Legacy

  “I guess this is me,” I said. He was staring at me. “Is something the matter, Peter?” I asked.

  He blinked and looked around, flustered. “No, no,” he said, “of course not. Please.” He gestured toward my door.

  “What is it?” I persisted. I’d known him long enough to recognize the familiar look of anguish in those gray eyes.

  He blinked again. Swallowed. “Well. It’s nothing, really. Just . . . well, nothing . . .”

  “Peter!”

  “Oh, it’s only . . .” He took a deep breath. “I . . . I was just wondering if . . .”

  I was struggling to stifle a yawn.

  “Well, I was wondering if you thought it was true,” he managed finally. “About the Darkness, that is. That the only way to destroy it is to burn the person alive.”

  I thought about it as much as my feeble and exhausted brain would allow. “No, of course not,” I said. “That would be horrible.”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about it, though,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “No one in Whitfield’s infected with the Darkness, as far as I know.”

  “Yes, right.” He nodded mechanically.

  “Even if it did happen, which it won’t, remember that we’re living in a town full of very smart witches. One of them would figure something out.”

  He nodded again and tried to smile, although it didn’t look very convincing.

  “Anyway, there have only been two harbingers. Birds and sinkholes. Pah. They might not count for anything.”

  “Of course.” He opened my door for me. “Good night,” he said.

  He turned away before I could say anything else. Not that I had much else to offer. I knew Peter was worried. I was too. Everyone in Old Town knew something was coming, and I doubted if anyone among those very smart witches had the slightest idea what to do about it.

  CHAPTER

  •

  EIGHTEEN

  OSTARA

  I suppose it was Mim’s idea.

  Because of the sudden appearance of the sinkhole in the Meadow, groundbreaking for the new Wonderland store had to be delayed while a team of geologists studied the hole, tested the ground with sonar and X-rays, analyzed the groundwater, and determined how much weight the underlying limestone would support.

  But instead of leaving the site covered with tarps and HIGH VOLTAGE signs, someone—and it had to have been Mim, because that was her job—had the area transformed overnight into a kid’s Easter fantasy. I hated to admit it, but it was a brilliant save.

  There were trees in pots with plastic oranges hanging from them, enormous tubs of fresh flowers that were replaced every morning, and live rabbits in an elaborate pen constructed to look like a Beatrix Potter-inspired English cottage. Directly over the sinkhole was a six-foot-tall Easter Bunny in a heated pavilion, seated on a throne of resinous carrots and cabbages with WONDERLAND stamped in parti-colored pastels across the top, ready to pose for pictures that came with coupons good for 10 percent off any child’s portrait taken in Wonderland’s in-store photo studio.

  The geologists came at night, after all the rabbits had been stashed in cages and returned to the pet store, and the Easter Bunny’s throne hauled aside to reveal the gaping maw of the sinkhole beneath.

  This was only in one corner of the Meadow, the corner farthest away from Hattie’s Kitchen, and was set off by a charming white picket fence and a huge silk banner announcing the First (and last, since the Meadow would be covered by concrete as soon as construction started) Annual Wonderland Easter Egg Hunt, featuring a petting zoo, craft fair, pony rides, and a drawing for five hundred dollars in Wonderland merchandise, redeemable at the store’s grand opening.

  This whole spectacle occurred during the Vernal Equinox, which is a witch holiday, but fortunately a minor one. Most of the Old Town residents just stayed away, but some diehards brought flowers to Hattie’s Kitchen, which had been out of business since the meadow was sold to Wonderland, and placed them by the restaurant’s closed doors. It was a funereal sight.

  Dad had been pestering me to come to New York, and since it was spring break, I didn’t have much reason to refuse.

  Mim wasn’t at the Sutton Place apartment when I arrived, so Dad and I had some time alone.

  “How’s school going, Katy?”

  “Good.”

  “Are you keeping your grades up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Making new friends?”

