Add that to the things I wish I’d known back then.
And now, seven years later, we still lived together in the confines of the blissful domesticity we’d created that first July day in Manhattan. Ben was my safe haven. My protector. But most of all, my escape.
* * *
He stood in our kitchen that morning, comfortable and worry-free, with a dish towel carelessly thrown over his shoulder and his bare feet solidly on the wood floor. For a moment I thought I might say yes to his seven-year open-ended question: “Marry me?”
But then the damn phone rang, bringing me back to the life I’d left behind.
It was my father. I hadn’t heard his voice since we said goodbye face-to-face. But every month, like clockwork since the week I’d left home, I’d gotten a letter and a check. No matter where my vagabond legs carried me, no matter how many years passed, those letters found me. They never asked me back, and though I’d long since stopped needing the money, he sent it anyway. But he never called, so I knew I had to talk to him.
Damn Southern manners.
And there it was, the trouble I’d never expected, all wrapped up in a little girl who shared my name but saw fit to call herself Byrd.
2
Byrd
Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again.
—The Little Prince
The Old-timers and Towners all think I’m crazy. They say I act too old for my age, and that my strange ways (even though the whole damn town depends on them) curdle up my thoughts. But that’s not the thing that bothers me most. I swear, I’m kept up nights just thinkin’ on how anybody could manufacture such an evil thought about a girl. You know what they think?
Everyone in this godforsaken town thinks I’m a tomboy.
Damn it. They don’t know much about anything. When I grow up and get my woman boobies, they’re gonna be surprised. Everyone but Jamie. He’s always told me how pretty I am. Well, and Jackson (he’s my grandpap). My daddy, too. They tell me I’m beautiful. But they have to because they’re related to me, and I’m the only person they got in this whole wide world who loves them. Also, it don’t hurt that I look just like the one true love of both their lives, the grandmother I never met—at least while she was alive and everything—Naomi.
And then, there’s Minerva (or Minny, “Minny with the red, red hair,” as Jackson used to tease her), she’s sorta old now. I tell her she’s old as dirt), but I can’t not love her because she’s Naomi’s aunt who came down this way when Naomi and Jackson got married. So she’s family too, and “blood is blood,” my daddy always says.
Minerva’s husband is Carter. He’s like another grandpap to me, and another father for my daddy ’cause Jackson’s mostly livin’ in his own world. Thing is, they all live with me. They’re my family, and they’re supposed to love me and think I’m beautiful.
But Jamie? He ain’t got no other reason to tell me I’m pretty. He’s just my friend, plain and simple. And gone or not, he’s still my Little Prince.
The night his mama, Charlotte, got killed, and he went missin’, I’d seen him right before supper.
“Why don’t you stay, Jamie? Minerva’s fryin’ up them catfish we caught.” Minerva always acts like the help. She does all the cookin’ and housekeepin’.
“Why don’t you go on and hire someone else, Minny?” I sometimes asked her. She says, “Pay good money to a stranger to do something I like to do? Fiddlesticks.”
(Yankees get all strange about things like that, wantin’ what they don’t want, and never even seein’ that they don’t want it.)
Anyway, that night Jamie said no to eatin’ the catfish (which was downright odd).
“Nah, I gotta get back to Mama,” he said. He could be such a mama’s boy sometimes.
“Your mama sure is needy these days. She okay?” I asked. I wasn’t a stranger to the drama over at their house. Lottie (that’s his mama’s nickname), she was nice to me. But she’d been actin’ funny before she was killed. She’d cut her pretty, dark hair short. Real short, like a boy. She called it a “pixie” cut, but she didn’t look like a pixie. She looked kinda lost and alone. Haunted.
So, me and Jamie were sittin’ on the side porch of the Big House and the sun was just lazily dancing across his face. I could just tell he was tossin’ thoughts around in his head. “Spill them beans, Jamie Masters, or I’ll make mincemeat outta ya!”
That made him laugh. I knew it would. “You couldn’t even hurt me. You’d be like a no-see-um all bitin’ at me, and I’d just swat you back into the air.”
