“Everybody knows. It’s been going on for the last few years,” Towner said. “Emily used to look the other way, but these days…Finn and Marta have known each other since they were kids. Everyone thought he’d marry her and end the family feud, but his father wouldn’t allow it because she wasn’t Catholic.”
They sat across from each other in the tearoom, sharing a pot of Difficult-Tea. “That seems odd,” Callie said. “In this day and age.”
“It was odd, and it wasn’t really the reason.”
“No?”
“The real reason was money. Marta’s father was the reason the Whitings lost their business. It rekindled the old family feud. Finn’s father had to refill the family coffers. Marta was not only family non grata, she was as poor as a church mouse. Emily’s not Catholic, either, but they were happy to look the other way for her money. Of course there was the not small matter of Emily also being…‘in a family way.’?”
“You told me as much when I first met her,” Callie said.
“I did? How indiscreet of me!” Towner smiled.
“So his relationship with Marta never really ended?”
“Oh, it ended. For quite a while. She didn’t live here for a long time. She was down in New York City. I don’t think they saw each other again for years. But then, when her mother got sick, Marta came back. From what I’ve heard, they pretty much picked up where they left off…and none too subtly, either.”
“That must be really difficult for Emily.”
“To say the least.”
“Why does she put up with his infidelity?”
A shadow crossed Towner’s face. “I think you’ll find when you love someone that much, you put up with all sorts of things you never thought you could tolerate, real or imagined.”
Callie looked at her friend. “We’re not talking about Emily anymore, are we?”
Towner didn’t break Callie’s gaze, and she didn’t answer the question. Instead, she sighed and stood to clear the table.
“There was a time my mother was talking about divorce,” Paul said. “But that was before she got sick.”
Callie had agonized before bringing up the subject with Paul. But Towner had assured her that he knew about Marta and his father, and, thinking back, some of his less than welcoming treatment of Marta now began to make sense.
“My mother has told me to stay out of it. But it’s not always easy,” Paul admitted.
Before they’d started talking about Marta, they’d been discussing solfeggio frequencies. Paul had been researching a symbol his team had found in the cave, something the scholars at the Vatican believed corresponded to the ancient solfeggio frequencies, at least from a mathematical perspective.
Callie sometimes used the frequencies in sound healing: solfeggio was an ancient scale of six notes, all of which were pure sound that vibrated at different frequencies: ut, re, mi, fa, so, la. This scale eventually morphed into the seven-note musical scale that is used today.
“The scale was used in the early Latin church hymns, for healing and spiritual awakening. Then many of them were mysteriously lost. Only a few remain, but we’re interested in finding anything that refers to them. This symbol might.”
That the Catholic Church was interested in anything that she was using in sound healing surprised Callie. But she took it as an encouraging sign of the practice’s growing acceptance.
They sat and watched the fire until it faded to embers. Paul stoked it once more and brought a blanket from the bedroom.
Lately, they’d taken to making out like high school kids. “Does this mean we’re at least going steady?” he kidded her.
She’d never gone steady in high school, never engaged in the “heavy petting” the nuns had warned was a mortal sin. Instead, she’d skipped over that phase entirely. Here, with Paul, she felt as if she were living her life in reverse.
She’d been here almost every evening since their kiss in the car, and, each night, she tore herself away from his hands and lips and rushed back to Pride’s Heart before midnight, which Paul had taken to calling “curfew.”
“I’ve got to get back,” she said just before twelve, pulling herself away from his embrace.
“Sleep here,” he said when she stood to leave.
“I sleep with my eyes open, remember? And I have nightmares.”
“I’ll make them go away,” he said seriously, trailing his thumb across her neck.
She laughed. “Are you going to walk me back?”
“I don’t think I am, no.”
“Okay.” She headed for the door.
He sighed, getting up to follow. “You’re killing me, Callie,” he said, only half kidding. “I hope you know that.”
Hearing his tone change, she turned back. “It’s not that I don’t want to sleep with you.”
“Don’t say you just want to be friends.”
“No. I can’t say that anymore.”
“Then what the hell are we waiting for?”
She decided to tell him the truth. Not the whole truth—the horrible suspicion that something awful might happen if she slept with him. Equating sex with death was too Freudian to mention. Instead, she told him, “I don’t want to be like my mother.”
It was equally true.
“Not much chance of that, I’d say.”
“I was a lot like her before we met.”
He seemed surprised. “Wish I’d known you then,” he tried to joke.
“No, you really don’t.”
When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed of sex with Paul: wild versions and perversions that left her body flushed and tingling, the blankets damp and clenched in her fingers. The dream ended the way it ended each time, with Paul on the cold stone floor, open eyed and openmouthed, the blood surrounding him growing less red and more purple every night.
The Catholic Church embraced December as Christ’s birthday in order to appease the heathens, thereby building the number of converts to Christianity. For their part, the Puritans disdained the celebration, which reminded them not only of the Pagan devil worshipers but of the Catholics who had once persecuted them in England.
—ROSE WHELAN, The Witches of Salem
“Lovely day,” Rose said as they rode across the bridge to Pride’s Crossing on Christmas morning. She looked out at the ocean, which seemed to surround them. At least it was warmer than it had been on Thanksgiving. Today it was forty-six degrees.
Emily had offered them her driver, and Callie and Paul had accepted. They’d gone together to pick Rose up from the shelter. Paul had waited downstairs in the family room while Callie braided Rose’s wild mane into a single tail, recalling how Rose had once done the same for her. Then it was time to introduce the two most important people in her life. Callie had been worried, but the minute they met, Rose said, “Look at these lovely boots Callie just gave me,” and seemed quite at ease. Paul complimented her footwear while ushering her into the car and then climbed in and sat beside her.