“Of course they were naked. And then they just ran in the house, laughing their heads off like fools.”
“Wow.” Just picturing it put a big grin on Jan’s face.
“I know. Happy, carefree, drunken fools. I actually felt a bit jealous. She looked so beautiful by moonlight. Like out of a fairy tale. A nymph from a fairy tale.”
“Speaking of which, how’s your Lady under siege doing?”
Jan was her closest confidante, the only friend with whom Meghan had shared the whole story of her dreams of Sylvanne and the siege. Jan’s reaction had been more amusement than concern—she treated it like a soap opera, eager for each new plot twist. “Come on, out with it. Something’s happened,” Jan cajoled her.
“She’s left the castle. Gerald is dead,” Meghan blurted out. And suddenly a surge of grief welled within her, Sylvanne’s genuine grief at the loss of her husband, and she began to cry uncontrollably, sitting there at her desk. Through her tears she managed to say, “This is crazy.”
To her relief Jan was supportive. “It’s getting serious,” she said. She dabbed Meghan’s eyes with a tissue and then stood behind her chair, rubbing her shoulders until the sobs subsided. “Maybe you need some help. I do know a therapist— someone who’d be perfect, and I can help get you in,” Jan suggested.
“I’d like that, I think,” Meghan said. “I’d like some answers. Or even just to talk.
“Good. Her name is Anne Billings. She’s my brother’s ex-wife but I’ve always liked her, a lot more than my brother actually, and she and I stayed friends after they split. You’ll like her too, she’s super smart but very down to earth. She has a private practice but she’s also a professor at the university, and these dreams of yours sound right up her alley—her PhD was all about Wicca, or witchcraft—apparently in academic circles she’s made a name for herself that way, using psychology to study mysticism and the paranormal. She’s at least sympathetic to stuff like that—if any psychologist is going to take a real interest, it’ll be her. I’ll call her for you, see what I can do.”
12
Betsy kissed her mother goodbye and locked the door behind her, then headed up to the computer. She had only two friends she was allowed to chat with, Sam and Brittany, and neither of them was online. Saturday afternoon. Brittany might have gone out of town for the weekend, and Sam was probably at ballet. Now what? She was instantly bored. This was the second time she’d been truly alone in her life, the second time in less than a week. The first time she’d felt only excitement, this time she felt abandoned. She wandered back downstairs and turned the television to a music channel her mother didn’t like her watching. The video showed a singer who looked to be about fifty under his pancake makeup and there were devils in it with blood coming out of their mouths. She watched until it ended and then turned it off. Now what? What she really wanted to do was go outside and jump on the trampoline, but her mother had laid down the law: no jumping without a grown-up watching you. What about Derek, she had asked. Her mother had made a pained face and said, Derek is on the wrong side of the fence, and Derek is to stay there. No jumping on the trampoline until I get home.
So. No jumping, but she hadn’t said anything about just lying on the trampoline.
The taut black surface of it was hot from the afternoon sun. She lay on her back watching the sky, then played with the orange sunlight through her eyelids, making it lighter and darker by scrunching her eyes shut. Presently she heard sounds from the back yard next door. Derek was working on something again. She heard knocks and clatterings and opened her eyes to see a fifteen foot square of mesh netting, framed on thin pipes, being leaned up against their shared fence. The pipes were junky, salvaged plumbing pipes, and the mesh looked tattered in places, but several layers thick.
A minute later there was a whipping sound, a sharp whap, and a golf ball flew into the net, where it was snared like a bird on the wing. The force of it stretched the netting, and the ball slid down to become entrapped in a little bulge of netting that hung over the fence onto Betsy’s side. Whoosh, whap. Another ball flew