“Well, see? You don’t want to do that. So why not just tell me? I ain’t got nothin’ but time and money.” I sat back in one of the old wicker chairs, letting Jackson’s favorite phrase come rolling off my tongue.
“Damn, girl, can’t I have any secrets?” he asked.
‘Nope. Not from me.”
He leaned against the railing and looked away, but I knew he’d tell me.
“She’s altogether torn up over that daddy of yours,” he said.
I didn’t want to hear any more ’cause I didn’t like my daddy mixed up with Charlotte. I didn’t know why … then. Couldn’t use my strange ways to see into his mind.
They do that, you know. My ways get all wonky when I’m learnin’ something important that has to do with me. If I’m too close, the sight plays tricks on me. Ain’t that the way. I’m never able to see things that are too close. Sometimes I wonder what good it is to have ’em at all if they can’t help me figure out the things that need figurin’.
“See, I knew you didn’t want to hear about this,” said Jamie, watching my face closely.
I got up from the chair and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “No. You are right. I do not want to hear about your mama whining over my daddy. Just run on home and tell her to find herself another man. She’s pretty enough, I guess.”
“Byrd, it ain’t like that! She wants to end it with him.”
That hit me hard. My daddy was always teetering on the edge of a great big sadness that could, and would, eat him up whole. I didn’t like his relationship with Lottie, but it kept him happy enough. In fact, they’d been friends for their whole entire lives before they started lovin’ on each other.
“Uh-uh,” I said.
“Scout’s honor! And you know what? I think it’s good. Come on, Byrd, you and me ain’t liked it from the git-go.”
“All right then, if you’re so happy about it, why sulk all around and skip supper?”
“That’s just it. I can’t figure her out. The whole mess has her screwed up in the head. Cryin’ all the time. Disgusting is what it is. And…”
“And what, spit it out.”
“And I think she’s on some kind of drug. She’s all loose lipped and weak-kneed.”
I was quiet. Drug is the worst, most ugly word in the English language. Drugs killed Naomi.
My daddy meddled with all sorts of drugs, too. Not to mention drinkin’ it up with Jackson. I was always scared he’d find Naomi’s love for anythin’ comin’ from that poppy flower. Opium was her favorite, like the caterpillar on the mushroom in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which, by the way, is a silly book. (Who’d eat anything without knowin’ where it came from? Shoot.)
You know what? I think those Old-timers and Towners are right. I think I do act too old for my age.
“And there’s more,” said Jamie, pulling me out of my worry over caterpillars and poppy fields.
I’d moved in closer. I was frightened of what he’d say, so I needed to be nearer. That way his words might fly right past me and wouldn’t sink in. I hugged him tight. Let him feel the love come out of me. Not a sexy kind of love. A better kind. True love. It let me know things about Jamie. That weakness made him queasy. It’s why he loved me from the start. I ain’t afraid of nothin’. Well, almost nothin’. His next words, those words scared me.
“What Jam
ie, what else?” I asked, not wanting to hear the truth.
“I think she’s been over to Belladonna Bay.” He nodded his head sideways toward the back of the house and past the creek where the mist, which never broke, enveloped that horrible piece of land.
And that’s when I knew things were gonna change. But I couldn’t foresee, even with all my tryin’ and scourin’ in bowls of water. Even with laying out a million tarot cards in all kinds of spreads and combinations. I couldn’t tell he’d be gone from me by morning. Or that everyone important, all the grown-ups all around us, would consider him dead. Or that they’d blame my daddy for his murder, too.
* * *
Jamie’d been missing for six months when Jackson finally fired the last prissy nanny and called my aunt Bronwyn out of sheer desperation. Carter and Minerva were too busy to take care of me (even though they asked Jackson to let them), and Jackson was too drunk. I tried to explain that I was just fine taking care of myself, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said I couldn’t just “run wild.” And I gave him a look that said, And just what do you think I’ve been doin’ my whole entire life, Jackson?
