The Witch of Belladonna Bay

by Suzanne Palmieri

Naomi loved us.

  The three of them were so peaceful. Breathing together, fluttering hands and eyelashes. I wished I could hold on to her, too, but you don’t get do-overs after death. You only get to remember things differently. And that’s what she’d needed. For me to see how much she loved me. For me to quit questioning that. All I could hear were the three of them murmuring to one another: Where were you? Right here! I looked and I looked, you are good hiders! We love you, Mama. You are the best, prettiest mama. I love you the universe. I love you bigger than that. I’m so lucky to be your mama. Shh. Thirty-eight freckles, thirty-two …

  Completely enfolded now, it was getting harder to tell where she left off and the children began.

  I thought she’d kiss them and then blow into her hands to make the rose glow she’s always dreamed of … but that isn’t what happened.

  Instead, she burst into starlight.

  Thousands of pieces of Naomi taking flight.

  My mother was free. She’d been the light in the sky.

  Thank you, darling was a whisper in the air as I stumbled, aching, back across the bay.

  29

  Wyn (Carter Tells a Tale)

  After I got back, Jackson picked me up like a baby and put me in a wide chair on the porch. Everything went fuzzy for a while.

  I heard muffled voices and felt Byrd’s soft kisses. “Time to wake up,” she whispered. And I did. Just in time to see Jackson coming out onto the porch with Carter and Min and a whole bunch of food.

  “We made your favorite, Wyn. Shrimp and grits. Byrd stirred the grits for the whole time they cooked,” said Minerva.

  “You gotta keep on ’em and give them love, else they won’t love you back in your mouth,” said Byrd.

  The shrimp were pink and coated in golden butter. Ben handed me a bowl, He was quiet, but I wasn’t mad at him anymore. Just glad he was there. He’d given me a gift. I knew that now. He did, too.

  “All right,” I said. “What the hell happened when I was gone? Everyone’s so calm and peaceful. We have an innocent man in prison. Did we forget?”

  That’s when it all came unraveling like the vacuum cleaner cord.

  “Well,” said Jackson, “a funny thing happened when we were making this here meal. And you were making peace with your mama.” His eyes flashed for a second, as if he wanted to say, Did she ask for me? He cleared his throat and went on, “Seems Carter’s been holding out on us.”

  “It’s a confession of sorts,” said Carter.

  “Tell me, Carter. Tell me how you can help fix all this,” I said.

  Stick put his bowl on the railing and stood up slow, smoothing out his sheriff uniform pants.

  “Well, Carter, it seems Wyn is about to make you do this all over again, so why don’t we go down to the station and make it official. If you’re ready, that is,” said Stick.

  Carter nodded. Hands in his pockets now. He’d come clean, this strange, quiet, loyal gentleman. Finally.

  “I’m coming,” I said.

  “I didn’t think I would be able to stop you. But only you, okay? The rest of you,” he said—waving his finger around at Ben, Jackson, Minerva, looking sadder than I’d ever seen her, and Byrd—“you crazy lot better steer clear until I get this sorted out.”

  “Well, I’m taking Min to Sam’s,” said Jackson. “We need to be at a bar after all this, I think. Ben, you want to come?”

  “Sure, that’d be great,” he said.

  “Byrd, you can come with me if you want. I don’t care what this fool says. I don’t want to leave you alone,” I said.

  She shook her head, but she never turned around. She stood there, looking over at that damned island and pushing her grits back and forth in her bowl.

  “Leave her,” said Minerva. “She’ll be fine. She needs—”

  “You people, I swear!” I shouted. “She needs, she needs … dear God. What about what’s right and what’s wrong? It’s damn wrong to leave her here alone with that boy out there.”

  “Fine, stay here then,” said Minerva, who knew I wasn’t going to let Stick interview Carter without me present.

  “Nope. I’m going,” I said. We’d never be the family that lived by right and wrong. Our moral compass was shot to shit. But at least I knew, finally, that there was love.

  I held my arms out to my niece, who came without hesitation.

  “Byrd, listen to me, if you’re scared or you feel alone, you come right on down to Stick’s office, you hear? And don’t even think about crossing that creek. I mean it, you haven’t seen me mad yet.”

