Page 4 of The Book of Magic

“Unlikely he’ll get the letter,” Franny chimed in. She had written to Vincent several times and had never heard a word in return, although every year she received a card from Agnes with a bright greeting—All is fine here in France—which she supposed meant Vincent was well.

“I don’t know about that,” Jet responded. “He could always find anything. He had that talent.”

“When he wanted to use it,” Franny sniffed. Her brother’s absence still pained her. “He never found us.”

“He couldn’t, darling,” Jet said. “There was the curse. He had William to think of.”

On the fifth day, after Sally had gone off to the library, Jet turned on the porch light and threw open the door. When the news got out that Jet was available to her neighbors, a line formed along the path and down the street. People wanted cures for rashes and indigestion, enchantments for runaway daughters and for sons who had made a wrong turn, tinctures for forgetfulness and for mean-spirited husbands, and, as always, they came for love. Jet was so busy that she enlisted Franny, who grumbled but set about gathering ingredients from the garden: leaves from their ginkgo tree, one of the oldest varieties on earth, for anxiety; turmeric as an anti-inflammatory; primrose, whose essence would be pressed into an oil that helped skin conditions and lifted the spirts; echinacea, best for the common cold; lavender, to bring wayward children home. In tall glass jars in the pantry there was mandrake, belladonna, mushrooms of all sorts, blue beads, black feathers, apple seeds, the hollow bones of birds, dove’s hearts. The rush lasted until five, and by the time it was through most of the daffodils had been trampled by people who wanted to make certain they got their turn bringing their problems to Jet. Before Sally arrived home to chastise them for practicing magic, Franny chased the last of the visitors from the path and once they were gone, she switched off the light. She agreed with Sally; let the porch light be turned down forevermore.

Jet sat at the table, exhausted, in need herself of a cup of Courage Tea.

“I hope you’re happy,” Franny said. “Half the neighborhood has been here today.”

Jet smiled and poured more tea. She was, indeed, happy, and because Franny couldn’t fight that, she had a cup of tea as well, for courage was what they both needed now.

On the sixth day, the aunts fell silent, in a haze of disbelief. The future was less than forty-eight hours away. Still, no one had ever called them lazy, and they made good use of their time, setting about cleaning the house, which, frankly, had not been seen to for some time, so that the woodwork and drapes were dusty and the carpets had to be taken out to the porch and beaten with a broom. It was traditional to do so after a death, to prepare for the mourners and clear out anything the deceased might wish to keep private, but knowing what they knew, they had the opportunity to complete the task together before the funeral. They covered the mirrors and opened the windows to let in fresh air. Sparrows were nesting in the shrubbery and buds had appeared on the magnolias that lined the street. The sisters packed up Jet’s clothing and her collection of novels, along with the batch of letters Levi had sent her when she was a girl, mostly concerning how they might manage to meet without the Reverend catching on. There was another correspondence that Jet treasured, letters tied up with blue ribbon. These were Rafael’s. She gazed at them, on the brink of tears.

“His?” Franny said. She’d never questioned Jet about her love life. Still, she’d been curious.

Jet nodded. She thought about what might have happened if Rafael hadn’t taken a part-time job as a bellman while he was going to college. “Life is luck.”

“That it is,” Franny agreed.

When they were through with the house, and the woodwork shone and the cobwebs were all swept away with a broom, they had a picnic lunch that included splurging on all of their favorite childhood foods which were too rich for them now: jam sandwiches, scones with lavender honey, cheese and chive biscuits, sliced apples with cream. Later, they walked to the cemetery where Jet wrote out a check, the final payment for the plot beside Levi Willard, whom she had loved when she was so young and hadn’t any idea of what love meant. Then they went out grocery shopping for the ingredients they needed. In the morning, when Sally came into the kitchen, ready to head to the library, her aunts were baking a Chocolate Tipsy Cake, a family tradition for birthdays, weddings, and funerals ever since Maria Owens’s time.

“Do you know how many calories are in that?” Sally said. All the same, she sat down at the table and ate the leftover batter with a spoon. “What are we celebrating?” she asked.

