Practical Magic (33 page)

“Fourth time’s the charm,” she says to people who ask her what the secret of a happy marriage is, but that’s not the way she feels about it. She knows now that when you don’t lose yourself in the bargain, you find you have double the love you started with, and that’s one recipe that can’t be tampered with.

Sally goes to the refrigerator for some milk to add to the mashed potatoes, although she’s sure Gillian will tell her to add water instead, since she’s such a know-it-all lately. Sally has to push several covered dishes around and as she does a lid falls off a shallow pot.

“Look here,” she calls to Gillian. “They’re still at it.”

In the pot is the heart of a dove, pierced by seven pins.

Gillian comes to stand beside her sister. “Somebody’s getting spelled, that’s for sure.”

Sally carefully puts the lid back in place. “I wonder what ever happened to her.”

Gillian knows she’s talking about the drugstore girl. “I used to think about her whenever things went wrong,” Gillian admits. “I wanted to write to her, to let her know I was sorry I said all those things to her that day.”

“She probably jumped out a window,” Sally guesses. “Or she drowned herself in the bathtub.”

“Let’s go find out,” Gillian says. She puts the turkey on top of the refrigerator, where Magpie can’t reach it, and quickly shoves the mashed potatoes in the oven to keep them warm, along with a pan of chestnut stuffing.

“No,” Sally says, “we’re too old to snoop.” But she lets herself be pulled along, first to the coat closet, where they each grab an old parka, and then out the front door.

They hurry down Magnolia Street and turn onto Peabody. They pass the park, and the town green, where lightning always strikes, and head straight for the drugstore. They pass several closed shops—the butcher, and the baker, and the dry cleaner’s.

“It’s going to be closed,” Sally says.

“No way,” Gillian tells her.

But when they get there, the drugstore is dark. They stare through the window at the rows of shampoos, at the rack of magazines, at the counter where they drank so many vanilla Cokes. Everything in town is closed today, but as they turn to go they see Mr. Watts, whose family has owned the drugstore forever and who lives in the apartment above. He’s following his wife and carrying the two sweet potato pies they’re taking to their daughter’s over in Marblehead.

“The Owens girls,” he says when he spies Sally and Gillian.

“Check.” Gillian grins.

“You’re closed today,” Sally says. They trail Mr. Watts, though his wife is waiting at the car, signaling for him to hurry. “What happened to that girl? The one who stopped talking?”

“Irene?” he says. “She’s in Florida. She moved there about a week after her husband died last spring. I think I heard she’s already remarried.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?” Sally asks.

“Irene,” Mr. Watts assures them. “She’s got a coffee shop down in Highland Beach.”

Gillian and Sally run all the way home. They’re laughing as they run, so they have to stop every now and then to catch their breath. The sky is gray, the air is raw, yet it doesn’t bother them in the least. All the same, when they reach the black gate, Sally suddenly stops.

“What?” Gillian says.

It can’t be what Sally thinks. What she thinks she sees is Gary Hallet out in the garden, crouching down, digging at the cabbages, and that just cannot be.

“Well, look who’s here,” Gillian says, pleased.

“They did it,” Sally says. “With the dove’s heart.”

As soon as he sees Sally, Gary stands, a scarecrow in a black coat who doesn’t know whether or not he should wave.

“They did not,” Gillian says to Sally. “They didn’t have anything to do with it.”

But Sally doesn’t care if Gillian phoned Gary last week and asked what on earth he was waiting for. It doesn’t matter if he’s had the aunts’ address folded into his coat pocket ever since that phone call. By the time she runs down the bluestone path, it doesn’t make a bit of difference what people think or what they believe. There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.

ALICE HOFFMAN is the author of Property Of, The Drowning Season, Angel Landing, White Horses, Fortune’s Daughter, Illumination Night, At Risk, Seventh Heaven, Turtle Moon, Second Nature, Practical Magic, Here on Earth, Local Girls, The River King, and Blue Diary. She lives near Boston.