But Rafael understood and so did Franny, who reached out her hand so that the sparrow might come to perch. She’d always had a way with birds; the natural world had beckoned to her even when she was growing up on Eighty-Ninth Street in Manhattan, when the only nature nearby was Central Park, a preplanned swath of countryside on the other side of the wall running along Fifth Avenue. It was said that the Owens girls could levitate, and that Franny in particular had the talent for rising, and often had to check herself so that she would not do so in public.
“Dear girl,” Franny said to the sparrow. She could hear its heart beating and she felt quite dazed with emotion. Franny knew that heartbeat; she’d heard it all her life and had never paid much attention. It’s only when you’re old that you truly appreciate those you have lost.
Franny went to the window and nodded to Rafael, who came to open it. The rain had stopped, and the air was fresh; as it turned out this day in March was the most beautiful day of the year. It would be like Jet to choose such a day to be interred, so that her family would be reminded of how glorious the world was. Franny breathed in the soft air. She wanted this moment to last. She was aware that spirits could return in the form of birds to let those they’d left behind know they have not been forgotten, and also to remind those who loved them that they must let go. Franny would be so alone, but what choice did she have? The sparrow flew through the open window to perch in one of the old magnolias, and then, before anyone could blink, it was gone, as was Rafael.
He walked the long way back to his parked car, left outside the cemetery gates. The dog was trailing him, and he understood that Jet had meant for this to happen. She hadn’t wanted him to be alone, so he whistled, and Daisy walked beside him so he could take her home to Queens.
“How do I do this?” Rafael said aloud.
The dog looked up at him, but they kept walking, for that seemed to be the only answer. Rafael counted twenty-five magnolias as they went along, all abloom, each one planted in the name of love, a long time ago, when there was a man who refused to believe in curses and a woman who wished she had known love when she first saw it.
III.
For many years, Vincent Owens had lived on the ?le de Ré, across the bridge from La Rochelle on the west coast of France, the scene of a bloody battle between Huguenot Protestants and Catholics, an island that in the past had belonged to England and then to France. Vincent had wanted to get as far away from his old life as possible and he had succeeded. Sometimes, when he woke, he had no idea where he was, not until he looked out at the flat blue sea. His residence was on the far side of the salt marshes, past the village of La Flotte, in an old stucco house where the ivy grew wild in the garden and every room was laden with sunlight. No one knew who he was. They had no idea that he’d been broken many times, and that love had saved him.
By now he was old, but he still had the charm he’d been born with when a nurse at the hospital had been so enchanted by him she’d tried to steal him from the nursery. Vincent’s thick black hair was now white, but he still wore it long, and his handsome features were the same, even though he often had a dark expression. He was tall, and his form seemed that of a younger man, for his mother had drilled all of her children on the need for good posture. A half smile crossed Vincent’s face when he thought of his mother; Susannah Owens had run away from love while he had run toward it. Vincent was the sort of man who loved completely. That was what he’d had with William, and it had been worth giving up his country and his family for that sort of love. It had been worth everything.
William’s heart had stopped, suddenly, in his sleep, and when it did, it was the end of a life that had been bound with Vincent’s, for they were made for each other, and had made one another’s lives whole. Now that his life with William was over, Vincent’s existence seemed pointless. His loneliness could not be soothed by words of comfort, there were no incantations to ease his pain, nowhere to take refuge. The family curse had ruled his fate and forced him to surrender one life and begin another in which he could be safe and anonymous, but the curse meant nothing now that he had been left with only his grief to sustain him. Nights and days alike were dark, and they had been ever since the instant he lost the only man he had ever loved.