Page 56 of The Rules of Magic

Jet nodded. “I think I’ll go to the bus station now.”

He drove her there in time for the last bus. When he pulled over, Charlie handed her a paper bag. Inside was a small thermos and something wrapped in wax paper. “Your aunt sent along some tea. I think there’s some cake in there, too.”

Jet threw her arms around the old man, utterly surprising him.

“She’s a good lady,” he said, as if explaining her aunt to her. “Anyone who knows her knows that.”

He waited, his car idling, until the bus pulled away. It was likely Isabelle told him to do so, and he always did as she asked. His two boys had been heroin addicts; one was in prison by the time he was twenty, the other went half-mad with drugs. She’d fixed them both with one of those mixtures of hers. Afterward there’d been a knock at their door even though everyone knew Isabelle Owens didn’t call on people. She came to see the boys every night for two weeks, watching over his grown sons as if they were babies until they were well again. She charged him nothing for doing so. Now when his sons saw her on the street, or when they were working on her house and she looked in on them, the boys would elbow each other and stand up straight. They were still afraid of her even though she’d sat by their beds and fed them soup with a teaspoon.

So Charlie stayed and waved as Jet got on the bus, and Jet waved back, and when she realized she was starving and hadn’t eaten all day, she was glad to have the chocolate cake her aunt had sent along, and grateful to have been convinced that forgetting her loss would be worse than the loss itself. So she sat there remembering everything, from the beginning of her life to today. By the time she recalled the pale yellow of the daffodils she’d picked that morning, she had reached New York.

The announcement was in The New York Times on March 21, Franny’s birthday, a day that had always proved inauspicious. It was the unluckiest day of the year, but it was also the day to celebrate Ostara, the spring equinox, when eggshells must be scattered in a garden, for new growth and transformation is possible, even for those who consider themselves to be unfortunate.

Perhaps publishing on this date was an oversight; but whether intended or not, it had the effect of injuring Franny more fully than she already was. Vincent tried to hide it, he threw the Times in the trash, but Franny found it when she took the garbage out to the bin. It was opened to the engagement announcements, and there it was in her hands, an arrow to wound her.

Haylin Walker, son of Ethan and Lila Walker of New York and Palm Beach, is engaged to Emily Flood, daughter of Melville and Margot Flood of Hartford, Connecticut. The groom is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Medical School. The bride, a graduate of Miss Porter’s School and Radcliffe College, is currently working at Talbots in Farmington, Connecticut.

Franny couldn’t read on. Not about how the groom’s father was the president of a bank and how his wife was on the board of the opera, not about how the bride-to-be’s parents were both doctors who raised boxer dogs that showed at the Westminster Kennel Club. Dating someone else was one thing, but this was marriage, this was the end of hope that it might ever be different between them.

Franny burned the newspaper in the fireplace. The smoke was gray and gave off the bitter scent of sulfur. Afterward, she propped open the windows, and yet her eyes continued to tear.

When Vincent came into the room there was still a gritty mist hanging in the air.

“Hay’s engaged,” Franny told her brother. “You shouldn’t have tried to hide it from me.”

“You should ignore it, Franny. How many years did you think he would wait for you? Ten? Twenty?”

“Shouldn’t he have waited?”

“Not when you told him to go away. People believe you when you say things like that. You never told him you loved him, did you?” Vincent held up his hands. “Do as you please.”

After he went upstairs, she did exactly that.

She phoned Haylin’s parents’ number, which she had memorized when she was ten years old. When a housekeeper she didn’t recognize picked up, Franny said she was calling about the engagement party. The housekeeper assumed she was a guest invited to the celebration that evening. Yes, yes, Franny said. What was the time? She had forgotten.

She wore her funeral dress, for her other clothes were all too casual. She slipped on a pair of her mother’s old stiletto heels bought in Paris. They were red, which made Franny feel her kinship with her mother anew.

The sky was a mottled pink and gray when she took a cab to Park and Seventy-Fourth Street. Her chest hurt when the cab pulled up at the Walkers’ address. Their apartment took up an entire floor. Tonight it glowed like a firefly. Franny went inside the building, following an older couple and taking the elevator with them so she might be considered a member of their party. “Such an exciting occasion,” the woman said to Franny.

“Yes,” Franny murmured in response. She had worn her brilliant hair twisted up so as not to call attention to herself, but she noticed the man staring at her shoes. Her mother’s red high heels. She kept her eyes downcast.

“And to think Ethan always feared his son would be a failure,” the woman went on. She was older but wore a Mary Quant miniskirt, along with a silk blouse and a long rope of pearls. The elevator opened directly into the apartment, and when it did Franny felt as though she were dropping back through time.

The party was crowded with guests, but otherwise it seemed exactly as it had when they were in grade school and Haylin had first brought her home, only after she had made a solemn promise not to tell anyone how he lived. It was after they had met in the lunchroom, when she had given him half of her tomato sandwich and he had eaten it without complaint, though it lacked salt and mayonnaise. The decor hadn’t changed since that time; the same pale pearly wool carpets, silk wall coverings, persimmon-colored sofas. Someone offered to take her coat.

“Oh, no thank you,” Franny said. “I’m cold.”

Indeed, she was shivering. She was out of place with or without her coat; nothing she had on seemed appropriate for this gathering. The women were in jewel-toned cocktail dresses, the men in well-tailored suits. Franny stayed on the edge of the huge formal parlor, where glasses of champagne were offered and hors d’oeuvres were served on polished trays. She thought she spied Emily through the crush, but there were so many tall, pretty young blond women she couldn’t be sure. There was a table littered with silver gifts. Platters, serving trays, candlesticks. Due to Franny’s presence, many of the smaller silver pieces tarnished and turned black. She walked away from the table, embarrassed by what witchery could do. She avoided the other guests, but she couldn’t hide from Haylin, who came up behind her and put a hand on the small of her back. She felt the heat of his touch through her coat. She tried to catch her breath.

“I couldn’t send you an invitation,” he said. “You never told me where you lived.”

He was in an expensive suit, his hair cut short. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him in a suit before. But it was still him, her dearest friend, no matter what he wore, no matter whom he had promised to marry.

There were spots of color on Franny’s cheeks and her hair had begun to unwind. She wanted to say, Run away with me. Now I know nothing else matters. I don’t care if we come to ruin.

In her black coat with her shining red hair, she was impossible to miss. From across the room, Haylin’s father spied her. He glared and gestured for his son to get rid of her.

“Let’s step outside.” Haylin led her to the elevator. He pushed the button for Lobby, but halfway down he stopped the elevator’s descent and drew Franny to him. In an unexpected show of intimacy he put his mouth against hers. It was so fast and intense nothing could stop what happened next. It didn’t matter where they were; it didn’t even take courage to do this. It was fate and they didn’t try to fight against it. Franny threw herself at him and Haylin didn’t stop her or himself, although by now Emily Flood was wondering where he’d gone, worrying because she’d seen a tall pale woman with red hair. She still had nightmares about Franny, for after Franny’s visit to the hospital, it had taken Emily months to win back Haylin’s affections. Don’t you see? she had told him. She’s never coming back to you. She doesn’t care or she would have come to Cambridge with you.