  “Uh huh.” It was awkward. There was so much I couldn’t bring up. Agnes and Gram, witchcraft, Peter . . . none of those seemed like good topics for conversation with Dad. It was going to be a very long weekend. But finally I touched on something I thought he might be interested in.

  “I’m writing a paper on medieval magic boxes,” I said. “They’re—”

  “Bottes,” he said, taking off his glasses.

  “You know about them?” I asked.

  “I’m a medievalist, Katherine,” he reminded me. “But I’m surprised you do.”

  “I . . . er, found a reference to them online and got interested,” I fudged. I wasn’t about to out my Medieval Alchemy teacher, Mrs. Thwacket, over a conversational nugget. “Do you think they ever existed?”

  “Oh, yes, certainly. Of course bottes weren’t really magic. They were mechanical devices, masterpieces of engineering, with drawers within drawers and false backs and bottoms and secret shelves and panels that opened only in a certain order to reveal still more compartments. To your average medieval denizen, it would have seemed miraculous.”

  “But they were supposed to be repositories for magical tools. Precious artifacts. Dangerous spells. Things like that.”

  “Spells?” He sat upright, his face alight. “Where on earth did you read that? Some New Age woo woo website?” He laughed aloud. “Really, Katherine.”

  I had decided to go up to my room—as far as I was concerned, the conversation was over—when Mim crashed in, loaded as usual with parcels and shopping bags.

  “Darling,” she breathed, planting a big wet one square on Dad’s lips. It was, I must say, repulsive in the extreme. Harrison and Madison: Their names even rhymed.

  She opened her eyes in mid–tongue kiss to stare at me. Then she must have remembered who I was, because she instantly turned on a flood of manufactured enthusiasm.

  “Kathy!” she gushed, running over to me stiff-legged, as if she were a doll with non-bendable arms extended. I think it was supposed to be an imitation of what she had imagined to be spontaneous joy.

  “Madison,” I responded, holding out my arms to stop her before she engulfed me in her robotic embrace.

  “Well!” she exclaimed with her usual breathless cheer as I fended her off. “How’s school? Oh, help me with these things, Harrison. They’re color swatches for the Whitfield house.”

  Boing. The Whitfield house. As in living there. I’d known the time was coming; I’d just hoped that something like an alternate reality would intervene and make it not be so.

  “When are you coming?” I asked woodenly.

  “Soon. The place is a shambles. Wallpaper, with borders. Country everything. A horror. Darling, what do you think of mustard for the living room?”

  “Aromatic,” he said, although she wasn’t listening.

  “So how did you like my talk?” Mim went on, pulling out huge collections of fabric samples. She was referring to an all-school assembly she’d arranged to lecture about Wonderland’s good works. “At the school,” she elucidated in a tone that demanded an answer.

  “Oh. Great. I think a lot of people are considering careers in retail.” Although this may have been true, I had no idea of the impact of her presentation, because I’d spent the hour in the nurse’s office. I just didn’t want to have to listen to Mad Madam Mim converting my clueless peers to the gospel according to Wonderland. Actually, most of my peers were in the infirmary with me, trying to convince Nurse Thompson (cowen) that a stomach flu was ragi
ng through the school. Only the Muffies were subjected to Mim’s exhortations to join the Wonderland family. Since they were already a lost cause, I didn’t care if they followed in her venal footsteps.

  “Yes, that talk usually goes over well,” she said, rummaging in her pocketbook and emerging with a cigarette and a shiny gold lighter.

  “I thought you quit smoking,” Dad said. That was one—maybe the only one—good thing about my father. He thought smoking was disgusting.

  “Bear with me, darling,” she said, exhaling a putrid plume of blue. “A new store brings tremendous pressure. I’ll quit once Whitfield opens.”

  “Until the next time,” he muttered. She ignored him.

  “Get dressed, Kathy,” she said. “We’re having dinner at Cibo. You have no idea what I went through to get a reservation.”

  “Would you mind calling me Katy?” I asked.

  She looked blank. “But why should I call you that? It’s not your name.”

  “Neither is Kathy.”

