The Night Strangers Part 15

"Sure."

"Anyway, when I did hear her, I started back up the stairs, and the next thing I know, I'm in the kitchen and I'm covered in blood."

"With the knife inside you."

"Yes."

"You never reached the pilot light."

"I don't believe so."

"But you didn't relight it."

"I don't think I did."

"So it probably wasn't out," she says. She seems to be thinking about this, but in reality you understand she is watching you. She is trying to decide if you're lying. You realize at some point that your shoulders have sagged and you are hunched over with your hands in your lap. Once, a long time ago it seems, you had exceptional posture. You take a breath and sit up straight in your chair, inadvertently pulling at the st.i.tches.

"What shoes were you wearing?" she asks.

"Slippers. Suede moccasins."

"You're certain?"

"I am. I always wear those slippers when I'm in for the night in the winter."

"I like slippers," she says, writing. You look down at her boots. Leather, small, solid heels. Her skirt is made of denim and falls just about to her knees. Her panty hose-no, these are tights-are black. "I'm just curious, did you ever wear slippers in the c.o.c.kpit?"

"It's a flight deck. We call it a flight deck."

"Not a c.o.c.kpit?"

"No."

"Okay. I won't ask why."

"You can."

"No, I'm good."

"Why would you think we wore slippers while on the flight deck?"

"Well, not when you were actually flying the airplane. But once when I was flying from Philadelphia to Rome, the seat beside me was empty and the captain or the copilot came out and put on a pair of those eyeshades and slippers they give you when you fly and took a nap."

"You were flying first cla.s.s."

"Business. Anyway, I can see you doing that."

"No, you can't. I never flew overseas. I flew regional jets."

"The small ones?"

"Yes. The small ones." Somehow, even this exchange has left you unsettled. It's as if you were a failure because you never flew a jet bigger than a CRJ. Did she do this on purpose, too? Again, your mind recalls Reseda and her remark about geese; again, it circles back to the idea that you are being oversensitive.

"Can we talk about 1611?"

"Yes." And you patiently answer the sorts of questions you have answered for other therapists (in two states), as well as investigators and lawyers and the FAA and the pilots' union. Finally Valerian asks you if you blame yourself for the deaths of the thirty-nine people on the plane.

"I blame the geese," you answer simply. "I blame the ferryboat captain who turned his boat too hard too quickly and created that wave. And, yes, I do blame myself."

"But no one else does ..."

"Blames me."

"Right. The crash wasn't pilot error. What Sully Sullenberger did was a miracle. You know there isn't a soul in this world who thinks it's your fault. You know that, don't you?"

In this world. You try to decide what that means, because certainly Ethan Stearns views the crash as your fault. So did the families of some of the pa.s.sengers who died who came to the hearings. You saw it in their faces. Why couldn't you do what Sully Sullenberger did? they seemed to be asking. And you can feel Ethan's presence right now, right here in the kitchen, in the way the top of your head is starting to throb. And although you try to restrain yourself, you can't help but turn around in your seat-and there he is. He is in the doorway to the dining room, framed by those ghoulish sunflowers, and he is glaring at you. Shaking his head in disgust. And this only makes the pain in your skull worsen, and you fear that while this doctor is sitting across from you it might become the searing, white-light agony you have experienced around Ethan in the past.

She deserves friends. Do what it takes.

"Chip?"

You rub your eyes. You turn around. "I'm sorry," you tell Valerian, wondering how it is that only you know Ethan is here with you. Valerian seems to be staring right at him.

"You looked a little peaked there," she says. "A midafternoon sugar low?"

"I guess. My head hurts."

She sighs. "Feverfew and cayenne," she tells you. "I have just the tincture. Sadly, I have just the tincture at home. In the meantime, have another cupcake. You'll feel so much better. I promise." And she hands you another of those remarkable confections.

Chapter Thirteen.

"You disappear, except for your name," explains Sandra Durant. "I'm just a name on a pa.s.senger manifest. In the newspaper. On a crawl on the cable news." She motions with her finger-and you notice the polish is salmon, every bit as vibrant as Valerian's but perhaps more girlish and childlike-toward Ashley, who is sitting rather primly on the couch. "She used to love to eat canned peaches in heavy syrup. She tells me she mastered the can opener in first grade and would snack on them after school and on weekends. Now no one will ever know that. Soon, no one but her mother will recall that she could make an origami swan-and eventually her mom will forget that detail, too. She'll forget what it was like watching Ashley learn to ride her bicycle. And some new technology will replace the video that her father made of her doing cannonb.a.l.l.s into a swimming pool one afternoon, and no one will duplicate the disk onto whatever comes next. And so that splash and the girl's laugh will be gone, too. Gone forever. Eventually, all that will remain is her name."

