Morgan understood, and he was as appalled that he did as by what Destiny proposed. “You want me to tell my parents that Meggie was sane.”
Destiny nodded. “As sane as you and me.”
“They would debate that.”
“Doesn’t matter. We have to vindicate her, because she can’t speak for herself.”
The owl stayed, refused a bite of birthday cake, and watched the glorious sunrise with them. With Destiny, Morgan huddled in the blankets against the bite of the ocean breeze at dawn and began to make peace with his past.
A few hours later, he called his mother from town to tell her that they were coming.
Destiny had obviously decided not to dress to please his mother but to please herself. She wore her favorite cowboy boots and hat, a butterscotch leather straight skirt, a yellow Western-stitched shirt, buttons open to the clasps on her yellow bra.
Morgan looked her up and down. “Thank you for not wearing your Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy shirt, or the one that says Orgasm Donor.”
“They’re only words,” she said, buttoning one more button on her yellow shirt, bless her.
As she got in the car on the dock, Morgan checked the backseat. “I can’t believe we brought the cat and dog.”
“Don’t look now,” Destiny said, “but they’re not all we brought.”
“Meggie? Are you kidding me?”
“No, and Buffy, too. Stop at the Immortal Classic. I need to pick up some picture frames. We have tons. Then we have to stop at a drugstore to make prints of these pictures of you and Meggie as kids that I found in the captain’s chest.”
Morgan did a double take. “I’m afraid to ask why.”
“So you get to keep the originals? Speaking of asking, I’d like your permission to replace the priest pictures on your parents’ wall with framed copies of you and Meggie.”
“You’re gonna piss off my mother.”
“Either that, or she’s gonna kill me.”
“No, I won’t let that happen. Changing those pictures needs to be done, and we’re going to do it together.”
“My hero.” Their hands met and held. “You’ve just taken a big step in facing your past,” Destiny added, which made him feel like he could do anything, even tell his mother the truth about his beautiful sister.
At the house, he didn’t knock; he opened the door like he’d once done naturally and let Destiny and their pets precede him into this house where he grew up and learned to shut up. But no more.
Samantha the schnoodle jumped on his father’s lap. His dad laughed and ate up the attention.
Caramello hissed at his mother, jumped on her coffee table, and a milk glass bowl went flying, though Morgan was sure that Caramello hadn’t gone close enough to have knocked it over.
His mother screamed so loud, Caramello peed on her pineapple doily.
Meggie, the instigator, had surely come in with them. Morgan tried not to crack a smile as he went for a trash can, paper towels, and spray cleaner. This house needed some Meggie action, though Caramello’s accident had been an unfortunate side effect.
“Mrs. Jarvis,” Destiny said, on her knees picking up glass when he returned. “Go to my shop tomorrow—you know where it is—and Reggie will give you an identical replacement. I’ll have it put aside for you on our way home.”
Together, he and Destiny cleaned the mess while everyone sat in silence, Caramello on his mother’s lap, despite her obvious dislike.
Dumb cat, unless she planned to pee again.
His mother wanted a fight. She looked hard. Purposefully older, a sympathy cane in her hand, granny shoes on her feet, hair pulled back so tight, her face was all severe angles.
She’d given him life. He’d been taught to appreciate that, but thinking about it, he couldn’t imagine her taking joy in anything, ever. They heard a sudden racket upstairs. It reminded him of Meggie’s tantrum in the lighthouse kitchen, minus the plates. Morgan ran, Destiny behind him, as they followed the sound to Meggie’s room. Barren. Stark. Empty. White walls. Not a stick of furniture. Empty closets. “What the hell did you do?” Morgan snapped at his parents. “Erase Meggie from your lives?” No wonder his sister was upset.
Every door—closet, bathroom, hall—and every drawer and window opened and shut, slammed and crashed. Window glass broke.
His father shouted with alarm.
His mother screamed. “What’s happening?”
