Helen stopped in her tracks. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, just as it had on the day that she'd first approached the Byrne mansion. On the same day—very probably, the same hour—that Linda Byrne had died, an uncommon owl had made uncommon contact with Helen by flying at her and looking her straight in the eye before it veered away, eventually to take up residence outside of Katie's bedroom.
My God. That's it, then. That's what this is all about. Even Katie ... Katie knows, in some subliminal way. Somehow she's connected, still, to her mother ... and that's why she wanted to come. Not to look for owls, but so that we could hear the legend. That was the whole point. Linda has made her daughter—made me—come here so that I would understand.
Wave after wave of goose bumps rolled over Helen as she stood there, caught in time, fearful and awestruck and overjoyed all at once. She realized that what she now possessed—what she'd been missing up until then—was a simple explanation to extraordinary events.
If Helen had been a Native American, if she had had access to a tribal shaman, she would not have stumbled around in the dark for so many months. But she was not a Native American; she was a Salem Yankee with little time for her spiritual side.
Linda Byrne has made me her friend. Her loves are my loves. Her pain is my pain. If I fail, she will mourn, if I triumph, she will rejoice. We will celebrate together, or we will grieve together. Because she is my friend. I've known it all along; and yet I haven't understood it at all.
Chapter 21
Excuse me, miss, are you all right?"
It was the naturalist, who'd sent his group on ahead while he paused to take the measure of Helen.
Tears were rolling down her cheeks. "Oh, yes—truly, I'm fine," she said. "Your Indian legend has touched me very deeply, that's all."
He sounded a little wistful as he said, "I've had it happen to friends—confronting an owl that way—but not to me. Maybe someday."
Smiling through her tears, she shook his hand. "Thank you. You'll never know how much this meant to me. Thank you."
They went their separate ways. Helen caught up with Nat at the car; he was wondering where he'd lost her. He put a finger to his lips, then pointed into the back seat of the Porsche where Katie sat slumped in her car seat, out to the world.
Smiling, Helen slipped her bag through the open window and whispered, "She knows more about owls than they do, anyway."
She and Nat lingered outside of the car for a moment, listening for sounds of night birds, hearing only the last, aching notes of a robin singing its evening song.
Nat turned to Helen; slipping his hands behind her head, he lowered his lips to hers in the kiss she knew would come. It was tender, erotic, another step closer to bed. There was no longer a question of if between them, just when.
His tongue slid over hers and she caught her breath in her throat. Helen knew the taste of him now, savored it; and she knew she wanted more. Never mind all her good intentions. It wouldn't be long; it couldn't be long. She wanted him too much.
He ran his hands down the curve of her back and caught them under her buttocks, pulling her hard against him as he kissed her mouth, her jaw, the skin exposed by the curve of her scooped-neck top. With her neck arched, her eyes closed, Helen clung to him, with one thought filling the recesses of her heart: I can't let him go, I can't.
Her one wild wish—that they could be in bed just then— couldn't be granted; but she returned his kisses as if it could. Hot, wet, wanton—she was making a fool of herself in the parking lot of an Audubon sanctuary.
"I'm sorry ... this is ... oh God ... I'm sorry," she said in whimpering gasps between kisses.
It was insane. He whispered, "Helena, Helena," combining versions of her name, pounding her with it in a drumbeat of desire. "Make love with me!"
"How, Nat!" she murmured, angry with frustration.
Suddenly he broke from his embrace of her and in a low growl said, "I'll show you how."
He led her a few steps away to the edge of the wood, practically in spitting distance of the Porsche, and then behind a wild, unkempt shrub that had sprung up beneath a weedy maple. In deepening darkness he leaned against the tree, then pulled her back into his arms.
"This is how," he said, kissing her hard and deep.
Somewhere in the racking thunder that rolled through her mind, Helen heard the sound of a zipper and then felt the folds of her skirt being lifted, exposing her thighs to the cool air of the night. She stepped out of one side of her underpants as he pulled them away, and all the while her mind was thinking, There are a thousand reasons not to do this.
And then all thousand fell away like the last dim rays of light as he hoisted her on top of himself and they yielded, with hot, passionate sounds, to this one wild thing.
It was wordless, breathless sex, primitive and focused. He came quickly, after a few deep thrusts; but not so quickly as she. Panting and spent, Helen collapsed on his shoulder, then let her legs slide slowly down the outside of his as she tried, feebly, to stand on her own feet again.
Wildfire. She'd burst into flames and then been quelled, all in the space of two or three minutes. And now that it was over, Helen, dazed, almost in shock, could think of only one thing to say.
''Katie.''
Never mind where they were, whom she'd been with, how she'd been with him. The only word left in Helen's vocabulary as she slipped her underpants back on was Katie.
"I know," he said, still trying to catch his breath. "I kept ... an eye on the car."
Helen was appalled that he'd been able to do that. But she would've been appalled if he hadn't. The first inkling of coming misery flashed before her like a flare shot off at sea, and then she was left in darkness again.
Dismayed, she said, "I never even thought of watching the car."
"You were facing the tree, dope," he said in voice that was meant to be breezy but sounded as shaken as her own. "How could you?"
