you’re not feeling well?”
“I feel wonderful. Never better. Why would you think—”
Morgan’s mother coughed, rearranged the napkin in her lap, and Morgan’s father shut up.
“Mother, Dad,” Morgan said, standing and pulling Destiny up with him. “We have to go now. Thanks for lunch.” He took Destiny’s purse from the floor and set it on the table. It fell over, and her huge pink penis pop rolled into the center of the table.
His mother screamed as if a rat sat there.
His father’s rolling belly laugh about knocked him over. He’d never heard Gordon Jarvis laugh like that in his life.
“Well, Dad, you do sound healthy. Thanks for the talk. The hussy thanks you, too.” Morgan railroaded Destiny to the door. When he’d nearly got her over the threshold, she stopped and tugged him to a halt.
She stood her stubborn ground, and he got a really bad feeling about that. “By the way, Mrs. Jarvis,” Destiny said, “I’m a wit—”
Morgan yanked her into his arms and shut her up the only way he knew how. He kissed her, and kissed her again, after which, he picked her up, still dazed from the kiss—both of them—and carried her down the walk. He deposited her in the passenger seat of his rebellious Mustang and walked around to the driver’s side.
He would have gotten away, if his father hadn’t come ambling out to the car, hands in his pockets. Morgan rolled down his window, but his dad went around to the passenger side.
Destiny rolled down her window, and as if she and his dad were on the same wavelength, she raised her face for his father’s kiss.
“You’re good for my boy,” his father said. “I like you.”
Then his father came to his side and strangled on his words, as usual.
“Say it, Dad. You’re allowed to say any damned thing you please.”
The poor man, who’d rarely been allowed to talk around his wife, blustered, but for maybe the first time in Morgan’s life, he unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “I love you, son. Be happy.” He squeezed Morgan’s shoulder. “You have good taste in women.” Then his father turned and went back into the house to face the wrath of Olive the Ornery.
If Morgan didn’t know better, he’d think his father had just congratulated him for getting laid.
“Quick,” Destiny said. “Drive, before your mother comes after me with a broom.”
“It would serve you right if she tried, after nearly telling her you’re a witch.”
“Sorry, I got carried away.”
“Ya think?”
She broke into laughter all over again.
Charmed the holy frustration out of him. Scared the swell out of him, too.
Chapter Thirty-one
“STOP here,” Destiny said a few minutes later, raising the hair on the back of Morgan’s neck, though he shouldn’t be surprised.
“Where?”
“The cemetery, of course. I wanna see Meggie’s grave and say a prayer.”
He didn’t ask how she knew where to stop, but he did need to know why. “Des, what are you looking for?”
“Buffy. She’s the tallest gravestone in here. She looks out above all the rest, but you know that.” Destiny stopped to shield her eyes from the Indian summer sun. “There she is.”
Meggie had named their guardian angel Buffy when they were in kindergarten.
Morgan stopped to see if Destiny would actually go to Meggie’s grave, but he shouldn’t have doubted her. By the time he joined her, she had knelt to run her fingers over the carving of Meggie’s name.
Butterflies appeared as if from nowhere, different species in varying colors, fluttering around them, landing on the carving of Meggie in her grotto of angel wings. No butterflies on the other gravestones. They looked forlorn and barren.
The butterflies reminded him of the ladybug infestation, and he wondered if he’d find a butterfly painting in Destiny’s new portfolio, though she did have a butterfly tattoo.
Destiny began to weep, softly, shocking him, releasing the emotional lock on his heart as if from a cage. She was mourning with him.
He could feel again. And it hurt. It hurt like a thousand bee stings.
He knelt beside Destiny, put an arm around her to console them both, and he mourned like he had as a boy—the first time in nearly twenty years.
He missed his twin. Yet his heart also recognized that this woman beside him moved him—Morgan the man—in ways he couldn’t rationalize.
“One of us is crazy,” he said, taking out his handkerchief to dry her eyes.
“No, both of us are psychic, but I’m not looking for an argument, so don’t answer.” She crossed his lips with a finger. He covered it with his own. And when their gazes met, something else shifted in him, something monumental but as basic as the need to breathe, the need to be with this woman for a scary long time. Maybe, for the rest of his days.
The knowledge came softly, like getting hit upside the head with . . . Meggie’s stuffed dog? He looked to see if his sister was there and thought he saw a shadow run behind the headstone. An old familiar giggle floated on the wind. He doubted hearing it, and yet, there was no mistaking that giggle, that joy.
A butterfly landed in Destiny’s hair.
She saw it from the corner of her eye. “In the Celtic tradition,” she said, “the butterfly signifies transformation and rebirth, a spiritual and physical recycling. Butterflies leave their chrysalis and remind us that after pain, life is beautiful. I’ll bet Meggie’s angel is using the butterflies to help you understand.”
“Meggie and I shared a guardian angel, or so Megs said.”
“I know. She told me. She thinks you stopped talking to Buffy when she passed.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I did.”
“Celtic women used butterflies to adorn gowns, blankets, and cradle sheets for expected babies. Did Meggie chase butterflies?”
“Incessantly, giggling the whole time.”
