People who were our friends and neighbors — people whom my mother had helped and cured — turned into a vicious mob within an hour. The war was raging all around us. People were losing their menfolk, starving and doing without, so it didn’t take much to ignite the dry kindling. My mother and I were blissfully unaware of what was coming. We were at home, baking bread and making a rabbit stew.
The mob dragged my mother from the house and accused her of murder. She begged and pleaded with them, swearing she had nothing to do with Daisy’s death, but they weren’t inclined to listen. The reverend proclaimed that witches should be burned, so they tied by mother to a stake in the village square and piled firewood and branches all around her. She was still proclaiming her innocence when they set the wood alight at her feet. I couldn’t bear to watch, but Daisy’s father and Edgar held me fast and forced me to watch, telling me to see for myself what happens to those who practice witchcraft. The last thing I saw before I passed out was my mother calling to me to save myself before she was engulfed in flames.”
Rowan was crying openly now, the salty tears running into her mouth as she tried to speak. “When I awoke it was dawn. I was alone in the village square, shivering in the cold, my clothes damp from dew. The pyre had burned out, and the air was filled with the acrid smell of damp ashes and roasted flesh. I dared not look closer for fear of seeing what was left of my mother. I forced myself to get to my feet and trudged back to our house, but it had been burned to the ground, smoke curling from the charred beams. I just sat on the ground and cried until Ellie found me. She leaned over me and whispered into my ear, “You’d better leave before they burn you too, Rowan. You know what they do to witches around here.” And then she giggled and smiled at me. “Edgar will marry me now,” she said before scampering away.
Rowan angrily wiped the tears from her damp cheeks. There, she’d finally said it out loud. Telling Brendan had been difficult, but at least now, he could help her carry the terrible burden of the past. He wasn’t there to help her then, but he was here now, and he would keep her safe from people whose friendship and trust could turn into a murderous rage on the turn of a coin.
Brendan didn’t say anything. He just held Rowan and let her cry, years of pent-up agony silently sliding down her face and onto his hand. What could anyone say to minimize the tragedy that befell her? It was shattering enough to lose both parents within the space of a year, but to be forced to watch your mother burn for a crime she didn’t commit was more than anyone could bear. The Church preached forgiveness and tolerance, but what they practiced was quite different. The reverend could have saved Rowan’s mother, but he slyly brought up burning, an act that would unite the villagers against a common enemy, and bring them closer to the Church in their self-righteous war against Satan and his disciples. How cruel human beings could be, especially the ones who pretended to love us. Brendan hoped Ellie had gotten her just desserts, but he doubted it. Even now, she probably lived happily with her Edgar, rewarded by God for the death of two innocent women.
The Present
Chapter 48
I snuggled closer to Aidan, listening to the rhythmic beating of his heart. Our hands were intertwined as were our legs, and it actually felt as if we were a part of one whole rather than two separate human beings. I’d made no mention of the future for fear that Aidan would think me clingy or pushy, but he spoke as though we were now an established couple, which made me inwardly jump for joy. Several times he’d referred to us as ‘we’ and I loved the sound of that.
I suppose I was used to American guys who always wanted to keep their options open and play the field for as long as possible, but Aidan showed no fear or reluctance to commit and see where the relationship would take us, which in turn made me curious about what happened with his fiancée. I suppose we were at that part in our blossoming romance when people shared their pasts, but I didn’t want to interrogate Aidan. He had to tell me in his own time. He hadn’t asked anything about my past relationships, not that there was much to tell. A few short-lived romances that meant the world at the time, but seemed awfully trivial now, in the face of what I was feeling for Aidan.
Aidan seemed to be reading my mind, because he disentangled his hand from mine and rolled onto his side, supporting his head on his elbow, his lips stretching into a slow smile.
“What are you grinning at?” I asked, happy to see him so relaxed.
“I’m just happy,” he said simply, as if it was self-evident. “I hadn’t realized how long it’s been since I felt this way. It’s overwhelming.”
I realized that was the opening I’d been looking for. He was clearly telling me that he’d been unhappy for a long time, so it wasn’t wrong to ask why. Was it?
“Aidan, what happened with your fiancée?” I asked carefully, watching his face for any indication that he was angry at the question, but I saw no resentment, just a sadness that briefly clouded his eyes. “Why were you so unhappy?”
“After Noelle and I split up, I sort of just retreated. At first, I needed time to heal, but then a few months turned into a year, and I realized that I’d been avoiding involvement or making any major decisions. I’d been drifting, waiting for something to shake me out of my complacency, and then this gorgeous American girl showed up and I didn’t stand a chance.” He was trying to charm me in order to distract me, but I wasn’t having it. I wanted to know.
“Dot intimated that you broke it off because you got cold feet,” I said, curious as to the real reason Aidan had been so hurt by the breakup.
“It’s sort of what I let people believe. You know how gossip travels around here, and I didn’t want anyone to know the truth, especially Noelle’s parents, since she never told them. I was so numb that I didn’t really care what people thought as long as they left me alone to deal with it in my own way. Noelle left shortly after I called off the wedding, so that just fueled speculation.”
“Why did you call it off?”
