Frankie #2
to get to their magic kingdom.”
“Not unless those fairies are boozehounds,” Troy replies with a laugh.
Now Portia is the one looking confused. “What’s a boozehound?”
Mom warns, “I piu piccoli!” This isn’t a topic she feels is appropriate to discuss in front of her impressionable grandchildren.
“Sorry, Ma,” Troy says, chastened.
“Are you two ready for dinner?” Angie asks her daughters. “Do you want Daddy to help you wash your hands?”
“Yes!” Portia squeals with excitement when Troy leans down to scoop up both her and her sister. “Nonna, will you come, too?”
“Yes, Nonna will come, too,” my mother says as she follows Troy and his happily shrieking daughters.
Angie barely waits until they’re out of the room before turning to us and rolling her eyes.
“He knows better than to talk about stuff like that around the kids—and Ma.”
Mark shrugs. “Maybe it was fairies who took your neighbor’s booze, Frankie. It’s as good an explanation as anything else.”
“There’s no such thing as fairies,” Dina says authoritatively.
I find this comment interesting, coming as it does from a practicing witch, but keep my opinions to myself as Dina goes on, “Though I did read awhile back that archeological evidence proves Center Island and the Seat have been in perpetual use by humans for over
a thousand years—”
“Wait.” Mark looks excited. “A thousand years? So some Viking dude could have buried his stash of gold there, and then died
before coming back for it?”
“And someone is out there digging for it?” Dina looks thoughtful. “I suppose that’s one possible explanation, although I’ve
heard rumors that there are intersecting ley lines—paths of dark energy laid during the earth’s creation by Gaia, the primordial
mother goddess—around here somewhere, and that’s what gives West Harbor such a magical—”
I interrupt. I can’t help it. “You know it’s probably just tweakers, right?”
This causes immediate indignation on the part of everyone: “There’s no meth in West Harbor!” “Tweakers don’t have boats!”
“How would meth heads know about the hoard?”
I watch as my family argues over the existence of fairies, ley lines, Viking treasure, and meth in West Harbor. It’s sort
of restful in its normalcy. Ever since that celebration at the courthouse last year—the one I didn’t go to—nothing has felt
very normal . . . at least, not to me.
“It was only a thunderstorm!” insist many of the people who were there, including my own brother.
But if it was only a thunderstorm, why did my ex come home shaking with shock?
“I . . . I don’t know, Frankie,” was all Richard would say when I asked what had happened. “I don’t know.”
Anyone can be at a loss for words after a traumatic event, even someone like Richard, who always prided himself on his extensive vocabulary. That’s why the preferred treatment for post-traumatic stress is cognitive processing therapy—talk therapy.
But Richard wouldn’t talk about whatever it was he’d seen that night. He claimed he was fine. Just fine.
Except he wasn’t. This was proven when, about month later, without a warning to anyone—including his own wife—Richard not
only abandoned his private practice as a clinical psychologist as well as his position as head of West Harbor Hospital’s behavioral
health department, but also emptied out his retirement and savings accounts (incurring a hefty tax penalty), bought a boat,
and declared he was going to sail around the world.
But not with me. With our twenty-five-year-old yoga instructor, Devorah Rainbow (born Debi Waicukowski of Bridgeport). The
name change only occurred after “the incident at the courthouse,” but whether Debi changed it to make her business more attractive
to all the witches suddenly flooding into town—the way my sister Angie changed the name of her hair salon from Glow-Up to
Hairitic—or because she truly believes she’s now Devorah Rainbow remains a mystery.
No one else who was at the courthouse that night seems to have suffered from such a self-harming reaction (if you count the
financial hit Richard is taking by withdrawing all that money early from his 401(k)—not to mention divorcing me). Sure, Mark
and Dina suddenly decided to elope, to both the delight and outrage of my mother . . . delight because she’d been campaigning
for years for the two of them to get married, and outrage because when they finally did, she wasn’t invited.
But you can hardly call that self-harming.
Even the only person that night who sustained physical injuries during the storm—the former head of “the World Council of Witches, the world’s largest organization to advance the common interests of witches” (since disbanded due to infighting)—was quickly treated, released, and never heard from again.
True, this is why the few media outlets that initially covered the incident started calling it the West Harbor Witch Riot—although
no one admitted to seeing any actual rioting. And this, unsurprisingly, led the millions of people on the Internet who viewed
video of the microburst and ensuing chaos to come up with their own explanation for what they were seeing: magic.
