Page 52 of The Witches of Cambridge

Ava went back to the house, and there was Jeanne Abbot on the porch. Not her mother, Ava understood that now, but her grandmother, the woman who had told her a pack of lies. Ava walked right past her grandmother and went down the hall to the room where she’d spent so many years, windows locked, lies spoken. Even though she’d known nothing, she’d always sensed that something wasn’t right. She grabbed her suitcase, threw her meager belongings inside, then came back out to the porch. She’d been such a good girl, she’d wanted to please them, but she didn’t give a damn what they thought of her now.

“Where are you going?” the woman who had always called herself Ava’s mother demanded to know.

“You never even told me his name.” Every word Ava spoke was burning through her, for on this day, she felt all she had lost, as if she were a little girl again.

“Who?” There was a moment of confusion. Liars lie, and if they do it well they come to believe what they say.

“Christopher Abbot. I had the right to know he was my father. But you didn’t think so. You erased him from my life!”

Silence then. When you know you know and lies will do no good.

“And my mother,” Ava cried. “My real mother, who was she? You must know!”

“Don’t ask me a question like that,” Jeanne Abbot said. “You won’t get an answer, and you’re lucky not to.”

Ava’s grandmother turned away. Perhaps she was crying, or perhaps she was in a fury. It didn’t matter. Ava was never coming back.

They were through.

Once, when Ava was a small girl, eight or nine at most, she had stumbled into a pond. Before she knew it she had drifted into the deep water as the people she had then believed to be her parents watched in horror. The man she now knew to be her grandfather had leapt in after her, sputtering in the frigid cold. There was a wild swan watching, its dark eyes trained on her. This was magic, she was certain of it, but it was interrupted when her grandfather grabbed her, hauling her toward shore. You can swim, the swan had told her. You can take flight if you wish. Her grandfather was having trouble swimming in his boots, his coat pockets filling with water; she remembered that surprisingly she had been the one to keep him afloat, pulling him back to where her grandmother was standing on the shore, howling as if all had been lost. In the end, the day had been saved by a sopping wet girl who could not seem to drown, whose boots were filled with mud, who wished she could have made her way out to the swan and remained in the deep green depths.

They had seen evidence of who she was. They’d known all along that she wasn’t like them. She never had been. She hadn’t drowned in the deep water, just as she hadn’t broken her legs when she jumped off the roof. Before she left for Cambridge, Ava went into the woods to stand on the muddy edge of the pond where it had happened. The people she thought were her parents had convinced her it had been a dream, but it wasn’t. Now, on this day, there were two swans in the water, one white and one black. Ava slipped off her shoes, then her clothes. She threw a stick for Jack, and as he raced into the pond, the swans rose into the air like clouds. Ava stepped into the shallows, her feet sinking into the mud. In no time the water was too deep for her to walk, and she swam all the way across, just as she’d always wanted to, not stopping until she reached the far shore. She was fearless, and with good reason. For the first time she knew exactly who she was.

Ava could hardly wait to return to Cambridge. There was very little traffic on the main road, but luckily, a delivery truck filled with crates of potatoes from a local farm was headed to Boston’s Haymarket fruit and vegetable market. The driver blared his horn, then stopped for her at the crossroads and waved.

It begins again. I am someone new. I am myself and no one else.

Witches who had been hanged were buried at crossroads, for this was thought to confuse their spirits and prevent them from finding their way back to their abusers, as if they would ever forget who had wronged them. Ava placed two black stones at the place where the roads met to mislead anyone who might wish to follow her. Don’t come after me, don’t seek me out, I never belonged to you.

“I wouldn’t let my daughter hitchhike,” the driver told Ava after she and Jack had climbed into the truck’s cab and Ava thanked him for the ride. Ava hadn’t asked for a good man to take her to Boston, but she’d gotten one all the same. She managed a smile despite the circumstances of her leaving.

“I won’t do it again,” she assured the farmer. “I’m never coming back.”

“At least you’ve got the wolf to look after you.”

“I do.” Jack had settled on the floor beneath her feet, and Ava reached to pet his head. She thought that she should have paid more attention when Jack had growled low down in his throat the first time he spied Ava’s grandfather. But it was easy to be fooled when a lie was so huge it had no borders. Close the windows, lock the doors, never say a true word, turn away and never turn back. Trust in us, you belong here, there is darkness falling beyond the lane, you could never cope with what is out there, you could never belong. Heading south on Route 1, Ava saw above her a vast blue sky speckled with clouds.

When she tried, Ava could recall bits and pieces of what had happened on Storrow Drive. She was in the car, in the backseat, under a blanket. She had been little more than a baby, but she’d been there, eyes open. Snow, sunlight, ice, tears, a river, a woman calling out as if her heart would break, the one who had saved her on the day the whole world had turned cold and blue.