Part 3 (2/2)
”You're Joshua, and you're Ellie,” Megan finished. ”And it's very nice to meet you, and please, even though I am from these parts, they change a bit every year. Finn and I are always up for suggestions. And my husband hasn't been here before. Ever! So, he may want to trust your judgment, just in case mine is a little tainted at times.”
”Well, actually, I've been through here once,” Finn said, glancing at Megan. ”I got it into my head to drive up alone from New Orleans to Maine, and I'd never done it before. I wound up taking a few wrong turns off the highway, so I have had lunch in the center of town.”
Megan grinned at him. Usually, he had a great sense of direction. She'd found it amusing that he'd gotten lost in New England, and sweet, as well, since he'd been on his way to find her.
Susanna came back in then, not saying a word as she set down their plates of eggs, bacon, and toast. She didn't even respond when Finn thanked her. She was halfway back out the door before she paused to say, ”Cereal and such is on the buffet table.”
There was silence for a moment again after she left.
”Well, you've just got to take your husband to the museum right by the Conant statue-that one is the best so far,” Sally said, cheerfully taking up right where they had left off. ”We were all just agreeing on that when you two came in.”
”Right,” John agreed, squeezing her fingers where they lay on the table. ”And Brad, you were saying that the kids really enjoyed the Pilgrim village.”
”Yeah, it was cool, too!” Joshua said. ”And you know what? It's kind of easy, once you're here, to see why New Englanders are supposed to be so messed up.”
”Joshua!” his mother moaned.
”No, no, sorry!” he said, realizing that, of course, Megan was a New Englander. ”The Pilgrims... Puritans, they couldn't do anything! They couldn't sing or dance or have fun or act normal in any way at all! Look at the people who wound up dead because of some old stories told by that woman. I mean, really, a bunch of people got hanged because they were all so hung up and silly. It was more than four hundred years ago, but you're going to have people come out-what did you call it, Mom, reserved?-when they're ancestors were that messed up!”
”Joshua,” Mary moaned. ”The lady here is a New Englander.”
”Yes, but she can't be all messed up and reserved, not if she had a nightmare like that and explained it to us!”
Mary looked mortified, red as a beet.
Finn's eggs had been pretty good, despite their dour server. They suddenly seemed cold.
”New Englanders can be very reserved,” Megan said, smiling. ”And, hey, by the way, Gallows Hill, where they believe the people convicted were executed, is here, and the judge, Hathorne, has his grave at the Burial Point, and there are a number of other locations as well, but the people involved weren't just from what we call Salem now. There was a Salem Town, and a Salem Village, but the area that used to be the village has different names now, such as Danvers. You can drive out there and see the Rebecca Nurse place, the home of one of the most pathetic victims of all. The writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, put that W in his name to distance himself from his ancestor.”
”You do know a lot about this place!” Joshua said, relis.h.i.+ng his new discovery.
”Well, Marblehead is a little bit from here, too. My mom's sister lived here for a long time, and my cousin and a few others are still here. But I went to school in the South where I met my husband, and Finn and I live in New Orleans now, and trust me, we're not very reserved down there.”
”No!” Ellie said, freckled face split in a big grin. ”They're wild in New Orleans. Dad says so-we can't go there because it's a big den of... big den of iniq-iniq-”
”Iniquity?” Finn suggested, amused himself.
”For children!” Mary said quickly.
”Hey, the city has its reputation,” Finn said. ”But it's kind of like anywhere else-good things, and bad things. We have some of the finest music in the country. And granted, some entertainment that's only for adults, and certain adults, at that. There's a lot that's fine in New Orleans, too, and a lot of really great people. You learn in life, anywhere, to watch out for things that are bad.”
”And people who are bad!” Ellie announced gravely.
”Exactly,” Finn said, looking at the child, and wondering if her parents had already warned her that Finn might be a bad man-a wife beater.
”So-is this your first trip here?” Megan asked, glancing around the table so that her question was for anyone who chose to answer.
”First time, and I love it!” Sally said cheerfully.
”First time for us, too.” Mary said.
”We're from Chicago,” John told them. ”Sally and I both.”
”Great city,” Finn commented, drawing a smile from them both.
”Brad is from Santa Fe,” Mary said. ”But I'm originally a Southerner, too. Montgomery, Alabama.”
”Definitely a good Southern town, progressive these days,” Megan said.
”So Megan is the only New Englander,” Joshua said. ”That's neat, really neat!”A slow, rueful grin crept into Megan's lips. ”And apparently, we can't be all that reserved, because someone told you that before we officially met, hmm?”
Even Joshua himself blushed at that.
”Naturally, we were all concerned about the screaming, and we had to ask,” his father said, his tone somewhat stiff, and, it seemed to Finn, his eyes still carrying something of an accusation.
”And you've got lots of family here!” Ellie burst out ”You've got a witch for a cousin!”
”Wiccan,” Megan murmured.
”You'll find all kinds of people here who are Wiccan,” Finn said. He wondered why he was jumping in so defensively. He thought it was all kind of ridiculous himself. Not that he was a steadfast believer in organized religion himself, but his concept was in a traditional G.o.d, and he believed in most of the Christian tenets of life. He firmly believed that most of the practicing Wiccans were in it for the fun and moneys-hard to survive off a witch shop when you weren't a Wiccan.
”It's just a different way of believing,” Megan explained. ”You know that there are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and more in the world, right? Well, Wiccans are the same.”
Ellie's father sniffed.
”You're one of them?” he asked Megan.
She shook her head. ”Catholic,” she told him.
For Megan, it was true. Finn went to church with her now and then, but she went far more often than he did.
He wasn't sure that Brad approved of Catholics any more than he did Wiccans, but it was his wife that broke in with, ”That's one of the great things about our country, son. People are free to believe in whatever they choose.”
”Even if it is all rather silly,” Mary told her children.
”But the Wiccan religion isn't about evil,” Megan said. ”Honestly-it's more of a religion in which people honor the earth. I don't know all that much about it, but a true Wiccan would never do evil, their spells are only for good things. In their way of thinking, if you do evil to others, evil comes back to you.”
”I want to have my palm read by a witch!” Joshua said.
”No!” his mother said sternly.
If it was all so silly in their minds, why such a vehement refusal? Finn wondered.
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