The Memory Keeper

Chapter 26

Piper went through the letters Mr. Sheinfeld had written, trying to organize them by the dates on which each memory transpired. They were all scattered, handed to her at random with no time-line. Natalie watched, trying not to snatch them all from her assistant, for what, she was not sure. But why did Piper get to keep them?

"Why do you think Flower and Peter went their separate ways?" Natalie sat at the table in Piper's house, tea cold and forgotten in front of her.

The witch did not look up from one of the letters she was reading.

With a small sigh, the mind weaver told herself her witch assistant had a right to ask for something in exchange for making some remedies Peter had asked for. But another question poked at her, and would not stop, until she asked.

"Why the letters? Why are you so interested in them?" Natalie went to reach for one, but Piper threw half her body over the pile.

"NO!"

A shot of rage shook her bones. "Why not? He is my client! You said those were for me. You asked if I wanted to keep them!"

"Yes, after you are finished."

Natalie leaned back in her seat, feeling foolish she had lost her temper for a moment, but more so because she could not see what perhaps everyone was trying to keep from her. Was it staring her directly in the face?

After a deep breath, she asked, perhaps with a bit more bite than she had intended, "What happened to his sister, then? Can you at least answer that? I am sure one of those letters have the answer."

Piper rubbed the bridge of her nose and shoved the letters to the side. "You remember what happened to the client who hired the mind weaver and her middle assistant, right?"

"Yes, it is the whole reason middles and mind weavers are not allowed to work together anymore."

The witch nodded, expression like a cloudy sky. "But do you remember what happened to the client? She wanted to summon a spirit to help her with spells. The spirit of a witch. Only a witch has the ability to cast spells, and with no help from a dark entity, mind you! No ordinary human can dabble in darkness without paying a price. Most of the time that price is their very soul."

Something Peter had said about his sister came back to her with the same sensation of slipping on wet flagstones. "Wait... Peter told us that his sister wanted to be a witch when she was a child."

Piper waited patiently, a solemn look on her otherwise cheerful face. Natalie's very bones shook with the beating of her heart. Peter's sister... she was the client whom had gone mad after hiring the mind weaver and the middle person. She was the one everyone whispered about, the reason middles were cast aside like they were the very entities that had destroyed the girl.

When she was able to speak again, she asked, "Why the mind weaver, then?"

"Perhaps in case things got out of hand, which they did. But the mind weaver did not have the ability to take the memories of the hauntings away, not when they kept on happening. Night and day, for months. Colette was said to have sent her very best mind weavers, but to no avail. Like trying to stop a tornado with a handful of pebbles." Piper shrugged, a shadow passing over her eyes. "Never mess with what you do not understand. Even middle people know that."

Anger gripped Natalie's muscles. "So then why did they do it? Why did the middle person and mind weaver agree to do it?"

Piper rubbed her thumb across her other fingers. "Money." Then she dropped her hand. "Or they thought they could handle it." She looked pointedly at the mind weaver.

The chill down Natalie's back kept her from any retort. "So she isn't dead. Peter's sister, I mean. There is still hope for her sanity?"

Her assistant pressed her lips in, then said, "You aren't thinking of trying to help her, are you?"

Natalie jumped up. "If I can handle Peter's memories, then perhaps I can handle hers, too. And you can put the memory spell on an item of hers to burn." She motioned her hands like a little explosion. "Boom. Not even I will remember."

Piper slammed her hands onto the table, her eyes like rings of fire. "It is okay to keep Peter's memories of... Flower, is it? Colette gave you permission, and you are lucky for that." She swiped her arm across the air, the corners of Peter's letters flapping in the force of wind. "But keeping his sister's memories would mean taking her insanity for yourself, without knowing the spell would even work on a memory that massive, that... heavy and foreboding."

Natalie remained standing, and shook the back of her chair. "Did the best mind weavers not even try?"

Piper picked up the stack of letters and straightened them on the table top, the thumping noise biting at Natalie's nerves. "It is said they did, but failed."

"Perhaps it is a lie." Natalie turned her back on Piper. "I cannot imagine how Peter feels, knowing that Alice, his beloved sister, is caged up in a mental institute, all because of a childish dream she had."

"Actually she is in Cape Colette."

Natalie felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle. In a voice as rickety as an old lamp post, she asked, "How does Peter not hate my kind?"

Piper looked down at a small paper cut on her thumb, and put the letters down, resting her elbows on the pile. Without looking up from her cut, she whispered, "Perhaps at one point he did. So much in fact he made some poor choices he is still trying to make right."

***

That night, Natalie sat by the hearth in her office, the basket of jewelry from her cabinets before her. Rain beat on the window, and wind howled through the door frame, sounding to Natalie like mournful spirits. She hummed a song to distract her ears.

Light from the blaze fluttered down the twinkling string of pearls and sapphires she lifted. In the dark colored glass of the grate doors, she held the necklace to her throat. The sapphires brought out her eyes, turning them to pools of blue fire.

Next she lifted mittens, and started when something slipped from inside one of them. It hit the carpet and rolled, firelight turning it into a little star. When it collided with the stone base of the hearth and flopped onto its side, Natalie crawled over to recollect it, mittens forgotten.

She lifted a band of silver. It was quite small, as though adjusted to fit a very delicate finger. There was something instantly familiar about it, but before she could ponder further, there was a light rap on the door. Without thinking, she slipped the ring onto the third finger of her right hand. It fit perfectly.

As soon as Natalie opened the door, the rain nearly shook with thunder. Standing there was Peter, wheat colored hair like a halo under the sudden flash of lightening. The mind weaver blinked as the sky shattered. "Come inside," she urged, holding the door open. "Don't just stand there in the rain, Mr. Sheinfeld!"

But he did not make to enter. With a little smile, he reached for her hand. The ring she had mindlessly slipped on shone as though crafted from the moon itself. He brushed his lips over it, sending shivers around the mind weaver's shoulders. His touch was colder than the rain, which soaked her dress hem, dotting her face like a flower petal. He seemed to stay dry, his black coat hem fluttering in a dry breeze.

"Peter?" she cried.

He tipped his hat and stepped from under the veranda, disappearing in the sheets of rain. Natalie stumbled over the steps after him, his name shivering out of her in little cries. Suddenly she remembered where she had seen the ring before.

Laughter rang over the river, had turned to silence, turned to shouts, then back to silence as Peter pressed a ring into Flower's hand and walked away. She gripped it and watched, feet rooted to the floor of a splintered old gazebo.

Lightning erupted like sheets of foil shaking in the sky, and in the brief flash of illumination, she could read words engraved on the outside of the band.

Forever My Flower