The Rules of Magic (46 page)

“It was always you,” he said to Franny. “That sort of thing doesn't happen very often. It was never going to be Emily Flood. Even I knew that.”

Love of my life,
Franny thought.

The day Haylin was buried was beautiful and clear. The crow was in the tree, old Lewis, who was going blind, his eyes filmy and white. Seeing him broke Franny's heart. The bird cried, even though crows are said not to have tear ducts. Afterward Franny called Lewis to her and she carried him home, where she wrapped him in a blanket, for he coughed and fretted. He died the following day and one of the Merrill boys buried him behind the shed. He had never belonged to Franny, and had always preferred Haylin, and she'd never once blamed him for that.

Franny stayed out on the porch for seven nights. The vines began to grow over the bench where Haylin liked to sit. They grew and grew until passersby could no longer see Franny Owens in mourning. The bin where Dr. Walker had offered lettuce to passersby was empty. Children asked for him when the
new doctor in town made a house call. They wanted the story about the rabbit and the kind, tall man who had lollipops in his pockets.

People in town pitied Frances Owens her grief, and many felt bereaved themselves by the loss of such a good man. They brought casseroles and salads, pies and cakes, all of which Jet accepted gratefully. But Franny did not try a bite and she left it to her sister to send thank-you cards. People in town had lost a doctor and a friend, she had lost her life. She looked at the trees and they grew taller, and the vines covered the fence and the gate, and people stayed away, the way they used to, before Haylin Walker came to town.

For seven days Franny Owens did not brush her hair or wash her face or have a meal. The birds in the thickets came to nest in the vines, but she couldn't even hear them sing and they wouldn't come to her when she held out her hands. She had lost some of who she was when she lost her beloved. Though Jet had draped sheets over the furniture and drawn all of the curtains, Franny couldn't bear to go inside and leave the place where she had last been with her husband. The man Haylin had been lingered in the dark. All she wanted was to hold his hand. To see the way he smiled at her. She saw bits and pieces of him out of the corner of her eye, or maybe it was the fireflies. He was a man of integrity, a man of honor, the boy who had chained himself up in the school cafeteria for the rights of others, the doctor who kept lollipops and bars of soap in his pockets, who had helped five hundred men learn how to walk, who had known how to make her shiver with a kiss when she was a seventeen-year-old girl. She had loved one person in her lifetime, and for that she would always be grateful.

On the eighth night she came inside and got into bed beside Jet. She was shivering and still wearing her coat. Haylin was gone and there was nothing she could do about it.

“How will I ever love anyone again?” she said to her sister.

That was when the telephone rang.

T
hirty years after Vincent's
disappearance, his granddaughters, aged three and four, lived with their mother and father in a house in California, in a town called Forestville, where the trees were so old and tall it was impossible to see the sky. Regina Owens had grown up to be a beautiful woman with long, black hair and gray eyes the color of mist. She had a lovely singing voice and was so graceful the birds came to watch when she hung the laundry on the line. She knew how to have fun. She didn't believe in drudgery or boredom and had a trick so that the broom swept all by itself when she cleaned the house. Her daughters, Sally and Gillian, were thirteen months apart, as different as chalk from cheese, but best friends all the same, a good thing, for there were no other children for miles.

Their world was mossy and green with rain that splattered down for days on end. The girls' father, Daniel, was a fisherman and a guide on the Russian River; their mother was a painter whose subject matter was trees, not surprising given their location. The girls liked to climb the trees surrounding their house, and often had tea parties with their stuffed animals aloft, using the branches as the table and chairs. When they concentrated they could make the wind come out of nowhere and shake the
branches and then they would laugh and hold on for dear life. Sally would open her hands and birds would come to her as if they'd been called and Gillian could dangle on the farthest branch and let the wind blow right through her and not be scared at all.

The girls' grandmother April, who had been their favorite person in all the world, had recently and unexpectedly died of a lethal bite from a brown wandering spider that had been hiding in a bunch of bananas brought from a market. They had not eaten fruit since. They had not laughed or climbed trees. They had been in mourning, and their mother especially had been so sad she took to her bed. It was not at all like Regina to be mournful, but sometimes she could be heard crying while she hung the laundry on the line, and now the birds scattered. She spent her birthday under the covers, even though the box from Ladurée Royale that always came to her from Paris on that day had arrived and the girls knew there would be delicious macarons inside, a treat to be savored. First a pale orange cookie that was apricot, then a green pistachio, then chocolate, of course, then the best of all, pink ones that tasted like roses. Regina brightened up then, as she did when anything came from Paris. Sometimes there was a postcard with a single heart as the message. Once there was a beautiful box of pastels.

They had the macarons and a fragrant tea that always made them feel especially brave. “Always choose courage,” Regina told her girls. She wasn't worried about Gillian, who loved to walk on a tightrope set up between the trees, but cautious Sally was another story. “Don't live a little,” Regina would whisper to her older daughter when she tucked her in at night. “Live a lot.”

Regina had fallen in love with the girls' father when they
were students at Berkeley. They'd dropped out to live on the land and for the first year they'd lived in a shack, sleeping together in one sleeping bag, mad for each other. They were still so in love they hadn't spent a night apart. Sorrow was not in either of their natures. At last their father told their mother that it was high time they had a little vacation. He surprised her with plans for a second honeymoon.

Regina my beautiful queen,
he said,
let's celebrate our lives.