You ask, "And you?"

"And me? Orange marmalade. I loved it."

"There's more."

"Of course there is."

"Tell me one more. Tell me one more thing that no one will know from your name on the pa.s.senger manifest."

"No one will ever know that at the end of my life my favorite color happened to be pink." She holds up her hands and spreads wide her fingers, her palms facing her, so you can see those nails you already have noticed. "But who knows," she adds, raising her eyebrows in mock earnestness. "Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe I was already too old for Barbie pink."

Garnet watched Hallie crushing the small purple seeds with the mortar and pestle, a little surprised by how much pleasure her sister was deriving from the ch.o.r.e. The seeds were about the size of sesame seeds, but they smelled like blueberries when they were mashed: The more of them Hallie turned to powder, the more the kitchen smelled like a fruit smoothie. Garnet had a sense that a big part of her sister's contentment came from the obsessive amounts of attention Anise and Clary and Sage were lavishing upon the two of them. Garnet, on the other hand, found the women slightly annoying; their presence was growing invasive. She and her sister seemed to spend three or four days a week after school with them. The only days they didn't wind up at Anise's or Clary's or Sage's (and most frequently it seemed to be Sage's) were those days when they had dance cla.s.s or music lessons. Again today Clary Hardin had picked them up at the school entrance precisely at three o'clock and brought them to Sage Messner's home to make tinctures or bake or tend to the seemingly endless tables of plants in that ma.s.sive communal greenhouse. Garnet thought that she and Hallie spent more time in Sage's kitchen or greenhouse than they did after school with kids their own age.

Which, maybe, was okay. Maybe they were fortunate to have the attention of these ladies. After the stories that Molly and her mother had told everyone of the blackout and their father's disappearance-and then, far worse, his reappearance covered in blood-there was no way that any kids were going to be allowed to come to their house anytime soon. Maybe forever. And now the girls (and even the boys) in their cla.s.sroom seemed to be a little scared of her and her sister. It was like they were the ones who made the strange potions-not the women.

Their mom had tried to rea.s.sure them that over time the kids in their cla.s.s would come around, but Garnet wasn't so sure. She saw how they kept away at dance cla.s.s and school. Still, her mom was confident. In the meantime, she and Hallie spent time with their mother's new friends, either this group of women or Reseda-and sometimes Reseda and Holly. It seemed there were two separate cliques. Clearly Reseda was an herbalist and a friend of these other, older women, but there was also some tension. She kept her distance; it was like she didn't completely approve of them. And while Reseda's greenhouse was much cooler-it had a comforting shape and small statues that reminded Garnet of fantasy creatures-she found that she had to be careful about what she was thinking when she was around Reseda. It was as if Reseda knew.

One time Garnet had asked her mom why she and Hallie didn't just go home after school when they didn't have dance cla.s.s or music lessons, the way they had before that night when Dad tumbled down the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs and fell on the knife. And her mom had explained that their father was working hard on the house and his stomach needed to heal. Garnet didn't completely believe this: Either he was working on the house or his stomach needed to heal. Not both. It was like the old joke about why the little girl didn't turn in her homework: Either she forgot it at home or the dog got sick on it. Both were overkill.

In any case, Garnet had now decided that she would ask her mom that night about moving. She decided that she'd had enough of Bethel. Maybe they could go back to West Chester. Sure, she and Hallie were always going to be the kids whose father's plane had crashed into a lake. And she would always be the kid who had the seizures. (It hurt her feelings when kids would talk about her that way, but they did. Sometimes people presumed she was in a trance when she was having one, but she wasn't. She was just, as one doctor liked to say, in her own world.) But at least she and Hallie had friends there.

"Lovely, Rosemary," Sage Messner was saying to her sister. "The powder is finer than salt, isn't it? It's as wispy as talc." The woman was hovering over Hallie with her hand on the girl's shoulder. It still left Garnet feeling a little uncomfortable and disloyal in some way when these women called her and her sister by their new names. Mom didn't seem to mind. And Hallie said she actually preferred being called Rosemary. But Calandrinia-and Cali for short? Over the last couple of weeks, she had grown to hate both the long and short versions of her new name.