“I called it off because I felt betrayed. I loved Noelle and trusted her implicitly, but I discovered that she didn’t feel the same about me. Her love was a lot more calculated.”
I laid my hand over his wrist, but kept silent, giving him a chance to speak.
“We met in our second year at Uni. She was reading Finance and I was studying Architecture, so our paths crossed in math tutorial. She wasn’t particularly interested in me at first, but Scots are known for being pesky buggers, so eventually I got her to go out with me. I’d had a few other girlfriends before, but it was never anything serious. But Noelle was it; she was the one. Being with her made me feel complete, and I knew that I wanted her to be not just my present, but my future. I thought she wanted the same thing.”
Aidan took a deep breath, as if bracing himself for the next part of the story. “After graduation, Noelle wanted to come back here to be close to her family, so I came with her and rented a flat while she moved back in with her parents. We saw each other every day anyway at my place. It was our little love nest. She’d gotten a job with an investment firm in Lincoln, and I worked to get my business off the ground. We were busy, but happy. I proposed on her twenty-third birthday and she accepted. I would have been happy to get married in a Registry Office, but Noelle wanted a long engagement and a church wedding, so I agreed. I wanted her to have the wedding of her dreams. We were engaged and planning our life together; another year wouldn’t have made that much of a difference.”
Aidan grew quiet for a moment, clearly reliving the past. “What happened then?” I asked, feeling an overwhelming need to know.
“I thought that a one-year engagement was long enough, but Noelle wanted to wait. She was working long hours and moving up in her company, so planning a wedding had to take a back seat. Before I knew it, another two years had gone by. I kept pressing her to set a date, and she finally agreed. She was busy at work, so her mother made most of the arrangements. It’s almost as if Noelle didn’t care; she simply wanted to show up and get it over with. I sh
ould have seen the signs, but I was too eager to start our life together. I booked our wedding trip – two weeks in Paris, which Noelle felt was too long to be away from her job, but I held firm. How often do you go on a honeymoon?”
Aidan took a labored breath, but I didn’t interrupt him this time. He needed to tell the story at his own pace. I could tell that it was difficult for him since he clearly hadn’t spoken to anyone of what happened, possibly not even his own parents. Funny how women needed support, pints of ice-cream or endless glasses of wine and dinners with girlfriends to work through a split, but men just go on with it.
“I often brought up starting a family. I wanted to have children while we were still young, not one of those couples who put their lives on hold until they established their careers. I didn’t want to have my first child at forty, and I certainly wanted to have more than one. Noelle said that she wanted that too, but it would have to be the right time, since she didn’t want to lose everything she’d worked for. She promised that we would have a baby within the first few years of marriage. I would have been happy to get her pregnant on our wedding trip, and she said that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”
Aidan rolled back onto his back and stared at the ceiling as he recounted the rest. “It was the night of Noelle’s hen party a week before the wedding. She went to take a bath and asked me to tell her friend Tracy, in case she called, that she’d be ready in an hour. I never bothered to look at the caller ID when her mobile rang. I assumed it was Tracy, but it wasn’t. It was a nurse from a clinic in Lincoln, calling to check how Noelle was feeling after the procedure, and confirming that her prescription for birth control pills had been called into the chemist, as requested.”
“She had an abortion?” I gasped.
“Yes, she had; just the day before. My first thought was that she’d been unfaithful to me and terminated the baby because it wasn’t mine. I confronted her when she came out of the bath, but she denied having an affair. I’m not sure what I expected; remorse or a plea for understanding, but the worst part was that she wasn’t even sorry. She said she’d accepted a new job, one with more responsibility and longer hours, and didn’t want to waste her youth on changing nappies and cleaning up spit; these weren’t the 1950s. She wasn’t ready for saggy breasts, stretch marks, and afternoons at the park pushing a swing. She wanted to be successful in her field and make a name for herself among the traders. Having a family wasn’t a priority, and might never be.”
“So, you broke off your engagement?” I asked, feeling a surge of pity for Aidan. He’d so clearly wanted a family with this woman.
“I did. I’m not even sure why she agreed to marry me, since she clearly didn’t want the same things. I suppose she thought I’d come around in the end, or maybe we would start a family when she was good and ready, but in the meantime, she’d take her tablets on the sly and let me believe that we were trying. She lied to me, terminated my baby without even consulting me, and had been interviewing for a new job when all along we’d been talking about her scaling down her hours so that we could start a family.”
“Were you ever sorry to have broken if off in the heat of the moment?” I asked, hoping that his feelings weren’t still engaged with someone who clearly didn’t love him.
“No. Had she discussed it with me and told me her reasons, I might have understood, if not been happy about it, but she made the decision without a thought for how I would feel. That’s not a person I want to spend my life with.” Aidan sighed and turned to face me. “In my mind, I knew all the reasons why it had to end, but it took my heart a very long time to catch up. I’d truly loved Noelle and felt as if the rug was pulled out from under my feet. Sometimes I still do.”
“I’m sorry, Aidan. That must have been very painful.”
