Page 87 of The Magic We Made

I’m surprised at how large the fire has grown, given how wet everything is from the fog and all the rain the other day. There’s never been a wildfire on Center Island before, which is surprising considering how much illegal camping goes on there. I’m not sure how the fire department would even get there to put out a wildfire. It’s not like they have boats—

“After what happened that night at the courthouse,” Richard is saying as he sinks down onto the porch step beside me, “I wasso broken. Everything I’d worked for, everything I believed—destroyed in a few seconds.”

“Richard, everything in your life wasnotdestroyed that night,” I say. “Iwas there for you, remember? And you wouldn’t let me in.”

“Not that night.” Richard’s voice is sad. “You’realwaysthere for everyone—your family, your patients, your friends. But you weren’t there for me that night. You didn’t see what I saw.”

I blink at him. “Really? You want to do thisnow? Tonight? Because this is a conversation we should have had a year ago when I asked you what you saw out there. Remember when I suggested we go to couples counseling and you said—”

Richard shakes his head. In what little light from the moon that is managing to get through the smoke and fog, I can see that he’s smiling.

“I know what I said. And I want you to know that, however I might sound now, I’m not blaming you. I just want to explain to you what happened, now that I finally have the words.”

Great. Exactly what I don’t need at this particular moment.

“Look, Richard,” I say. “You’re tired. You’ve had a hard few weeks. Do you have a place to stay?” I remember how Debi had said she’d been having trouble getting her old place back. But if Richard thinks I’m taking him in, he’s even more delusional than Ash. “Because I’m a little busy right now. I think you should go get some sleep, and then maybe we can talk about this later—”

“No, Frankie,” he says, in his rich, professorial voice that I used to find so sexy. “We need to talk about this now. I’m sorry I treated you the way I did—that was cruel of me. But I didn’t know then that I was being cruel. I only know what I saw—and what I was told. That’s why I’m here. You need to hear this, Frankie.”

I look around, thinking I hear voices. But it must only be the wind—which is picking up—since all I can see is smoke, mingled with fog.

“Okay, fine. But make it quick. I need to go inside and make some phone calls.” I really am going to call Jackie. Not because Ash told me to, or because I want to get him on a temporary psychiatric hold, but because of the fire. Maybe there’s no need to worry about it spreading to the homes around the lake since the water makes a natural fire wall. But what if the wind picks up a stray ember? “What exactly did you see that night?”

“A witch,” Richard says simply.

I tear my gaze away from Ash’s house to look at him. “Excuse me?”

“I said I saw a witch.”

“Richard, everyone saw witches that night. The press called it a witch riot, remember?”

“But I saw one particular witch that no one else seems to have seen. Thequeenof witches.”

“Was her name Debi, by any chance?”

“You see!” Richard cries, pushing himself up from the porch steps, indignant. “Thisis why I couldn’t tell you back then. You can be so judgmental!”

“Richard.” I’m scrolling my phone for Jackie’s number. I know it’s rude, but I’ve got multiple crises occurring at the same time. I have no choice but to multitask. “I don’t know what you want me to say. You claim you saw a witch at the courthouse that night. That’s great. But this is West Harbor. To quote my brother, you can’t swing a dead cat in West Harbor without hitting a—”

“But that’s just it!” Richard hurries back toward the steps to sit beside me again. “The witch I saw wasn’t like any of the others.It was... well, there’s no other word for it. She was a queen... no, adeity.”

“Adeity?”

“That’s right. The reason I couldn’t find a scientific explanation for what happened to me that night, Frankie, is that thereisno scientific explanation. Only a theological one. Because what happened to me was a theophany.”

“You had a waking vision of God at the West Harbor tricentennial celebration?”

“Not God as your mother sees God, Frankie. This was no man in a long white beard with a staff and a halo. This was a goddess. She came to me. She surrounded me with love and filled me with the truth.”

My phone sits forgotten in my hands because Richard has a rapturous expression on his face. He really does look like a man who saw... something.

“And what did this goddess look like?”

“Well, she was very small—surprisingly so, for such a powerful witch. She had short dark hair cut in a sort of bob, and brown skin, and she was dressed all in purple. She told me to follow my dreams—and she knew, Frankie. Sheknewmy dream was to sail around the world. She told me to do it. She told me to abandon everything else, buy a boat, and go.”

“Uh-huh.” I point to his front jacket pocket, where I saw him stash his joint after stubbing it out. “Did you happen to be smoking that at the time by any chance?”

“Of course not! I’m not talking about drug-induced euphoria. This was something else. I tried to resist. I tried to resist for so long, because I knew what my leaving would do to us. I loved our comfortable little life together.”