Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385)

by Jerome, Celia

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I had a posse.

  Instead of making me feel safer, the three big men surrounding Jimmie and me and Red brought the danger closer. If Deni were in New York City, I ought to be free to go anywhere I wanted, by myself. If Lou thought I’d be safe, these guys would be off playing golf.

  On the other hand, or hip, the outline of the gun at Harris’ side did make me stop cowering at every car door slam.

  My first stop had to be at my house to get more clothes, not that Matt had a lot of spare closet room or dresser space. I’d lived out of suitcases before.

  Harris took the time to check all his instruments and sensors. I checked the phone messages myself. I knew they’d been listened to from here to hell and back, but I still had to listen: my editor’s assistant about a copyediting question; a poll taker I had no intention of responding to; the upstairs apartment guys wanting to know about the sublet in Mrs. Abbottini’s unit; my college asking for money.

  I packed as many clean clothes as fit in the case, and one of Susan’s sexy summer nightgowns. I counted on Matt to keep me warm.

  Harris found no signs of intruders.

  Next I checked on my mother’s two dogs, who were staying at Aunt Jasmine’s. Uncle George came home from the farm frequently to walk them, since they couldn’t be put out in a pen in the yard, not with Deni’s threats. They gave me unenthusiastic tail wags and went back to sleep.

  Then we drove into the business area of town, all three blocks of it. I’d wanted Carinne to see Paumanok Harbor at one of its prettiest seasons. The trees still had some color, the village green had pumpkins and mums and bales of hay at every corner, walkway, and lamppost. The streets had easy parking spaces now that the summer crowd was gone. More important, the shopkeepers and passersby had more time and more patience. Carinne could have seen how friendly the Paumanok Harbor people were, how multitalented. I thought that important if Carinne were to live here for any length of time.

  People waved and asked how my cousin was. Clerks left their cash registers to say they’d hang posters or put out collection jars for the sand reclamation. Two women handed me gold chains. I handed them to Harris for safekeeping. One of the school board members offered to get the sixth graders to write poems. Bill at the hardware store set the keys to playing R-E-S-P-E-C-T, most likely in honor of the Andanstans, but I harbored the warm thought it was for me. Little Red snarled.

  Carinne might have been impressed when Joanne at the deli had takeout containers of macaroni and cheese all ready for me and the professor. The perfect thing for mid-October, even the right color, with toasted bread crumbs on top. Jimmie’d never had an American version, so he was delighted. Harris wasn’t, when Joanne refused to make him a bologna sandwich on white bread with mustard, and handed him ham and swiss on rye instead. Then he laughed, saying he was only testing her.

  She laughed back and teased me about cornering every handsome man in the Harbor.

  “But the most handsome one is at the vet clinic, getting a rubber ball out of the Maclays’ puppy’s stomach.”

  Which kind of ruined Colin’s appetite for his meatball hero.

  We sat on benches outside the deli to eat and watch more people go by, many wishing me good luck, others volunteering to help. No one volunteered to talk to my mother, of course. And you could see them biting their lips about Matt, but they showed tact, for once. Or fear of Grandma Eve. I kept my baseball cap on, so no one had to pretend not to see my pink hair.

  Janie came out of the hair salon at the side of her house to fetch lunch for her and Joe the plumber at the deli. Showing no tact whatsoever, she pulled my cap off and shook her head.

  “Next time, go to a professional.”

  I put the hat back on.

  Jimmie patted my shoulder. “I think it is lovely, my dear. It matches your blushes and a rose that I used to cultivate.”

  Great. So I looked like a faded blossom. “Thank you, and for being a good friend to me and to Carinne, too.” She’d need his gentle companionship more than ever if she couldn’t leave Rosehill. No, there had to be a way to help her. I’d find it.

  Carinne’s existence complicated my life, sure, but I felt sorry for her. And I liked her. She looked like me. She was my sister.