He took her by the shoulders. She was just able to make out the features of his face, but not to read them with any accuracy as he said, "I didn't mean for it to happen this way, either."
"But it did." She said it sadly, knowing there could not be a second first time.
He tilted her chin and gave her a breathless, utterly gentle kiss. "Are you all right?"
She began to say something, then stopped. With a small ache of a laugh, she said, "Sure. I guess."
Enfolding her in his arms, he whispered a second time, "I didn't mean for it this way."
They went back to the car, both of them subdued, and Nat began retracing the route to Salem. The raw magic of the sanctuary had touched the wild creature in them; Helen left it behind with more fear than regret.
What had she done? Her plan to build a gradual, solid, lasting relationship had seemed so reasonable. She had wanted him to come to terms with the death of his wife, to test his commitment to parenting, to put his career in some kind of perspective. She thought of his earlier, poignant plea: I've taken a hit from you, Helen, he'd said. Please don't run.
In the silent darkness of the car, she smiled bleakly to herself. The only thing hit-and-run about her was the sex she'd just had.
Another thought flashed across her brain, sending chills through her: What if she became pregnant? Unprotected sex in a wildlife sanctuary? It had to have been her fertile time. She tried to remember when her last period was, but drew a blank.
She shuddered, knowing that the night would be the first of many spent in second-guessing.
Nat saw her distress. He said softly, "It's not the end of the world, Helen."
"I've never done anything like that before!"
His voice was low and sad and pained. "I didn't think you had."
"I don't know what came over me," she said, hugging herself.
"It was nothing we could fight," he said, sounding as abashed as she felt. "It was ... God. It was incredible."
Isn't that what the man always says?
She made herself s
ound brisk. "We should have tried harder not to give in."
"Now you sound like Hester Prynne."
"Yes, well, look what happened to her."
He reached over across the gearshift and took Helen's hand in his. "I understand what you're saying, but—"
"I know. You're a numbers man. You're going to tell me that the odds are against it."
"No, I was going to say, if anything comes of tonight— I'll be there for you, Lena. No matter what happens, no matter what you decide, I'll be there. I promise."
Ignoring the fact that she had misread him completely, Helen zeroed in on his tone instead. He sounded more than determined; to her he sounded almost grim.
It's because of Linda, she decided. He was never there for his wife, and now he wants to make up for it. But did she want a man to "be there" who was spurred by guilt?
She did not. "You don't have to worry that I'll become pregnant," she said in a proud lie. "It's not the right time of month."
"You sound angry."
"I am; at myself. How can I expect my daughter—inexperienced, with hormones surging—to practice some self-control if I can't do it myself?"
He said nothing for a moment. Then, softly: "Have you been with anyone since Hank?"
The question took her breath away. How could he possibly assume that she'd go four years without a man? It was insulting.
"No. I haven't."
He amazed her by sounding disappointed with her answer. "In that case, there goes my theory of destiny, all shot to hell," he said quietly.
Her laugh had a dangerous edge to it. "You're saying the real reason I joined you at a tree in the woods is because I haven't been with someone in a while? Ha. Guess what? That's my theory about you."
"Are you kidding? What do you think I am? Some tom—"
Katie stirred in her car seat, which instantly reduced him to a whisper.
"—some tomcat?" he finished. "Listen to me. I'm driven to you the way a starving man ... a thirsty man ... oh, Christ, I don't know how or why I'm driven to you, Helen. I just am."
He lifted her hand slowly to his lips in a kind of silent homage. "Whatever is happening between us is way, way bigger than anything that's happened to me before."
Helen sighed deeply. It didn't seem possible to be so unhappy about happiness. She said, "We need time to talk, really talk, Nat. We seem to make time for everything else.
He thought that was funny; even she could see a certain lunatic humor in the remark. "But it would be nice if we had more than two minutes," she said dryly. "There are things I want to tell you ... and things I want to know."
"About Linda." It wasn't a question. "Sometimes I feel as if we're in a kind of ménage a trois—you, me, and her ghost," he said, unwittingly hitting a bull's eye. "She's more in my thoughts now than ever—and yet you're always there, too. It's an odd, odd thing," he mused.
They rode for a while in silence, reluctant, still, to come to grips with that ghost.
Eventually Helen turned to another worry altogether. "Two more parents withdrew their children, this time from the fall session. Is that still within the range of normalcy?" she asked him lightly.
She assumed that he'd come back with a resounding "absolutely!" Instead he said with a troubled air, "Is anyone offering a reason why?"
"Nothing that makes sense," she admitted. "They tell me the program's too structured; the program's too loose. The setting's too urban; there are too many shrubs. That's why I think it's really the salmonella thing. When we had that false alarm three years ago, I had to write and then call every single parent to reassure them. Even then I could tell some of them were reserving judgment."
"I don't think it's salmonella this time."
"Maybe, but one of the parents is particularly paranoid about that kind of thing; she might've gone too far in her speculations."
"Helen. There's another rumor going around," he said. "I had no intention of telling you—I'm still not sure I'm doing the right thing here—but five withdrawals is too many. Unless someone's decided that the preschool's been built on a toxic dump, five is too many."
