~16~

Now

One of Rick's favourite books was titled The Ledger. There was a fascinating and disturbing premise to this story that now assaulted him with greater horror than ever before. Maybe there was this great balance sheet in the heavens that wanted to make sure that joys eventually equalled pains. Some dusty and melancholy angel sat at this ledger and dealt fate on the humans below in order to bring about this balance.

Part of him had ached for the voice of the writer, even as he ached for the touch of his wife.

The last four days had certainly pushed the figures of the pain column right through the roof.

He should have known that life with Kathryn had been too good to be true. He should have lived his life in greater moderation, and understood that life was only a carnival; where fate was a strong-arm sideshow, ready to pulverize anyone who disagreed.

Would Kathryn recognize his life now?

The children down the street, they played different games now. Different pictures hung on the walls. There was a different symphony of sound in the house, some silent chasm of sports instead of music. The town itself was changing; the city councillors she had worked with were all gone now; there were new people, different people, who debated the issues of waste management and downtown parking and welfare. They dared to change the colour of the lights that shone through the Central Park Fountain.

Brin dared to grow up without her mother. It was Kallie's mom who taught Brin how to put on makeup, how to tell the difference between a guy who was interested in her for her intellect and not for her looks. Somewhere after the death of her mother, Brin had developed breasts; Rick went to Kallie's mom in a near-panic on how to deal with the situation.

Time dared to march on, and each day painted a thin veneer over the memories of his wife.

He could only pray that the same would happen to the memories of his only daughter, the last of his family. If forced to remember all the joys tallied up in that column, he would surely go mad.

He had already been frantic that night, for Brin was late, and bless her heart, she was never late. Rick gave her a pretty broad curfew, and Brin always operated within it. The two times she had broken it she had phoned with her reasons; sensible ones, like Kallie's brother's car blowing a tire on their way home from the city, or to beg for permission to just stay at Kallie's house all night for a pillow party instead of coming home.

When he got the news of her death, he had gone completely numb. It couldn't possibly be true; he had already made hefty deposits in the pain column of the ledger and was due for a little joy. Not content to sit back and wait for joy to happen, he had been scrimping and saving money for over a year to take Brin to Africa.

It was blood money now, and tainted. Could he use it for anything at all, knowing it had been earmarked for her?

At first he let the strange girl into his house because he couldn't stand the silence anymore. He had never fanatically watched television, but he did now. It was always on because he needed the noise, the noise that should have been coming too loud from Brin's room, her stereo thumping with some frenetic beat so idolized by the youth and despised by the old.

There was something about the stranger he had just let into his home, some aching sadness he recognized so well. By the very slump of her shoulders, the illness with which she handled her purse (obviously not hers), he knew that she was someone else who had been making hefty deposits in the pain section of the ledger.

She didn't lie very well, either. Not to him, at least, though most people wouldn't have been paying close enough attention to catch it. He had been partially engaged with her even as he kept part of his attention on the abyss of sound in his house and how Kathryn would have hated the pictures on the walls, until she had mentioned Brin's killer and the possibility of it being the same person who had killed her loved one.

Then he was all ears. Her sound was the only sound that mattered.

She finally said her name was Haley Grant, and then she fidgeted and paused. Rick was happy enough just to let her stew for a moment. He had learned that silence was a weapon, especially the silence of this house that remembered and mourned noise.

"I don't know if you'll believe me," she finally said.

"You can try me," he replied. "After all, I'm just a stranger."

She blinked her eyes again and her cheeks rose in a very light blush. It was an endearing expression and Rick internally sighed to see it. How long had she been wearing an invisible black ribbon of mourning, some sleeve garter, around her arm?

"Do you believe in fate?" she asked.

Rick thought of his sister-in-law, who had had long conversations with Kathryn about the subject before Kathryn's death. They didn't speak of it afterwards. The bond of sisterhood could surely survive the grave, but not this strange bond of in-laws separated by death and distance and conflicting interests.

