I worked contentedly in Marly’s kitchen, mixing several varieties of lettuce from her garden and sending Michael for other ingredients. I like an interesting salad, with as many different tastes and textures as possible. While I waited for Michael to bring me some tomatoes, I put together balsamic vinaigrette dressing, leaning out onto the back deck to pull leaves from Luke’s potted herb garden.
As I puttered and mixed, I let my mind wander over our conversation that afternoon. I thought of Michael talking with his mother about Nell and about me. He had never asked me if he could tell his parents that I could hear minds, and I knew he wouldn’t without my express permission. As unhappy as my parents would be, I was tempted to share my secret with Luke and Marly. Although I wasn’t sure I bought into Michael’s belief about the men in his family, I hoped that one day the Sawyers would be my family, too, and I felt they deserved to know the truth.
No, my parents wouldn’t like that. Of course, they didn’t realize that Michael knew, either. My mother questioned me frequently about how I was doing in maintaining my mental wall without making Michael suspicious. I hadn’t had to lie outright yet, and I didn’t think I would. I just hoped that by the time I had to confess, they knew Michael well enough to trust him to be discreet.
When Marly and Luke arrived at the cabin, tired from a long day with plants and people, Michael and I had dinner on the table. Marly greeted us with a grateful smile.
“Oh, aren’t you the best children any parents ever had!” she exclaimed, and I glowed at both the praise and the inclusion. “Just let us wash up and we’ll be ready to eat.”
Conversation around the table was as lively and varied as it always was. Marly was talking about Lela and her upcoming fall break when I suddenly made a connection.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “Michael and Marly, Lela and Luke. Did you do that on purpose, give them your initials?”
Luke and Marly exchanged glances and Michael rolled his eyes. “Now you’ve done it. You’re going to get the name story.”
“There’s a story?” I asked eagerly. I had my own name story, and it occurred to me that I had never shared it with Michael, let alone with his parents.
“Yes, actually, there is,” Marly said. “We named Lela after my great-grandmother. When I was little, she told me that one day I would have a daughter, and she asked me to name my little girl after her. So we did.” She smiled. “Then there’s Michael’s story…”
“He told me he was named after an archangel, isn’t that right?”
“Well, yes, named after and quite possibly by an angel.”
“Mom!” Michael protested.
Marly was unfazed. “Michael, it’s true. Pipe down and let me tell her.” She turned to me. “When I was pregnant with him, I had a dream—well, at least I think it was a dream, but sometimes I’m still not sure…” She looked thoughtful, and then shook her head. “Anyway, I dreamed that I saw a huge, tall man. He looked like he was glowing. And he told me that I was going to have a son, and that we should name him Michael, after the archangel. And so when Michael came, we did.”
“It was a name we liked at any rate,” Luke put in. “We’d given Lela my first initial, so we were leaning toward M names. And an archangel seemed like a good idea, right?”
Michael was shaking his head. “Have you ever heard anything like that?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “No, but I can see you as an avenging angel.” Michael grinned and struck a noble pose.
“Your name is very unusual, Tasmyn,” Marly remarked. “Where did your parents find it?”
I hesitated only a moment. After all, they’d shared their stories; it seemed only right to tell them the truth about mine. “I usually just say my mom read it in a book, but actually, a fortune teller gave her the name.”
“Really?” Marly was intrigued. “Tell us about it.”
“It was before my mom knew she was pregnant with me. They went to a fair or something, and they ended up at the fortune teller’s tent. My parents are so completely not into that kind of thing… I can’t imagine why they did it. But when she read my mom, she told her that she was going to have a daughter named Tasmyn. Both of them liked the name, so they decided to give it to me.” I grimaced. “Of course, they don’t have to live with telling everyone how to spell it and teachers mispronouncing it at every new school.”
“Very interesting,” Luke remarked. “A story you can tell your kids someday—how mom and dad got their names. Wonder what their names will be?”
“Luke!” Marly exclaimed. “Good heavens, they’ve only been dating for a little over a month. Don’t rush them.” She rolled her eyes at us, but Luke just laughed.
“With my family history, I don’t think it’s too soon to talk about the future,” he observed confidently.
“Luke, really,” Marly laughed, but I could tell she wasn’t truly annoyed with him.
“Tasmyn’s not upset at me, are you?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “No, of course not.”
“Nothing to worry about. I was just saying, it’s a funny coincidence that you two kids would be drawn together, given the history of your names.”
Marly tactfully changed the subject. “So, what did you do with your afternoon? I assume you didn’t hang out in the pumpkin patch.”
Michael made a face and we all laughed. “No, we took a picnic to the Christmas tree field and talked about Nell Massler.”
I was startled, since I had no idea he was going to be quite so honest with his parents.
Luke sighed. “Yes, that’s a very sad story. The whole family was essentially destroyed.”
That reminded me of a question I had meant to ask earlier. “Did Nell’s father ever pursue his political career?”
“No, after the incident with his wife, he knew it was all over. There was just too much uproar, not only locally, but across the whole region. No one would touch him, professionally speaking, after that.”
“What’s even sadder,” Marly put in, “is how he reacted to Nell after everything was over. It was like she reminded him of her mother… she does look very much like Alyse—that’s her mother. And so he’s pretty much left her to her own devices all these years. They had a nanny until Nell got too old to need one, but I imagine it must have been a very lonely existence.”
“She hasn’t helped much, the way she treats people,” Michael remarked.
“A little compassion, please, Michael,” his mother admonished. “I know Nell hasn’t been kind to you, Tas, and I’m sorry about that. But I try to remember that her life has been difficult. Maybe she’ll be able to come to terms with that as she gets older.”
“I was wondering,” I began, “whether… well, Michael said her mother was planning to harm this other woman using witchcraft. And if you believe in that, then I can see it being a threat. But if it isn’t real, then wouldn’t it have been pretty—I don’t know, harmless, in the long run?”
Luke nodded thoughtfully. “Well, she wasn’t exactly harmless. Apparently, she had a knife she planned to use on her victim. But the crux of the matter is how much what you believe affects your actions, I think. If Alyse was completely convinced that she had the power to pull off whatever she had planned, I’m not sure how harmless she would have been. I don’t know that I believe in witchcraft, but I do know that the power of the mind is quite strong. I don’t think that we’ve even begun to tap into its true potential.” He smiled at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and I wondered if he somehow suspected the power of my own mind. My mental block was so slippery these days anyway, that it would be easy to just take a little listen… but no, that would be wrong.
As if he realized what I was thinking, Michael squeezed my hand under the table. But when he spoke, he addressed his father. “Are you saying you might believe in witchcraft, Dad?”
It was Marly who answered. “Your father and I try to avoid some of the darker elements in King, you know, Michael. We won’t live in town. I knew that from
the first time we came here to look at property. This nursery sits on land that was never part of King’s property. I don’t give a lot of credence to the rumors that go around town, but I also know there is far more to the world than meets the eye.”
I nodded in agreement.
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