Yep. According to the rumors on social media (and even some members of my own family), it was magic that caused such a freakishly strong thunderstorm.
Magic that took out the tent and the leader of the witch organization.
Magic that made my brother decide to elope with his longtime girlfriend, and allegedly magic that made my formerly logical spouse completely lose his mind.
Magic. Yeah, right. That explanation works if you’re seven-year-old Portia. It’s a little harder for a thirty-something-year-old
financial therapist to believe in . . . especially one who watched her father die right in front of her eyes. Where was magic
when that happened?
I’ll tell you where: Nowhere. Because magic doesn’t exist. There is a rational, scientific explanation for everything.
I just haven’t figured out the explanation for whatever it is that’s happening here in West Harbor.
I’m startled out of these dark thoughts by my sister Angie demanding, “Frankie, are you going to let me cover those gray hairs
of yours before Derrick and Jessica’s engagement party, or what?”
This is one of the many reasons I have a love-hate relationship with Sunday Gravy. “You leave my gray hairs alone,” I say.
Once again, Dina comes to my defense. “Frankie looks amazing, Ange.”
“True, but she would look even better if she’d let me give her a root touch-up, highlights, and a trim.”
“I’m not going to the engagement party,” I say. “I already RSVP’d no.”
Angie looks shocked. Jessica—Dina’s best friend since grade school—got engaged to tall, motorcycle-riding Derrick last year,
so Dina offered to host their engagement party since both Derrick’s and Jessica’s parents live out of state. Jessica, like
Angie, is the owner of a popular local business—a clothing boutique called Enchantments—so Angie seems to feel obligated to
“help” with the party even though I’m pretty certain no one asked her to.
“But Frankie, you have to go,” Angie cries. “You used to balance Jessica’s books. And Dina is her maid of honor, and Mark is Derrick’s best man.
Your own nieces are going to be flower girls at the wedding!”
“Yeah, Angie, I know. Which is why I’m going to the wedding. But that doesn’t mean I have to go to the engagement party.”
When I see Angie’s eyes widen, I add, “Don’t worry, I sent a gift.”
“She did,” Dina hastily assures my sister when she sees the thunderous look on her face. “Which was so nice, but not necessary—”
“I wanted to,” I say with a shrug. “I like Jessica. But I still wonder what the point is of engagement parties. They made
sense in medieval times, when marriages were more of a commercial transaction. But now it feels like the whole thing has just
become a massive cash grab—”
“You only feel that way because your marriage was a bust,” Angie interrupts savagely.
“No.” Surprised, I shake my head. “That’s not true. I wasn’t thrilled about what Richard did, but that doesn’t mean I wish
Derrick and Jessica anything but the best of luck.”
“Maybe not consciously,” Angie insists. “But how else do you explain why you’ve been such a Negative Nancy for the past year,
so down on love and men and marriage and, well, everything?”
“I’m not! I haven’t!” Is this really the image I’m projecting? Or is this just Angie being Angie? “That isn’t how I feel at all. I mean, things haven’t been great, obviously, and I’m not going to pretend like they are. But I’m sorry if it seems like—”
“Hey, Frankie,” Mark interrupts. “Has Jackie said anything to you about those missing girls?”
“No.” I feel a little whiplash from the abrupt change in subject. When I see Dina throw Mark a grateful glance, I realize
he did it on purpose to distract me from the subject of engagement parties.
Have I been too negative lately? I know I always act professionally in front of my patients. But I don’t want to seem like a Negative
Nancy to anyone . . . not even Angie.
“Why would Jackie say anything to me about the missing girls?” I ask.
“Well, it’s all anyone is talking about at the restaurant,” Mark says. “And since Jackie is one of your best friends and deputy
chief of police, I thought she must have mentioned something about it. The cops don’t seem to be looking for them anymore—”
“Because all those girls are legal adults who appear to have gone missing by choice,” Dina says. “In fact, I heard they’re
part of some new coven that considers West Harbor the center of the spiritual universe—”
I can’t help it: I burst out laughing.
“Sorry,” I say quickly, but it’s too late. Angie—whose head has been bent over her phone screen as she texts someone—looks
up, outraged by my smirk.
“What’s so funny about that?” she demands. “It’s no different from Mecca or Jerusalem.”
“Well, for one thing, Mecca and Jerusalem don’t have more bars than they do churches, like West Harbor does.”
Mark is laughing, too. “Yeah. Not to mention antiques malls.”