Fate? A strong-arm sideshow, a mistress of fortune, a decrepit angel tallying up columns and lists.

"I'm not sure if I do," he replied. "I don't like the idea of my future being mapped out before I live it."

"I think of fate more like consequences. You do something and it activates some future that fate already thought of, maybe already prepared for you."

"Okay, I'll bite," Rick said, finally settling back into his chair. The girl mirrored his movement, as he hoped she would. "Why do you ask, anyway? Do you think fate killed your friend, and my wife and daughter? Is fate the person you are looking for?"

For her answer, Haley opened her purse and drew out an oversized cardboard playing card, displaying one side. Upon it was a figure, maybe a woman, walking down a beach under a downcast moon. There were five chalices along the bottom of the card, with three chalices upon them. Rick recognized it as coming from the Tarot; one of the many fascinations of his sister-in-law, though he didn't know what it meant.

"This is from the Tarot, the Minor Arcana," Haley was explaining, and her voice was tight. "It's called the Eight of Cups. The cups or chalices are equal to hearts in a standard playing deck, where each suit represents one of the classical elements: fire, earth, water, and air. They also represent emotion or love. When this card is drawn last, it is called the outcome, and then it represents mourning, a descent into the underworld as the consequence of a relationship-associated death."

Whatever Rick had expected to hear, it wasn't this. A small tinge of frustration began to creak through his bones, but he decided to keep playing along. After all, there was a woman in his house, and there hadn't been a woman in his house in a long time. "Cups, they equal water, right?" he guessed. "That's what cups hold, is water."

She was starting to look strange, her pupils dilating and her breath coming in a little shorter. "The Holy Grail, the cup that held the blood of Christ. Christians are taught that water symbolizes life through the blood of Christ. 'Let him that drinketh never thirst again'. Baptized by water, buried in the stream, reawoken to life renewed, reborn. Some people who die come back. Water is the gateway to the unseen world, and the mirror is the proof."

By now Haley was nearly hyperventilating, and the words were gibberish in his ears. He needed no dictionary to translate emotion, however, so Rick leaned over to touch her on the hand. "Haley," he said, "your friend drowned? You can stop. Please stop."

The touch seemed to do the trick; she visibly flinched, not in revulsion, but in surprise, and then she took a deep breath. "Fate didn't kill your daughter, nor my friend. Their deaths were caused by the fortune teller, the fortune teller that gave my friend a card just like this."

"Where did you get that card, then?" he asked, finally following the story.

She hesitated before turning the card over. The writing on the back hit him like hammers on his chest.

Brin's name was on the back of the card. What was worse, it was written in her handwriting. He recognized it instantly, for she had taken to using tiny hearts to dot the i in her name. Beneath her name something else was written in a spidery and unrecognized hand.

Carhenge. Midnight. You will meet your mother. Go alone.

There was a light roaring in his ears, and tiny sparks of light danced around the edges of his vision. He blinked, and the hammer blows of pain in his chest were replaced with a fierce and brilliant anger. His mouth had gone instantly dry; his tongue felt like a wooden plank as he asked again, "Where on earth did you get that card?"

"I promised I wouldn't say," she said softly, and her voice was tremulous and wary.

"To hell with your promise," he growled, nearly swearing at her but stopping at the last moment. When she blanched, he realized he had been gripping her hand. He immediately dropped her hand and sat back, but kept his eyes on her.

"Do you want me to sell my integrity to you, Mr. Hall?" she asked, her voice sandpaper, her eyes blazing.

Rick released his breath slowly. "No," he replied. "I suppose I don't. What can you tell me about it, then?"

"It was given to her by the fortune teller," Haley admitted. "It was the reason she was alone at midnight at Carhenge, where the killer that the fortune teller hired was waiting for her."

"Why would this fortune teller want my daughter dead?" Rick asked, feeling nebulous and bewildered. "What did my Brin ever do to her?"

Haley hesitated again. Rick kept his patience, and his silence, though inside he was a seething volcano about to erupt. Then her eyes changed, took on the quality of fire-forged steel; her mouth tightened and he knew she had just made a decision.

