The Line

THIRTY

Just shy of three weeks had passed since my last Liar’s Tour. I was sure that my pack of suburban dads had already pretty much forgotten about me, wrapped up as they were in soccer matches and sales meetings and reporting deadlines. Since I’d dropped them off at the Pirate’s House, they had fought with their wives, made up, mowed their lawns, and played a few rounds of golf. I’d probably never cross their minds again. But I was sure I’d never forget them, because the hours I’d spent with them had marked the end of my normal life. From the moment I saw Jilo in Colonial Park Cemetery and got it in my head to pay her a visit, my world had gone mad.

Ginny’s murder and the drawing of lots. Maisie’s jealous rage and disappearance, even if only temporary, from my life. Jilo’s spells pulling me into her dark world then sending me running into Peter’s arms. Grace’s revenge and my borrowing Oliver’s power. Connor and Wren. The fire and dark spirits that had fed on them. Jackson, and Jackson’s departure. The microscopic infant in my womb.

I found myself sitting on the base of the Waving Girl statue at the riverfront, staring out at the water and wishing for a return of the simple life I’d always known. All of a sudden I understood Florence, and why she’d come out here for forty years waving her apron. She wasn’t waiting for a man, she was hoping for the return of the girl she’d been before her life had been turned upside down. I wasn’t sure I’d ever have the heart to lie about her again.

I was going to have a boy, Ellen told me, provided that I chose to have it. It, he, would be healthy, she assured me, if I decided to carry him to term. The embryo was only a few days old, and it would take hardly any witch magic at all to undo the union of sperm and egg. If that’s what I wanted, it could all simply go away, like it had never happened.

I watched the light gleaming on the river, and my hand fell instinctively over my stomach, protecting the blooming life I knew was there, even though it would be days before there were any non-magical signs of its existence. I’d never judge another woman for doing away with an unexpected pregnancy, but abortion was not for me. There were no two ways about it. I would have this child, even if it meant risking my life like my mama had done. And that meant that I would forever be linked with Peter. I’d have to find a way to forgive him, because my baby was not going to grow up without his father. That didn’t mean I’d ever be his wife. I wasn’t sure I trusted him, and I could never marry a man unless I trusted him. To be fair, I wasn’t so sure I trusted anyone anymore.

A group of tourists arrived, snapping pictures of themselves next to the Waving Girl. I didn’t want to be the shadow in their photos, so I slid off the statue’s base and headed up River Street, replaying the tours I’d done over the years in my mind. Mind the cobblestones and never mind the cobbled together lies. The bars lie dead ahead! Don’t forget to tip your guide.

I had to talk to Peter, and the sooner the better. I needed to get everything settled before the next rush of insanity arrived. It was less than a week before the investment ceremony, when the anchor energy would be linked to Maisie for her lifetime, and soon the Taylor house would be filled to the brim with representatives from each of the nine other families who would be there to participate. I found a new appreciation for Emmet, since he was a much more manageable way of housing nine guests at once.

Maisie would be back the day before the ceremony. I wondered how much I’d have to tell her about what had happened and how much she already knew. It was hard to believe that she’d only been gone for a week.

The story about the fire at Ginny’s house and Connor’s suicide had headlined the newspapers gracing half the doorsteps in Savannah and had also been on all the local television stations. I turned up East Broad, doing my best to evade anyone I might recognize. They’d want to talk about was what had happened, and I was in no mood. Let the people of Savannah think what they wanted, but for God’s sake, let them keep it to themselves.

I fished my cell phone out of my backpack while I walked, and turned it on. Thirty texts, mostly from Peter. A couple of voice mails from Ellen and Oliver. I opened Peter’s last message and without even reading it, responded “Meet me at home.”

He was waiting for me outside in his truck when I got there. He started to get out, but I climbed in to the passenger’s side instead. “I know you went to Jilo,” I said. “I know you had her put a spell on me.”

Shame turned his face a deeper red than his hair. “Mercy,” he started.

“And then you took me to bed,” I interrupted him. “Knowing that I was under the influence of Jilo’s magic.”

He slammed his fist into the steering wheel, and tears started streaming down his face. The guilt he felt wouldn’t let him look at me. “I thought I was going to lose you. I thought I was going to lose you to him.”