“Our baby would have been about eight months now. I can’t help wondering if it had been a boy or a girl, and who it might have looked liked. What particularly struck me as I spoke to Noelle was that the decision had been a foregone conclusion. She never even considered keeping the child. She never felt any remorse or regret. It was just an inconvenience to be gotten rid of.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. I hated that he’d been so hurt.
“Don’t be. I believe that everything that happens makes us the people we are meant to be, and when the right thing comes along, we are ready and able to make the most of it.” He kissed the tip of my nose and smiled in a way that made me think that he was referring to me when he spoke of the ‘right thing’, and that made my heart smile.
Chapter 49
I was still grinning from ear to ear as I closed the door behind Aidan on Sunday night. He’d been with me for nearly twenty-four hours and had to go home and feed his cat, Leomhann. When I asked Aidan what the name meant, he informed me that it translated into ‘big cat’ from Gaelic.
“Very imaginative you are,” I said laughing. “So, if you get a dog, will it be called ‘big dog’?”
“Neh. Dogs are easier since they show more of their personality. Cats are an enigma, and I wouldn’t want to give the wrong name. Leomhann is the perfect name for that self-absorbed, lazy brute. He’s probably going to give me the cold shoulder when I get home for not being there last night. He’s very territorial and views me as his property.”
“Well, you’d better get him something yummy to make up for your desertion. Can’t wait to meet him.” I actually wasn’t a fan of cats, but this one sounded like quite a character.
I was actually in very good spirits as I climbed back up the stairs. The past weekend had been unexpectedly wonderful and I knew I would sleep soundly tonight, knowing that it was only a few more hours until I would see Aidan again. He said that the work would continue as planned, and he might have to hire an additional man to take Colin’s place. I didn’t want to talk or think about Colin. I’d give my cooperation to the police, but I couldn’t care less what happened to the man after that.
I glanced out the window at the gathering clouds. It looked as if it might rain again, so I went around closing the windows to keep the rain from drenching the floor. The air in the rooms was flat and heavy, as if all the oxygen had been sucked out by the coming storm. I supposed it was the calm before the storm that people talked about, when everything was strangely tranquil, as if the world was holding its breath.
I walked into the room where Aidan had spent Friday night. He’d taken his sleeping bag, but the window was still open, the ashtray on the sill. I shut the window and turned to leave when I noticed the box. There was a torn sheet of paper tucked into the flap. It read:
Lexi,
This is the box of albums you’d asked about. I brought it down from the attic while you were sleeping.
Cheers,
Dot
I was grateful to Dot for remembering about my interest, but honestly, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to look at the pictures. I realized that subconsciously, I’d been putting it off, afraid of what I might find. I didn’t really want to see the faces of the Hughes women, but I needed to put my mind to rest. Were people really seeing something that wasn’t there because they wanted to find a connection, or was there really some resemblance between myself and Kelly?
The box was just sitting there in the corner where Dot had left it. There was nothing to sit on, so I sat cross-legged on the floor and pulled it toward me. There were several albums and a few framed photographs that someone had carelessly thrown on top as they packed away the photos. I picked up the uppermost album and turned back the heavy brown cover to find black-and-white snaps dating back to the war. There was a man in uniform, a young woman in a polka dot dress with her hair in a Victory roll so popular during the war, and pictures of an older couple who might have been either of those people’s parents. I flipped the pages until the pictures became more current. There were lots of shots of two little girls, who I assumed were Kelly and Myra, and an attractive woman who must have been their mother.
I felt a wave of melancholy as I looke
d at the old snaps. At one time, these people were happy, blissfully ignorant of the future that was to come. They were laughing and posing playfully, the girls now in their teens, sitting on the couch with their arms around each other. I pulled out the photograph and held it up to the light as a shiver of apprehension raced down my spine. I didn’t have to ask which one was Kelly and which one was Myra. Myra was dark-haired and a little chubby, her dark eyes smiling into the camera as she rested her head on her sister’s shoulder. Kelly was a redhead, her eyes either blue or green, and a sprinkling of freckles across her pert nose. She had a wide mouth that gave just a hint of a smile as she looked into the lens.
My hair was darker, more auburn than red, and my eyes hazel, but the girl in the picture could have been my sister. It wasn’t just her features, but the expression on her face. There was many a picture from my teenage years when I looked just like that, as if I were hiding some great secret and I could barely contain the enigmatic smile that resulted in that playful look. How was it possible for us to look so alike when there was no connection between us whatsoever?
I flipped the page and looked at some more pictures. Toward the end of the album, there were pictures of Kelly with what I assumed was her husband, her belly round and her face filled out with the glow of pregnancy. The man looked at Kelly with a look of such devotion and love that it was hard to believe what I’d heard only a few days ago. What had gone wrong between these two young people who looked so content?
I got to the end of the album and two loose pieces of paper fell out into my lap. I picked them up and felt a chill that had nothing to do with the summer evening. I was suddenly sick to my stomach, my hand shaking violently. What I was looking at were the drawings of a child. The first one depicted a mom, dad, and a little girl between them with the house in the background. It was almost identical to the picture I had given my dad years ago. The signature at the bottom was written in a childish hand, the N drawn backward, and the letters crooked and slanted. It said, “Sandy,” with a little flower drawn underneath.
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