"What ... is it, then?" she said with a sinking heart.
He hesitated, then said, "Someone's been mouthing off about Satanism in connection with Russ's graffiti."
She was dumbfounded. "What!"
"Yeah. Apparently one of the neighbors across the Common saw the boys at the statue, then called the police. Supposedly, after the kids were hauled off she sent her husband out to look at what they'd done. The woman told someone who told someone who told someone—you know how it goes—and a Satanist version, with Becky as gang leader, slithered onto the grounds of the preschool during the Ice Cream Social."
"I don't believe it," she said flatly. "Who told you?"
"Eventually the story ended up in the lap of Constance Bonham, who's a neighbor of mine. She's the one who came to Peaches and me with it. It's so asinine. I've had Peaches working overtime trying to track this thing down."
Still in a state of shock, Helen said numbly, "What did she find out?"
Reluctantly, he answered her. "It seems your aunt was telling some people at the Social about how you made your kids go back and clean off the paint; she was very proud of that. Her story must've got merged with the Satanist crap and..."
He shrugged unhappily. It was obvious that he didn't want to be doing this.
For the rest of her life, Helen remembered everything about that moment: the black, moonless night, the black leather of the car's interior, the black hood that clawed the road ahead of them, even—bitter irony— 'That Old Black Magic' playing softly on the FM.
Black. Round and round it went, down and down it went: black, black rumors. A rumor of Satanism, no matter how absurd or unrelated, would bring down the school in no time flat. Every preschool director in America knew that. A lifetime of work, a career dedicated to caring for children she loved—gone. The prospect was mind-boggling.
"But ... there was nothing Satanistic," she said, dazed. "There was an initial R. And the usual—well, the f-word, only it looked like f-u-c-h. And last of all, the word Sarah. That was it."
She turned to him and said helplessly, "You do believe that, don't you?"
"God—you have to ask?" But he added in a depressingly grave voice, "You've got to confront this head-on, Helen. Call a meeting of the parents and deny it."
"No," she said, shaking her head. "If I do that, it'll look like I'm protesting too much. I have to hope it blows over. I can't believe that anyone would seriously believe such trash. Anyone who knows Becky. . ."
An image of Becky popped up in her head: sweet, lively, generous Becky, with her funky black clothes, clodhopper shoes, and sunflower hats. Becky: outgoing, gentle, loved by all. Becky, who related to kids so well that parents fought over having her sit on Saturday nights for them.
Becky, a cult leader and Satanist.
"How could anyone do this?" Helen said, appalled. "How could they?"
"Call the meeting, Helen."
"No. I won't have Becky's name dragged on stage for any reason," she said vehemently. "She'd die if she knew I'd done that."
"She'd die if she knew about the rumor."
"It's true. This is horrible," Helen said, as one ugly implication after another came oozing out.
"We've got to find out who started this thing," Nat said angrily.
"We can't. That would just keep it going longer. God in heaven," she said, pressing the palms of her hands over her mouth. She shook her head in disbelief. "This is too much; too much for one night."
"I shouldn't have told you, Helen," he said instantly. "It was dumb. You didn't need this."
"No, no, better to have heard it from you than a parent. Oh, it explains so much. The looks ... the contempt—even fear—in their voices. I couldn't understand it."
She bit her upper lip, trying to keep her emotions under control. "What do I do? What can I do?"
"Helen, we'll get through this. You're i
nnocent. Becky is innocent. People don't willingly destroy the lives of ... the innocent."
But even as he said it, Nat's voice faltered. He was from Salem, the same as Helen. They knew full well what could happen to the innocent.
He pulled up in front of her house, then got her door for her. Katie woke up and began to fuss, forcing Nat and Helen to part after a hurried embrace. He said, "The graffiti rumor was bad luck, but it will pass. You're too well liked, too well respected. You've got the most level head of anyone I know. No one who's met you can possibly doubt you.
He kissed her softly and said, "At the sanctuary—I've never known anything like that, Lena. Never. Please believe me."
He left and Helen went inside and directly to the shower, where she stood under the showerhead until the hot water ran out. Then she slipped into a T-shirt and jeans and went downstairs to wait for her children. She was desperate to have them in her arms again; to keep them safe from harm.
They didn't deserve this. No one did. Russell was a handful, yes, but no more than that. And Becky. . . Becky was a complete innocent. Helen's anxiety turned to anger and then to frustration and then to rage again. How dare someone slander them that way?
She closed her eyes, trying to control her emotions—but as soon as she did that, she was back in the sanctuary, under the tree with Nat.
Think about something else.
She opened her eyes and stared at the clock, waiting for Becky to bring Russ home—Becky, who should be having a postmovie pizza with a nice boy, but instead went to an early show in her own car so that she could be free in time to fetch her brother. Becky would be crushed by this.
Think about something else.
She closed her eyes and was back at the sanctuary.
Think about something else.
She opened her eyes and remembered the owl. That, she could think about. Somehow, in some way, there was a connection to Linda in all of this. Linda had been a mother, too. Linda had loved her firstborn child; she would've loved her second one as much. Linda would understand what Helen was going through.
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