  She blew smoke into my face. “Just be glad I’m not calling you Serenity,” she said, then laughed so uproariously that she began to cough.

  My outfit didn’t please Mim.

  “You look like a waiter.”

  I glanced down at my black pants and shirt, thinking that maybe they would be enough to get me out of this forced celebration, but no dice.

  “Well, you don’t have time to change,” she sighed. “You’ll just have to go as you are.” Dad had on a new suit, I noticed, and a pink op-art tie he would never have chosen for himself.

  The restaurant was very crowded, and we had to wait for our table. Looking around at all the people in Cibo, groomed and gorgeous as show dogs on display, each one vying for attention by showing off their possessions—in Mim’s case, my father—I was suddenly bored by the grayness of it all. I looked at my dad, feeling a surge of pity and longing.

  My dad had sacrificed everything he’d had to keep me safe after his world fell apart. If he really hadn’t cared about me, he could have made a new life for himself and left the horror of what had happened in Whitfield and me behind him forever.

  But he hadn’t. That counted, no matter how frustrated and angry I got. Love counted.

  I leaned over and kissed his cheek. It surprised him. For a moment, his whole face lit up. His mouth opened in the kind of stunned delight you usually only see in little children. I didn’t know it would mean so much to him.

  “God, that took long enough,” Mim said as we were ushered to our table. “I could eat a horse.” She pushed the menu aside. “But I’ll have a salad.”

  Dad and I exchanged a look. It meant nothing except that across the ever-widening distance of our two universes, we still loved each other.

  Mim consumed her salad, plus the lion’s share of three bottles of wine. By the time the bill came, she was extremely happy.

  “I’ll miss you, Pierre,” she said to our waiter, clasping his hand. She also slipped him a fat roll of bills and, I think, her business card. “I’ll be leaving for Buttcrack, Nowhere, next week.”

  The waiter clucked sympathetically. Dad looked appalled.

  “Do you mean Whitfield, Massachusetts?” I asked, deadpan.

  “Site of the next big Wonderland!” she shouted, raising her fist in the air. She tripped over her feet as she rose. Dad put his arm around her. She fumbled in her bag for a cigarette that dangled from her lower lip as we left.

  “Yeah, Wonderland,” Mim said, lighting up as she slid into the backseat of the taxi.

  “No smoking,” the driver said.

  Mim took a drag, then tossed the cigarette out the window, but not before filling the cab with smoke.

  “You should see the place where it’s going,” Mim went on. “Big old field, right in the middle of town. Waste of prime real estate, absolutely. It’s not even a park. No benches, nothing. Waste.” She flailed her arms in the air, striking every available surface, including my father and me. “But the worst part—the absolute worst—was getting rid of that voodoo queen who lives there. You know the one I mean?”

  My heart felt as if it had exploded in my chest.

  “Man! I mean, Mon!” She cackled. “I thought she was going to put the jambalaya curse on me when I told her to get out.”

  “Hattie?” I squeaked. “You evicted Hattie Scott?”

  Mim’s face contorted into a belligerent mask. “She was living there illegally, for God’s sake. And for God knows how many generations.”

  “Did you at least pay her?” Dad asked.

  “To get off land that she never paid a dime for? Get real. Hey.” She slapped the back of the cab driver’s head with her pocketbook. “Slow down. We’re almost there.”

  The taxi screeched to a halt and the driver turned around, furious. “Look, lady, you don’t hit me, understand? You hit me, I’m gonna call the cops right here, I don’t care—”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said, throwing a bunch of bills at him. Dad got out and ran over to Mim’s side of the car so that he could open the door for her. She spilled out of the seat like Jell-O in a silver fox coat.

  “Sorry,” I said to the driver. It didn’t do any good, though. He was still pissed off, even though he was covered in money. I would have been, too.

  I left the next morning, prematurely. I wanted to talk to Hattie. And my relatives. And Peter.

  My father didn’t look me in the eye when I said good-bye. I understood. He knew what he was, what he’d become.