Sally looked exhausted, with dark bluish circles under her eyes. She worked too much and she hadn’t conditioned her hair for ages, but she was still beautiful and, in the aunts’ eyes, still their little girl.

“If you can’t eat chocolate cake for breakfast, what is the point of being alive?” Franny said.

On the morning of the seventh day, when the ashy circle around Jet closed so that she was surrounded by a black aura and time was running out, they did exactly that. For reasons Sally could never explain to herself, nor understand, she joined her aunts at the breakfast table, and instead of her usual yogurt and blueberries, she had the biggest slice of all.

Jet insisted they all have dinner in the taproom at the Black Rabbit Inn that evening. She’d already phoned Gillian, who would fetch Kylie and Antonia and drive them up from Cambridge. Jet had made reservations as well, the rear table, far away from the fiddler who played there after six, whose mother had often come to them for a success elixir for her son, though, due to the level of his talent, there was none to be had.

“Are you certain you want them all here on the seventh day?” Franny asked with concern.

“They’ll need to be here on the eighth day, won’t they? I don’t want you to have to handle everything alone.”

Franny had little choice but to agree. She couldn’t yet bring herself to think about the eighth day and a world without Jet. Perhaps just this one time, she might need help dealing with what was to come. Although the Black Rabbit certainly would not have been her choice for a last supper; she couldn’t stand the cheerful dining room, with its red-checked tablecloths and a menu of second-rate New England food: boiled potatoes, baked cod, macaroni and cheese, always burned on top, along with salads that included only shredded iceberg lettuce, and all manner of puddings for dessert, the specialty being something called cheesecake upside-down, which the kitchen had been serving to mixed reviews for more than a hundred years.

At the close of the afternoon, before the others arrived, Jet grabbed her spring coat and set out for the library.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Franny wanted to know. The truth was she didn’t wish to let her sister out of her sight. The deathwatch beetle had situated itself in the linen closet on the second floor and its clacking was louder all the time. Franny had used bug spray and set out traps laced with sugar with no success. When it came down to it, she knew this was one insect it was impossible to be rid of.

“What I want most is for this to be an ordinary day,” Jet explained. “On an ordinary day I’d go get Sally to be certain she left the library at a decent hour.”

“Fine. But be at the inn by five. I’ll bring the girls. Don’t leave me stranded there.”

Time was everything, and there was so little of it. Jet walked the long way around, stopping at the cemetery to visit Levi Willard, bringing a bunch of daffodils from the garden, yellow with orange centers dotted with inky black marks. She lay down in the grass next to his headstone and looked up at a sky clotted with clouds. She was beginning to say good-bye to the world, to all the things she loved, grass and sky, the lanes in town that were so shady and green, the library where she and Franny and Vincent would go on sultry days during their first summer in town. When she arrived, Sally was still working even though it was nearly five and they certainly didn’t want to keep Franny waiting at the inn.

“I need fifteen minutes to close up,” Sally called when Jet came through the door. Sally was in a hurry, as always, but something made her stop and gaze into Jet’s eyes. They seemed darker than usual, the pale gray flecked with black. Dear Jet, whose love and good heart were constant, appeared to be quite exhausted. “Are you all right?” Sally smoothed down her aunt’s hair. “Is that mud on your shoes?”

“I’ve been for a walk in the cemetery.” On Jet’s last night in the world she saw everything with clear eyes, including her beloved niece. How kindhearted Sally was. How vulnerable beneath all that bluster. Sally had been the one who had found the aunts listed in their mother’s phone book, and had called clear across the country to inform them that she and Gillian would be coming to stay. Their aunts had loved them beyond measure ever since.

Sally narrowed her eyes, wondering if Jet was trying to pull a fast one. She had always been wary, certain that Jet wasn’t exactly what she seemed to be. Once, in the year when she’d turned thirteen, Sally had gone so far as to follow Jet into Manhattan, breaking into a run to catch up with her outside Penn Station. Jet had surprised her by being furious.

“I want one day a month to myself,” Jet had said as they stood on Eighth Avenue, nearly deafened by the roar of the traffic. “If I want to go to a museum or take a walk in Central Park, it’s no one’s business but my own.”