A deep luster clung to the heart pine boards in spite of the margin of sticky dust that ran along the walls. Paint flaked from the high crown moldings but they themselves were sound. He felt love for everything he saw-love for the workmanship of the tapering keyhole doorways, and the fine newel post and balusters of the long stairway. He liked the feel of the floor beneath his feet, so solid. And the warm good wood smell of the house filled him with a sudden welcome contentment. A house smelled like this in only one place in the whole world.
“Michael? Come in, Michael.”
He walked to the first of the two living room doors. Dark and shadowy still, though she had opened all the drapes. The light was slatted coming through the shutters, and dim and soft pouring through the dirty screens of the porch beyond the side windows. Whiff of honeysuckle. So sweet and good. And was that the Queen’s Wreath bursting in little bright pink sprigs along the screens? He had not seen that lovely wild vine in all this time.
She was sitting, small and very pretty, on the long brown velvet couch with its back to the front of the house. Her hair was falling down beautifully against her cheek. She had on one of those loose wrinkled cotton overshirts that is as light as silk, and her face and throat looked darkly tanned against the white T-shirt under it. Legs long in the white pants, her toes naked and surprisingly sexy, with a thin flash of red polish, in her white sandals.
“The Witch of Endor,” he said, swooping down to kiss her cheek and hold her face in his left hand, warm, tender.
She took hold of both his wrists, clinging to him, kissing him roughly and sweetly on the mouth. He could feel the tremor in her limbs, the fever in her.
“You’ve been here all alone?”
She sat back as he took his place beside her.
“And why the hell not?” she asked in her slow deep voice. “I quit the hospital officially this afternoon. I’m going to apply for a job here. I’m going to stay here, in this house.”
He let out a long whistling sigh and smiled. “You mean it?”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I don’t know. All the way over here … coming back from the Irish Channel, I kept thinking maybe you’d be here with your bag packed to go back.”
“No. Not a chance. I’ve already discussed three or four different hospitals here with my old boss in San Francisco. He’s making calls for me. But what about you?”
“What do you mean what about me?” he asked. “You know why I’m here. Where am I going to go? They brought me here. They’re not telling me to go anyplace else. They’re not telling me anything. I still can’t remember. I read four hundred pages of the history and I can’t remember. It was Deborah I saw, I know that much, but I don’t really know what she said.”
“You’re tired and hot,” she said, touching her hand to his forehead. “You’re talking crazy.”
He gave a little surprised laugh. “Listen to you,” he said, “the Witch of Endor. Didn’t you read the history? What’s going on, Rowan? Didn’t you read all that? We’re in a big spiderweb, and we don’t know who’s done the weaving.” He held out his gloved hands, looking down at his fingers. “We just don’t know.”
She gave him a quiet, remote look, which made her face seem very cold, even though it was flushed, and her gray eyes were picking up the light wonderfully.
“Well, you read it, didn’t you? What did you think when you read it? What did you think?”
“Michael, calm down,” she said. “You’re not asking me what I think. You’re asking me what I feel. I’ve been telling you what I think. We’re not stuck in any web, and nobody’s doing the weaving. And you want my advice? Forget about them. Forget about what they want, these people you saw in your visions. Forget them from now on.”
“What do you mean ‘forget’?”
“OK, listen to me. I’ve been sitting here thinking for hours, thinking about it all. This is my decision. I’m staying here, and I’m staying here because this is my house and I like it. And I like the family I met yesterday. I like them. I want to know them. I want to hear their voices and know their faces, and learn what they have to teach. And also, I know I wouldn’t be able to forget that old woman and what I did to her no matter where I went.” She stopped, a flash of sudden emotion transfiguring her face for a second, then gone again, leaving it taut and cool. She folded her arms lightly, one foot up on the edge of the small coffee table. “Are you listening?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“OK, I want you to stay here, too. I hope and pray you will stay here. But not because of this pattern or this web or whatever it is. Not because of these visions or because of the man. Because there is absolutely no way to figure out what these things mean, Michael, or what’s meant, to use the word you wrote in your notes, or why you and I were thrown together. There is no way to know.”
She paused, her eyes scanning him intently. Then she went on:
“So I’ve made my decision,” she said, her words coming more slowly, “based on what I can know, and what I can see, and what I can define and understand, and that is, that this place is where I belong, because I want to belong.”
He nodded. “I hear you,” he said.
“What I’m saying is that I’m staying here in spite of this man and this seeming pattern, this coincidence of me pulling you up out of the ocean and you being what you are.”
He nodded again, a little hesitantly, and then sat back taking a deep breath, his eyes not letting go of hers. “But you can’t tell me,” he said, “that you don’t want to communicate with this thing, that you don’t want to understand the meaning of all this … ”
“I do want to understand,” she said. “I do. But that wouldn’t keep me here by itself. Besides, it doesn’t matter to this being whether or not we’re in Montcleve, France, or Tiburon, California, or Donnelaith, Scotland. And as for what matters to those beings you saw, they’re going to have to come back and tell you what matters! You don’t know.”
She paused, deliberately and obviously trying to soften her words as if she feared she’d become too sharp.
“Michael,” she said, “if you want to stay, make up your mind based on something else. Like maybe wanting to be here for me or because it’s where you were born, or because you think you’d be happy here. Because it was the first place you loved, this neighborhood, and maybe you could love it again.”
“I never stopped loving it.”
“But don’t do anything else to give in to them! Do things in spite of them.”
“Rowan, I’m here now in this room because of them. Don’t lose sight of that fact. We did not meet at the yacht club, Rowan.”
She let out a long breath.
“I insist on losing sight of it,” she said.
“Did Aaron talk to you about all this? Was this his advice to you?”
“I didn’t ask him for his advice,” she said patiently. “I met with him for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to talk with him again, and confirm for myself that he was an honest man.”
“And?”
“He’s everything you said he was. But I had to see him again, really talk to him.” She paused. “He’s a bit of a spellbinder, that man.”
“I know.”
“I felt this when I saw him at the funeral; and there was the other time, when I met him at Ellie’s grave.”
“And you feel all right about him now?”
She nodded. “I know him now,” she said. “He’s not so different from you and me.”
“How do you mean?”
“He’s dedicated,” she said. She gave a little shrug. “Just the way I’m a dedicated surgeon, and you’re dedicated when you’re bringing a house like this back to life.” She thought for a minute. “He has illusions, the way you and I have illusions.”