The taproom at the inn had been rented out for Friday night, and Sally’s daughters had decorated with black crepe paper and black balloons. Vincent’s guest, David Ward, had taught the bartender how to make a really good martini, and although they were invited to attend, the two decided they would take the opportunity to make a quick trip to Manhattan so that Vincent could show David the house at 44 Greenwich Avenue where he’d lived when he was young, when the world began to open up to him, when he fell in love for the first time, but, as it turned out, not the last.
Kylie and Antonia had planned the bachelorette party for over a month, with Sally putting in her two cents via telephone. No macaroni and cheese! No embarrassing speeches! They bickered over the menu and the guest list, but all agreed on one thing. Now that the curse was gone, they could all love someone without fear of reprisal.
Since her return from England, Kylie’s hair had remained densely black, worn in a waist-length braid. She left it that way to remind herself of the first Essex County, where enchantments occurred and people went missing. It happened all the time. A woman would be found wandering in a desperate search for her beloved, a man would drink himself to death beneath a holly tree, a girl defied her parents and set off to have an adventure never to be heard from again, all were said to have been toad, placed under a spell. Kylie had been toad. She had overheard Margaret Wright assure her worried, bleary-eyed family that she would recover. She’d been on the wrong path, but had returned to them, damaged, it was true, but returned all the same. Still, they must remember that those who had been toad were altered in some deep way that was irreversible, and their futures could be precarious if those around them weren’t vigilant. No snakes, no stones, no nights spent alone for a good long while, no narcotics, no needles, no knives, no razors, no mirrors. Such individuals must be treated with kindness even when they sulked and looked at the world with dread through unenchanted eyes. It was best not to mention the changes that might have occurred, the black hair, for instance, the vacant stares. Best to wrap your arms around the person who’d been missing, for an enchantment is a step out of ordinary life, and when that person returns nothing is the same, not her image in the mirror, not the lines across her palm.
* * *
Kylie had, indeed, been changed, but the one constant was her love for Gideon. She and Gideon had moved into the house on Magnolia Street as soon as his physical therapy ended. Gideon didn’t often speak about the time when he was between worlds.
“I am so sorry,” Kylie said when she first got to the hospital to see him.
“I’m sorry,” Gideon said. “I was the idiot who stepped in front of a car.”
He had changed as well and was a much more serious person now, planning on applying to medical school. He drove down to Cambridge every Tuesday and Thursday to attend classes, dropping Kylie on the other side of the Charles River. She had left Harvard and now attended Simmons University, where she was studying library science. As it turned out, she had a passion for books. On weekends, Kylie worked with Miss Hardwick at the Owens Library, and the after-school story hour she led was beloved by mothers and children alike. Currently, she was reading Half Magic, in which only half of wishes that were made came true, prompting all sorts of unexpected adventures. Many of the children who came on Tuesday afternoons arrived half an hour early, desperate to hear what happened next to Jane and Katharine and Mark and Martha, who was very, very difficult indeed. It seemed that half magic was often quite enough.
Whenever she walked home from the library and turned onto Magnolia Street, Kylie had no desire to be anywhere else. In every generation there was someone who stayed, who planted the garden early in the spring, and kept the bees, and switched on the porch light at twilight so the neighbors knew they were welcome to come for cures and elixirs. As it turned out, Kylie was quite good at magic. She took good care of the red Grimoire Franny had left for them, kept under lock and key in the greenhouse. All they had ever known and all they would need to know had been written down in it, and not a single line had been lost. Kylie was in residence on Magnolia Street, and by rights the book belonged to her now.
There was rarely a night when neighbors didn’t come to the door for help, which was always given freely, although often there would be payment left on the porch, a hand-knitted sweater, a pot of chrysanthemums, a silver serving spoon, an envelope of cash, and once, quite recently, a black kitten Kylie had named Raven, a great mouser who stretched out on the porch on warm days as if he owned the place.