The Night Strangers (26 page)

I
t was sixty-five degrees outside, but Reseda could feel the temperature was about to plummet. The sun had been high overhead at lunchtime, but now a great swash of gunmetal gray clouds was darkening the sky, rolling in from the northwest and stretching deep into Canada. She gently shut the door to her greenhouse and turned toward Anise, who was misting the tentacles, nacreous as marble, that were branching out from the poisonous acedia. The acedia was spreading like a spider plant, and its tentacles were dripping over the sides of the pedestal on which it resided. Reseda knew that Anise didn’t approve; she felt it should be trimmed back, the shoots chopped and the toxins harvested. But Reseda was so pleased with her success with the plant that she couldn’t bear to don gloves and take a knife to it. Not yet. No one had ever had such a triumph with acedia. The plant was named after the Latin word for sloth because it was a sedative and, used improperly in a tincture, lethal. She wondered how she would feel about her achievement if it had been named for the Latin word for pride.

“What are you feeding the pilot?” she asked Anise now.

Anise continued to circle the plant, careful not to make eye contact with her.

“Crumpets,” she answered evasively, her voice uncharacteristically light. “Always vegan. Always delicious.”

“I’m serious.”

“I am, too.”

“I don’t see what good could possibly come from poisoning him.”

“Me, neither,” said Anise, and she put down the mister on one of the gardening tables and stroked the stone Baphomet’s beard. “Do you ever find it odd how out of touch a pilot is with the earth? Oh, they see how beautiful it is from twenty or thirty thousand feet. But their whole purpose is to separate themselves from the soil. To be above the ground, rather than one with it. You grow beautiful things, Reseda. That pilot never will. I’m really not all that interested in him.”

“But you have been constantly filling the Lintons’ refrigerator. Bringing them small confections with
his
name on them.”

“I’m a one-woman Welcome Wagon. You’re a real estate agent: That should make you happy.”

“Just because you put the captain’s name on it doesn’t mean he’s the only one eating it. I am sure the girls have eaten some of your … confections.”

“Perhaps. But it’s not like they’re hash brownies. Anything special in them would demand, well, repeat exposures.”

“Hallie had nightmares.”

“We all have nightmares,” Anise said, dismissing her concern. “I find both girls very interesting. Don’t you? I find them curious. Or do only the dead inspire you these days?”

“I worry about them,” she said, ignoring the dig. “They have endured an awful lot.”

“I agree. And that’s what makes them so … special. So receptive. It changes the brain chemicals. You know that as well as anyone.”

“You’re not trying to up the level of trauma?”

“Maybe a little. But mostly I’m just an observer. I’ve been watching them. We all have. I had them working at the communal greenhouse again this afternoon. And I know you’ve been watching them, too,” Anise said, and she turned to Reseda, though she did not meet her eyes. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You pretend you’re above that sort of thing: It’s too dark, it’s evil, it’s cruel.”

“A boy died. That seems to me far too high a price.”

“You weren’t there. You don’t know what happened. You’ve only heard the story from Clary and Ginger.”

Reseda gazed at a pair of water droplets descending the glass window near the steamer. “I know what Clary saw,” she said.

“You know what Clary
thinks
she saw,” Anise corrected her. “You know what Clary recalls. There is a big difference, Reseda. Remember, I was there, too; you weren’t.”

“I don’t want you to try again. They’re little girls.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t even know which one we would use. I really don’t,” Anise said, and she strolled over to a long table with cooking spices, inhaling the aroma from the basil. “But you know something?”

Reseda waited.

“If you were my age—good heavens, if you were Clary’s and Ginger’s and Sage’s age—you would view the twins more the way I do. You really would. It’s human nature.”

“Tell me: What are you feeding the captain?”

Anise smiled, but then she shook her head and her eyes grew narrow and reptilian. “You really think I’m a witch, don’t you?”

“Are you?”

“I just like to bake,” she said, refusing to answer the question. “That’s all. I just like to bake.”