  I gazed around, trying to imagine her here in the village, seeing the small town through a stranger’s eyes. Not bad.

  Until Walter from the drugstore ran across the street and handed me a brown paper bag, then a white pharmacy bag with a tube of something that I doubted was toothpaste.

  “If you keep using all these”—the brown bag—“then this”—the white bag— “might help.”

  How could I even consider staying on in this place, or thinking Carinne might be happy here?

  Walter handed a brown bag to Harris. I glared at the bodyguard despite my embarrassment. He was supposed to be guarding my house and the road to Grandma Eve’s house and the farm stand. He was not supposed to be entertaining women there, and definitely not my cousin Susan.

  Harris looked into the bag and grinned.

  Walter handed another to Colin and Kenneth to share. “You can never be too careful.”

  Jimmie didn’t get a bag. “I say, did everyone have prescriptions to fill?”

  Walter took a Cadbury bar from his white coat’s pocket. “Made in England, so you don’t get lonely.”

  Jimmie beamed. “I’ve never had so many friends in my life.” He waved the candy bar at us on the bench. “I’ll share my treat if you’ll share yours.”

  We hustled him to the library.

  Mrs. Terwilliger did not have any books for me today. “You’re too busy writing your own and helping the town. But here’s a printout of the local real estate offerings.”

  “But I’m not—”

  “You will. Talk to him.”

  I decided she meant I should go talk to the House on Shearwater Street again, where the two homes on either side were back on the market. I silently wished the real estate people good luck in selling either of them.

  Jimmie got a book on chess, and the guards got copies of the latest Reacher novel. All without asking.

  “Do you have anything I could bring back to my cousin, who is not feeling well?”

  Mrs. T didn’t ask what Carinne liked, what her usual reading was. She thought a minute, scurried off down the stacks, and came back with James Herriot again, this time for Carinne and the professor to share, and a book about choosing the right college.

  “Oh, I don’t think Carinne will go back to guidance counseling.”

  “I do. She needs to stay current.”

  Carinne might have taken heart at the old librarian’s confidence . . . or inside information. She’d appreciate the new library card tucked inside the college book, already made out in her name.

  There were mothers with strollers, though. Toddlers coming from story hour. A couple of younger people on the library computers. Twenty-somethings jogging outside.

  Thank God Carinne hadn’t come to town.

  The toddlers reminded me that I wanted to see how my friend Louisa was doing with her new baby, and tell her I’d volunteered to teach that course. I didn’t expect her to be at the community center. She managed the arts side of the building, which housed a magnificent collection and gave all kinds of classes. I thought I’d ask her assistant if Louisa was ready for a visit, because I didn’t want to call and disturb her if she was resting. I could drop off the wrapped package I’d brought for the baby here, with a message to call me.

  There she was, though, with a tiny bundle crosswise at her chest in a sling. She, of course, had either not heard or not cared about my grandmother’s caveats. “I love your hair! Can I help plan the wedding? Does it have to be all pink to match? I have the perfect flower girl and ring bearer. They’re at sc
hool and day care, thank heaven. Oh, and I’d love to meet your new relative. Is she talented like you?”

  I knew Louisa meant my books, not the paranormal bit. She herself had no esper aura whatsoever.

  I shook my head. Carinne’s talent was far from mine, from anyone’s here, and potentially harmful. I doubted she could ever be Louisa’s friend, or visit the arts center programs and concerts, not if Louisa intended to carry the new baby like a papoose, like I carried Little Red.

  The thought made me sad. I didn’t particularly want to go to many of the cultural activities—Why should I, when I had all of Manhattan’s museums and galleries and auditoriums at my fingertips?—but I wanted Carinne to be able to go.

  While the professor and the DUE guys looked at the paintings that formed a small part of the building’s benefactor’s collection, I admired the baby. Out of her swaddles she looked even tinier. I prayed Louisa wouldn’t ask me to hold her while she checked the course calendar. I jiggled Little Red, just in case Louisa got ideas.

