Now it is you who everyone presumes is so fragile. Wounded. Scarred. Maybe they’re right. Perhaps you are.
A nursery rhyme comes into your head, and, like an egg, you allow yourself to topple onto your side, your legs still pulled hard against your torso. You lie like that a long while, watching the chrome shell of the tape measure sparkle until the sun moves.
She deserves friends.
You nod. She does.
Chapter Three
Garnet came down the stairs with her math workbook and a couple of pencils. They were supposed to convert miles into yards or feet and vice versa, and Hallie was incapable of explaining to her how to do it when the answer wasn’t obvious. Their dad was excellent at math, although neither girl had availed herself of his abilities since the accident because they did not want to burden him with one more thing. From conversations they had overheard their mother having with friends on the telephone and the things they had seen their father doing (or, in some cases, not doing), they feared that asking him to help them with math just might put him over the edge. But they had been in New Hampshire for a couple of weeks now, and maybe things would be different here. More normal. Their mother and father talked about how they were starting here with a clean slate. And based on the changes that would occur in the house when they were at school-some old wallpaper gone or some new wallpaper hung, a banister stained or another room painted-their dad had emerged from the funk that had left him cocooned and immobile in his bathrobe in West Chester. And so Garnet figured now was as good a time as any to come down the two flights of stairs and get some help with her math. It might even be good for Dad.
When she found him, he was in the kitchen, but he wasn’t making dinner even though it was nearly five in the afternoon. They seemed to eat earlier here than they did in Pennsylvania, in part because Mom didn’t have such a long commute and got home earlier, but also because everyone here just seemed to do everything earlier. In Pennsylvania, Dad had usually done the cooking in those three- or four-day periods when he had been home and Mom had fed them when Dad had been flying. Of course, Mom’s dinners had been pretty likely to be frozen food or take-out pizza-which was absolutely fine. She was, essentially, a single parent half the time. And then there were those seasons when Mom was in a community theater drama or musical. Often those nights when Dad was flying, Garnet and Hallie would color or play games or do a little homework while eating deli sandwiches in the back of whatever gym or community center where Mom’s theater troupe was rehearsing.
When Garnet got downstairs, she found her father on his knees, rummaging through the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink. His head and shoulders were invisible inside the cabinetry, and around his legs were the bottles and jars and brushes that usually were stored under there.
“Dad?”
Carefully he withdrew his upper body and sat on his heels. His hair was disheveled, and she noticed a thin trickle of sweat on his brow. He had a mug with cold coffee beside him.
“Hey, princess,” he said. He called both her and her sister princess. It was a term of endearment, but no more specific than honey or darling. “What do you need?”
“Can you help me with my math?” She held out the workbook like an offering, both of her hands beneath it as if she were presenting a sacred text to a rabbi or priest.
He was silent for a moment, and she wondered after she had spoken if this might be one of those instances that would be important years from now: the first time her dad had helped her with her math after the accident. A great step forward in the march back to normalcy. But when the moment grew long and still he had said nothing, she decided she was wrong: This would instead be merely one more of those times when her dad’s behavior would suggest it was going to be a long, long time before he was better.
“I mean, if you’re busy, I can probably figure it out myself,” she continued. She knew that sometimes she made people uncomfortable when she grew quiet. They feared she was about to have a seizure and go into a trance. Especially lately. But often it was just easier to say nothing and let everyone else do the talking, the deciding, and the… worrying. And it was nice to daydream. She liked the visions that sometimes marked the seizures. She wondered if her dad now had them, too.
“Oh, I’m not doing anything important,” he said finally.
“Cleaning?” she asked. “Organizing?”
“Something like that. I keep expecting to find a secret compartment back there.”
She nodded, intrigued by the idea that there might be one. She understood why her father might have such a suspicion. Sometimes she found strange things in this house and the barn and the greenhouse.
Abruptly he stood to full height and rubbed his hands together, a habit of his when he was excited about something. “Well,” he said, his voice robust and happy. “What have you got there?” Then he placed his palm on her back and escorted her to the dining room table, where together they tackled the two pages in the workbook.
R eseda Hill stood in her greenhouse a few steps in front of Anise, inspecting the scapes on the coral root she had transplanted earlier that winter. She kept the plants and spices for cooking cordoned off from the herbs for healing. Basil and parsley had no business mixing with hypnobium, belladonna, or amalaki. Her tomato seedlings in late April, prior to being transplanted into her vegetable garden, would not do well near the pungent aroma from the angel’s death. The greenhouse was pentagonal and divided in half: On the right side, as one entered, were those herbs and spices that were common to any chef with even a modicum of culinary education; on the left side were those rare tropical plants from South America and India that only experienced healers, herbalists, and shamans were likely to use. In the center of the pentagon was a fountain with a stone creature holding a vase that dribbled water into the catch basin. The creature stood about three and a half feet tall, half man and half goat, with great, batlike wings on his back and a trim and pointed Vandyke running from his chin to his ears. Reseda did not bring it home from a compound in Barre, Vermont, that sold mostly (but not exclusively) tombstones and have it transformed into a fountain for her greenhouse because it bore a distinct resemblance to Baphomet. The truth was, she wasn’t a Satanist or attracted to most satanic rituals; but she was a bit of a bomb thrower, and she liked the idea that designing her greenhouse in the shape of a pentagon and placing what looked like a stone demon smack in the center would fuel rumors among the sorts of people who were never going to be her friends anyway. Besides, she liked goats and she liked handsome men with their shirts off. She thought both were cute in a diminutive sort of way.
“I find the twins very interesting,” Anise was saying, her parka draped over her folded arms.
“You’ve spent too much time with horror movies and pulp paperbacks. You always find twins interesting. I’m a twin. The world is filled with twins. Trust me: We’re not interesting.”
“These ones are prepubescent, and they have been traumatized. They’re like the Dunmore boys. You know the tincture. You know the recipe.”
Reseda bent over the patchouli and rubbed one of the egg-shaped leaves between her thumb and forefinger, breathing in deeply the perfume. Patchouli made her feel young. “The Dunmores were well before my time,” she said after a moment. “Besides, it was the girls’ father who was traumatized. We don’t know if Hallie and Garnet were.”
“You’re not a mother; I am. Their scars are different from their father’s, but nearly as deep.”
“The pair struck me as rather resilient.”
“I’m sure they are. But their father is an airline pilot who survived a plane crash. Most of his passengers died.”
“You really don’t like to fly, do you?” Reseda observed.