G
arnet had both books that Anise had given her sister and her open on the rug in the living room. She was lying on her stomach before them, near the warmth from the radiator, resting her chin in both hands. The books were so old and so heavy that the pages wouldn’t flip shut when she laid them flat on the floor. Whole sections had thick pages with nothing but handwriting—somebody’s cursive lettering. Recipes and formulas and diagrams, and some beautiful watercolor illustrations of flowers and ferns. They were more like scrapbooks than published books, she decided. They smelled a little musty and a little like one of the plants from Sage Messner’s greenhouse: maybe the one that had the red leaves that were shaped like the points on the wrought-iron fence by the cemetery. She found a picture of it in the book that had been presented to her,
The Complete Book of Divination and Mediation with Plants and Herbs
, but it didn’t appear in the botany book that had been given to Hallie. The plant was called
Phantasia
. Much of the biology in her book was over her head, but Garnet found the elegant and precise drawings more interesting than she might have expected and the uses for the plants absolutely fascinating. She had, of course, thought about flowers as decorations and gifts; she had been aware that her mother used herbs as seasonings when she cooked; and certainly she understood the role that fruits and vegetables played in her health. But this was completely different: It was as if some plants and some herbs were medicines. It was as if others were—and the word lodged itself in her mind—
magic
. They affected how people behaved if they ate them or drank them. But it wasn’t like the way alcohol or drugs might change your behavior; that was random and unpredictable. She had seen adults drunk at her parents’ parties, and she had seen what alcohol did to people on TV shows and in movies. According to this book, however, some plants or combinations of plants, properly cured or steeped, could make people fall in love. Grow violent. Have visions. The book talked about making people act on their
dreams
, and dreams in this case had nothing to do with ambition. It was as if, with the right herbs in the right doses—the right
tinctures
—you could make someone’s nightmares feel real by the light of day.

Moreover, she realized that her book was part of a small encyclopedia. It said
VOLUME I
on the spine. She went to the back of the book to see how many volumes there might be and had to read something twice because it looked so strange. It seemed there was at least a second book. This one was called
The Complete Book of Divination and Mediation with Animals and Humans
. It was Volume II. She made a mental note to ask Anise about that, if she ever got out of Anise’s doghouse. These women seemed to be interested only in plants—just look at all those greenhouses. But maybe she was mistaken. Maybe they did have other … interests.

Over her shoulder she heard Hallie coming down the stairs in her clogs and then joining her in the living room. Her sister sat on the carpet beside her and glanced at the books, but she wasn’t especially interested. She rolled her fingers around her bracelet and then touched Garnet’s wrist.

“How come you’re not wearing your bracelet?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’m just not.”

“You should.”

Garnet put her forehead down on the rug and closed her eyes. She breathed in the aroma of the books. She was home, the women weren’t here right now. What did it matter if she wasn’t wearing her bracelet?

“How does Dad seem to you?” Hallie asked. “He seems to talk less than ever.”

“I know.”

“He talks even less now than he did, like, two or three weeks ago,” said Hallie.

“Since the night he got hurt in the basement.”

“Yup. But you know what’s weird?”

Garnet waited. Everything these days was weird.

“He’s changed, but maybe it’s just who he is now. I’m getting used to it. In some ways, it’s like when he was still flying planes and gone a lot of the time. Know what I mean?”

Garnet knew precisely what Hallie meant. Before Flight 1611 had crashed, it was more normal having their father gone than it was having him home. Or, at least, it was as normal. The reality was that, for most of their childhoods, their father had been away from home three or four days a week. They—Mom and Hallie and she—were accustomed to being a household of three, and their mother had the single-mom drill down to a science. She knew how to run the house just fine when Dad was flying. In some ways, things even went a little easier when it was just the three girls. Dad wouldn’t suddenly be there wanting to bring them to and from dance class when their friend Samantha’s mom was already planning to pick them up at school and bring them to her house until Emily was finished at work. Dad wouldn’t suddenly want dinner to be a perfect replica of what the school nurse said dinner was supposed to look like, with just the right combination of meat and vegetables and grains. They could eat dinner in the den and watch TV. And Dad wouldn’t suddenly be checking to make sure they had made their beds before going to school or practiced the violin or the flute before going to sleep. The truth was, regardless of whether Dad was flying or he was sitting silently at the table and staring at something no one else seemed to see, the three females had figured out long ago how to manage.