  “It’s okay, Aunt Wyn. I kinda want a little solitude anyhow. And if you think I’m gonna venture on over there, you’re being all obtuse again.”

  That girl. I swear.

  * * *

  The whole story unwound exactly where it should have the night it all happened—in the sheriff’s office.

  “Sit down, Carter. Try and make yourself comfortable. You want anything, a coffee or something?” asked Stick.

  “No, sir. I’m fine. I just wanna get this whole thing over with.”

  “I’m gonna record you, so Wyn here needs to be quiet, and you need to refrain from speaking to her as well.” He turned to me. “Not a word, you hear? This recording has to hold up with the district judges. Not even a deep breath, okay?”

  I nodded my head and pulled my fingers across my lips.

  He cleared his throat and pushed Record: “Interview with Carter Simpson: Magnolia Creek. Sheriff Bill Croft.

  “Carter, would you like me to ask you questions? Or would you prefer to simply tell the story of the night Charlotte Masters was killed?”

  “Well, Sti—I mean, Sheriff, I suppose I’d like to tell my story. How about you just interrupt me when there’s somethin’ that needs clarification?”

  “Sounds good, Carter. Start whenever you’re ready.”

  “Well, I suppose we need to start at the beginning. Paddy ’n’ Charlotte. What a pair. Both of them getting more and more tired of life as it wore on, you know? And each tryin’ their absolute best to raise their children up right. And Byrd and Jamie? They weren’t a pair who took kindly to bein’ raised. So it was only a matter of time before Charlotte and Paddy just sort of fell in with one another. Only, they didn’t get no comfort. They got more, I don’t know, full of sorrow. That’s what it was. And they drank too much together. Other drugs, too.

  “I tried to warn Paddy. Tried to warn him many times that Charlotte and him were a toxic sort of combination. And Jamie? He hated Paddy trying to get ‘fatherly’ with him. I suppose I had a little to do with that, too. I urged him to try. I mean, everyone needs a father, don’t they? But the more Paddy tried with Jamie, the more Jamie pulled away from him and Charlotte, too.

  “Anyway, they’d had a big fight. And that weren’t no surprise. Toward the end they were always fighting, those two. Fighting about how they felt toward one another. Fighting about the kids. Fighting about what color the sky was by the end of it.

  “And the night Charlotte was killed, Paddy was on his way over there with fire in his eyes. I stopped him in the hall. Had a talk with him. Convinced him to come with me to Sam’s before he went over there. Figured I could stop somethin’ bad before it happened. But I was wrong about that. If I’d let Paddy go straight over, he could have stopped the whole thing.

  “Those damn best-laid plans.

  “So there we are, a little drunk, walkin’ back up Main Street when Patrick decides he’s going over to talk to Charlotte anyhow.

  “‘I’m goin’ with you then. You’re in no shape to handle yourself right,’ I told him. And he didn’t mind. He just wanted to see her, I think. Try to convince her to stay with him.

  “When we got there, the house was dark, all except the kitchen. And the front door was wide open.

  “‘What do you thinks goin’ on here?’ I asked Paddy. ‘Maybe we should call Stick first?’

  “‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Nothin’s goin on. Charlotte never locks
her doors. Hell, no one does round here.’

  “But I could tell. I could feel something bad had happened. And all we could see once we got inside were Lottie’s feet in a pool of blood. Patrick ran in there so fast he slipped in the blood and skidded into the cabinets. He was on her and cradling her in his arms before I could stop him. I knew immediately he’d be one of the suspects, so I wanted to keep him as clean as possible. But then I realized neither one of us would ever be clean again. There she was, stabbed—damn, Stick—how many times?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “There was so much blood,” continued Carter. “That’s when I really looked around. To see what could have possibly happened.

  “Paddy and I saw the knife at the same time. He let out a wail that I thought would bring down the whole house. It was Byrd’s knife. Her favorite one.

  “‘Oh, God, Carter! We gotta get rid of all this! We gotta make sure she ain’t held responsible,’ he cried at me, covered in blood.”

  Stick interrupted at this point. “Carter, why did Paddy think Byrd did it?”