  “After Halloween, I think. The kids get too hyped up about that.” And the sand problems would be over by then, one way or another.

  “The kids?” she asked. “The whole town goes bonkers, if you ask me. All I’m hearing at sculpture class is talk about that festival. And morning yoga is full of who’s bringing what to the women’s night before All Hallow’s Eve gathering on the beach, then to the big party on the village green on Halloween itself for all the local kids. You know, I’ve never been invited to the beach.”

  “I, uh, didn’t know it was a private affair. I’ve never gone.”

  “But your mother and grandmother run it.”

  “That’s why I’ve never gone. Why would you want to?”

  She unbuttoned her blouse to nurse little Emma. I watched as she gave a Renaissance Madonna’s smile at the fuzzy little head at her breast. Then she looked at me with a grim look in her eye. “Because I heard they send out blessings and prayers on little paper boats with candles in them. Because I heard they call on every deity ever known, and more that aren’t, to protect the land and all its people. Because they join hands and celebrate women and girls.”

  I never knew what the witches did on the night before Halloween, just that it used to be called Mischief Night. What she described sounded a lot more appealing than naked old pagan women dancing by moonlight.

  Emma finished, and Louisa got her to burp. “And I wish to go because I am a woman who lives here and raises her children here.”

  I understood. We’d been outsiders together as children in the Harbor. We were summer kids, not locals. We lived in summer cottages, not real houses. Our fathers were businessmen on vacation, not fishermen and farmers who worked here year round. It wasn’t just a class thing, because neither of our families was wealthy. It was an “us against them” thing. Louisa and I hung out together because none of the other kids would play with us. We thought they were brats. They thought we were snobs. It was like we were from two different countries, speaking two different languages.

  And we never, ever understood why the adults had so many meetings and private gatherings and whispered conversations, or why so many weird things happened in the stupid, boring little town we both despised. Why would ten year olds suspect that the blind postman used magic to sort the mail? Or that the bay constable could control the winds when he needed to, or that crazy Mrs. Grissom really did talk to her dead husband when she walked down the street? Magic existed in storybooks, not real life. So much that went on here was so far beyond our innocent comprehension, our beliefs in how the world operated, that we just ignored the anomalies. The Drurys’ lawn never needed mowing? A new variety of grass. The Waskinkis’ flowers grew twice as high as anyone else’s? Better fertilizer. The rest we disregarded as more adult mumbo jumbo we’d figure out as we got older.

  I did. Louisa didn’t.

  I knew she had inklings. No adult who lived here could be that trusting, that ignorant of how many peculiarities got taken for granted in Paumanok Harbor. So what if she couldn’t remember the twenty white mares appearing out of the air at the horse show, or the tsunami that stopped before it reached our shores? She still had to know there was some kind of magic involved, and she had to know she was still an outsider.

  But now? Now she had children, kids she wanted to see happy and well adjusted and knowing they were as smart and strong as the boys and girls down the block and in the same school. She wanted her kids to make lifelong friends here, be part of the community. And she wanted them blessed by whatever superstitious, quasi-religious sorcery the women used.

  She had every right to be there. More than many, in fact. She’d been the one who influenced the arts center donor to bequeath his collection to the town, along with enough money to build the handsome building. She was the one who made it be more than a sterile museum, but open to everyone, to bring the arts to Paumanok Harbor. She’d managed the galleries and the classes and the recreation center with the seniors and the after-school programs as well, until the job and her family got too big. I knew she and her wealthy husband never turned down a call for help, be it sponsoring the horse show or using Dante’s vast computer system to catch the embezzler. I think Dante donated the land for the community center, although that was a closely guarded secret, too. I knew for a fact that he helped Ty Farraday get financing to make Bayview a world-class horse ranch and equine rescue facility.

  Yes, they were good, giving people, and yes, their children deserved the same rituals as Janie’s grandniece Elladaire, who swallowed a firefly and almost set the whole village on fire. But no, they would not be invited to the secret festivities on Halloween eve.