“Yeah, well ‘he’ is gone, and I’m still here. But you done lost me anyway,” I said, feeling more resigned than angry.

Peter buried his face in his hands, his broad shoulders heaving up and down in the rhythm of his heavy sobs. “I am so sorry, Mercy. I am so sorry.” He lifted his face from his hands and looked at me. “I won’t ask you to forgive me. I know I don’t deserve that. Just know that if I could take it back, I would. I even tried. I went back to Jilo a couple of days after I sought her out. She told me it was too late to take it back. I hoped that she’d fail, you being who you are.”

“And who am I?” I asked. Was he holding back more secrets? Had he, along with the rest of the western world, known who my father was all along? Irrational questions, maybe, but I was fresh out of trust.

“Well, a Taylor,” he said flustered. “I thought maybe—”

“You should have told me what you did,” I said.

“I know I should’ve, but I was so afraid,” he said. “It’s no excuse, I was a coward.”

“Damn right you were,” I said and glared at him. “You were the one person in my life I could count on to simply be what you said you were. No tricks. No lies. No magic. And what do you do? You use magic on me.” Hearing myself say the words, I realized that this was the real reason I felt betrayed. It wasn’t because Peter had had a love spell set on me. It was because I’d always believed that magic was the one weapon that he would never—could never—use against me. But then he had gone and done it.

On the other hand, there was no circumventing the fact that I too had gone to Jilo asking for the self same spell. I had been willing to use her magic to deceive myself, and by extension, Peter. My attempts at righteous indignation started to feel a little bit less righteous.

“All I can say is that I am sorry,” he said. “I’ll always love you, Mercy. And I will go to my grave regretting what I did.” He took in a ragged breath and slumped back in his seat. “I’ll understand if you don’t want me to be a part of your life anymore.”

Seeing the regret written across his face, a face that had been a part of my world since I spent my days dressing like a tomboy and climbing trees, convinced me that even though I might never marry him, I’d always want him around. Dishonesty didn’t come naturally to Peter. “Well, it’s a little too late for all that, seeing as how we are having a baby.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “What?”

“We’re having a baby, Peter. Ellen felt it in me, and she’s never wrong about these things.”

His face morphed from the red mask of guilt I’d been looking at a moment ago to the ashen white of fear and then settled into a glow of joy. “Oh, Mercy. I don’t deserve this,” he said reaching out to me, trying to pull me to him for a kiss.

I slapped his hand away, and his eyes went wide with fear and regret. “We’re having a baby together,” I said firmly. “That doesn’t mean that we’re together, or that we’re going to be.”

“I’m sorry,” he said and retreated to the far side of the truck’s cab.

“I haven’t forgiven you yet,” I said. “I will. I must. My child will not grow up without his father. Ellen says it’s a boy by the way. We’ll name him Colin after your dad, and we’ll celebrate every holiday and birthday together. But,” I concluded, “that does not mean I am going to be your wife. You hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you,” he said meekly. “It’s more than I have the right to ask for.”

My piece had been spoken, and whatever anger I was holding had been spent. I looked over at his sweet face. “It’s going take time for me to move past this, but I’ll try. For Colin’s sake.”

“Okay,” was all he said, relief written all over his face.

“That’s enough about us for now,” I said. “We have family business to attend to.”

“I should get out of here then and leave you to it,” he said and tried to smile.

“Sorry there, buddy,” I responded as I climbed out of the truck. “You are most definitely family now. Get on in here.”

When we entered the house, we found Ellen in the library, busy boxing up Connor’s phonograph albums. “Charity truck is coming for all of this tomorrow. Kind of a shame,” she said. “For a total prick, he had good taste in music.”

“We’re doing this so fast?” I asked.

“It’s what Iris wants.” She turned away from her task and took a seat on the love seat. “So you two have spoken.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Peter replied.

Before risking a faux pas, Ellen gave me a lingering look to make sure that I’d really told Peter about the child. I nodded my head. “Good,” she said. “And may I ask what you’ve decided to do about the baby?”

“We’re going to have it,” I responded, and Ellen jumped up and took me in her arms, spinning me around.