Still, Garnet felt guilty even thinking such things, and so she found herself answering, “I know what you mean. But Mom says it just takes time. He’ll get better. You think he will, right?”

“Yeah. I’m sure he will,” Hallie said, but she sounded dubious. Then: “Want me to get you your bracelet?”

Garnet pushed herself to a sitting position. “Fine. Get me my bracelet. It’s on the top of my—”

But before she could finish, Hallie handed it to her. She had already retrieved it and brought it downstairs. “I saw it on top of your bureau,” she said. “And I figured you should be wearing it. You just never know when Reseda or Anise or someone is going to drop by the house.”

I
t had been clear to Emily throughout dinner that something was troubling the girls, though Garnet had seemed more out of sorts than her sister. (But wouldn’t it be worse, she asked herself, if something
wasn’t
troubling her children?) She watched them pick at their food, Garnet always seeming on the verge of bringing something up. Now Emily was going through their vocabulary words with them in Hallie’s bedroom on the third floor, helping them complete the workbook pages they had been assigned as homework. Chip was downstairs taping the frames of the doors in the entry foyer, because he was planning to paint it tomorrow. His stomach, he insisted, felt pretty good.

But she studied her girls as they worked. Hallie was sitting on her bed, while she and Garnet sat on the floor with their backs against it. She tried to focus, but as she watched the twins together in a moment of such comforting normalcy—upstairs in a bedroom doing their homework—she found herself wondering how so much of their life as a family had gone so terribly wrong. Actually, not how. The how was easy. It was the why. The why seemed almost Job-like. Inexplicable. Unreasonable. But the how? A person could trace the steps with ease. There was the plane crash, of course, that was where it all began. It was Flight 1611 that had led to Chip’s depression and PTSD, which in turn had resulted in their moving to northern New Hampshire. And then it was here in Bethel that his mental illness had worsened, perhaps—according to Valerian—because of the solitude. Not that taking a yoga class or volunteering at the library would have made a difference. But all those hours alone in this house scraping wallpaper and slathering paint on kitchen walls? It had exacerbated his disconnection from people other than his wife and his daughters. And so whatever demons he already had were transformed into the self-loathing that had led him to hurt himself.

And then Garnet had found the bones. Good God, her children would have had to have been mannequins not to have been out of sorts. It was a miracle that they could put one foot in front of the other and function at all.

No, it wasn’t precisely a miracle. It was Reseda. Anise. Holly. Clary. Ginger. Sage. It was all those remarkable women. It was John Hardin. It was all those remarkable
people
. They were strange, there was no doubt about it. They were obsessed with their greenhouses and gardens and quaint little remedies. But they were caring and giving and intellectually engaged. While the girls might feel a little ostracized at the moment by their classmates—though Emily honestly was convinced this would improve over time—they had been embraced by the most interesting women of Bethel.
Verbena
. This was the name that Clary and Anise were calling her now. John was, too, though for some reason she found his use of it a little troubling: It suggested a more public transformation than she was prepared to make at the moment, because he wanted to call her that at work. Moreover, she wasn’t enamored of the name—the connotation in her mind was the men’s talcum and soap she had sometimes placed under the Christmas tree for Chip, though Anise had reassured her that it had a long and rich feminine history as well. A mystical history. Anise had told her that another term for
verbena
was Juno’s tears, and she thought it might be a fitting name for Emily as she coped with the heartbreaking loss of Flight 1611 and her reawakening into a future she had never anticipated.

When Emily had told Reseda that some of the women now wanted to call her Verbena, her friend had shown absolutely no emotion, and for a moment she thought that perhaps Reseda didn’t approve—which made her fear that perhaps Reseda didn’t believe she was worthy of having a new name. Of becoming one of them. But then Reseda had nodded and said, “Yes, of course. We should have a christening. A rebirth into Verbena. It might be fun. We’ll view it as an excuse for a party.”