  “Well, see … there was this incident a few years back with her old dog. The sweet thing killed it because it bit him. And then there were all those dead animals we found. When he asked her about it, she just said she and Jamie did it. So, I guess he was scared she’d lost her mind with all those strange ways and simply killed Charlotte for hurting him like she’d killed the dog. Hell, Stick, I don’t know. All I know is that once the thing was in motion, it rolled away from us like a rock down a slope.”

  “Okay, go on,” said Stick.

  “That’s when I noticed young Jamie. He’d been pushed, it seemed, through the glass doors that went into the dining room. And there was all this glass stickin’ in him where it shouldn’t have been. He’d lost a lot of blood, too, and there was a small knife mark on his neck.

  “‘He’s still alive,’ I said.

  “And Paddy sat there, nodding like a fool. ‘Yessir, he is. Because she wouldn’t have killed him, not if she came to her senses. Looks like whatever happened to him was an accident. Like he came in, and she just pushed him away before she knew what she was doin’.’

  “‘We got to get him to the hospital, Paddy. We got to call Stick. Now.’

  “‘Can’t we take him somewhere and help him ourselves? He’ll tell on her when he wakes up. He’s just a kid. He won’t know what to say to all them folks. We need to help him and figure out what to tell everyone.’”

  “‘How we gonna explain it when they find him?’ I asked.

  “‘I can’t think about that now. Just … just take him somewhere. Somewhere no one can find him. Then we’ll get him well and tell him what he can and cannot say. Once he’s better, he won’t turn on our girl. I know he won’t.’

  “I don’t know why I listened to him, Stick, I swear. But the whole situation was crazy. We were there, mourning Lottie. That sweet lost girl. And looking at a seriously injured child. All the while thinking our Byrd was the killer and we had to protect her. That’s what families do. So Paddy told me, ‘So, you take him, okay? Take him. And take the knife, too. Do something with it. I’m gonna leave my hands all over this place,’ while he’s still holdin’ on to Charlotte. Still cryin’. Moving his hands around in the puddle of blood on the floor. Broke my heart.

  “I folded up Byrd’s knife and put it in my pocket.

  “So that’s what I did. I picked up Jamie who was still breathing, but just barely. I had no idea how that kid would survive. But I made that choice.

  “Then it hit me. The only place no one would look was over at Belladonna. So that’s where I took him. There’s an old shack in the center of that dammed island and I took him there, laid him down, and made a fire.”

  “How’d you know there was a cottage there, Carter?” asked Stick.

  Carter laughed. “I’m not from here, remember? I never believed those stories. So the first thing I wanted to do after Minerva and me got back from our honeymoon was to explore that place.

  “And it ain’t much of a place. But there is one small cottage sort of a ruin. But when I saw it again that night, it was livable. Looked to me like someone had been there a bunch. Kept it up, you know? I didn’t know then what we all know now. I didn’t know I was bringin’ Jamie to the exact place he wanted to be. His own place. Guess he’d been going there for years. If’n you can have ‘years’ when you’re still only about eleven. Anyway, I got him settled on a cot and covered him up with a blanket that was left there. Then I ran on back over the creek to get some first aid supplies.

  “But there was Byrd, in her white nightgown. Holding her arms out to me. Her eyes so big and wide and full of fear. I knew right then that she’d done it and that she didn’t remember doin’ it. Paddy had made me so damn sure, I couldn’t even think past the idea.”

  “It’s called loyalty, Carter. It’s okay. Just keep goin’. Why were you so sure, right then that it was her? Besides the fact that Paddy got the idea stuck in your head?” asked Stick.

  “It was the look in her eyes. I could tell she’d had one of her ‘blackouts.’ Those damn strange ways of hers. It’s a curse. So I picked her up and told her everything was gonna be just fine. That Carter was gonna fix up everything just so. And I put her back to bed.”

  Carter stopped there for a second and took out a handkerchief. His eyes had welled up, and he was trying not to cry. Strong, older Southern men crying is the most awkwardly beautiful thing on this earth. I wanted to hug him just then, but he continued.

  “Then I got some supplies and went out back across the creek to fix up Jamie. Only he wasn’t there.”

  “What do you mean, he wasn’t there?” asked Stick.