“Maybe Meggie’s haunting you. Maybe she’s pissed off that you stripped her out of your lives. My room’s the same as it was when I grew up. Why isn’t hers? I’m ashamed of you both.”
The tantrum stopped, another shock, and Morgan felt something lean against him, like maybe Meggie, grateful that he’d spoken up for her.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and stood straighter.
He loved her, and it was time somebody stood up for her. “Mom, Dad, I’d like to speak with you downstairs.”
Chapter Forty-one
MORGAN waited until his parents were sitting. “Destiny,” he said, “Give me a minute to do the first part myself, then you can help me.”
She nodded and sat in a rocker, protecting the box of framed pictures in her lap.
He went to the stair wall and took down every picture where he was wearing his cassock or vestments or any form of priestly garb.
His mother shrieked once, as he began, and his father shushed her successfully. Very reassuring.
“I presume you came here for a reason,” his mother said when he finished.
“I have a whole list,” Morgan said, bringing Destiny up with him. “No, we,” he said, keeping an arm around her. Because if he let his mother stare her down like that, Destiny would grow icicles.
His mother stood to face them head-on, firming her spine.
“Sit down, Olive,” his father said.
“Gordon!”
“No. You had your turn at calling the shots, and now it’s mine. Sit.”
His mother sat.
“Son, Miss Cartwright, feel free to sit or stand. Whatever makes you comfortable.” His father settled into his favorite chair, and Samantha and Caramello joined him. “We’re listening.”
“Give us a minute first to replace the pictures on the wall,” he said.
Destiny opened the box, and they hung the ones she’d picked, great pictures of him and Meggie together as children.
His father got up, came closer, and gazed at each one, clearing his throat more than once. His mother remained ramrod straight on the sofa.
Morgan started a fire in the fireplace and threw in the pictures of him as a priest.
His mother rose, but he stood in her path while the fire behind him did its job. “You’re harboring false memories,” he told her. “The place should be full of Meggie and me together. That was real. That’s the past to remember.”
The fall board on the piano went up with a crash, revealing the keys, which started moving slowly, and individually, in a one-fingered version of “Chopsticks,” the only thing Meggie had ever learned to play. His parents paled, but Morgan felt as if he could do anything with Meggie and Destiny beside him.
“Mother, Dad, I’m angry,” he said. “I have been for a long time. Years. Nearly my entire life. I’m mad that you erased Meggie from our lives after she died, except for the pictures I stole from the trash along with Samantha, her doll, all of which I still have, though you now have copies of the pictures. You can thank Destiny for that, though she asked my permission, and I gave it wholeheartedly. I’ve been angry for years that you wouldn’t let me talk about Meggie after she passed, and I hate that you sent her away to die.”
His mother shot from her chair.
“Olive,” his father warned.
His mother sat again.
“I’m mad/sad/furious that you made Meggie feel like a freak as a child.” Morgan hated that his voice cracked as he tried to keep his finger in the dike on the dam he’d built to keep his emotions at bay. The only thing keeping hi
m sane was the strength of Destiny’s arm around his waist, her closed fist digging into his side with a kind of rhythm, a living reminder of her presence.
“Meghan loved life,” he said. “She loved people, and she wanted to help anyone whose sad future she saw in her psychic visions, but you shut her up, called her crazy, and hid her away.”
“Meghan was our punishment!” his mother snapped.
“No,” Destiny said. “Children are gifts. No child, especially Meggie, should be considered a punishment.”
His mother stiffened as she managed to look down her nose at Destiny even though she stood and his mother sat. “What do you know about Morgan’s twin?” she whispered.
Morgan exchanged a glance with Destiny, and they decided, without words, against going there—a form of communication he’d only ever employed with Meggie. “Her name was Meggie, Mother.”
The piano keys played the grand “Alleluia,” used during high mass, which Meggie must have learned at the abbey school.
“Meggie. She lived for twelve years, and she made my life better because she did.”