"If my theory is correct, the fortune teller is using Brin as bait. For you. She wants more power and immortality, and she is going to use you to get it."

Rick was lost again. "What are you talking about?"

"Rick," she said, using his name for the first time, and it was a trembling bird on her lips that flew straight to his heart. "I'm talking about magic."

"I don't believe in magic," he said, nearly automatically, wondering if this girl was a loony and whether he should phone the police to get rid of her.

"That's a good thing, you know," she said, her voice matter-of-fact and wry. "If you don't believe in magic, the unseen world can't touch you. It's when you start believing that you get into trouble."

"Can you stop being cryptic, please?" he asked. "That's the second time you've mentioned the unseen world."

"I've already said too much," Haley said, standing up. He followed suit, suddenly wanting her to stay here and explain herself. "I don't want the same thing that happened to my friend to happen to you. Can you promise me something?"

"You've a nerve. What should I be promising you?"

She was already walking back to the front door, that purse heavy and uncomfortable in her hands, unaccustomed weight and bearing. "If the fortune teller calls you, don't believe a single word she says. If she should call you, please phone me, and tell me everything."

She handed him a business card, one of the homemade ones that still had downy perforation along the sides, and he took it without thinking, his mind whirling on everything else she had said.

"Please?" she implored one last time, touching him on his wrist before she fled into the burgeoning darkness of falling twilight.

Stupefied, he watched her drive away in her rental vehicle, standing in his doorway and feeling the fiery burn of that touch on his wrist. He finally looked down at the card, inspecting the phone number.

The area code was 207. Because of his former sister-in-law, he recognized it instantly.

Maine.

He had a different phone call to make.

Then

A week after kissing Elsa in her kitchen, Anna sat at the same kitchen table with her phone in her hands. She was looking at it as if it were a thing alive and snakelike and venomous, and she was as fond of snakes as Indiana Jones.

"You sure you don't wanna do it in person?" Haley asked from her perch on the tiny bed in the corner of Anna's apartment. She was drinking a can of root beer and seeing how much of the alphabet she could burp.

Anna easily remembered the burning vituperation of her father's gaze, especially when about to embark on a sermon that focused on the eradication of sin, as if sin were a termite and he was a divine exterminator.

"No, I can't do it in person. I wouldn't mind telling my mom in person, but I don't think I could tell my dad."

"Then best to get it over with," Haley said, and then she belched. Just as Anna opened her mouth to ask for Haley to be quiet at least during the duration of this phone call, Haley continued, "Don't worry, Anna. I'll contain myself while you're on the phone. Call me backup girl. I can practice scowling on your behalf, though." She screwed up her black painted lips into what may have been a snarl, had the spiky blue haired girl been able to stop grinning.

"Scowl away, backup girl."

Anna looked at the phone. At least sixty more seconds passed, and Haley stayed quiet. Backup girl, indeed. She always had been, from the very moment Anna tiptoed into the library last fall. Those cardstock soldiers, Elsa in her carrel, and Haley, her heart as big as the ocean.

Anna looked at the other kitchen chair, empty now, but which had taken on some of the magic of the girl who had been sitting there the day of cocoa and cream.

Her father had nearly gone ballistic when she first announced her divorce. How would he take this piece of unwelcome news, her coming out of the proverbial closet, a girl in love with another girl?

She glanced at Haley, pleading for rescue.

Bless her heart, Haley smiled. "You're stronger than you think," Haley said, the words evoking the memory of those violated dandelion heads, the gritty coolness of the boulder she had sat upon as she brooded near the Kennebec River, and then the beauty of everything that had happened since.

Anna dialled.

The conversation went as well as she feared, which was not well at all. Her parents had just gotten accustomed to the idea of her being divorced and living on her own and making money. They had determined that it meant she wasn't the spawn of the devil after all, if God was blessing her so much.

