Six Times a Charm

by Deanna Chase

  I knocked twice on the door to the Boy’s Room, just to make sure that it was empty. When I showed Jason where he’d be sleeping, he looked shocked. “I thought…” He trailed off, but the way his eye roamed over my sweater told me exactly what he’d thought.

  My cheeks flushed, and I started to stammer. “I did, too. I mean, I’d hoped. I mean, I wanted….” I took a deep breath and forced myself to exhale slowly. “I’ll see what I can arrange. There are cottages on the grounds. They’re spoken for, but maybe…”

  He leaned over and brushed a wayward strand of hair off my cheek. “See what you can do.”

  My heart was pounding by the time we got back to the kitchen, and that had nothing to do with the climb down the steep stairs.

  Jason was the perfect Boyfriend. As the family troops returned from their morning excursions, Jason met relative after relative. He let himself get roped into a surprisingly brutal game of touch football on the front lawn, managing to capture one of Simon’s twins and hold the boy upside down while a teammate scored the winning touchdown. He helped collect wood for the night’s bonfire, securing a tiny pine cone that he pressed into my palm like a secret token. He sat on the porch with Gran, holding out his hands for her new skein of wool, admiring her knitted shawl and asking intelligent questions about her latest project.

  He even carried on a spirited conversation with Clara, about whether our colonial forefathers had been capable of breaking free from their Christian indoctrination to experience a true spiritual awakening in the rugged new land of America. I think that he gained innumerable points when he proclaimed that Plymouth Rock was a symbol of all religious settlement of the New World, and that the stone beneath the pilgrims’ feet was echoed in the crystal around Clara’s neck.

  Chalcedony, I noticed at a glance. The stone for motherhood.

  If Clara caught my intent gaze, she ignored it.

  My contribution for the evening clambake was a giant casserole dish of apple crisp. Some of the cousins had brought back bushels of orchard-fresh apples that afternoon, and I had found myself grinning as I peeled and cut them, slapping Jason’s fingers away as he tried to steal slices. When the kitchen timer beeped its alarm, I excused myself from the porch to remove the bubbling, cinnamon-scented dish from the oven.

  And when I turned back to the counter, Gran was standing in the doorway.

  “He seems quite charming, dear.”

  I let the fluttering joy beneath my heart burst through my smile. “He is, Gran. He really is.”

  “I’m surprised that you’ve never mentioned him before.” I heard the hurt behind her words, and I knew that she was asking if I was ashamed of her. She’d always worried about my being different from my friends, growing up without the standard issue of one mother and one father.

  I set the hot apple crisp on a cooling rack before looking up at her again. “Gran, it’s not like that at all. This has all happened so quickly. There have been so many changes, just in the past couple of months.”

  “Changes?” She sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. Suddenly, I was assailed with deja vu. I’d had this conversation with my grandmother before. We had talked about Jason, about my job at the Peabridge, about the mysterious collection of books in my basement.

  I blinked and realized that we’d never had such a discussion. But we had talked throughout all my painful years of high school. Through the trials and tribulations of my first date, my first kiss, my first agonizing decision of who to invite to a Sadie Hawkins dance.

  I took a deep breath, ready to share with Gran, ready to tell her about Neko, and David, and what little I had learned about witchcraft. Before I could get out the first words, though, Leah burst into the kitchen. “Oh, good,” she said. “You’ve got the cobbler out.”

  “It’s a crisp,” I said, irrationally annoyed by her appearance.

  “Crisp, cobbler, freaking brown betty. The kids are screaming for dessert. If you had children, Jane, you’d know that they really can’t be kept waiting when they’re excited like this. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know how you single women survive.”

  My retort was hotter than the crisp in its casserole dish, but before I could spill out a venomous reply, Gran pulled herself up from her chair. “We’d best make sure all the little monsters get more sugar, then, shouldn’t we? At least they’ll work it off running around the bonfire.” I flashed her a smile of gratitude and scrambled for bowls and spoons.