In the end, it took him a whole half a year to get up the courage to call his own daughter. And even though I can’t look into his mind like with folks I don’t know so well, I already knew he wasn’t really lookin’ for Bronwyn to come home to take care of me. He’d just had enough of her bein’ gone. And with my daddy gone too, he needed his other kid around.
But damn. six months is a long time in a girl’s life to wait for the inevitable. I could already feel those boobies growin’. Minerva tells me I’m crazy and flat as a board. Seems that having strange ways slows down the whole process of getting old. But I swear I can see ’em, I swear it.
Thing is, I ain’t never even been sick. And I don’t expect to. And I’m beautiful and therefore useful. That’s a funny idea, ain’t it? It comes from my very own bible. The Little Prince. It’s full of all sorts of funny ideas that don’t seem to make sense at first, until you sit and think on it for a bit. Those are the best kind of ideas, in my opinion.
The book belonged to Naomi. She brought it with her from some little crazy town called Fairview up north. Only the view wasn’t so fair, as far as I’ve been told. That little town sits right across from its own misted island, one just as cursed as Belladonna Bay. Only Jackson told me that Naomi’s island was rumored to have mermaids.
I sure wish Belladonna Bay had mermaids.
Anyways, The Little Prince belonged to Naomi, and she read it to my daddy and my aunt Bronwyn.
It’s the story of a pilot and a little boy, and the pilot, see, he’s stranded in the desert. But then the Little Prince comes along and helps him to understand all sorts of things. And that’s when they become best friends. But mostly, it’s a book about bein’ practical and strange all at the same time. Which is exactly how I like to see myself.
When Bronwyn left, she tried to take the book with her, but Jackson wouldn’t let her. The cover ripped a little when they were fightin’, but I don’t care. I like broken things.
Like my daddy. He’s been broken since before I was born. It makes him more interestin’. Jamie used to say it ain’t good, how much I love my daddy. But I don’t think you can love anyone or anything too much.
So I said, “But I love you, Mr. Jamie Smarty-pants. I love you almost, if not as much, as I love my daddy.”
We were sitting up in a tree, and his head was crowned with a wreath of leaves I’d made. The sun shone through his dark curls and the heat made his cheeks pink. He was more beautiful than any boy or girl I’d ever seen, except for me. But you couldn’t compare me and Jamie because he’s a boy and I’m a girl. Other than that, we got a lotta similarities. We’re both dark and small with hair black like the night. Daddy tells me I’m just like Snow White. Dark hair and pale skin.
I know what I see when I see my reflection in other people’s eyes. Like those Towners and Old-timers. They see my potential. But Jamie didn’t ever need to live up to his potential. He’s just plain beautiful. Born that way and stayin’ that way. Even if only in my memory.
He laughed a little in the tree that day and snuck a kiss on my cheek. I moved from my branch to his and wrapped my arms around him, letting our black hair mingle. Our congruities always made my heart sing. Made me feel less alone, too. Congruity means bein’ similar, and it’s one of my very favorite words.
And because we were both so amazing, me and Jamie, most other folks let us be. And the whole town of Magnolia Creek just lived in the shadow of our usefulness. Because we were gonna be famous together. We were bright shining stars ’bout to shoot off this tired planet and into the sky. Then we’d rain stardust into the eyes of every living thing this side of Mobile. Or the whole world, if you wanna think big.
Now I’d have to rethink that particular dream, ’cause Jamie disappeared into the dark, velvet Alabama night. Leaving a whole lot of blood. Blood that sent my daddy to prison and brought my aunt Bronwyn home.
3
Bronwyn
I tried to hang up the phone, but I was shaking too much. Ben placed his hand over mine, and we hung the phone up together. Then he gently led me to the front porch, a place that always calmed me. I’m happiest outdoors.
After we left Manhattan, we moved upstate. I’d been working as a freelance photojournalist for about six years and had become well known enough to have a decent savings (not that I needed one, Jackson’s checks kept on keepin’ on). The subtle notoriety brought me more of what I really liked about my job. The running away part. I was called when anyone needed really good pictures of a place no one else wanted to go. War-torn nations were my specialty.
