Chapter Seventeen #3
“Is that your father’s car?” Ava wanted to know.
The crows were overhead, making a racket. Something wasn’t right. Ava’s suitcase fell over, and she left it there and Jamie didn’t reach for it. Instead, he ran a hand through his thick hair, his face blank.
“It’s over,” he told Ava as they stood in the doorway.
He was slouching, his hands in his pockets.
It was as if he were a stranger, there to deliver a message.
Ava laughed, certain he was joking, but when she went to embrace him, Jamie took a step back.
“Not a good idea,” he said. He could barely bring himself to look at her, and he tried his best to still his heart so she wouldn’t know that for him this encounter was agony.
“Why not?” Ava asked, thoroughly confused.
Jamie’s expression was grim. “Just go back inside. Be glad you’re rid of me.”
“Jamie,” Ava said. She went forward despite his warning, looping her arms around him. She could feel his heart beating too fast in his chest. She could not believe it when he placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her away.
“I told you what my family is like.” He was doing his best to be brutal. It would be better that way. Let her hate him, let her forget him, at least he wouldn’t ruin her life. “I warned you, but you didn’t listen.”
It was the time of year when all the leaves were a dazzling green and the light was so bright you had to squint just to see. Paul Mather had the nerve to honk the horn, then glared at his son. Jamie looked back steadily, and that was when she knew.
“It’s your family,” she said. “They think I’m not good enough. They know what I am.”
Jamie dropped his arrogant attitude. “It was never going to happen. We are who we are, unfortunately.”
“Anything can happen! We can make it happen.”
Jamie shook his head. “No. I can’t.”
“Are you so afraid of them?” she wanted to know.
“There’s good reason to be afraid of them, for both of us.”
“We don’t have to do as they say.” It was true, she was willing to do battle if it came down to that. She stared at the car and began a curse that would cause the engine to crack.
“Stop it,” Jamie said roughly. “What’s done is done. We’re over.”
Ava looked up at him. She didn’t even know she was crying when Jamie turned away and headed for the car.
Paul Mather was observing her carefully, and he didn’t like what he saw.
She’d tricked them over the holidays by acting as if she were some sweet, na?ve creature, but now he understood she was something more.
The crows were circling above her. What appeared to be a wolf was by her side.
He’d known women like her, the ones his ancestors had brought to trial, women you couldn’t trust, those who would curse you and fight back.
“You’re better off without her,” he told his son when Jamie wrenched open the car door and got in.
Did I ask for your opinion? Jamie wanted to say, but instead he stared glumly out the window. He didn’t have the heart to look at Ava, so he leaned his head against the seat and closed his eyes. He wanted to run back and tell her the truth, but it wouldn’t have changed what was to be.
Ava and Paul Mather locked eyes, and she thought of the men who sat in judgment in Salem and the women they burned.
She could have sworn she smelled fire even though it was only engine exhaust spilling into the air as the car drove away.
Paul Mather might think it was over, but Ava knew better.
It never would be over. The story Jamie had told her wasn’t pretend.
Once upon a time there was a woman on earth who waited for her beloved to come back to her despite the distance between them, despite the fact that love wasn’t simple at all.
The end-of-term dinner party was somber that year.
They wore white dresses, which wrinkled in the damp heat of the day.
There were cheese sandwiches for lunch, but most of their meal went uneaten.
The weather was dreadful, and the Lilith girls sat under the covered porch rather than in the yard.
Petals of the black roses fell off, one by one.
A long time ago people believed that if you drew the portrait of a witch on the north side of an oak tree and hammered a nail through the place where the heart would be, the witch would lose her powers and likely turn to ash.
Some witch-hunters piled grass and twigs in a large circle, then at midnight set the ring on fire, meant to force the witch to appear in the circle and be consumed by flames.
There were witch bottles and spite dolls buried beside the foundations of the oldest buildings at Harvard that had never been found, that would be there forevermore.
For all the women who had ever been chased across the river from Boston, for those who had been hanged from tall trees, and those who tended their gardens in Cambridge, the four members of Lilith House recited a blessing.
May you rest in peace, may you always be with us, may your sacrifices not be forgotten.