On weekends there was often a full house on Magnolia Street. Gillian and Ben came to visit nearly every weekend, glad to be out of the city. Margaret’s remedy had worked and Gillian had the daughter she’d always wanted, a little girl named Francesca Bridget after the aunts, but called Birdie by one and all. Birdie had been born at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge on March 21, a date that was no longer considered unlucky. Oh, beautiful day. Oh, March 21. People who were born on this day had a unique brand of courage and what more could a woman wish for her daughter? Ben Frye had handed out chocolate cigars to anyone he could stop in the corridor. He and Gillian were both deliriously happy to step blindly into whatever was to happen next. Birdie had a tuft of red hair and her features resembled Franny’s; she was stubborn and serious and could call birds to the window with a wave of her hand, sparrows and hawks alike.
“Something tells me she’s not like all the other little girls,” Ben said of his daughter. He had never understood the Owens curse, but now that it was over he had moved downstairs and was happy to forget whatever it was that had kept them apart. Frankly, nothing could have kept him from his daughter. The baby had silver eyes and she never cried and her father was over the moon every time he saw her.
“She’s not like the other girls,” Gillian said proudly. “She’s extraordinary.”
The baby girl Antonia had expected, however, had turned out to be a boy named Leo, now nearly a year old, adored by his four parents, adored by one and all. Scott Morrison, Leo’s biological father and his husband, Joel, loved to come up to the house on Magnolia Street whenever they could, and Antonia, busy as ever, still came for dinner with Ariel and their son every Sunday evening.
Leo was pure trouble, delightful from the start, and when Antonia saw baby pictures of Vincent she was amazed by how much her son resembled him. In public places, where he might easily be lost, Antonia kept Leo on a baby leash, but he was already close to figuring out how to unsnap the harness, and once that happened Antonia was grateful that he had four people to run after him. Often, when she was over at Mount Auburn Hospital on rounds with the attending physician, she bumped into Scott and they would sneak a look at photos of their little boy and mull over what their high school selves would think of their current lives, in which their utmost concerns were day care and consumption of apple juice.
“We would think our lives were perfect,” Antonia told her dear friend. “We would think we were the luckiest people on earth.”
* * *
Sally still had the keys to the library, which she used to enter the building on the night before her wedding, even though it was after hours and meant she would be late to her own bachelorette party, an Owens tradition the night before the wedding, since weddings had been so rare. She flicked on the lights, delighted to see the library was exactly as she remembered it. She went to the rare-books section and found the shelf she’d always ignored, the one Franny and Jet had insisted they keep for magic books. There was a Grimoire written by Agnes Durant’s sixth great-grandmother, Catherine, along with a brand-new copy of Ian’s book, The History of Magic.
She’d gone back for The Book of the Raven after Franny’s drowning, and had kept it ever since, knowing it should be returned to the library. It was such a small volume that it nearly disappeared when Sally fitted it in between two larger, more imposing-looking volumes of English magic. Some people vow that a book contains the soul of the writer, and often the best ones are written by those who have no voice, yet still have a story to tell. Amelia Bassano knew there would be women who would do anything to fulfill a wish or break a curse or fall in love.
Make one wish and pay the price. Make one mistake and it can haunt you. All the same, love who you will. Know that language is everything. Never give your words away.
The Book of the Raven was meant to go to the next woman who needed it. It might sit on the shelf for another three hundred years or it might be discovered the very next day, either way it would continue to live, for people often find the books they need.
Sally locked up the library for the last time, then ran all the way to the inn. She was the last to arrive and threw up her hands, flustered by the size of the crowd at the Black Rabbit and all the fuss that was made when she walked in and everyone shouted, Congratulations, and applauded like mad. She wasn’t used to being the center of attention, but after her first cocktail a feeling of recklessness came over her and after her third, a signature drink that Gillian had concocted, called the Toad, which included crushed mint, vodka, grapefruit juice, and rosemary with a splash of rum, Sally got up on the bar of the taproom with Gillian for a hilarious chorus of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.”