She touched the circle on the map and remembered Rose sitting her down for her lessons. Teaching her to read before she attended school by memorizing poems and then reciting them, something her mother and her friends had found very amusing. When Rose wasn’t home, her mother’s friends had asked her to recite for them—sometimes in front of guests, sometimes for their own amusement. Rose had also taught her history, the real history of what happened in Salem.
“As I’m sure you remember, Rose was once an important scholar of the witch trials,” Towner said, as if reading her young guest. “She uncovered so many discrepancies between the historical records and their accepted interpretations. When she was a professor at BU, she was awarded research grants from the Massachusetts Historical Society and honors from the Smithsonian, for God’s sake. People forget just how important she was.”
Callie remembered a few of the things Rose had told her about her research. How Puritan Salem had kept detailed expense records. And that none of those records mentioned any gallows being built, which had led her to conclude that it was far more likely the Puritans used a sturdy hardwood, possibly an oak, to hang the accused. How written accounts claimed one could see the bodies hanging all the way over from North Street. This public spectacle had been required by law, a warning to others of the consequences that befell those who signed the Devil’s book. “Those bodies would not have been visible from Gallows Hill,” Rose had always said. Since the accused would have been transported by cart, and since such transportation had been difficult, Rose had believed the condemned would have been taken to the first place beyond city limits with a hill visible from town, not Gallows Hill, but the actual hanging spot, one far more accessible by horse and cart back in 1692.
“Sorry. Let me climb down from my soapbox and show you where the bathroom is,” Towner said, reading Callie’s agitation at recalling this much information. She walked Callie down the hall. A woman was coming out as they approached. She nodded to Towner but looked at Callie with suspicion before moving on. “It’s a shared space,” Towner said. “I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s okay with me if it’s okay with her,” Callie said. Towner opened the linen closet. “Clean towels and sheets are in here, though your bed was changed this morning.” She paused, considering before she spoke again. “Most of the women who live here are from Yellow Dog Island.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a shelter for abused women that my family runs. The ones who are ready to come back to the world sometimes live here and work in the tearoom. It’s a reentry program of sorts. So don’t take it personally if they seem skittish. It’s not you. I’ll introduce you tomorrow—but only by first names. Most of them are part of the Domestic Violence Victims Protection Program. Their identities are kept secret in case their abusers are trying to locate them. So it won’t be odd that I don’t use your last name.”
Callie was familiar with the program and with this type of abuse victim; she’d once volunteered as a music therapist at a shelter in Northampton.
Towner looked at her, then, keeping her voice lowered, she added, “You might not want to tell people your last name anyway. There are a lot of people in town who still remember what happened.”
Callie was quiet as Towner walked her back to her room. At the doorway, she paused, as if to ask a question, then changed her mind. “Thank you for this. I’ll get a hotel room if I’m still here tomorrow.”
“Let’s see what happens with Rose. Her room is yours for as long as you want to stay.”
“Thank you,” Callie said.
“John and I live in the coach house. I don’t know if you’re hungry, but we’re cooking tonight if you want to join us.”
“I’m really tired,” Callie said. It was true. She hadn’t realized how true until she’d heard herself say it.
“Okay, then, just rest. You can raid the fridge downstairs if you wake up starving. I open the tearoom from seven to eight thirty for the hungry and destitute. And then again at ten for our regular customers. If you’re in the first group, you eat free and help serve or clean up. In the second, you pay for your breakfast. The menu’s pretty much the same, so you can decide which category you belong in tomorrow morning. Personally, on any given day, I can fit into either one.”
Callie tried to smile.
“Nice to finally meet you, Callie,” Towner said again. “I’m glad John brought you home.” She was gone then, disappearing down the long staircase.
Callie sat on the bed, looking out the window at the common, with its huge trees and decorative cast-iron fence. In the center of the park was a bandstand. Callie didn’t remember staying in this house with Eva, but she did recall a night when she and her mother had slept on the cold floor of that bandstand, before Auntie Rose had given them a place to live.
Exhausted but far from sleep, she realized her bag was still in her car. She was too tired to walk back and get it, and she didn’t want to bother Rafferty again. She looked through Rose’s closet for something to wear, and, finding nothing, she undressed and hung up her clothes, crawling between the sheets in her underwear. She tried to focus her thoughts on Rose, tried to remember all she could about the woman who was once like a second mother to her. She knew they had some common ancestors. Hanging from each of their family trees was the name Rebecca Nurse. That genealogical connection was how she and Olivia had come to call Rose “Auntie.”
All of the young women who had died that night had ancestors who had been executed on the same day in 1692. That was how they had found one another, why Rose had gotten to know the girls who became regulars at the center. Most had little education and lacked any background in research, so she had coached them, taking them first under her wing, and later, when she’d come to know their circumstances, into her home. In that way, Callie felt Rose and Towner were a bit alike. That was probably one reason Callie liked Towner immediately. It seemed as if both Towner and Rose were dedicated to helping the less fortunate citizens of Salem. Callie hoped Towner’s luck would be better than Rose’s had turned out to be.
Callie started to doze, then jolted awake when she heard a snapping sound. She turned on a light but saw nothing. It was the dream again. That sound was always part of the dream, branches and twigs snapping. Followed by a squirrel scrambling up a nearby tree.
She remembered hearing a snapping sound that Halloween night just before everything happened. Was it only a squirrel? Her memory was reaching too far back, getting too specific. She would not allow herself to remember that part of her past, not tonight. She had to keep from going there. She would fight to stay in the here and now….