Insofar as I ever knew, Merrick was faithful to her vow.
After we completed a detailed letter regarding our expedition, for a university of our choice, we sealed the records and the mask permanently, along with the idols, the perforator that Merrick had used in her magic, all of Michael's original papers, and the remnants of Oncle Vervain's map. All was kept in storage at Oak Haven, with access only allowed to Merrick or to me.
In the spring, I got a call from America, from Aaron, telling me that investigators in the area of Lafayette, Louisiana, had found the wreck of Cold Sandra's car.
Apparently Merrick had led them to a portion of the swamp where the vehicle had been submerged years before. Enough remained of the corpses to ascertain that two women had been in the vehicle at the time that it sank. The skull bones of both showed severe and potentially life-threatening fractures. But no one could determine whether or not either victim had survived the blows long enough to be drowned.
Cold Sandra was identified by the remnants of a plastic purse and the random objects inside of it, most particularly a gold pocket watch in a small leather pouch. Merrick had recognized the pocket watch immediately, and the inscription had born her out.
"To my beloved son, Vervain, from 'your Father, Alexias Andre Mayfair, 1910." As for Honey in the Sunshine, the remaining bones supported the identification of a sixteen-year-old girl. No more could be known.
Immediately I packed a bag. On the telephone, I told Merrick I was on my way.
"Don't come, David," she said calmly. "It's all over. They've both been buried in the family grave in the St. Louis Cemetery. There's no more to be done. I'm going back to Cairo to work, just as soon as you give me leave."
"My darling, you can go immediately. But surely you must stop in London."
"Wouldn't think of going on without seeing you," she said. She was about to ring off when I stopped her.
"Merrick, the gold pocket watch is yours now. Clean it. Repair it. Keep it. No one can deny it to you now." There was a disturbing silence on the other end.
"I told you, David, Oncle Vervain always said I didn't need it," she replied. "He said it ticked for Cold Sandra and Honey. Not for me."
I found those words a little frightening.
"Honor their memories, Merrick, and honor your wishes," I insisted. "But life, and its treasures, belong to those who are alive."
A week later, we had lunch together. She looked as fresh and inviting as ever, her brown hair drawn back in the leather barrette that I'd come to love.
"I didn't use the mask to find those bodies," she explained at once. "I want you to know that." She continued on. "I went out to Lafayette and I went on instinct and prayers. We dredged in several areas before we got lucky. Or you might say Great Nananne helped me find the bodies. Great Nananne knew how much I wanted to find them. As for Honey, I can still feel her near me. Sometimes I feel so sad for her, sometimes I get weak—."
"No, you're talking about a spirit," I interjected, "and a spirit is not necessarily the person you knew or loved." After that, she spoke of nothing but her work in Egypt. She was happy to be headed back there. There had been some new discoveries in the desert, due to aerial photography, and she had a meeting scheduled which might lead to her seeing a new, previously undocumented tomb.
It was marvelous to see her in such fine form. As I paid the check, she brought out Oncle Vervain's gold pocket watch.
"I almost forgot about this," she said. It was quite well polished and it opened at the touch of her finger with an audible snap. "It can't really be repaired, of course," she explained as she held it lovingly. "But I like having it. See? Its hands are fixed at ten minutes before eight."
"Do you think it has some connection," I asked gingerly, "I mean, to the time that they met their deaths?"
"I don't think so," she said with a light shrug. "I don't think Cold Sandra ever remembered to wind it. I think she carried it in her purse for sentimental reasons. It's a wonder she didn't pawn it. She pawned other things." She put it back into her purse and gave me a reassuring smile.
I took the long drive with her out to the airport and walked her to the plane.
Everything was calm until the final moments. We were two civilized human beings, saying goodbye, who meant to see each other soon again.
Then something broke inside me. It was sweet and terrible and too immense for me. I took her in my arms.
"My darling, my love," I said to her, feeling the fool dreadfully, and wanting her youth and her devotion with my whole soul. She was utterly unresisting, giving way to kisses that broke my heart.
"There never will be anyone else," she whispered in my ear.
I remember pushing her aside and holding her by her shoulders, and then I turned, without so much as a backwards glance, and I walked swiftly away.
What was I doing to this young woman? I had just passed my seventieth birthday. And she had not yet reached her twenty-fifth.
But on the long drive back to the Motherhouse, I realized that, try as I might I could not plunge myself into the requisite state of guilt.
I had loved Merrick the way I had once loved Joshua, the young boy who had thought me the most marvelous lover in the world. I had loved her through temptation and through giving in to that temptation, and nothing would ever make me deny that love to myself, to her, or to God.
For all the remaining years that I knew her, Merrick remained in Egypt, going home via London to New Orleans perhaps twice a year.
Once I dared to ask her boldly why she was not interested in Maya lore.
I think the question irritated her. She didn't like to think of those jungles, let alone speak of them. She thought I ought to know that, but she answered me in a civil manner nevertheless.
She explained clearly that she met with too many obstacles in studying Mesoamerica, in particular the question of the dialects, of which she knew nothing, and of archaeological experience in the field, of which she had none. Her learning had led her to Egypt, where she knew the writing, knew the story, knew the history. It was where she meant to stay.
"Magic is the same everywhere," she said more than often. But that didn't deter her from making it her life's work. There is one more piece to the puzzle of Merrick which I possess.
While Merrick was working in Egypt that year after our trip to the jungles, Aaron wrote me a strange missive which I'll never forget.
He told me that the license plates of the car found in the swamp had led the authorities to the used-car salesman who had murdered his young customers Cold Sandra and Honey. Indeed, the man was a drifter with a long criminal record, and it had not been difficult to trace him at all. Belligerent and somewhat cruel by nature, the miscreant had gone back several times over the years to work at the very car lot where he'd met his victims, and his identity was well known to any number of people who could connect him to the car found in the swamps.
A confession to the crimes was not long in coming, though the man was judged to be insane.
"The authorities have advised me that the fellow is terrified," wrote Aaron. "He insists that he is being hounded by a spirit, and that he would do anything to expiate his guilt. He begs for drugs to render him unconscious. I do believe he will be placed in a mental hospital, in spite of the clear viciousness of the crimes." Naturally, Merrick was advised of the whole affair. Aaron sent her a pack of newspaper clippings, as well as what court records he could obtain.
But much to my great relief, Merrick did not wish to go back to Louisiana at that time.
"There is no need for me to confront this person," she wrote to me. "I'm sure, from all that Aaron's told me, that justice has been done."
Less than two weeks later, Aaron advised me by letter that the murderer of Cold Sandra and Honey had died by his own hand.
I called Aaron at once:
"Have you told Merrick?" I asked.
After a long pause, Aaron said, quite calmly:
"I suspect that Merrick knows."
"Why on earth do you say that?" I asked immediately. I was always too impatient with Aaron's reticence. However, this time he was not to keep me in the dark.
"The spirit who haunted this fellow," said Aaron, "was a tall woman with brown hair and green eyes. Now that does not square with our pictures of Cold Sandra or Honey in the Sunshine, does it?"
I answered no, that it did not.
"Well, he's dead now, poor fool," said Aaron. "And maybe Merrick can continue her work in peace." That is exactly what Merrick did: continue her work in peace.
And now:
Now, after all these years, I have come back to her, asking her to raise the soul of the Dead Child Claudia for Louis, and for me.
I have asked her in so many words to use her magic, which might surely mean using the mask, which I know to be in her possession at Oak Haven, as it had always been, the mask which could let her see spirits between life and death. I have done that, I who know what she has suffered, and what a good and happy person she could be, and is.