Page 50 of The Witches of Cambridge

Jamie stalked out in a fury. His mother had been distraught when she heard about the plan the family had hatched, and she’d driven out to the house, even though no women were ever included in family meetings. Now she got out of her station wagon and followed Jamie down to the sea garden filled with lavender and bordered by white stones. There were blood-red roses and sage that had been planted three hundred years earlier. The place might be cursed, but it was beautiful all the same. Jamie’s mother was crying as she begged him to do as his father asked. Her husband had come up with the plan to discredit Ava that morning at breakfast.

“It’s best for both of you,” Louise Mather said to Jamie. “You know as well as I do that she will bring it out in you.”

“Bring what out? My humanity?”

“Your magic.” His mother’s face looked bleak. “They’re not afraid to go after Ava,” Louise told her son. “They’ll find a way to have her removed from school. She’ll wind up back where she came from, and if that happens, she’ll never forgive you, Jamie. Do you want to live with that?” Though a mother is never meant to favor one child over another, Louise had always loved him best. She knew he hid his true nature because he was so easily hurt. Now he looked at her, unnerved, just as he used to when he was a boy and didn’t understand all that was cruel in the world. “It’s better for both of you,” his mother told him. “Let her have her life, and you have yours.”

“Why have you stayed married to him?” Jamie asked. “You should have left, and you should have taken me with you.”

The wind was stronger now, and the clouds were moving so fast they were sailing by like ships at sea. Louise had been a fairly ordinary girl, pretty and kindhearted; it had been easy for the Mathers to mold her into the sort of wife they wanted for their beloved Paul, despite the fact that he, too, had been born with what they called The Sign, an unfortunate feature in their family that had to be removed. Louise’s mother-in-law had patted her arm on her wedding day and said, You’re a good girl, and that was when Louise had almost turned and run, for she wasn’t so certain that was what she wanted to be. She’d had a wild side; it was long gone now, though it was not forgotten. “Sometimes you fall in love with the wrong person,” she told Jamie. “You just do the best you can.”

Jamie took his mother’s hand. He wasn’t particularly proud of the details of his life, but he was a good son. “I know one thing about Ava,” he assured her. “She’s the right person.”

Louise Mather was the one who had told him the story about how complicated love could be, so it didn’t surprise Jamie when she embraced him fiercely and said, “If it’s meant to be, it will be.” The rest of the family would have been enraged to hear that sentiment, but she went on. “Sometimes you don’t choose love. Sometimes it chooses you.”

Jamie was driven back to Cambridge by his father, to ensure that the plan went as scheduled. After Jamie had packed for his summer in Wyoming, locking his apartment, he insisted they stop at Lilith House.

“Just make it fast,” his father told him. “Drawing these things out is never helpful.”

Paul Mather waited in the car, his window rolled down, while Jamie went up the path. Ava had been waiting for him, lingering at the window. She was worried and somewhat cross, for everyone else had already left for the summer. This time she was to lock up the house. This was not like the summer when the other women shouted Last one out is a nanny goat as they left, and each and every one had kissed her goodbye. Now Jamie had finally arrived, but there was the sleek black Mercedes at the curb. She recalled the night she’d tied the strips of white fabric to the tree, when the keys had sounded like bells, but he’d never shown up. They had sworn to one another that this time would be different, and yet, it certainly didn’t feel different right now. Jamie wanted to embrace Ava but kept his distance.

“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, naïve 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.