“Oh, I’m so happy,” she said. “It has been far too long since this house has had a child, a real child in it,” she said, thinking of Wren. “With all the death that’s struck our family lately, it will be wonderful to have a birth to look forward to.”

For the first time, I let myself feel the joy of having a child growing in me. “Yes. This is going to be good for all of us,” I said. I motioned for Peter to take a seat as Ellen and I settled onto the love seat. “Ever since you told me I was pregnant, I haven’t been able to focus on anything else but now I need to know, how is Iris doing?”

Ellen licked her lips and looked at the floor, and I could tell that she was trying to work out what she needed to say. “Iris is devastated,” she finally began. “She has been forced to see that the man she loved, and God only knows why she loved him, was a monster, a murderer. She has a black, black anger against him, and she wants him to pay for what he tried to do to you. But Connor—or, rather, the man she thought Connor was—was the only man in the world for her. And while she’s angry at what he did to you, she hasn’t even begun to get angry over all the things he did to her. She has a lot to reconcile, a lot to move past.”

“Should I go tell her about the baby?” I asked.

“Sweetie, she is going to be so happy to learn about the baby. He may be the only thing that helps pull her through this mess. But she isn’t here now. She and Oliver are down at the police station.”

“Why?” I asked.

“They had to go answer some questions. You see, Iris served as Connor’s alibi for the day of the murder. When she handed over that forged suicide letter, Cook wanted to know why she’d lied for her husband.”

“They aren’t going to charge her with anything?” Peter asked.

Ellen practically snorted. “Please, Oliver went with her to make sure that wouldn’t happen. He’ll get her off the hook and probably find some way to get himself laid in the process. But I’m afraid I do have some vexing news. We got word today that some of the families are sending their representatives for Maisie’s investment ceremony early. They’ve heard about what happened with Connor and Wren—the truth, not the nonsense we’ve fed the police—and they’ve decided that they should come early to ‘help us out’ with the preparations due to our ‘bereavement.’ ”

“Which means we have to shift into high gear to prepare for their arrival,” I said, standing.

“You got it,” Ellen replied. “And Iris wants all of Connor’s belongings out of here before they arrive. You could help me by packing up his clothes and other effects from their room before Iris gets back,” she said and paused. “ ‘Effects,’ ” she repeated. “An interesting choice of words when talking about a man like Connor.” She shook her head. “Well, you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do,” I said. It would take a long time to soothe the ripples Connor had set loose in our lives.

“And you, Peter, can carry these heavy boxes of records out to the garage. The less that reminds Iris of Connor around here, the better.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Peter said. “I’m glad to help out in any way I can, but couldn’t you…” He hesitated. “Well, couldn’t you do some kind of spell to handle all of this?”

Ellen laughed. “Yes. I could. But I need something tangible to focus on right now. Besides, I’m told that doing things the non-magical way builds character.”

“Okay,” Peter said. He turned to me. “Don’t you go lifting anything heavy.”

“Oh, and so it begins,” Ellen said and smiled.

I took a couple of empty boxes up to the room that Iris and Connor had shared for longer than I’d been alive. I opened his closet and pulled out his rack of ties and his three suits—two dark ones and the tan one he wore during Savannah’s hottest months. Those went into the first box. Next, I swept his shirts up in my arms, leaving them on their hangers. As I shuffled over to lay them on the bed, his scent rose up around me like a shroud. I tossed the shirts down and started removing the hangers. Folding them up as fast as I could, I stacked them into another open box. There was a lot more of Connor in this room than I’d be able to cart out in two cardboard containers. A sense of heaviness began to overwhelm me, and I left off to go grab a few more boxes from the library.

Ellen and Peter were nowhere in sight when I returned, so I grabbed some of the still flattened containers and headed back upstairs. The door to the room had swung shut behind me, so I had to fumble with the doorknob, the boxes awkwardly tucked under my arm. When I stepped into the room, I felt all hope abandon me. I sat on the side of the bed, put my head in my hands, nearly crushed by the weight of my sorrow. I felt more than saw a movement, and lifting my head, I caught a glimpse of Connor in the mirror. The misery I was feeling was radiating from him. I knew then that Savannah had refused to grant him peace or pardon him for his sins.