"Now, your turn, Cali," Sage said, her voice that singsong river of condescension. She always talked to Hallie and Garnet like she thought the two of them were preschoolers. So did Ginger and Clary. Anise tended to speak to them more like grown-ups. But she was also far more stern with the two of them.

"My turn to do what?" she asked. "I think the seeds are all ground up."

"The hypn.o.bium seeds are. But we still need to add the yarrow and the rose hips. If you only add hypn.o.bium to a tea, you are likely to give someone a headache along with very scary-"

"Sage, that's a lot more information than the girls need at the moment," Anise said, cutting the woman off before she could finish her sentence. Garnet hadn't realized that Anise had returned to the kitchen from the greenhouse.

"Along with what?" Garnet decided to ask, partly because she was curious but also because it was clear to her that Anise didn't want her and Hallie to know.

"Instead of making them feel better, Cali," Anise said simply but firmly. "Now you want to wash your hands thoroughly after working with hypn.o.bium and completely rinse both the mortar and the pestle." She barely glanced at Sage as she carefully poured the powder into a small gla.s.s spice jar. The ground-up seeds now resembled the old-fashioned sugar candy that some people gave away in straws on Halloween.

"I'm sorry, Anise," Sage murmured, her voice low and soft, as if she hoped that no one else would hear her. But Anise seemed to ignore her as she screwed the lid on the spice jar and then ran hot tap water over the mortar and pestle. The moment the water hit the wood, the room was infused with the aroma of the herb and the kitchen smelled like someone was baking a blueberry pie.

"Next we need to prepare the rose hips," Anise said, gazing out the kitchen window. "I think Sage thought that might be a nice task for you, Cali."

"My name is Garnet." It was an impulse; correcting Anise had been as instinctive just now as batting a mosquito. Still, she regretted the short sentence the moment the words had escaped her lips. Her sister poked her surrept.i.tiously in the side.

"It is," Anise agreed, turning off the water and using a dish towel with a rooster on it to dry the inside of the pestle, and for a second Garnet thought she might have worried for naught. But then Anise leaned over her, her face only inches away-Garnet could inhale the mint on the woman's breath-and said, "But not when you're with me."

"Why?" Again, it was a reflex, and Hallie turned to her and silently mouthed her regular name, drawing out each of the syllables: Gar-net. Garnet didn't usually like confrontations, but she didn't understand the desire these women had to change her and Hallie's names. She simply didn't get it.

"I've told you, it's a term of endearment. A term of inclusion. Of solidarity. Do you know what those words mean, Cali?"

She couldn't have defined them in a spelling test, but she understood more or less what Anise was saying. She nodded. She wished she were back in her bedroom in West Chester that moment. She saw in her mind the windows there and her bed with the blue and gold comforter that matched the wallpaper: planets and stars and a cow jumping over the moon. She wondered where Mom had stored that comforter these days. The attic? A guest bedroom closet?

"You are now a part of my world, Cali," Anise continued, emphasizing her new name, an undercurrent to her voice that was vaguely menacing. "You are a part of Sage's world and Clary's world and the world of some striking people who can make a difference for good or ill in all that you know. You are not a part of your precious Pennsylvania. You're in New Hampshire. In Bethel. So don't cross me. Not this afternoon. Not ever." She brought her fingers to Garnet's cheeks and gently grazed the skin there with her nails; when she did, the silver bangles on her wrist jingled like chimes. "Think of that skull you found in your bas.e.m.e.nt. The bones you touched with those little fingers of yours. The next time you are pondering whether you like your name or whether you should follow one of my instructions, I urge you to recall that skull. Recall the eye sockets. Recall the jaw. Recall the very idea that someone was buried in your new house and how scared you were when you found the remains. You, too, Rosemary. Now, do you have any other questions?"

Garnet thought she was going to cry, and so she bit her tongue and breathed in deeply through her nose. Then she glanced at Hallie, who was staring down at her feet. Her sister was wearing blue jeans and what she called her cinnamon toast socks: They were brown with yellow spots.

"Good. And if it makes you more comfortable with your new names, rest a.s.sured that your mother is taking one, too. And she rather likes hers." Abruptly Anise stood up to her full height. Garnet noticed that Clary and Sage were now standing beside Anise, the three of them looking like severe and demanding teachers, their eyes ominous and their arms folded across their chests.

"So, Cali," Anise said finally, her voice once more sounding calm and caring and kind. "We have the rose hips to prepare. I believe Sage will show you how."