“Or did the butterflies chase her?”
Morgan thought about that. “You know, thinking back, it would be difficult to say.”
Destiny indicated the pink granite angel. “See the way Buffy is making a grotto of wings to protect Meggie? That’s how the two of them often appear to me, except that Meggie’s hair is in braids. She’s wearing the red plaid school uniform, and clutching a curly haired stuffed dog.”
“You’re kidding? She has the dog?” Morgan looked around again and resisted an urge to call his sister. Had she hit him with her stuffed dog just now? Like the old days? Nah.
“The angel’s gown is blue,” Destiny said, standing. “Blue here, and red there, with a gold sash, and her wings are a bright, glittery white. Now that may be
my
perception of an angel, but that’s what I see. Buffy’s face is different from this angel’s, though. Buffy doesn’t smile, but she looks at Meggie with a great deal of love. Meggie didn’t catch that in her drawing so it’s not on your tattoo, either, but I don’t think that kind of love can be captured on canvas.”
That kind of love. Buffy. Meggie.
All the right words.
As if this beautiful, loving Destiny was his.
Chapter Thirty-two
HIS destiny? Morgan thought his head might explode. He searched for the meaning in his life, but found none, until Destiny took his arm.
“Let’s go,” she said. “I want to stop at a nursery to buy some plants. Meggie wants a healing garden for you, and I also want it to be a memory garden for her.”
Morgan went along with plans so ludicrous, they made a strange sort of sense, because he didn’t want to be left in Oz without Destiny. Down the road at the nursery, she pulled a list from her purse. “I want Frikart’s asters, joe-pye weed, plumbago, sneezeweed, snakeroot, tickseed, turtle-head, and tree mallow.”
Morgan’s heart about stopped.
“Yep, you guessed it,” Destiny said. “Meggie chose the plants, and I made the list.”
“I recognized her sense of humor right away. It’s a lot like yours, actually.”
The clerk filling her order kept shaking his head.
Hands on hips, Destiny circled the guy, who should be very afraid. “What’s wrong?” she asked him.
The clerk wiped his hands on his gray apron, as if his palms were sweaty, then he looked around and lowered his voice. “Most of these plants won’t come up next year because you’re planting them so late, but I could get fired for telling you so.”
Destiny leaned close. “I won’t give you away. I don’t care. I need to plant them. I also want that garden statue of the angel.”
Morgan smiled as she linked arms with him. “For Meggie,” Destiny said.
He fought the urge to kiss her in public. Destiny spelled trouble with a capital
T
.
“Look, Morgan, a lighthouse,” she said. “We’ll take that, too,” she told the clerk.
Morgan chose an engraved stone and put it on the counter with the rest of their purchases. “A garden stone that says Destiny,” he added. “Meggie needs that, too.”
Later than they expected, it took two water taxis to get the two of them, Destiny’s luggage, and their plants and statues back to the island.
“I wonder if the ladybugs are gone,” Morgan said picking up as many suitcases from the dock as he could carry. “I hope they didn’t migrate upstairs. I planned to take the tattoo tour tonight. I’ve had glimpses, but I’m talking spotlight on talent, here.”
Destiny shivered. “I don’t have the only tattoos in the neighborhood.”
He shook his head. “You first saw mine when you were spying on me in the shower, didn’t you?”
“Never mind that. How does a priest get tattooed?”
“He goes sailing to the islands with his crazy friends, where they all get hammered and tattooed.”
“Aiden and King?”
“I can’t believe your sisters haven’t shared, though we vowed on penalty of death not to rat each other out. They must have sworn their wives to secrecy.”
“Screw that,” Destiny said, leaving her newest portfolio outside the kitchen door and going back for the plants. “Their wives are my sisters. I should know what Harmony and Storm know.”
“I don’t think the sister thing counts after you’re married. Besides, each might only know about her own husband. I think husbands trump sisters.”
“Figures. I’m such a late bloomer. The middle child but the only one with no psychic mandate or prospects.”
Morgan dropped one of her suitcases. “You mean marital prospects?”
“Get real, and be careful with my things. I don’t want a man gumming up my life. I’m only toying with you.”
He sighed inwardly with relief and slapped her on the ass on his way back to the dock a while later for the statues. “You weren’t talking like that in the shower this morning.”
“We weren’t talking at all in the shower this morning. Screw you, Morgan.”
He stopped and raised his hands. “
That’s
all I’m saying.”
As he opened the kitchen door, a racket greeted them, cupboard doors opening and slamming, plates flying from the cabinets, hitting the floor and each other.
“Meggie,” Destiny said, “What’s wrong with you?”
Everything calmed. Cupboard doors stopped, some open, some closed. Plates lay in pieces on the floor.
“Why are you crying?” Destiny asked, but nobody was there.
Morgan hurt as if Meggie did—an old familiar ache. “Well?” he snapped, in over his head, and going down for the count. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s upset. She couldn’t find us last night, and she’s angry that we went away today.”
Good thing Destiny cast the spell so Meggie
couldn’t
find them last night. “But she was at the cemetery today. She knew where we were.” Morgan heard himself and shut his mouth for half a beat. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”