Page 67 of The Witches of Cambridge

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

As they stood in the garden of the Bells’ house, Lionel handed Billy a letter postmarked Palo Alto. He’d been accepted into the residency program at the Stanford University School of Medicine, his dream, Billy’s nightmare.

“You’re going to California?” Billy had been waiting for something like this to happen, something that would ruin their happiness.

“We’re going,” Lionel said. “The two of us.”

“Oh yeah. Sure.” Billy was already out of bed, grabbing for his clothes. He’d never belonged on Brattle Street, where people did as they pleased and led their lives with the protection of wealth. “And what do I do about my life? Forget about everything I’ve worked for?”

“Come with me and we’ll find a different life.”

“One that’s all about you.”

“No, one that’s about us,” Lionel said, asking him to think it over, the glimmering white city, the road that would lead to the redwoods in La Honda, where they could rent a cabin not far from Stanford. Lionel said he wanted to be who he was and come home every day to someone who loved him. “You’ll find your way once we’re there.”

Billy left the house in a fit of temper, accusing Lionel of thinking only of himself. Lionel was being unreasonable and naïve to imagine that Billy could give up his career and simply walk away from his life. He had a family, didn’t he? He had spent years rising to become a detective like his father, and now he was keeping the secret of how a man had died. Witches kept secrets when they needed to, Lionel had told him, when they had no other choice, when they would be judged guilty no matter what they did.

Billy slammed the door on his way out, and he got in his car with the intention of never coming back. As he drove away, he thought of the men he worked with, the ones he went out with on Friday nights, friends and acquaintances he’d known most of his life, buddies and coworkers who thought they knew him when in fact they knew only what he allowed them to know. When he really thought about it, they didn’t know him at all.

As he drove, he loosened his tie and lit up a cigarette; he felt as though he was burning up inside. And then he thought, What would it be like to have a different life, to do as he pleased, to love someone? What if he didn’t have to hide himself away, or hate himself, or fear being found out? What if he lived a life in which he didn’t lose the person he cared for most in the world? Halfway down the block, he made an illegal U-turn and headed back, cursing himself and the state of the world. It was May, and there had been a streak of very hot days. Everyone was dreaming of summer, and birds that had spent the winter down south had returned early and were making a racket in the trees. Billy could never make sense of Massachusetts weather, any more than he could make sense of his own feelings. He’d learned to keep secrets, and he wondered if he’d be able to be himself in California, the person Lionel wanted to come home to.

Billy parked in a no parking space on Brattle Street. No one would give him a ticket; all the cops knew his car, just as they thought they knew him. He was wearing a black suit and a white shirt, clothes to wear to funerals and to weddings or, in his case, to work. Clothes he’d like to tear off and never wear again. What if he wore jeans and a T-shirt? What if he let his hair grow to his shoulders? He had become a stranger to himself and could no longer admit what he really wanted. His father had been a detective, and so Billy had joined the force, never even considering other options. He was who he thought his father wanted him to be, but what if he was wrong?

After Billy’s mother’s death, there were years when it had been only the two of them, Billy and his moody father, Ray. They had cold cereal for supper, and if the laundry wasn’t done, they wore the same clothing for the rest of the week. Don’t listen to a word anyone says about you, Ray Healy told his son after Billy’s mother’s struggle with cancer, when the house was finally emptied of well-meaning relatives and friends. You’re the best son I could have ever had. Better than I deserved. I want you to have the life that you want. Billy had always thought his father was telling him he was worthy of joining the police force, but he wondered now if his father had known the truth about him, though it wasn’t a subject they had ever discussed. What if his father were saying, You should be whoever you really are.

Billy had come back to the garden, where the cherry trees were blooming and the wicker furniture was set out on the brick patio. Ivy was growing wild over the crumbling stone walls. Anything could happen if you let it, he saw that now. He saw that his father had only wanted him to be happy. Billy lifted his eyes, and when he saw Lionel in an upstairs window his heart began to pound in his chest. Perhaps he’d always known that someday the truth of his soul would claim him. It would happen when he found his one true love. The nights he’d spent with Lionel hadn’t been a mistake or an accident, they hadn’t been due to thoughtlessness or alcohol. If you don’t know who you are, no one else will, Lionel had told him once. Billy thought that his father would have gotten on with Lionel. They were both men who stood for something, who were fearless, who knew and accepted who they were.

Lionel’s suitcases were packed and set out in the hall, and his beagle, Houdini, was napping beside them. Lionel had decided to drive his grandmother’s old Jeep across the country. He came downstairs as soon as he heard footsteps. He’d only been waiting for Billy to return.

“And I just never report in to work?” Billy said.

“Send them a letter of resignation.”

“And then?”

“Then we live.”

They would stop at cafés and general stores; they would buy cowboy boots and sleep in the same bed; and when they reached California, they would step into the future as soon as they crossed the state line.

Lauren would miss her brother terribly, but after graduation she would be leaving as well. She had withdrawn from the master’s program at Oxford, and instead of traveling to England, she was off to Manhattan. To prepare, she’d been reading New York novels—The Great Gatsby and The Age of Innocence, along with poems by Walt Whitman. She had a job interview at the Strand Bookstore a few days after graduation. But her main goal was to see whether she was a poet, and she thought there was no better place to do that than in New York. Goodbye, Cambridge, close up the house, cover the furniture with white sheets, hire a man to water the gardens, lock the gates, cry on the crooked brick path. Lauren’s clothes had been stored in the attic at Brattle Street, but she didn’t need designer clothing anymore. She’d packed a few black sweaters, several pairs of jeans, and her red boots. She’d decided that was all she would need.

When Maureen arrived to pick up Billy’s car, she and Lauren sat out on the patio. The black roses were all in bloom and bees flitted through the air. Maureen and Lauren had never cared for one another, but here they were, in the same situation, already missing their brothers. Lionel had left Lauren a note, which she understood. They had never been very good at goodbyes, not since the night Lauren spent in the cherry tree when their parents didn’t return. You are my family and my darling sister and wherever I am that will always be true. Go fall in love. Live your life.

“Will they be happy?” Lauren wondered.

Maureen had been waiting so long for Billy to be true to himself that she replied right away. “They will be so happy,” she said. “They deserve to be.”

Lauren gave Maureen the once-over. “I suppose this makes you my sister-in-law.”

“Now we really have good cause to hate each other” was Maureen’s cheerful response. “We’re family.”

They both laughed then. They supposed they were.

“You’re right about them,” Lauren said. “They’ll be so happy.” For the first time since they’d met, the two women couldn’t agree more. Hello to the future, whatever it might be, a place where their brothers didn’t have to lock themselves away, where the walls they had always built would fall into the western sea.

Ava slept too much and cried far too easily. She had urges for odd foods at odd hours, buttered toast for dinner, tomatoes for lunch, gooey chocolate cake at midnight. She had been suffering from lovesickness ever since Jamie told her he had no choice but to leave town, and when Ava vowed she’d go with him, he shook his head. His father had threatened her if Jamie didn’t leave alone.

“I don’t care,” Ava insisted.