  The crisp was declared a success, and everyone adjourned to the back clearing for the evening’s main event.

  The bonfire was everything that I remembered from my childhood. Flames leaped high against the pitch-black sky, sending up sparks in ever-changing patterns of light. My back grew chilled, even as my face was toasted by the fire. Someone broke out bags of giant marshmallows (Jason and I shared a fond smile), and Hershey bars magically appeared beside boxes of graham crackers. The kids tracked down long branches for marshmallow-roasting. One of Simon’s twins discovered a coveted five-pronged stick.

  I learned that Jason preferred his marshmallows charred to a crisp. I learned that he liked extra chocolate on his smores. I learned that he could lick stray graham cracker crumbs from the corners of my mouth, in the dark, on the very edge of the fire’s light. And I learned that he could protect me from the spookiest ghost stories in Connecticut, his arm hollowing out a perfect circle by his side.

  As the kids fell asleep and parents began to make noises about shuffling off to bed, Simon came and sat beside me. “It’s been a long time, Jane,” he said, nodding to Jason, as if to include him in reminiscences.

  “Too long,” I sighed.

  Simon held out his fist, and I automatically extended my hand. Something brass slipped from his fingers to mine. “Blue,” he said.

  The Blue Cottage. The one that Gran had set aside for Simon and Carol, to give them a break from their boys. The one that was nestled on the very edge of the Farm’s property, far away from prying eyes. “Simon, I can’t.”

  “Of course you can. I’ll take the couch in the main house. Someone has to make sure that the boys don’t sneak out too late. And Carol will be fine up in the Girl’s Room.”

  Jason’s fingers tightened on mine. I leaned forward and kissed Simon on his cheek. “Thank you,” I said.

  “You look happy,” he replied, and he nodded toward Jason again. “Both of you.”

  We waited a few minutes, just for appearance’s sake. Someone called for another ghost story, and there was a good-spirited debate about whether it was time to bring out a bottle of schnapps.

  I waited until the singing began before I clambered to my feet. Trying to look innocuous, as if I were heading out to search for a new marshmallow stick, I eased into the darkness. Jason followed behind me, close as a shadow.

  My feet knew the path to the Blue Cottage; they’d traveled the walkway often enough when I was a child. I clutched Simon’s key like a good-luck charm. I felt Jason breathing behind me as I worked the lock. When I fumbled for the light switch, his fingers closed over mine, keeping me from springing the cottage into brightness.

  The moonlight was enough. It puddled on the queen-sized bed, illuminating the wedding-ring quilt that had been in the family for as long as I could remember.

  I barely managed to set the key on the night stand before Jason was kissing me. These were not the sweet, promising kisses that he had stolen on the stairs. These were urgent kisses, plying kisses. They reached down into my belly, twisted me, arched me against him with an urgency I had long ago forgotten.

  We were like animals, there in the Blue Cottage. We were like fairies from the woods around us, Titania and Oberon, come together in desperate forest love. Jason tugged at my sweater, peeled off my jeans. I returned the services, pulling him closer to me.

  The air was chilly in the cottage, kissed by the autumn night. We dove underneath the quilt at the same time, pulling it up to our shoulders and giggling like mad children. For just a moment, I wondered
what Jason was seeing. I worried that he would feel betrayed by my too-chunky thighs, that he would close his hands around my waist and realize that I was never going to be a ballerina. I was never going to be a sculpted Russian ice queen.

  But then his hands moved with a new urgency. Even I—a woman who had been left high and dry on the sexual seas for over a year—recognized what pushed against my belly.

  “Damn!” I exclaimed.

  “What?” He barely pulled back.

  “The condoms! They’re back in the house.” I was furious with myself. Embarrassed. Disappointed. Desperate. “Maybe Simon and Carol—” I started to say.

  But Jason silenced me with another kiss. And when I’d abandoned the ridiculous notion that my happily married cousin might have rubbers sitting around his weekend cottage, Jason sat up. He fumbled for his jeans in the pooled darkness on the floor. He reached into his pocket and drew out a ring of keys, placing them on the night stand. He extracted his wallet. He opened it up.