“Well, she made my life miserable!” His mother tore her handkerchief in half.
“No! Mother, take it back!” Morgan fisted his hands. “Meggie was nothing but laughter and sunshine. Miserable? Where did you get such a horrible notion?”
His father sat forward. “Her brother, Jim, put it into her head, and she’s never been the same since. That pompous old priest stole the bright lass I married and left a bitter woman in her place.”
“Gordon!”
“Meggie was a treat, Olive. A blessing, like our boy here.”
“What did you do to deserve punishment?” Destiny asked.
“She’ll never tell,” his father said. “But I will.”
“No!”
“Morgan, you and your sister were conceived before your mother and I were married. She never got over the shame.”
“I’ll bet Father Jim never let her.” He should have known.
His father nodded. “Twins come early, and you were small, so the secret stayed in the family.”
“Gordon, stop talking about such things.”
His crazy world started to make sense to Morgan, but the knowledge was breaking him.
Destiny caught his seeking hand, and he grasped it like a lifeline.
“That explains so much,” Destiny said.
“I can’t believe that one’s here for this,” his mother snapped.
“Who?” Morgan asked. “Destiny or Meggie?”
His father stood and looked around.
“Don’t be foolish, Gordon,” his mother said. “I mean the hussy hanging all over you, Morgan, of course.”
But his father’s eyes had widened as he looked toward the piano, up the stairs, and back at the piano, where “Chopsticks” played again. His father sat on the edge of the piano bench and watched every key.
His mother nodded toward Destiny. “I wish you’d put her in the car.”
Destiny chuckled. “I’m not a dog.”
“No, you look more like a country-western street-walker.”
“That’s better,” Destiny said. “Thank you.”
Morgan scratched his nose. Destiny was a light in the dark tunnel of his life. “Mother, I am no longer a priest, nor will I be one again, but this isn’t about me. Meggie had a gift. A God-given talent. She was psychic.”
“That’s her kind of talk,” his mother said, pointing at Destiny.
“No,” Morgan said. “It’s my kind. I’m psychic, too. I always have been, just like Meggie, but I hid it, even from myself, coward that I am. As a kid, Meggie was smarter than me in every way but one. I knew enough to keep my visions to myself, including the vision I got of Maggie’s tower, the one where she slept in that boarding school, getting hit by lightning, burning, and falling to the ground. I wanted to tell you that Meggie was in danger. I made myself sick over it. But I knew you’d never believe me. It’s my fault that my sister died.” His voice cracked again, which he hated.
His father wiped his eyes. “Not your fault, Son.” He touched Morgan’s hand. “It’s mine. All of it.”
His mother pursed her lips in that way she had, only harder, her eyes cold and dark. Lost.
Destiny laid her head on his shoulder, a blessing, and Morgan raised her hand to kiss her knuckles.
“So,” his mother said, standing. “Now I have two more heathen believers on my hands. You and your father both, not to mention this one.”
Destiny shrugged. “I feel like what the cat dragged in.”
For an instant, Morgan almost wanted to tell his mother that it was her fanatical fault Meggie died, but she wouldn’t believe him. “Mother, I’ve been trapped all my life inside my head, filtering every word. Then I trapped myself at the seminary. Destiny,” he said, turning to her. “I’ve remembered something else. Father Jim said that if I became a priest, I could atone for my parents’ sins. I didn’t know what sins, but he said that the parents of priests always get into heaven.”
“That’s not true!” His father looked at his mother and realized that she knew about her son’s sacrifice for their sakes. He took out his handkerchief. “I swear, Son, that I thought you were happy as a priest.”
“I don’t blame you, Dad. I didn’t know how to be happy until a little girl named Meggie set me straight. That night, I went to the lighthouse and took off my cassock. It didn’t fit anymore.”
Morgan brought Destiny kissing close. “I’ve known Destiny for four months, and now I’m no longer lost in the dark. She pulled me into the light, and we’re taking it one beautiful day at a time.”