Anna went right back to being devil spawn, and Haley gave her a good and hard hug after Anna hung up the phone, angry tears of betrayal on her cheeks.

"I'm proud of you," Haley whispered.

Moving up in the world, one step at a time.

Anna went house-hunting.

She found a two bedroom house, built at the last turn of the century and therefore had a small shortage of electrical outlets and no basement. But the owners only wanted $750 a month, and Anna jumped at the chance. She would probably kill every blessed plant in the garden, but there was a roomy unattached garage in the back where she imagined working on her cars, and the kitchen had lots of natural light and space.

She moved in the beginning of June, with the help of Haley and Elsa and a small swarm of volunteers from the library, the matrons and their husbands. Much of her new furniture was donated by these women, and she loved the stories they told of the articles they had donated. One woman admitted that the couch was so comfortable to sleep on that it was no good to use it as a threat against her husband for bad behaviour.

Fringe lamps, scuffed and endearing end tables, all the used furniture as beloved as the scars on Elsa's throat. Anna had nearly forgotten how nice it was to have an actual bedroom large enough to have a queen sized bed. The size of her twin mattress just wasn't appealing anymore, not with Elsa in her life and the steadily growing urge

insistent need desire craving heat

to make love to her at night, in a bed big enough for two. She hadn't said anything while the mattress was set on the bed frame, but Elsa didn't seem to miss much. There was a twinkle in her eyes, and dimples on her cheeks, and Haley said she was glad she had decided not to move in with Anna after all, not with all the canoodling of twitterpated people around. Haley Grant was not a third wheel nor fifth wheel nor any sort of wheel, no sirree.

Anna teased her back, saying she wore enough chains to cover a snow tire.

Haley stuck her tongue out at her, and Elsa had laughed along with the matrons, and all the women shooed their men outside for a few blessed minutes at the close of moving day, expressing their good wishes to Anna. Anna who stood hand in hand with Elsa, unafraid, and the women lamented that their own romantic days with their husbands needed sparking just like this.

Their acceptance lifted a weight from Anna's shoulders that she hadn't even known was there.

Elsa did not move in with her. She stayed at the elusive and as yet unseen farm house throughout the beginning of summer, coming to Bath as she had, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Anna ached to ask her to move in, but she was so afraid it was too soon, that something might go sour and take this blessed sweetness from her mouth. She made up her second bedroom as a guest room, and Elsa spent the last weekend in June with her, as a guest in her house.

It was the most magical and damning weekend Anna had ever known. Desire, need, and urgency seemed to burst from her fingers, but she bottled it up, not wanting to scare or frighten Elsa away. Friday night had passed innocently enough, with Haley and popcorn and a movie. They snuggled on the couch and Haley sat on the floor in front of them. In the reflection of the TV screen, Anna could see she and Elsa together, and Haley smiling for their happiness.

Elsa stayed in the guest room after Haley went home. Watching Elsa put some of her things in the drawers caused a strange and painful constriction in her chest. This is what grown-ups did in their relationships. They had drawers and spare keys and a new toothbrush in the bathroom for their significant other. Some time after midnight, for Anna simply couldn't sleep, not for the starlight that seemed to gust through her veins, not for the ache in her limbs at the thought of her girlfriend in the very next room, Anna gently pushed the door open to look at Elsa sleep.

In sleep Elsa lost some of that tightness that was always on her face. She slept on her back, with her damaged hand on top of the sheets, her hair a silken flood of sunshine on the pillow.

That same fist constricted Anna's heart, and she returned to her bed and finally to tormented sleep.

She prepared a gourmet breakfast the next morning, with eggs Benedict with hollandaise sauce, fresh strawberries and clotted cream (something she had heard about from books about Britain and for which she had made a trip to Bangor where it was sold), hash browns and orange juice.

"Maybe you're the witch in the gingerbread house, just fattening me up before you're going to eat me," Elsa accused, when she had finished her large serving of food, and then she blushed deeply at the double entendre. Anna chuckled to relieve the tension, pretending that the idea had never crossed her mind.