  And he displayed a foil packet.

  A glorious foil packet.

  A foil packet that was ripped open in a matter of seconds. And put to astonishingly good use in the middle of the Connecticut woods.

  Chapter 26

  The early morning sun woke me up, slanting through the window shade. For one confused moment, I thought that I was back at home. I pulled my comforter up closer to my chin, only to realize that it was not my comforter.

  It was a quilt.

  And I was lying under it, naked.

  And I was not alone.

  I rolled over to find myself looking into Jason Templeton’s eyes. “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning.” I barely got the words out, as my heart started jack-hammering away, and I regretted them immediately. What was I thinking? I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet! Here, I had finally lured Jason to bed, and I was going to drive him away with clambake-and-smores morning breath.

  Before I could figure out a way to sneak out of bed, to redeem my breath by stealing Simon’s toothpaste and rubbing it on my teeth with my finger, before I’d reconciled myself to showing Jason my bare rear-end as I ducked into the bathroom, the decisions were taken away from me.

  Jason’s hands were firm as he pulled me close. His fingers clutched my hair. His lips found mine, as if it were perfectly natural for two people to kiss without the aid of minty fresh breath.

  Which, I supposed, it was.

  And I didn’t regret that lesson. I didn’t regret anything, as his fingers began to massage my scalp. His hands moved lower, smoothing over my bare back. I wriggled even closer to him, relishing the feeling of our bodies awakening, tangling, finding each other beneath the quilt.

  Scott had never been one for morning love-making. He’d never wanted to linger between the sheets—he’d had too many important things to do, too many exciting people to see. I’d once proposed an entire “Pajama Weekend” where we’d do nothing but stay at home, make love, and eat disgustingly fattening food, and he’d looked at me as if I was mad before laughing and “getting” my so-called joke.

  But Jason…. Jason was a different man entirely.

  When he came up for air, he said, “And here I thought it might be strange, coming to your family reunion.”

  “I knew you’d fit right in,” I said. And the double entendre in my innocent words made both of us laugh. “Seriously,” I said, when I trusted my voice again. “I don’t know what possessed me to invite you. I know it can be overwhelming to meet so many people at one time.”

  “At least Leah set out a welcome mat.” We both laughed again. If only my spiteful cousin could see us now…

  Jason leaned back on his pillow, pulling me on top of him so that my head rested against his chest. His surprisingly well-muscled chest. His perfect chest. I mean, the man was a college professor! I hadn’t expected him to have the body that he had, hidden beneath his long-sleeved shirts, and his impeccable khaki pants….

  As I listened to his heart lub-dubbing beneath my ear, I spread my fingers against the curve of his ribs. “This is too perfect,” I sighed. I hadn’t actually intended to say those words out loud. Nevertheless, they seemed right, drifting to rest in the morning cabin, settling in with the dust motes that sparkled in the sunlight. I closed my eyes as Jason started drawing designs on my back with his fingertips. “Tell me something to make it real,” I said.

  “What?” His voice was as lazy as his hands.

  “Tell me something bad about you. A secret, or something. Something so that I’ll know this isn’t some fairy tale dream.”

  “Something bad? You mean, other than the fact that I’m married?”

  I froze.

  He was joking, of course. He was teasing me. I had practically asked him to tease me. “Married?” I sounded stupid, but my question freed me to sit up, to gather the quilt across my chest like some censor-conscious heroine on a TV show.

  “You know, Ekaterina? Marriage? I do, and all that crap?”

  I knew all the words that Jason was saying, but I couldn’t make sense out of them. I couldn’t make them apply to my Boyfriend, to the man I’d just slept with.

  “Ekaterina?” I’d lost the ability to form sentences, to string together subjects and predicates, nouns and verbs. Even as my belly twisted, even as my fingers and toes flamed red-hot then fell icy cold, I tried to remember how to speak, how to ask what I was suddenly terrified that I did not want to know.

