Page 53 of The Witches of Cambridge

CHAPTER NINETEEN

This year no letters would be left beneath the pillows of new initiates. The two freshmen who were to have moved in would instead remain at South House, sending letters of regret to Lilith House before they had even been invited to join the society. Two girls who had been in residence had left last year; one dropped out of school and retreated to her family’s farm in Connecticut, and the other transferred to Mount Holyoke College. The girls’ families feared that a witch-hunter was once again searching them out, and if that was true their children would be unsafe, no matter what spells or enchantments were cast. Ava and Lauren were to be the only residents of Lilith House. Although Lauren and Lionel were still in Provincetown, Ava went directly to their house when she arrived back from Maine. She knew where to find the hidden key, plucking it from a tin that was kept in a bed of ivy. After letting herself in through the back door, she made her way upstairs to one of the guest rooms, where she cried herself to sleep, trying and failing to keep count of all the lies she’d been told when she was a child.

We are your parents, we know what’s best, all your talents are sins, you must not speak to birds, swim in the lake, talk to the other girls, meddle with the weather, see inside people, do your schoolwork with such ease, imagine that you know what others feel and think. Close your eyes, go to sleep, trust in us, be what we tell you to be, plain and simple, nothing more.

On Saturday morning, Ava ate canned food from the large, well-stocked pantry, heating beans and stewed tomatoes and soup. She holed up in the library reading magic books, allowing herself to be who she was. By Sunday afternoon she could turn a stone into a toad and a toad into a stone. She burned the clothes she’d worn in Maine, tossing her earth-stained jeans and shirts into the fireplace. She borrowed a black dress from one of many in Lauren’s closet, and when she looked at herself in the mirror, she realized she was mourning the person she’d been before she came to Cambridge, the girl who had tried and failed to please her parents.

Lionel and Lauren arrived late Sunday night, invigorated as they always were after a visit to Provincetown. They had spent most of the summer surrounded by the artists and theater people and writers who gathered at the glorious place they lovingly called the end of the world. In Provincetown men and women fell in love with whomever they wished to, they painted their souls onto canvas, they danced all night; witches held meetings beneath the silver moon and gathered at the Alchemist on Saturday nights.

Billy had come to visit Lionel. He wished he could enjoy the town, but he’d been so afraid he would be recognized as a police officer, and lose his job, that he would go out only after dark, and then only to the beach, where they could be alone and drink wine and steal kisses, arms around one another. They took the beagle, Houdini, for long walks and stayed to watch the sun rise over the cold blue ocean, but even then Billy wasn’t himself.

“How far away do we have to go for you to be comfortable?” Lionel had asked, already madly in love. “California?”

“Maybe.” Billy had shrugged. “Maybe farther.”

Lionel and Lauren were arguing over who was more sunburned when they stumbled upon Ava and Jack in the garden. Houdini trotted over to welcome the wolf-dog, for they both had suffered at the hands of men and belonged to the same club of survivors.

“Well, look who’s here!” Lauren cried out. “Now that we’re seniors and can finally boss everyone around, they’ve all disappeared. They’re afraid of a witch-hunter, the big babies.”

Ava didn’t mention that she, too, had been wary of staying at Lilith House when no one else was in residence. Now that Lauren and Lionel looked at her, they could see that Ava wasn’t quite the same. Her face was drawn, she’d lost weight, and more than ever she appeared to have come from another world.

“Terrible summer?” Lionel asked as he folded himself into a wicker chair. He’d heard about Ava’s parochial upbringing, the locked doors, the rules and regulations, and the awful isolation she’d known.

“It turns out I was stolen,” Ava said. “The people I thought were my parents are my grandparents.”

“That was why you didn’t know what you were or why you’d be accepted at Lilith House.” Lauren shook her head. “What awful people.”

“They didn’t want me to know,” Ava said. “They hate who we are.”

“It’s a good time to finally find out who your parents were,” Lionel advised.

“Or maybe it’s better not to know,” Lauren said. “Your parents could have been anyone or anything.”

“It’s always better to know the truth,” Lionel said, the same advice he had given Billy during their time in Provincetown. “You know it is.”

Ava phoned the New England Conservatory of Music, and although there was no record of Christopher Abbot, a cellist who had taught in the years Chris Abbot might have been there was now living in a home for the elderly in Cambridge. She and Lionel shouted out a goodbye to Lauren, who was already dragging all of her sandy clothes and sheets into the laundry room behind the kitchen. She shouted back, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. The truth hurts.”

“Are you ready for this?” Lionel asked as they approached the nursing home. The shrubbery was untended and daisies were growing wild.

“Ready or not.” Ava took Lionel’s hand, grateful for his support. “Here I come.”

In the lobby, several people in wheelchairs had been left in a patch of sunlight, and one woman of nearly ninety was crying, batting away the streams of light. Ava knelt beside her. “Would you rather be in the shade?” When the woman nodded, Ava moved her wheelchair, and as she turned to leave, the woman took her hand and wouldn’t let go.

Ava looked to Lionel for help, and he quickly offered his assistance. He no longer needed psychedelics to see inside the beating heart of the world; he was doing it on his own. Look at me, here I am, even if no one can see me.

“You were lovely.” Lionel saw a vision of this woman at a dance when she was seventeen, the age when she was at her most beautiful, when her future had just begun. She was still at that dance inside her mind nearly all the time. There was no sunlight on that night, only cool shadows and the promise of the future.

“I was,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Was and are,” Lionel told her.

When they arrived at the music teacher’s room, there was no answer to Lionel’s knock, but the door was ajar. He pushed it open, and there was Charles McClary in an armchair, gazing out the window, wondering how he’d gotten to this place, and then suddenly there were two young people in his room. Lionel came to shake his hand, and Ava explained that she was looking for information about a man who might have been his student. McClary admitted that he couldn’t remember the names of his students, but he appreciated the candy Ava offered him. He wasn’t allowed such things anymore.

“These were my favorites,” he said of the Junior Mints, which were made in a candy factory in Kendall Square.

“The man I’m interested in is Christopher Abbot,” Ava said. “He would have studied with you in the thirties.”

McClary shook his head and said “Nope,” but when Ava brought out one of the notebooks she’d found in the cellar, he glanced at the pages, curious. “Let’s have a listen,” he suggested.