Liar.

Being with Elsa, making love to Elsa was something that was always in the back of her mind, every blessed minute of every blessed day or night. Non-Tuesdays and non-Thursdays were no longer dull; by her influence, Elsa seemed to bless every moment of Anna's life, and that happiness that she had embarked on after her conversation with Haley only deepened and intensified.

She wondered what someone would think, should they see only this girl, only right now. Would they know the treacherous shoals she had crossed, the frightful waves and storm-tossed seas by which she arrived at the Elysian shores?

From that point on, Elsa spent every weekend with her. One memorable Saturday they drove to Ashland together. Anna was nervous about how she would view the town where she had lived so long in misery. When she had phoned Dave in planning the trip, he had been overjoyed to hear from her, and there was a pan of her best squares waiting for he and his wife, Maggie, in the back seat.

Billy Carmichael was giving up his muscle car, as he needed the money for college. Dave bought it from him and then offered the commission to Anna for the restoration. The engine was sound, but the rest of it needed a lot of work. He, Gary, and Raj were thrilled to meet Elsa; they sat on the stools in the station and told Elsa all sorts of Anna-specific stories, each one more funny and embarrassing than the last, including the time she had received a jet of oil right in the eye.

The only downside was their separation on the ride home; driving in tandem those four hours to bring the car back to Bath.

The garage was too hot during the day, so they went there in the evening. Elsa sat with her new laptop at the bench, her face shiny with sweat and her eyes beaming and contemplative. Anna had the hood up on the 1977 Chevrolet Chevelle and she was dressed in her super fashionable blue coveralls, wearing an old and oil spotted t-shirt underneath. They were getting properly introduced, she and Billy Carmichael's muscle car, but she was always aware of Elsa near her as she poked and prodded at the engine.

"I need a last name," Elsa said from behind her. Anna glanced at her, grinning, delighted to see Elsa at her new laptop, how she had traded in her notebook and pencil for lightning fast fingers at a keyboard.

"What's the first name?" Anna asked, pulling out the air filter.

"Georgia."

"Certainly can't be Brown, then, can it?" Anna replied, lifting up the air filter and staring critically at it.

"Indeed not," Elsa said.

"Where's she from or what's her ancestry?"

"I might make her Korean."

"A Korean named Georgia?"

"She grew up in the States. It could happen, you know!"

"I'm starting to think that anything can happen," Anna replied, putting the filter back and wiping her hands on her coveralls as she looked at her girlfriend. "It's like the magic that happens when I'm around you."

Elsa reached over to tug at one of Anna's belt loops, and Anna was willingly pulled into the space created by Elsa's slightly open legs as she sat on the stool. Aware of her dirty hands, Anna left her arms at her sides as she kissed Elsa, the sultry heat of the evening amplifying the ache that always existed inside her, fanning her desire like a flame.

Elsa broke the kiss long enough to pant, "I'm a farm girl, you know. It's not like I'm afraid of doing laundry."

Freed of their restraint, Anna's hands instantly flew behind the girl, latching on to her lower back and pulling slightly forward as she captured Elsa's lips in another kiss. Not gentle now, not really, for it was a hard kiss and a hot kiss, Anna firmly against the curvaceous contours of Elsa's body, she used one hand to caress her lower back, the other hand to draw a fiery line up Elsa's still prominent spine.

Elsa gasped, and it was yet another sound to etch in her mind forever, the sound of it certainly the most beautiful thing she had ever heard, because it wasn't really Elsa's gasp, not really.

Anna, her heart a yowling and greedy beast, thought, I did that.

So much more love, not merely a wish or dream to spend all her days with Elsa, but a ravening desire to become the entirety of Elsa's world, to wrap each of them in a cocoon made of this love-gauze, where they would morph into one being and burst into the world as a butterfly.

When Elsa gasped again, her breasts hard nubs against Anna's chest, Anna lifted her mouth to suckle on the lobe of Elsa's ear, whispering, "I love you, Elsa."