  Jason went on, before I could piece together a coherent sentence. “You met her, remember? At Five Guys? At the Harvest Gala?” He was sitting up now, too, leaning against the bed’s headboard and staring at me warily.

  “I met her,” I said, finally managing to make a sentence. “I met her, but you never said anything about being married.”

  “I told you that she was going to Historical Politics this weekend,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  “But you left out the tiny fact that you’re her husband!”

  I was such an idiot.

  He’d let me make a fool out of myself. He’d let me declare my interest in him. He’d flirted with me and joked and made me think that we had a future. But he would never, ever be there for me. He would never, ever be mine. Because he belonged to someone else. To have and to hold. Til death do us part.

  I was such an idiot.

  I’d seen him with her twice. I’d watched her crying. He’d talked about her research. I’d forced myself to believe that she was a grad student, that she meant nothing to him, that she was just another woman among the hundreds of women that he saw in his professional life.

  I was such a complete and utter idiot.

  I threw myself out of bed, tugging the quilt with me, so that Jason was suddenly exposed. Bare. Silly.

  He stared at me in astonishment. “Jane, you had to realize I was married!”

  “And how was I supposed to realize that?” I said, as I scrambled for my clothes. “You don’t wear a wedding band!”

  “I told you that I couldn’t make dinner on a weekend night.” He honestly sounded aggrieved, as if I were the one who had lied, who had pretended to be something I was not. “I told you that I couldn’t get up here to Connecticut until Saturday. I gave you my cell phone number.”

  I tugged on my pants. My bra was tangled around itself, and there was no way that I was going to stand in front of him long enough to tuck myself into its cups and clasps. Instead, I jerked my sweater over my head, slashing at my hair to free it from the tight knit neck. By the time I had finished that maneuver, I could trust my voice with a few more complete sentences. “You never told me you were married. You never gave me any reason to believe that you were. You lied to me, Jason. You lied, and you took advantage of me.”

  I shoved my feet into my tennis shoes, deciding that socks were as unnecessary as my bra. Jason took a deep breath, and stood up in front of me, naked.

  “Jane, you’re being completely unreasonable!”

  “I’m—” I
started to say, but he cut me off.

  “Come on! You had to know Ekaterina was my wife. You’re the one who brought her up in half our conversations.”

  “But what—” My voice broke, and I needed to swallow hard before trying a second time. “What was this all about?” I gestured toward the bed.

  “This was a break,” he said. “We’ve both been working so hard—me, writing my articles, you, doing my research….”

  Doing his research. My so-called Boyfriend thought I was nothing more than a research assistant. Well, a research assistant and an easy lay. A research assistant, an easy lay, and a wiling partner in adultery.

  My anger was hotter than our passion the night before, hotter than the bonfire that had blazed in the back clearing, hotter than the greasy flames that had shot out from my oven on the night that Jason first kissed me.

  I needed to do something, needed to move. My arms rose up, and my fingers stiffened. Power pulsed inside me, building with every heartbeat. The thrumming energy of spell-work rippled down my spine. My hair crackled, and I knew that it must halo my face.

  The magic was strong, stronger than anything I had summoned before. It was greater than my fumbling efforts when I awakened Neko, greater than my mastering simple kitchen flames. I opened my mouth and heard a terrible sound, a grating laugh, a murderous glee. I was making that noise; I was gloating over this power, this strength.

  Part of me was mortified, horrified, afraid to even look at Jason’s aghast face. But part of me reveled in his terror. He was remembering. He was thinking back to the fire in my kitchen. He was making himself see the magic that he had denied, the power that he had convinced himself was nothing.

  Nothing.

  He thought that I was nothing. He had been playing me from Day One. Plying me with marshmallows and Italian lunches.

  I closed my eyes, but I could no longer control my rage. It spun me around, crashing my thoughts against each other. I needed to ground the force; I needed to store it away. Even thinking of dampening it, though, only made the magic surge higher. I panicked, and that adrenaline rush folded into the maelstrom.