Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(16)
Author: Anne Rice

“She’s a sweet thing in her own way,” Celia had admitted.

“Yeah, and that Band-Aid on her knee,” Michael had muttered under his breath, not thinking. “What a girl. I believe what she said about Rowan.”

“So do I,” said Beatrice. “Only …”

“Only what?” Michael had asked desperately.

“Only what if she never makes up her mind to speak again!”

“Beatrice, shame on you,” Celia had said, glancing pointedly at Michael.

“You think that Band-Aid’s sexy, Michael?” Mona had asked.

“Well, er, yeah, actually. Everything about that girl was sexy, I guess. What does it matter to me?” He’d seemed sincere enough, and sincerely exhausted. He’d wanted to get back to Rowan. He’d been sitting with Rowan and reading a book, by himself, when they’d all come together.

For a while after that afternoon, Mona could have sworn, Rowan looked different, that her eyes were tighter now and then, and sometimes more open, as though she were posing a question to herself. Maybe Mary Jane’s big gush of words had been good for Rowan. Maybe they ought to ask Mary Jane back, or maybe she’d just come back. Mona had found herself actually looking forward to it, or maybe just asking the new driver to fire up the monstrous stretch limo, pack the leather pockets with ice and drinks, and drive down there to that flooded house. You could do that when you had your own car. Hell, Mona had not gotten used to any of this.

For two or three days Rowan had seemed better, showing that little frown more and more, which was, after all, a facial expression.

But now? On this quiet, lonely, sticky sunny afternoon?

Mona thought that Rowan had slipped back. Even the heat did not touch her. She sat in the humid air, and the droplets of sweat appeared on her brow, with no Celia to boldly wipe them away, but Rowan didn’t move to wipe them herself.

“Please, Rowan, talk to us,” Mona said now in her frank, almost brash girlish voice. “I don’t want to be the designee of the legacy! I don’t even want to be the heiress if you don’t approve of it.” She leaned on her elbow, her red hair making a veil between her and the iron gates to the front garden. Felt more private. “Come on, Rowan. You know what Mary Jane Mayfair said. You’re in there. Come on. Mary Jane said you could hear us.”

Mona reached up for her own hair ribbon, to adjust it, to make her head stop itching. There was no hair ribbon. She hadn’t worn her bow since her mother died. It was a little pearl-studded barrette, holding a clump of her hair too tight. Hell with it. She loosened it and let her hair slip down.

“Look, Rowan, if you want me to go, give me a sign. You know, like just do something weird. And I’ll be out of here that quick.”

Rowan was staring at the brick wall. She was staring at the bacon-’n’-eggs lantana—the wildly grown hedge of little brown and orange flowers. Or maybe she was just staring at the bricks.

Mona gave a sigh, a pretty spoiled and petulant thing to do, really. But then she had tried everything except throwing a tantrum. Maybe that’s what somebody ought to do!

Only it can’t be me, she thought dismally.

She got up, went to the wall, pulled off two sprigs of the lantana and brought them back, and put them before Rowan like an offering to a goddess who sits beneath an oak listening to people’s prayers.

“I love you, Rowan,” she said. “I need you.”

For one moment her eyes misted. The burning green of the garden seemed to fold into one great veil. Her head throbbed slightly, and she felt some tightening in her throat and then a release that was worse than crying, some dim and terrible acknowledgment of all the terrible things that had come to pass.

This woman was wounded, perhaps beyond repair. And she, Mona, was the heiress who could bear a child now, and must indeed try to bear one, so that the great Mayfair fortune could be passed on. This woman, what would she do now? She could no longer be a doctor, that was almost certain; she seemed to care for nothing and no one.

And suddenly Mona felt as awkward and unloved and as unwelcome as she ever had in her life. She ought to get out of here. It was shameful that she had stayed so many days at this table, begging for forgiveness for once lusting after Michael, begging for forgiveness for being young and rich and able someday to have children, for having survived when both her mother, Alicia, and her Aunt Gifford, two women she loved and hated and needed, had died.

Self-centered! What the hell. “I didn’t mean it with Michael,” she said aloud to Rowan. “No, don’t go into that again!”

No change. Rowan’s gray eyes were focused, not dreaming. Her hands lay in her lap in the most natural little heap. Wedding ring so thin and spare it made her hands look like those of a nun.

Mona wanted to reach for one of her hands, but she didn’t dare. It was one thing to talk for half an hour, but she couldn’t touch Rowan, she couldn’t force a physical contact. She didn’t dare even to lift Rowan’s hand and put the lantana in it. That was too intimate to do to her in her silence.

“Well, I don’t touch you, you know. I don’t take your hand, or feel it or try to learn something from it. I don’t touch you or kiss you because if I was like you, I think I’d hate it if some freckle-faced, red-haired kid came around and did that to me.”

Red hair, freckles, what had that to do with it, except to say, Yes, I slept with your husband, but you’re the mysterious one, the powerful one, the woman, the one he loves and has always loved. I was nothing. I was just a kid who tricked him into bed. And wasn’t as careful that night as I should have been. Wasn’t careful at all, in fact. But not to worry, I’ve never been what anyone would call regular. He looked at me the way he looked later at that kid, Mary Jane. Lust, that was all. Lust and nothing more. And my period will finally come, like it always does, and my doctor will give me yet another lecture.

Mona gathered up the little sprigs of lantana there on the table, next to the china cup, and she walked away.

For the first time, as she looked up at the clouds moving over the chimneys of the main house, she realized it was a beautiful day.

Michael was in the kitchen, fixing the juices, or “brewing the concoction” as they had come to call it—papaya juice, coconut, grapefruit, orange. There was lots of undefinable slop and pulp all over.

It occurred to her, though she tried not to process the thought, that he looked healthier and handsomer with every passing day. He’d been working out upstairs. The doctors encouraged him. He must have gained fifteen good pounds since Rowan had woken up and climbed out of bed.