He kissed her on the mouth and made her laugh and after that she seemed more like her old self, the one who knew how to have fun and who always took her daughters outside to dance in the rain. They packed their suitcases, promising to bring home presents and chocolate bars. The girls stood at the window waving, and they watched their parents dance on the lawn before they waved back and headed off for their trip.

But something had gone wrong. That much was evident. The girls were woken in the middle of the night by their babysitter, a teenager who had become so hysterical the sisters couldn't make out a word she said. They clutched each other and tried to make sense of the babysitter's ramblings. She mentioned a phone call from the sheriff, and then she talked about fire and water, which they knew never mixed. She called them poor pathetic creatures and wondered what would happen to them now. As the babysitter considered their future, her despair set her into fits of uncontrollable weeping.

It was pouring, buckets of cold, stinging rain. No one could dance in this sort of weather. The trees were shuddering without the sisters willing them to do so. Leaves fell like a black blanket. Birds that always gathered at Sally's window disappeared. The girls waited for their babysitter to catch her breath and stop
crying. They had never been up in the middle of the night and they knew bad luck when it came to them. It tapped on the door, quietly at first, then it pounded, insisting on being let in.

Gillian, fair and usually fearless, clutched her stuffed bear and stood in a corner, terror creeping up her spine. Sally, dark and serious, sat on the bed and held the babysitter's hand to calm her. This was the moment Sally had been dreading, when the life they had enjoyed was turned upside down. Her grandmother had confided that it happened to everyone sooner or later. Sally had always thought it would be later, but as it turned out it was now.

Their parents had taken a canoe down the Russian River, loaded down with their father's fishing equipment and their mother's paints and canvases and the pastels that had been sent from Paris. When the rains commenced, suddenly and without warning, the canoe overturned. Daniel nearly went under in the rushing tide, but he managed to hang on to the hull of the boat. Their mother, so buoyant she could not be drowned, floated alongside him, saying encouraging words so he wouldn't give up. When they at last made it to shore, they were grateful for their luck. There was a small motel, and they checked in to wait out the storm, but they must have dozed off and they didn't hear the storm worsen. When lightning struck the building they were tangled together in bed, deeply asleep, not recognizing that there were curses in this world, and they were still there, their arms around each other, when the fire began, with smoke filtering through the walls of their room.

The babysitter informed the girls that the sheriff's office would soon be sending someone over. Since there was no family, the sisters would be taken into protective custody. “They'll
find you someplace to live. It might not be together, but you won't be alone.”

“But where will Mommy and Daddy be?” Gillian asked. Her voice trembled and her eyes brimmed with tears. “When are they coming home?” Gillian said.

Sally had very dark gray eyes and a somber expression. “Don't you get it?” she said to her sister. “They're not.”

“That's impossible,” Gillian said. “We have to have parents.”

Sally turned to the babysitter. She was the take-charge sister, and in this moment it was clear that she had better begin to do so. “Can you make a phone call?”

The babysitter covered her puffy eyes with a damp cloth and said, “Maybe later. I'm too upset right now.”

Sally stood up, took hold of Gillian's hand, and led her into the parlor.

“No one is splitting us up.” She went to the telephone and opened her mother's datebook. She quickly began to page through it. Fortunately, she knew how to read. She remembered an enormous bouquet of wildflowers from Massachusetts had been sent to their grandmother's funeral. The card had been signed
With love from Bridget and Frances Owens.
That meant they were family.

“What are you looking for?” Gillian wanted to know.

The girls were in their pajamas and their feet were bare. They both had a shivery feeling.

“Granny said that if anything ever happened I should call our family.”

“We have a family?”

Sally brought the phone to the babysitter, still reclining on the couch, and had her dial.

“Go pack,” Sally whispered to Gillian as she took hold of the phone. “Get our best dresses. The ones Granny bought us.”

“What about everything in our room?”

Sally shook her head. They would be traveling light from now on. “You can take Arthur and Pip.” Gillian's stuffed bear and her toy mouse. “I'll take Maxine.” Sally's stuffed black dog.

Sally waited for someone to answer. The person who picked up turned out to be a mean old lady.

“Do you know what time it is?” said the annoyed voice on the line.

“I can't tell time,” Sally admitted.

“Who is this?”

“Sally Owens. Who is this?”

“Frances Owens,” the old woman said, sounding surprised.

“You sent the flowers. My grandmother said to call our family if anything happened.”

There was a pause. “And did it?”

A police cruiser was pulling into the driveway. The headlights were so bright Sally shielded her eyes. When the lights were turned off Sally blinked. She would have to tell the people at the funeral parlor that her parents should be dressed in black, with no shoes. That was the way their grandmother had been buried. She and Gillian would wear their best dresses and, out of respect, be shoeless as well.

“Oh, thank God,” Sally heard the babysitter say when the officers knocked on the door.

Sally held the phone receiver tightly. “We're coming to live with you,” she said to the mean old lady. At least she and Gillian would be together. Gilly had returned, dragging along their
party dresses. Hers was violet and Sally's was pink trimmed with lace. “Good,” Sally said. “Those are the right ones.”

“What are you saying?” the woman on the phone asked in an upset tone. “What happened?”

The officers approached the girls solemnly. They'd taken off their hats and one policeman got down on one knee so he could talk to the sisters at eye level. “I think you need to hang up the phone, little girl,” he said.