  “Exactly what I said. And now we know the truth. But back then I was sure he’d crawled off somewhere to die. So I looked for him. I did. I swear it. But there wasn’t even a trail. And I’m a half-decent hunter.

  “I figured I’d go back in the morning. I made sure the fire was nice and warm in case he made his way back. It soothed me, makin’ that fire. Made me feel better. Like I wasn’t doin’ something terrible. Even though I was.

  “I walked back into the Big House and washed my hands good in the sink, and then made my way upstairs to check on Patrick. I was relieved when I heard Patrick in his room. I knocked on the door and he let me in. He’d taken a shower. He seemed way too calm and clearheaded. I’d not seen him so sharp in a long time. ‘I called Stick,’ he said.

  “‘Oh hell, Paddy, you didn’t. What did he tell you? What did you say?’

  “‘I called him and told him he needed to get to Lottie’s in the mornin’ and to come here right after. He was half asleep. And he don’t know the hell he’s gonna face in the morning. So I’m sure I have tonight. Stick ain’t never rushed anywhere in his whole life.’

  “‘What are you gonna do, Paddy?’

  “‘I’m gonna confess. What else?’

  “‘But you didn’t do it!’

  “‘No, but we both know who did.’ He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it hard. ‘Look, Carter. I’m not gonna say this twice. I’m not ever going to let one hair on her head come to harm. It aint her fault she’s the way she is. It’s my mama’s fault. It’s all our faults. And I’m gonna have to ask you to do one more thing.’

  “‘What’s that, Paddy?’

  “‘No one will know what we saw. They can guess, but they can’t ever know. Okay?’

  “‘You could get the chair, Paddy. How’m I supposed to sit back and let you die?’

  “‘Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t. But it don’t matter. Because she’s worth it. You understand me?’

  “I just shrugged. I couldn’t shake the vision of Paddy in the electric chair. My boy. I’d raised him up since he was sixteen. He was combing his hair like a dandy in the mirror, all clean and neat and to one side.

  “‘Did you take care of Jamie?’ he asked.

  “‘Yes. Only when I went back, he was gone.’

 
“‘Gone, like dead?’

  “I thought about telling him the whole truth, but I knew he needed to be free of worry to do what he needed to do. So I just nodded.

  “‘I hate to say it, Carter. But that might be the best thing. Did you take care of the knife?’

  “The knife. I’d forgotten about it.

  “I took it out of my pocket.

  “‘Shit! Carter, we gotta hide it.’

  “‘Where?’

  “‘You decide. But don’t tell me about it. Don’t tell no one.’

  “‘Okay.’

  “He hugged me then. Hugged me like he hadn’t since he was a boy.

  “‘I’m not scared, Carter. I feel better than I have in a long time. I feel, useful. And now I’m gonna crawl into bed with my little girl and hold her like I did when she was a baby. You hide that knife and get some rest. You’re gonna need it to help with Byrd come tomorrow.’

  “So what was done was done. And when I went to the cabin on Belladonna the next day, Jamie was still gone. I looked for hours. Not a sign of him. So I thought he was dead, for real … and eaten up by an alligator or something.”

  “Where did you hide the knife, Carter? That’s gonna be important,” asked Stick.

  Carter laughed. “You wanna know? Here you are: it’s in the kitchen of the Big House in the junk drawer near the back. I wiped it, though.”

  “Carter, you could have left it at the bottom of the creek and we’d still be able to lift prints off it. Don’t worry.”

  Stick pressed Stop on the tape recorder.

  “I’ll need you to write it down, too. And then sign. That all right with you?”

  “Anything we need to do to get this whole mess straightened out,” said Carter.

  “Come on, Wyn, let me walk you out. You better get home now, there’s a storm comin’.”

  When we were back at the front of the office, I turned to Stick and said, “Look here, I’m going to ask you something, and you’re going to comply, okay? I’m not going to throw out any threats or tell you how you fouled up this whole thing. I’m just going to ask you a favor.”

  “What, Wyn?”

  “You go back in there and record that confession again. And you have Carter take out any mention of Paddy. You tell him to say he’d done the whole thing himself thinkin’ Paddy did it. Covering for him. I know it’s a lie. But it’s a good one. It will save a lot of people a whole lot of pain.”