“It needs to be much worse than that,” said Hallie.
“It does,” Molly agreed. “What would those freaky women around here have used? Maybe the lady who lived here before you brought weird poison plants back from Australia or South America. A lot of the women do that.”
The twins turned to each other simultaneously, and Hallie could see the surprise she was feeling mirrored in her sister’s eyes. What in the world would the lady who once lived here have known about poison? From the way their parents talked about the woman, it sounded like she practically never left Bethel. Why would Molly think she knew anything at all? Instead of answering Molly, Hallie asked, “What are you talking about?”
“You know, the woman who lived here. She was a witch. They all are. If there’s a greenhouse, there’s a witch. That’s how you can tell. And this one? Very scary. My mom says her son killed himself.”
“She was a witch?” Hallie said.
“I mean she wasn’t a real witch. They’re not like that. They don’t think they can fly through the air on broomsticks or something. They don’t run around in those pointy Halloween hats. But they are, like, into witchcraft. Witch stuff. My mom said they make potions out of plants that usually only grow in jungles and deserts. They’re all known around here for growing stuff.”
“Yeah, like herbs,” Garnet said.
“Much more,” said Molly.
“Look, I’m sure they grow vegetables and herbs and I guess some flowers,” Hallie told her. “You know, tomatoes. Parsley. Daffodils. Not…” And she stopped speaking because she had no idea what sorts of things a witch grew.
“It’s not like the woman was a real witch,” Molly said again. “It’s not like any of them are.”
“They’re herbalists,” Garnet told the girl, speaking the word very slowly because she had heard her parents using it one night after dinner, and she had never before said it aloud. It was, she decided, a mouthful.
“What’s that?” Molly asked.
Garnet shrugged because she wasn’t completely certain. “I guess it’s a person who uses herbs for stuff. But for more than cooking, because everyone uses herbs in cooking. Right?”
“What else did your mom say about the woman who used to live here?” Hallie asked.
Molly went to one of the dolls and adjusted the quilt. She’s stalling, Hallie thought, because she doesn’t know what to say. She wishes she hadn’t brought any of this up.
Finally Molly answered, “She said she was kind of weird. She and some of her friends. They scared people. There were all kinds of rumors about them, and it was like they were hippies, but older. At least most of them were. Not all. But all of them were women.”
Hallie thought of the pictures she had seen of hippies: the kaleidoscopic-colored T-shirts, the long hair. The ripped bell-bottom pants. The beads and the peace signs. The marijuana. “Do you mean she grew marijuana?” she asked Molly. “Marijuana’s an herb, right?”
The child shrugged her shoulders, which looked even broader and more substantial in her snow jacket. “I don’t know. But I don’t think that’s what my mom meant.”
“Then what did she mean?” Hallie demanded, and she knew there was a bullying quality to her voice that teachers would never approve of, but she couldn’t stop herself and she really didn’t care.
“Well, my mom said that the lady who used to live here and her friends all had these little garden plots or greenhouses where they grew the stuff for their potions. It was all very hush-hush. A lot of people didn’t like them, but I guess a lot of others did.”
“What kinds of potions did they make?” Garnet asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did they make poisons?”
“I said, I don’t know! But here’s the scariest part. She had twins.”
Hallie knew this on some vague level, but because her parents had only mentioned one and he lived in St. Johnsbury, she’d never really thought about it. There was so much other information to try to understand. But now the idea that there had been twins long ago in this house grew more real.
“They were boys,” Molly continued. “And one killed himself. At least that’s what everyone says. But my mom thinks he was murdered by the women. The police never arrested the lady, and she ended up shutting down her greenhouse -this greenhouse. But my mom says the women killed him.”
“How old was he? Our age?” Hallie asked.
“A little older. He was, like, twelve or thirteen,” she said, and suddenly this big girl bowed her head and her body seemed to collapse into itself, the child almost shrinking before the twins’ very eyes. She was, Hallie realized, on the verge of tears. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you any of this stuff. My mom made me promise.”
“But you did,” Garnet said.
“It all just came out,” she murmured. “Maybe it’s not true. I don’t know. But you can’t tell anyone I told you.” Then: “I want to go home. I should go home. Can I call my mom?” The last of her sentence was smothered by a few pathetic sniffles, and she ran her bare hand across her mouth and under her nose. Garnet reached out to pat the girl’s arm, but Molly jerked away and wouldn’t look at them. Garnet had the sense that the child was scared- really and truly terrified, despite the reality that it was the middle of a Sunday afternoon and the sun was high overhead.
“Molly, please stay,” Hallie said, though she was still profoundly disturbed by the idea that twins had lived in this house before Garnet and her and one of them had either killed himself or been killed. But she also realized that one of her and Garnet’s very first playdates here was about to end in disaster. That wouldn’t bode well as she and her sister tried to make new friends. And, the fact was, they were stuck here in Bethel; they had to make the best of it. So she took a deep breath and then did what she could to salvage the afternoon. She pulled the American Girl doll from eighteenth-century Virginia from its bed and held it under its arms like an offering. She presented the doll to Molly and said, raising her eyebrows theatrically and trying to add an aura of evil to her sentence-as if she were the scariest witch on the scariest Halloween-“Now, how shall we poison the child?”
A nise handled a pestle with the grace of a gourmet chef wielding a chopping knife. This afternoon she was grinding hypnobium, using her black marble mortar because her wooden ones were far too absorbent for a plant this toxic, pounding and swirling the seeds against the sides of the bowl. It sounded almost as if she were dicing an onion on a cutting board or chopping basil for bruschetta. Clary Hardin was sipping green tea and leaning against the counter in Anise’s kitchen, telling her about her dinner last night with John, the Messners, and the Lintons. She was pausing now in her story only because her friend was so intent on her work. Finally Anise looked up at Clary and exhaled deeply. “Tell me more about what you think of the girls,” she said.
“I told you, I think they’re delightful. John does, too.”
“This morning Sage described them as rather philistine. She found their uninterest in plants off- putting.”
Clary shook her head at Sage’s description. “They’re ten. She forgets what it’s like to be ten.”
“She said they want to use Tansy’s greenhouse as a playhouse.”
“For now. But I’m sure they’ll grow into it.”
“And Emily?” Carefully she tapped most of the powder from the mortar into a wide-mouth glass canning jar, holding the jar over the sink in the event some spilled over the side. She reserved a teaspoon, which she dropped into a porcelain mixing bowl already filled with flour and margarine and the very last of her maple syrup. She was baking cookies.
“Emily is far more scarred than she lets on,” Clary answered. “Of course, she is nowhere near the wreck that her husband is. Now he is seriously damaged goods.”
“As he should be. But not the girls?”
Clary thought about this. “Oh, they are. I think they’ll do. Really. But Hallie is far more readable than Garnet. I know children are resilient-”
“Children are resilient,” Anise said, simultaneously agreeing with her friend and cutting her off. “But often their wounds simply remain invisible until, all at once, whatever is festering there becomes agonizingly apparent.”
“Nevertheless, neither seems quite as traumatized as I would have expected. They’re going to have dinner with Reseda tonight, and I will be very interested in her take.”
Anise pressed the lid atop the glass and then screwed the large ring around the top, sealing the jar shut.
