Page 63

When I married Gregory I was sick twice before breakfast and then locked myself in a bathroom and cried until my father came and stood outside the door and talked to me about nothing for half an hour. My mother had to hold my wrist while I signed the license, because I couldn’t make my hand do it.

That morning I sat still and let a stranger cut and style my hair and tried to think about nothing whatsoever.

* * *

My mother came in at ten with two glasses of champagne and Zephyr walking three steps behind her.

"Absolutely not," I said.

"He's not staying, darling, he's only going to—"

"Mother."

"It's only a blessing, darling."

"I've already been blessed," said Kit brightly. "In the hall. It was lovely."

My mother put a glass of champagne in my hand and the other on the table. Zephyr stood in the doorway looking serene.

I looked at him, and he looked at me, and something went between us.

He knew that I knew. I’d swear to it in a courtroom.

Gregory had told him nothing — I am confident of that — and I had never said one word to the man. But he stood in my mother's doorway and gave me the smallest nod I have ever received from another human being, and it was not a holy man's nod.

It was one professional acknowledging another across a room.

"Not today," he said to my mother. "Not him. He's already carrying it."

"Carrying what?"

"Mother. Get him out of here." I rolled my eyes

"Carrying what, Zephyr?"

"Ask him on Monday," said Zephyr Amaranth Aeolian, and he spun around and left.

My mother stared at me for a long moment.

"What did that mean?"

"I have no idea."

"You do, though." Her hands went to her hips. "Come on, sweetheart. You can tell me."

"Mother, there is a woman cutting my hair."

She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked out the window at the fog. She was quiet a while. Then she decided to tell me a story.

"When you were small," she said, "you told me the truth about your father's business."

"I remember."

"You said, Mother, Daddy isn't going to be a hippie next year, he's going to be a very rich hippie. I asked how you knew and you said the ouija board told you. And I sent you to your room." She got a faraway look. "Then I sat in that kitchen and cried, Blaine Solstice, because I’d known it for a year and I had needed somebody else to say it out loud."

I sat very still under the damp towel.

"You have always been the one who says the thing." Mother sighed heavily. “But…’