The witching hour

mother had gone on to marry and have seven children. And talk now could only do the woman harm. Over the miles and the years, Rowan felt no malice for this faceless, nameless creature, only a dreary hopeless longing. No, she had not said a word.

He had studied her for a long moment, quite unruffled by her impassive face, her inevitable quiet. When she gave him back the card, he took it graciously, but he held it out tentatively as if he hoped she would take it again.

“I should so like to talk to you,” he continued. “I should like to discover how life has been for the transplanted one, so very far from the home soil.” He had hesitated, then: “I knew your mother years ago-”

He stopped, as if he sensed the effect of his words. Maybe their sheer impropriety disturbed him. Rowan didn’t know. The moment could not have been more excruciating if he had struck her. Yet she hadn’t turned away. She had merely remained there motionless, hands shoved in her coat pockets. Knew my mother?

How ghastly it had been. And this man with cheerful blue eyes regarding her so patiently, and the silence as it always was, a shroud binding her in. For the truth was, she could not make herself speak.

“I do wish you’d join me for a lunch, or only for a drink if there isn’t time for that. I’m really not a dreadful person, you see. There is a long history … ”

And the special sense told her he was telling the truth!

She had almost accepted his invitation-to everything, to talk about herself, and to ask him all about them. After all, she had not sought him out. He had come to her with his offer of information. And then, at that moment, had come the compulsion to reveal all, even the story of her strange power, as if he were inviting her to do it silently, exerting some force upon her mind so that she would open its innermost chambers. For he really did want to know about her! And that interest, so keenly personal, from one devoid of the slightest malicious taint, had warmed her as surely as a winter fire.

Patterns, witnesses, all her far-flung thoughts of these things flashed suddenly to the fore.

I have killed three people in my life. I can kill with anger. I know that I can. That is what has happened with the transplanted one as you called me. Is there any place in the family history for such a thing?

Had he flinched slightly as he looked at her? Or was it merely the slanting sun in his eyes?

But this could not happen. They were standing over the grave of the woman to whom she’d made the promise. “No, I will never go back to New Orleans. I will never try to find out.” The woman who had cared for her and loved her, and given her more perhaps than her real mother ever could. The mood of the sickroom had come back, the sound of soft, near inhuman cries of pain. “Promise me, Rowan, even if they write to you. Never … never … ”

“You are my mother, Ellie, my only mother. How could I ask for more?”

In those last agonizing weeks, she had feared her awful destructive power most keenly, for what if in her rage and grief she turned it on Ellie’s weakened body, and thereby ended this stupid, useless suffering once and for all? I could kill you, Ellie, I could deliver you. I know I could. I can feel it inside me, just waiting to be put to that test.

What am I? A witch, for the love of God! I am a healer, not a destroyer. I have a choice as all human beings have a choice!

And there the Englishman had stood, studying her as if fascinated, as if she had been speaking when she hadn’t been at all. It was almost as if he said I understand. But of course that was only an illusion. He had said nothing.

Tormented, confused, she’d turned on her heel and left him there. He must have thought her hostile, or mad even. But what did it matter? Aaron Lightner. She’d never even glanced at the card before she’d given it back to him. She did not know why she remembered the name, except that she remembered him and the strange things he’d said.

Months had passed since that awful day when she had driven home, opened the wall safe, and taken out the paper which Ellie’s executor had had her sign.

“I, Rowan Mayfair, do solemnly swear before God, and in the presence of the undersigned witness, that I shall never return to the city of New Orleans where I was born, that I shall never seek to know the identity of my biological parents, and that I shall eschew all contact with the family called Mayfair should any member approach me for any reason whatsoever, or on any pretext … ”

On and on it went in that near hysterical language, attempting to cover every foreseeable contingency, so many words to have so little meaning. No wonder Rowan distrusted language. It was Ellie’s wish that carried all the weight.

But Rowan had signed it. The lawyer, Milton Kramer, had witnessed it. Into his files the executed copy had gone.

Had Michael Curry’s life passed before his eyes like this, Rowan sometimes wondered, the way that my life is passing before my eyes now? Often she had stared at his smiling face, torn from a magazine and pasted to her mirror.

And she knew that if she saw him this dam might surely break. She dreamed of it, talking to Michael Curry, as if it might happen, as if she might bring him home with her to the house in Tiburon, as if they might drink coffee together, as if she might touch his gloved hand.

Ah, such a romantic notion. A tough guy who loved beautiful houses, drew beautiful pictures. Maybe he listened to Vivaldi, this tough guy, maybe he really read Dickens. And what would it be like to have such a man in her bed, naked except for his soft black leather gloves?

Ah, fantasy. Rather like imagining that the fire fighters she brought home would turn out to be poets, that the policemen she had seduced would reveal themselves to be great novelists, that the forest ranger she’d met in the bar in Bolinas was truly a great painter, and that the husky Vietnam veteran who’d taken her to his cabin in the woods was a great motion picture director hiding from a demanding and worshipful world.

She did imagine those things, and they were entirely possible, of course. But it was the body that commanded preeminence-the bulge in the jeans had to be big enough, the neck powerful, the voice deep, and the coarsely shaven chin rough enough to cut her.

But what if?

But what if Curry had gone on to the South where he came from. That was probably exactly what had happened. New Orleans, the one place in all the world that Rowan Mayfair couldn’t go.

The phone was ringing when she unlocked her office door.

“Dr. Mayfair?”

“Dr. Morris?”

“Yes, I’ve been trying to reach you. It’s about Michael Curry.”

“Yes, I know, Doctor. I got your message. I was just about to call.”

“He wants to talk to you.”

“Then he’s still in San Francisco.”

“He’s hiding out in his own home on Liberty Street.”

“I’ve seen it on the news.”

“But he wants to meet with you. I mean, well, to put it bluntly, he wants to see you in person. He has this idea … ”

“Yes?”

“Well, you’re going to think this madness is communicable, but I’m just relaying the message. Is there any chance you would meet with this guy on your boat-I mean it was your boat you were on the night you rescued him, wasn’t it?”

“I’d be glad to take him back on the boat.”

“What did you say?”

“I would be glad to see him. And I’ll take him out on the boat if he wants to go.”

“That is absolutely great of you, Doctor. But I have to explain a few things. I know this sounds absolutely bonkers, but he wants to take his gloves off and touch the boards of the deck where he was lying when you brought him around.”

“Of course he can do that. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that myself.”