“You know, you’ve been avoiding talking about this all day,” I said to my wife.
It was now rapidly approaching seven-thirty in the evening, and she was rushing around the house haphazardly stuffing ritual items into her nylon backpack. As usual, she was running late.
Physically, she had bounced back from the episode the previous evening much better than I had expected. In fact, on the outside, if I hadn’t been a witness to it, I wouldn’t have been able to tell anything had happened. Still, I knew something had to be going on behind those green eyes, and she wasn’t being very forthcoming. Scratch that; she was all but denying it.
I had filled her in on the conversation I’d had with Ben, but much to my dismay, she had simply taken it all in with calm detachment. I’m sure it was largely due to the seizure she had experienced, but the radical shift in her personality was disconcerting to say the least.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she told me matter-of-factly.
“I know better than that, Felicity,” I replied. “Think about who you’re talking to. I’ve been there, remember?”
“Exactly, so you know there’s nothing to talk about,” she returned.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” She shrugged. “I saw nothing. Just like you.”
“You must have seen something,” I countered. “What about the grading papers thing?”
“I don’t even remember saying that, Row.”
“But you did, whether you remember it or not.”
“Okay, so I said it. Your point is?”
“That you were channeling the spirit of Tamara Linwood,” I said. “Or her memories at least, which means recent experiences can’t be far behind.”
“So?”
“So you have to have seen something, it’s just not in your conscious mind.”
“Good.”
“What do you mean, ‘good’?”
“I mean, good. Maybe I don’t want it to be in my conscious mind.”
I shook my head harshly. “You aren’t like that, Felicity. You and I both know it. You aren’t going to run from the responsibility.”
“Maybe I don’t want the responsibility,” she spat back. “Did you ever think of that?”
“Do you think I wanted it?” I returned. “It pretty much just got dumped in my lap.”
“And it’s been fucking up our lives ever since,” she stated with enough bluntness to give me pause.
“I haven’t exactly got control over it you know,” I replied sharply.
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she answered.
I shut my eyes and rubbed my forehead for a second before reopening them and letting out a heavy sigh. “You’re right. This whole conversation has gotten off track.”
She looked back at me wide-eyed, gave her head a slight shake, and shrugged again. “Has it?”
“Yes it has. My original question in all of this is why. Why is this happening to you now?” I submitted. “ Why you instead of me?”
“Not instead. It happened to you too.”
“You’re being evasive, Felicity. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Coincidence. Sympathy. Destiny.” She offered the words in a quick stream and then followed them up with a quick change of subject. “Can you hand me that copy of Everyday Magic on the table there?”
I looked at her in silence, inspecting her face carefully. There was something just not right about the way she was acting and moreover, the way she felt to me, and I didn’t mean the current argument.
She had erected an ethereal wall about herself, creating a shield against the outside. It was something she had automatically done the moment the psychic episode had ended last evening. I knew it was an act of self-preservation, and it was exactly what any Witch in her position would do. That, in and of itself, was a good thing; but, she was keeping me out as well, and that bothered me.
I kept telling myself that the enforced distance was just because of the newness of the situation and though she wouldn’t directly admit it, because of the fear I knew she must be experiencing deep down inside. I had lived with the very same emotion swirling in my gut for long enough to know the pain.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel there was something more going on. I just couldn’t get it to sit still long enough to peg exactly what it was.
She looked back at me questioningly and raised an eyebrow. “It’s right there. Behind you. Please?”
I twisted and picked up the book then slowly handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said as she took the tome from me and then stuffed it into her backpack. She continued flitting about the room as if the previous conversation had never occurred.
I continued watching her and resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to pressure her into talking to me about this. I suppose it wasn’t all that much different the first time it had happened to me, but that didn’t make it any easier to take.
“After what happened yesterday, I’d still be a lot more comfortable if you rode with someone,” I finally said.
“Okay,” she replied. “I’ll ride with you.”
“Funny,” I told her. “Very funny.”
“I was being serious,” she answered without looking at me.
I borrowed a page from her current playbook and ignored the comment. “Maybe you should beg off and just stay home. They’ll be fine without you for one evening.”
“Can’t,” she told me. “I’m the one giving the lesson tonight.”
“So postpone it.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to. Besides, what good is a Coven meeting without a Priestess?”
“Felicity…”
She turned to face me, shuffling things in the knapsack and then zipping it shut. “Come with me.”
I shook my head. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Rowan…” she spoke my name then looked away while chewing at her lower lip. She brought her gaze back to my face and adopted an almost pleading tone. “This was your decision alone. No one in the Coven wanted you to leave.”
“I had to,” I answered succinctly.
“No you didn’t,” she appealed. “No one blames you for anything that happened.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do,” she shot back. “You are the only one to hold yourself in contempt. You had no control over what a crazed maniac did.”
“He did it because of me,” I replied.
“If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else who was openly Pagan. You know that.”
“But it wasn’t someone else. It was me, and he killed them to get to me.”
“So?” she spat. “That doesn’t make it your fault.”
“It’s my fault that I didn’t stop him.”
“You DID stop him.”
“Not in time to save Randy or Millicent.”
We stood looking at one another. A gelid hush frosted the air between us, expanding out to fill the room. The rhythmic tick-tock of the swinging pendulum on our wall clock clacked dully out of time with my slow breaths as I watched my wife. The passing seconds kept appending themselves to the end of the measure, lengthening the painful silence with each beat. As if pre-ordained to mark the end of the torture, the hammer on the timepiece drew back with a mechanical whir then fell hard, striking a single blow against the chime. The initial sharpness of the bonging sound slowly flowed through the room, softening as it faded to nothingness.
“I have to go,” Felicity stated simply, slipping a single strap of the knapsack up over her left shoulder as she brushed past me.
I didn’t turn nor even say a word. I heard the deadbolt snap and the door creak slightly on the hinges as she swung it open. I could sense her hesitation as she stood in the open doorway, and I could feel her eyes on my back.
“You know, Rowan,” she finally said. “You can stay gone for a year and a day, or you can stay gone forever, it’s up to you. But a Coven is family. You know that. You have people… people who are more than just friends that are worried about you. They’re your family, and they want to help if you’ll just let them.”
She grew quiet for a moment, and I slowly turned to face her. She was standing with one hand on the doorknob, staring back at me with a pained sadness in her face.