When Emily walked into John's office, he was pressing his phone against his ear with his shoulder, finishing a conversation with a client. He was rubbing a cream onto his hands. He smiled at her, motioned for her to sit, and said good-bye to whomever he was speaking with.

"Want some?" he asked, tipping the small compact with the cream toward her. "My hands are chapped raw after a White Mountain winter. Between the woodstove and the time I spend on the mountain, they're an absolute disaster."

She dipped two fingers into the compact and took some. She wondered if it was the same sort of cream Ginger Jackson had rubbed near her eyes that night at Reseda's. "Did Ginger make this?" she asked.

"Nope. Clary."

"Ginger makes something similar."

"Of course she does. All the women do." He paused and smiled. Then: "You must think we are all awfully vain."

"No." She decided to try a small joke, hoping she might learn from it. "But I do think you're all witches."

He laughed ever so slightly and shook his head. "More like chemists," he said. "It's not about spells and magic. It's not about pendants and charms and"-he waved his hand dismissively-"crystals. It's about chemistry. It's about natural medicine."

"Potions."

He pretended to shush her, his eyes wide. "Tinctures," he said, aware this was a semantic difference at best. Meanwhile, she felt her skin tingling where she had ma.s.saged in the cream. Already her hands looked better.

On the first spectacularly warm day of spring, you sit on the walkway outside your front door and watch the ants, which built a small hill between two edges of slate overnight. It is lunchtime, and you have brought with you a piece of banana bread that Anise baked. You decide that you really know nothing about bugs. Really, nothing at all. But in the past you have watched ants eat. Everyone has. You have watched them move crumbs that look proportionately like boulders. An efficient, almost robotic swarm. They break apart what they can and move what they can, carting the bounty above their heads and their trunks, disappearing either into anthills in the ground or nests behind the walls. They move in lines. You have seen it as you sat on the front stoop of your old house in West Chester and, years and years ago, as you would lie on the gra.s.s in Connecticut when you were a small boy.

And you are quite sure that you have never seen ants do this. Never. The small ones die within inches of the banana bread morsels. They take one of the minuscule crumbs you have broken off and collapse under its weight seconds after starting off. And the larger ones? They last a little longer. They stagger in circles as if they have grown disoriented-panicked-and then they wobble and crumple. It's as if their tiny legs have just buckled.

You tell yourself that they were not really panicked. Not even scared. You know that an ant's nervous system isn't built that way. Most likely, they were merely confused, suddenly unsure of what they were doing or why they were dying. It just looked like they were scared.

Still, you cannot help but wonder what herbs would poison an ant-and what those herbs might do to a human.

It was sixty-five degrees outside, but Reseda could feel the temperature was about to plummet. The sun had been high overhead at lunchtime, but now a great swash of gunmetal gray clouds was darkening the sky, rolling in from the northwest and stretching deep into Canada. She gently shut the door to her greenhouse and turned toward Anise, who was misting the tentacles, nacreous as marble, that were branching out from the poisonous acedia. The acedia was spreading like a spider plant, and its tentacles were dripping over the sides of the pedestal on which it resided. Reseda knew that Anise didn't approve; she felt it should be trimmed back, the shoots chopped and the toxins harvested. But Reseda was so pleased with her success with the plant that she couldn't bear to don gloves and take a knife to it. Not yet. No one had ever had such a triumph with acedia. The plant was named after the Latin word for sloth because it was a sedative and, used improperly in a tincture, lethal. She wondered how she would feel about her achievement if it had been named for the Latin word for pride.

"What are you feeding the pilot?" she asked Anise now.

Anise continued to circle the plant, careful not to make eye contact with her.

"Crumpets," she answered evasively, her voice uncharacteristically light. "Always vegan. Always delicious."

"I'm serious."

"I am, too."

"I don't see what good could possibly come from poisoning him."

"Me, neither," said Anise, and she put down the mister on one of the gardening tables and stroked the stone Baphomet's beard. "Do you ever find it odd how out of touch a pilot is with the earth? Oh, they see how beautiful it is from twenty or thirty thousand feet. But their whole purpose is to separate themselves from the soil. To be above the ground, rather than one with it. You grow beautiful things, Reseda. That pilot never will. I'm really not all that interested in him."

"But you have been constantly filling the Lintons' refrigerator. Bringing them small confections with his name on them."

"I'm a one-woman Welcome Wagon. You're a real estate agent: That should make you happy."

"Just because you put the captain's name on it doesn't mean he's the only one eating it. I am sure the girls have eaten some of your ... confections."