Page 34 of The Witches of Cambridge

“She needs a nickname. We can call her Mouse,” the horrible Brent said, and Sawyer agreed, as always, but the sisters-in-law laughed and told Brent not to provoke their guest. All the same, when Ava stood up to leave the table, he called out “Bye, Mouse.”

Ava wished this brother of Jamie’s would get what he deserved. She whispered a shatter spell, even though she knew that magic should never be used for revenge, and had been taught at Sunday meetings that whatever you sent out into the world came back three times over. But it was too late to take back her wish; the wineglass had shattered in Brent’s hand. All around the table there were gasps, and the brothers’ wives made sure none of the shards were on the table. Paul Mather narrowed his eyes and stared at her.

“Be careful,” Ava advised Brent as she went down the hall to the kitchen. She was more furious with herself for losing her temper than she was with any of the Mathers.

The housekeeper had the day off, so Ava slipped on rubber gloves, rinsed off plates, and piled them up on the dish rack. She took an onion and chopped it into four pieces, the skin still on, so it would cleanse the atmosphere. She then washed the sink with salt and water and peppermint soap, a good way to banish arguments.

“You don’t have to clean up,” Louise told her, after she’d followed the girl, embarrassed by her family’s behavior.

“No trouble.” Ava felt as if she were the help, just as she’d been at Eliot House, and so she might as well act the part.

The men were playing cards, except for Jamie, who’d come back to get Jack from the bedroom to take him for a walk.

“My son is not like other people,” Louise Mather said, eager to make amends. “He hides his true self because he’s so easily hurt.” She surprised Ava by taking Ava’s hand, the left hand, where the eleventh finger had once been. Louise Mather had seen who her visitor was the moment she walked in the door. “I think you understand him the way someone else wouldn’t.”

“He’s magic,” Ava said softly.

“Exactly. I did him a disservice when I pretended he was something he wasn’t, but I was protecting him.” She looked closely at Ava and could see that she possessed a strength that Mrs. Mather herself had been lacking. “You won’t do that, I can tell. You won’t let him get away with everything the way I did. I babied him.”

“You’re a mother, he’s your baby, it makes perfect sense,” Ava said.

“I can see he was smart to pick you,” Louise said admiringly.

“Oh, he didn’t.” Of that, Ava was certain. “I picked him.”

“Just know my husband won’t accept it,” Louse said. “He’ll figure out who you are. He’ll keep Jamie away from you.”

“I don’t think it’s his choice,” Ava found herself saying. “It’s ours.”

While the family began to play a vicious after-dinner round of poker, Ava was left on her own in the enormous house, relieved to have been forgotten by the family. She took the opportunity to snoop around in the library. There were several very old volumes, and Ava found herself drawn to a leather-bound book she quickly grabbed off the shelf. The text had been handwritten in the seventeenth century and documented births and deaths in the family. When she paged through, she found a white feather, and then, to her surprise, a letter written by Cotton Mather. It occurred to her that the librarians at Harvard would go mad with joy if they were told of her find, but when she read the letter, she knew she must leave it where it was, for it contained pure evil.

I have taken care of Rose Bridewell. There will be no more magic.

Shocked, Ava went up to Jamie’s childhood bedroom, got into the old-fashioned iron bed, and slipped beneath the blankets. She wondered what they had done to the first witch of Cambridge. Being in this house felt like a betrayal of the women who had suffered at Cotton Mather’s hands. Ava turned off the lights and fell asleep on what had been Jamie’s boyhood bed. She dreamed of the white crow in the elm tree who couldn’t find his way back to his beloved. She was running through the wild wood, her feet bleeding, her heart broken.

At last, it grew dark, and Jamie came back to the house, calling for Jack to follow with a low whistle. Jack had accompanied him to the pond, where they’d both been careful to stay clear of the water, but even so, they left muddy tracks as they climbed the stairs and went into Jamie’s room. There was a row of meaningless trophies from the years when he played baseball, won by the team, not by Jamie himself, for he was never a very good player. When he saw Ava in his bed, he felt embarrassed by his childish behavior at dinner. He lay beside her, his arms around her. “How did I get to be so lucky?” he said.

“Hello,” Ava said, as she awakened from her dream. The white crow had been falling through the air and she couldn’t catch him. As she woke, she thought of Jamie as a boy, and of herself when she was young, both seated beside their windows, both wishing they could run away. They were wishing that now.

“This is where I first dreamed of you,” Jamie said.

His arms were around her, and he smelled of pine trees and sweat. He was still wearing his black coat, and there were streaks of mud on his boots. He was hers alone, and she could tell he was burning for her. She didn’t need an enchantment for that.

“There was always a girl with red hair in my dreams,” Jamie told her. “Not that I deserve you. I’m a bad man, just like all the others in my family.”

“I like you the way you are.”

“Do you? Even when I stomp out of Christmas dinner?”

“No matter what you do.”

They spent the night in the small bed and in the morning awoke when they heard car doors slamming as the brothers and their wives set off for their own homes, which were not far away. Sleet had begun to hit the roof. The world was cold and beautiful and cruel. Their histories were braided together, both those who believed witches should be punished and the women they went after; those who created Harvard College and those who cleaned its kitchens and parlors; those who studied for the ministry and those who’d been locked in prison cells. Ava told Jamie about the white feather hidden in the book in his parents’ library. She thought perhaps the story his mother had told him as a boy was based on something in their history. Once upon a time there had been a white crow in a tree, and he’d never returned to the one he loved. Ava didn’t want that to happen again, yet when she closed her eyes and called for a vision of the future, she could see him walking away from her, his boots clattering, black coat flaring out behind him.

Ava had seen a photograph of Jamie with his family on a shelf in the library; he’d looked so unhappy and out of place, the brooding youngest boy, the one with the scar from his eleventh finger, the telltale sign that he wasn’t like the others. She would have appeared to be equally uncomfortable had her grandparents ever bothered to have a photograph taken of them as a family.

“One day we’ll run away,” Jamie told her.

Ava heaved a sigh. When she concentrated, the sight gave her a vision. She saw Jamie’s apartment as if she had walked through the door. Light came in from a high window, but no one was there. How do you lose someone? Count to three and they just might be gone. No matter what their fate would be, Jamie was with her on this cold morning, in the bed where he’d dreamed of her. He had worries of his own, half-convinced she would leave him after this visit. Surely she’d see him for who he was. He pulled away from her and lay flat on his back. She knew what he was thinking from the look on his face, and she moved to lie atop him, whispering.