They were just climbing the hill behind the chapel when a taxi came from the other direction. It stopped in front of them, cutting them off. It was Temple Fortune. Claire got out of the car. There was the moon.
“I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye again,” he said. Evangelika’s clean white sheets flapped around them in the wind.
They walked into each other’s arms, holding on for the last time, feeling each other’s strange, familiar forms.
Blacky complained from the car. Dirk reached over and honked the horn long and hard.
Finally, they let go. She still had Stella’s bowl in her hand, pressed between them painfully.
“Look what I’ve done! I’ve gone and cracked your fine bowl,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Now I have something of you.”
She turned and climbed into the old rumbling car. They pulled away, leaving Saint Hildegard’s Mill, rolling past the chapel, the band of foresty trees. Temple stood beside his taxi, his hands down at his sides. He watched for a good long while, until the car was just a dot. Claire sat, a little squashed, between Blacky and Dirk.
A precious bright series of tears dropped into her bowl, dazzling the spot where Temple had chipped it.
Something winked excitedly beneath, revealing at last the spell unbound and baked into its just seams.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1995 by Mary Anne Kelly
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9405-5
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Keeper of the Mill Page 27