We decided to move to the forest, both of us inspired by the trees. And it was on the porch—the porch that sold us on the house before we’d even walked in—that I told him what happened to my brother. And told him how my father needed me to come back home.
Ben leaned back easily in the Adirondack chair and stretched out his long legs, cupping his hands securely around his coffee mug. “Why do you suppose he didn’t call sooner? You’ve gotten letters, but no mention of any of this…,” he ventured hesitantly.
“That’s not how Jackson works, Ben. And it probably wasn’t in the news because Jackson wields a lot of power with his wealth.”
“I can understand keeping it out of the news, but keeping it from you? Why?”
“Because he wanted me to come home on my own terms. Don’t underestimate Southern pride. I bet he thought he could just fix it all up and I wouldn’t have to know a thing. Remember, Ben—this man let my mother die. I love him, but he practically spoon-fed her drugs. Anything to make her happy. Anything to avoid conflict, to stay in control. He knows I’ll come back now. That man knows I don’t have a choice.”
“Are you going to go?” he asked.
“I have to go.”
“Why? Why do you have to go?” he asked.
Because I promised Paddy I’d try to be his mother, and now I have to face the fact that I’ve been a crappy, absent one, I thought. Just like Naomi.
But Byrd was easier to think about, and easier to explain.
“Because she needs me. Byrd needs me,” I said.
My niece I’d never met. Byrd.
I tried to push away the questions that were tugging at my heart. Sure, I knew the basics from Jackson’s letters: that Paddy’d gone and found himself a crazy, beautiful Italian girl from somewhere in Virginia. Turns out, she had magic in her, too. “I guess us Whalen men can’t love no ordinary type of woman,” he’d written. He said Stella came looking for bits and pieces of her own scattered family, and it brought her to Susan Masters, the one person of Italian descent in the whole town. Later, I’d find out that her searching led her to the Big House as well. The only thing I did know was that Stella died giving birth to Byrd. And I should’ve been there.
And why wasn’t I? Why hadn’t I gone straight home the second I heard? Why hadn’t I at lea
st called? For a second I felt myself panic, a childhood fear slowly lacing itself through my veins.
“The mist over Belladonna Bay is inside.… It seeped into me, Mama, I can feel it!”
“Hush, Bronwyn, Hush, darling, there’s no mist inside of you. I promise.”
That old, familiar boogeyman. That same feeling churned inside me now as if Jackson’s voice was casting some sort of memory spell all his own.
I’d never even seen pictures of Stella or Byrd. Jackson never sent any, and Paddy never wrote. We were in a communication stalemate, my brother and I. First person to give in and contact the other would be the loser. “You two are competitive to a fault,” Jackson used to say.
But there, in the safety of Ben’s gaze, I knew the truth. It was me. I should have called Paddy. I should have requested a photo of my niece. Damn, I should have gotten on the first plane back to Magnolia Creek when I found out she was born. I was the abandoner. It was my responsibility, and here I was just living my life and thinking it was their fault for not reaching out. Guilt sits uneasy in the belly, and mine was churning with all I’d missed.
Byrd. Paddy, Stella … Lottie.
“Why haven’t you ever gone back?” Ben asked.
And Lord, if that wasn’t the ten-million-dollar question.
The one I’d been worried he’d ask, at first, because I didn’t have an answer. Then, after enough time passed, I didn’t think about it anymore. Short memories, remember?
“I don’t know. I guess, as cliché as it may seem, I was running away from everything, and I guess I never stopped,” I said.
“Why?”
“That woman they say Patrick killed, she was my best friend. And her brother, Grant … I don’t talk about him. And I won’t. But my mother? I did something pretty bad the day she died.” I sighed, looking away.
“What do you remember about that day? Bronwyn, if you remember it well enough, you could just stay here and we can send for Byrd. Raise her here, together,” he suggested.
The Witch of Belladonna Bay Page 2
