Page 54 of The Witches of Cambridge

There was a cello in the corner, which Lionel brought over. “Here you go.”

“I see who you are,” the music teacher said, studying him.

“Do you?” Lionel laughed. “Well, I see you as well.” Lionel always knew when someone had been forced to hide his true nature. He gathered that McClary had been judged for much of his life, as a queer man and a musician, and now as an old person who couldn’t remember certain facts of his own life.

“I would have thought you to be a fine-looking man if I’d met you when I was young,” the cellist told Lionel. At the end of his life, he’d discovered there was little point in staying quiet. “Do everything you want to do,” McClary confided. “Don’t put things off. Don’t give a damn about what anyone thinks.”

“I will,” Lionel said. He had decided to apply for his residency at Stanford University Hospital. He knew he could be happy in California, driving up to San Francisco on weekends, walking through the fog.

McClary leaned over his cello, and Ava held up the notebook as he played. The music was wild and beautiful and alive, the composition of a man in love. It was like nothing she’d ever heard before.

“I remember him now,” the music teacher said. He never forgot music. “He was running away from his family. They were old-fashioned, that’s what he told me. Puritan stock who didn’t believe in music. Sounded like terrible folks. They were convinced he had married a witch. That’s why he called this piece of music ‘The First Witch of Cambridge.’ It was written in honor of one of his wife’s ancestors.”

“Is that what he told you?” Ava said, shocked.

“He said he wanted it to sound like magic.”

Ava kissed the old man’s cheek, then returned the cello to its place. After their goodbyes were said, Ava and Lionel left in silence, for nothing could compare to the music they’d just heard. On the way back to Harvard Square, they passed neglected yards where twisted rosesbushes bloomed. When you fell in love, it could be slow or quick, it could happen overnight. Ava had a vision then. She saw her mother hearing music through the open window of an apartment building as she was walking home from Radcliffe Yard. Her mother had stopped on the sidewalk, and her heart had stopped as well. A young man looked out the window and saw her standing there; and that was when the music changed. It was a bird, a cloud, a kiss; it was the song on his first and only album, recorded in a studio in Somerville.

Later that week, Ava found her father’s record in a secondhand store in Central Square. She went into a small booth at the rear of the store and closed the door. What you know, you can’t unknow. What you discover can change your life. But how else can you make sense of who you are? On the album cover was the image of a white crow. To my darling, who followed the sound of my music through the streets and up the stairs. Ava turned off the light and listened, and as soon as she heard his composition, she understood that once her parents had fallen in love, nothing else had mattered to them. At their wedding the only two witnesses were secretaries who worked at City Hall. They had all they needed on that day, and on every day they spent together, and if fate later would turn on them, if the ice on Storrow Drive changed everything, there was still that day they met, when a beautiful woman had stood outside his apartment crying and falling in love with the music he was making, and one day their daughter would hear the song that told their story and it would reveal everything she needed to know.

Lauren stumbled upon Jamie at the Harvard Book Store, as busy as ever on this September day, packed with students and professors and book lovers of all sorts. Lauren could have left when she spied Jamie. She’d sat up with Ava night after night, listening to her friend go on about how she would never speak to Jamie again, not saying a word for fear she would expose her own actions.

Lauren had decided it was likely best to avoid Jamie, for surely he hadn’t gotten over her betrayal when she disposed of his note. Then their eyes had met, and there was no graceful way to act as though she hadn’t seen him. She reluctantly went to the fiction aisle, where Jamie had been thumbing through The Catcher in the Rye; he let the book fall closed when Lauren approached. He looked terrible, unwashed, wearing clothes he’d worn for days, with no obvious evidence of his arrogance or his wealth.

“You read?” Lauren said to him, surprised.

Jamie threw her a dark look. “Occasionally. I’m studying literature.”

“I would never have guessed. I’m surprised your family would allow that.”

“Maybe you should stop guessing.” Jamie had discovered he had no interest in economics or political science. He went back to flipping through the pages of the book he held, but Lauren knew he wasn’t reading. He was just waiting for her to go. Perhaps that was why she stayed: to make him feel worse.

“I know a man who despises you,” she told him. She was thinking of Carrick, who’d gone to jail when Jamie had merely been swept away to the family ranch in Wyoming.

“Well, tell him welcome to the crowd.” Jamie set down The Catcher in the Rye, which was said to be unique and affecting, the book young people in search of themselves were drawn to. If he read it, it was likely that he would never go to law school. He’d get on a plane and travel to places he hadn’t heard of before and would read as many novels as he could. “Give Ava time and I’m sure she’ll despise you as well as me.”

His comment was wrenching, because it was likely true. Still, she refused to imagine a time when Ava discovered she was the cause of the breakup with Jamie. “You think I’m the one who spoke to your father.” She was a good liar, but it wasn’t working this time.

“I know it was you. He told me. He had no reason to protect you,” Jamie said, his eyes cold. “Happy you put an end to us?”

“Don’t act like you’re the wronged party. You were so quick to walk away and do whatever your family told you to do. I’m actually surprised you were so easily bought. I thought you might put up a fight, even if it was just a little one. But you proved me right. You’re just like them.”

“You think this is about me?” Jamie shook his head. “I didn’t tell Ava what you did, because she’s the one who can be the most hurt.” He took in the look of surprise on Lauren’s face. “Didn’t think of that possibility, did you? My family would have had Ava removed from Radcliffe if I didn’t go along with their plans. I wasn’t about to let that happen.”

Lauren was taken aback to learn that Jamie had acted nobly. Perhaps he wasn’t exactly who she thought he was, and she began to wonder if it might be possible that she was the villain here. She felt a fool, though she did her best not to show it. “It doesn’t matter,” she assured him. “You would have ruined things with her sooner or later.”

“Yeah. So will you.” Jamie decided to buy the novel. What the hell? He might as well read it and let it change his life. If he was going to fail at being a Mather, he might as well be someone else.

“I didn’t betray someone I was in love with,” Lauren called after him, loud enough for people to turn and stare.

“But you’re her best friend, and you’re still lying to her. Which is worse?” Jamie went to the counter to pay for his book, handing over a five. “Keep the change,” he told the clerk. He hoped the one good thing that came out of this whole mess would be that Ava could be rid of Lauren, although clearly, she wasn’t so easy to ditch. When he left the bookstore, she chased him outside. Lauren had actually begun to feel bad for him and, worse, to wonder if they were in some vast plot together as co-conspirators. It was dusk and the whole world seemed made of ash.

“Maybe she’s better off without both of us,” Lauren said sadly.

“Is she?” Jamie wondered.

It was the yearning expression on his face that surprised Lauren most of all and made her wish she could be in love. The quick, impetuous thought made her realize that perhaps she already was, even if she had tried with all her might not to be. She had treated Carrick without any care, as if he didn’t matter to her in the least; perhaps she had even believed that to be true. It was difficult to tell the difference between an angel and a monster, and by the time you did, it might just be too late. It was probably too late now.