  “See you, Dad,” I said. He nodded. He was wearing a Dior golf shirt.

  “I’ll come up for the summer,” he said.

  “If I let you,” Mim joked.

  Sort of.

  CHAPTER

  •

  NINETEEN

  SANGOMA

  The kitchen equipment at Hattie’s was gone, leaving big stained areas on the floor where the oven, sinks, refrigerator, and dishwasher had been.

  “She gave it all to the school,” Peter said. “Miss P’s got everything in the maintenance shed.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. “Hattie’s Kitchen, closing for good.”

  “Closed and demolished,” Hattie said, coming down the stairs from her apartment.

  She looked tired and thin. The mischievous smile that had always played round the edges of her mouth was gone, replaced by deep furrows. “Will you come in for a cup of tea, Katy?” she offered.

  I’d never been upstairs before. She’d decorated the place with a strange but beautiful combination of New England severity and Caribbean whimsy. The ceiling was painted to resemble a blue sky. The doorways were strung with tiny shells that clacked when someone walked through. Some of Eric’s toys were strewn on the floor amid the piles of boxes that were already sealed and stacked.

  “Where will you be moving?” I asked Peter as Hattie was getting the tea ready.

  “We’ve rented a house near New Town,” he said. “It’s cheaper there.”

  “I’ve been here a long time,” Hattie said, returning with a tray. “In 1989 I came back to Whitfield from St. Croix with my skin and next to nothing else . . .” She shook her head slowly, looking into a distance that was hers alone. “That was Hurricane Hugo,” she said with a sigh. “That devil wind blew the roof off my house, then reached in and took my boy Dando into the air like he was a stick doll. Where he landed, no one knew. Might still be flying in the thin air, for all that.”

  I was stunned. “You had a son?” I stammered.

  “And a husband. After the hurricane moved on, he went into Christiansted to help pull out people trapped in fallen buildings. He was shot by a looter,” she said calmly. She sipped her tea. “So this thing, this Wonderland . . . This is nothing.”

  I could feel the air fairly crackle with her unspoken emotion.

  I drank my tea quickly. “But this place is yours,” I said at last. “Gram says it’s always been in your family.”

  “For more than three hundred years. I just don’t ha
ve a document to prove it.”

  “I don’t suppose the Historical Society was any help,” I said.

  “Oh, the Historical Society doesn’t know squat,” she said, dismissing the organization with a wave of her hand.

  “We don’t even need a Historical Society in Old Town,” Peter added. “Everyone here’s still living in the past.”

  We all laughed at that, so loud that Eric woke up in the next room and started to wail.

  “Oh, me and my big mouth,” Hattie said. “Now, you two keep it down.” She got up and left the room.

  “I never knew Hattie had a son,” I whispered.

  Peter nodded. “She doesn’t talk about him much,” he said. “She grew up here, right in this house. But she met this guy in college. He was from the Caribbean—”

  “I’ll thank you not to be telling my life story like it was your property, Mr. Shaw,” Hattie broke in, leaning against the doorjamb.

  “Oh. Sorry, Hattie.” Peter blushed.

  She gave him a sour look. “Was there anything special you were planning to tell our guest about me?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She shifted her guilt-inducing gaze toward me. “And was there anything special you wanted to know about me? Because if there is, I am the person you should be asking, not him.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I know I should have let it go at that, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Actually, there is something,” I said.

  Hattie took a step into the room, her arms folded across her chest. “Yes?” The look on her face was that of a dare. A double-dog dare.

  I swallowed. “I was just wondering how you could be forced to leave a place where everyone knows your family has lived for so long. I mean, if there was a deed, it would be hundreds of years old. There must be a way around that.”

  She sighed. “No, honey,” she said, “I’m afraid there isn’t. It’s just the law. If you got no deed, you got no land. The Shaws have been paying taxes on it, so that makes it theirs. Probably some smart lawyer somewhere along the line came up with the idea to pay those taxes. And the Shaws always had more money than God, anyway, so they never missed that money. Turned out to be a good plan.”