  Unless I took charge. It was bad enough that Carinne couldn’t go, not when there’d be so many young people. Maybe I couldn’t go either, not if Deni’d be lurking behind the beach grass, or in costume among the crowds. But Louisa and her babies? They had to be blessed, whatever that meant. Enough of this polarized caste-system crap, this hush-hush paranoia. Sure Paumanok Harbor had to be protected from the outside world, and from the federal government, too. But Louisa was a citizen, a taxpayer, a pillar of the community. Between Lou and Grandma Eve and the mayor and the chief of police, there had to be a way. I’d make them find it.

  “The beaches are public. You’re invited.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I had another new mission. Just what I needed.

  I had a new mental attitude, too. Grandma Eve and her cronies wanted my help with the Andanstans? I’d take a page from the little nasties’ book. A favor for a favor. I’m giving up my time, maybe giving up my safety and sanity; the older generation could give up some of their inbred, ancient ways. The world kept changing. Paumanok Harbor had to, also.

  I didn’t mean for them to go public, inviting supermarket tabloids and undercover documentaries and Roswell-type tourists. I just wanted Paumanok Harbor to acknowledge its other citizens.

  R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

  I collected my retinue to go take on the sand, then the psychics. Unfortunately, one of my supporters had to sit down. Jimmie was weary and needed a rest after walking through the gallery corridors after the amble through town. He had so much determination to help that I kept forgetting he’d barely recovered from a near drowning and days of being lost. Then he’d had to face his most fiercesome foe in the middle of a hurricane. I also kept forgetting how many birthday candles the courtly old gentleman had blown out in his lifetime.

  As we got in the car to head back to Rosehill, he said he liked my paintings better than any he’d seen at the arts center. He ought to be knighted.

  Maybe I’d get Grandma Eve to include men on the beach, not just untalented women and children. Jimmie deserved our blessings, too.

  I didn’t mind putting off the beach visit till later, hoping Matt could come along with us after office hours. Besides, I wanted to
check on Carinne. We pretended to take Jimmie home to get what he called his trainers.

  “What you call running shoes or sneakers. Can you imagine me sneaking around?”

  Honestly, no.

  Lily said Carinne had fallen asleep. I wanted to check for myself. Her public raving could unravel centuries of hidden magic, and I did not trust Lou, DUE, Royce, or Monteith to put her well-being ahead of keeping the secrets. Inviting outsiders to a beach party was one thing. Letting them know we had Pandora going postal was another.

  I did trust my mother’s cousin, but I tiptoed upstairs anyway. I whispered Carinne’s name, and tried the door when I got no answer. It was unlocked, which only went to prove Carinne came from Florida, not Manhattan. She lay curled on the bed, the gray cat next to her on the pillow. I got out fast before Little Red saw a mortal enemy.

  I reassured Jimmie, who now had a cup of tea in his trembling hand. When I claimed I had a lot of errands before I went to the beach, he looked relieved at the chance to rest here. I’d come get him later in the afternoon, when odds were better that Oey might appear. Shadows could hide the molt the proud creature did not want Jimmie to see.

  Lily nodded in approval.

  The new Rosehill director, Monteith, must have a touch of telepathy or precognition because he stayed out of sight, rather than face the lecture I’d prepared on the way over. Like what he could do with his yo-yo. And how he was supposed to guide Carinne, not toss her to the lions.

  * * *

  I found Grandma Eve and Lou and Doc Lassiter shifting papers around in the farmhouse kitchen.

  “You’re not too busy to listen. Good,” I said, setting Little Red down so I could cross my arms over my chest and look belligerent and determined, if not like a pouty six year old. Then I proceeded to tell my thoughts on equality and democracy and brotherhood. I amended that to sisterhood. Then I threw in a few mentions about second-class citizens, bullies, and isolationism, which was nearly impossible in the age of iPads and Ethernet.