Chapter Twenty-one
I am standing in the herb garden, watching the setting sun cover the castle grounds and distant hills in gossamer golden light, and listening for the sound of my aunt laughing with the fairies, when Mrs. McGregor joins me.
“The gloaming,” she says, pulling her shawl around her frail shoulders. “When the day takes its last gasp before slipping into night. The ancients believed the time between sunset and darkness was magical. An tam mianta agus iontas. The time of wishes and wonder.”
“Wishes and wonder. What a lovely thought.”
A skein of black-necked barnacle geese flies overhead, their mournful honks shattering the quiet of the gloaming. We watch their silhouettes move across the sky toward the ever-darkening horizon.
“If ya could make one wish, Tara, what would it be?”
“Just one?” I bend down and pluck a leaf off a peppermint plant, bruising it between my thumb and pointer finger, inhale the minty oil, and a memory sparks to life in my brain of Aunt Patricia serving me peppermint tea to calm an upset stomach. “If you had asked me that question a few months ago, I would have wished for Daddy and Aunt Patricia to be alive.”
“And now?”
“Now,” I say, tossing the bruised peppermint leaf onto the gravel and wiping my fingers on my jeans. “I accept the cycle of life as one of the more painful details in God’s grand design. I don’t have to like it, but I would be a damn fool to try to change it. No, now I would simply wish to live a life of purpose and passion, one that would make my family proud.”
“She was proud of you, love.” She reaches out and laces her fingers with mine. “She used to say she loved each of her nieces and nephews, but felt a special kinship with ya. Soul connection is what she said it was.”
My throat tightens. “I loved her something fierce.”
“I know ya did.”
“I used to count the days until summer break. I had a calendar stuck to the back of my bedroom door and I would mark off each day with a big old red X.” I blink back tears. “My sisters never understood why I was in such an all-fire hurry to leave South Carolina. They loved Charleston summers. Mandy curled up on the divan on the back porch, sipping sweet tea with lemon slices and reading, reading, reading. I swear the only time she left that porch was to go to church or to take Emma Lee to the beach. Mandy loves swimming almost as much as she loves reading. I never did like swimming much. All that sand in places where sand shouldn’t be!”
Mrs. McGregor laughs.
“If Mandy would have spent a little less time curating her book collection and a little more time cultivating her social circle, she would have been the belle of every ball. She’s our momma’s daughter, sweet, soft spoken, and effortlessly pleasing. I reckon that’s why she was daddy’s favorite,” I say without bitterness. “Emma Lee is the true Charlestonian, though. Charming, clever, and extraordinarily magnetic. People are just naturally attracted to her, like hummingbirds to honeysuckle. She couldn’t wait for summer and her dizzying swirl of social activities. Pool parties, barbecues, clambakes, paddle boarding at Folly Beach . . . A body could get exhausted just listening to Emma Lee rattle off her summer schedule.”
Mrs. McGregor laughs.
“What?”
“I seem to recall feeling knackered watching ya run around with the village kids when ya visited.”
“That was different.”
“How was it different?”
I peer at the distant hills as if the answer to Mrs. McGregor’s question is hidden somewhere in the shadowy valley between them. How do you explain a vague and baseless feeling you’ve had all your life? It’s like trying to hold fog in your hand. It’s there. You know it’s there. You can see it, feel it, but as soon as you try to grasp it you realize it has no real substance.
“I had loads of friends and a family that loved me, but I never felt like I belonged in Charleston.” I let go of Mrs. McGregor’s hand and wipe a tear from my cheek. “You once told me a story about a baby who was stolen from her crib and replaced by a fairy child.”
“The Changeling.”
“I’ve always felt like a changeling, like I was in the wrong place and living a life not intended for me. In the story, the changeling eventually loses her fairy features and learns how to behave like a human. I have learned how to behave like a proper Southern lady, but I don’t feel like a proper Southern lady.” I sigh. “Shoot, I don’t want to be a proper Southern lady. I don’t want to spend three hours putting on my face just so I can sit on the front porch and gossip with my neighbors. I don’t want to conceal my backstabbing knife behind a plastic smile. I don’t want to burn a hole in my gut worrying I won’t make the perfect match, raise the perfect kids, amass the perfect shoe collection.”
“What do ya want?”
“I’m still trying to figure that one out.”
“Will ya forgive an auld woman with a gammy tooth if she tells ya something ya might not like hearing?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“People are people, whether they’re from South Carolina or South Cork. Do ya think the villagers don’t gossip about their neighbors or fret about their kids?” She turns her watery blue gaze on me. “It wasn’t fairy magic that turned ya into a changeling, Tara love. Ya became a changeling by convincing yourself ya were different and that being different was a bad thing.”
She pats my cheek before shuffling back into the kitchen.