He led Destiny to the door, his father behind them.
His mother got up and went to look at the new pictures on the wall, her shoulders a little less rigid than when they’d arrived.
His father hesitated then embraced him. “I loved you and your sister the same.”
“Meggie knows that, Dad.”
“Are you sure? Make certain she knows.”
Morgan nodded. “Meggie and I, we still have that twin connection going. Take it from me, she does.”
His father cleared his throat. “I think she might have been here tonight, hey? I think she might have kissed my cheek.”
“I think you might be right, Dad.”
“I won’t see you anymore, will I?” his father asked, tears coursing down his face, sorrow lining his cheeks.
“I’ll call next Wednesday as always.”
“I’ll be answering the phone myself. I’d like to see your lighthouse someday.”
“Then see it you will.” Morgan took Destiny’s hand as they walked down the brick path. He felt drained yet elated.
A life door closing.
Another opening.
Maybe.
Chapter Forty-two
MORGAN leaned against his seat and closed his eyes. “What a relief to get that off my chest.”
Destiny put an arm around his neck and rubbed his temple. “Your aura is always dim and red-hazed when we leave here.”
He sighed and closed his eyes at the pleasure of her touch. “I’m not sure I ever want to come back.” He turned to her, her head on the seat back, near his, facing him, kissing close. “You wouldn’t mind if my dad came to visit, would you?”
“Over the next two weeks? Of course not.”
Wake-up call. He’d meant over the course of their lives.
“What about your mother?” Destiny asked, distracting him.
“Oh, she’ll never come.”
“Don’t bet on it.”
Morgan groaned. “Tell me that is not your psychic knowledge talking.”
“It’s just a hunch.”
“I can’t believe Meggie heard what Mother said about her.”
“Morgan, after your mother said it, Meggie kissed her cheek and whispered something in her ear, and your mother heard her. I could tell by her reaction.”
“Good reaction or bad reaction?” Morgan a
sked.
“More like a revelation of a reaction.”
“Is Meggie all right?”
Destiny looked in the backseat. “She’s smiling. She thanks you for defending her. She says that you’re her hero.”
“Yeah, well the two of you are my heroes. I’m proud of her—of you, Sis,” he added looking in the rearview mirror at an empty backseat. “For letting them know how you feel.”
“I feel for them both,” Destiny said. “Your father’s filled with guilt, and your mother’s a broken woman.”
Morgan started the Mustang. “For a minute, I actually wanted to strike her,” he said. “I don’t think I love my own mother.”
Destiny reached for his hand. “You might wish you didn’t, but you do.”
“The kicker is that she’ll deny her guilt quickly enough. She’s aces at that.” He grasped Destiny’s hand, and with his over hers, he shifted into second gear.
Her exclamation of delight washed over him like a healing mist.
“Will you teach me to drive this?” she asked.
His heart expanded. “You bet your flying buttress, I will.” She’d become everything to him. He cared deeply for her. She’d become the focus of his life, for now, except that he didn’t want that now to end.
He drove to the Rockport art colony, where they walked hand in hand in the Indian summer sun and shared a paper cone of cotton candy. He bought Destiny an antique painting of a whaling ship with their own lighthouse—his, he supposed, not theirs—all lit up in the background.
On the way back home, they stopped at Meggie’s grave and left a bouquet of Chinese lanterns, bittersweet, and silver dollars, which Destiny had bundled with a big white bow before they left.
“Meggie says she loves it,” Destiny said, butterflies marking the circle Meggie ran around her own gravestone. It hit him hard, then, that she was gone. She would never be an aunt to their—
God, he was screwed up today.
They later stopped at the same nursery for butterfly plants, and between them they picked garden stones for hope and love.
Did he want to spend his life with Destiny? Swell, yes. But why? Because he hated living on his own, or because he couldn’t live without her?
Never Been Witched Page 20
