A Special Place for Women, Laura Hankin [brene brown rising strong .txt] 📗

“I get it, why you feel that way. And I’m so sorry about the shit you had to go through. But I can’t get mixed up in this.”

“It has to be you,” she said, clasping my hands, staring up at me with such a strange intensity that I had to laugh.

“As Caroline very helpfully pointed out today,” I said, “I’m new, and I don’t get to talk, so I really don’t think I’m much use to you.”

“Look,” she said, and moved her finger on the photograph to the woman in the chair, the cigarette dangling from her lips. Something about her face struck me as familiar. “My great-grandmother’s biggest regret was how they treated the third member. When she asked them for help escaping her abusive husband, they tried to keep her in the circle instead. So when she left, she didn’t even say good-bye. She just disappeared. My great-grandmother always hoped that she was all right, that maybe one day, someone from her family would rejoin the circle and make it whole.” Margot moved her finger down the photograph until it rested right below the necklace around the third woman’s neck. My necklace.

“I summoned you,” she said. “When everything was getting bad with Nicole, I did a spell to bring you into my life. And then one day, a local paper printed some feature on In the Stars, as part of a trend piece on astrology. I never read the paper anymore, but for some reason I read it cover to cover. Even the obituaries section.”

She reached into her pocket again and pulled out a newspaper clipping: Kathleen Beckley, beloved mother, dead from cancer at age fifty-seven, leaving behind a daughter, Jillian. I’d spent hours looking through family photos, trying to find the right one to send in to the paper, finally settling on one I’d taken of her years before, where she was giving me her signature wry look. Where she was wearing the necklace.

“No,” I said, my heart thumping. Coincidence. This was a coincidence that had spiraled far out of control. “I’m sure a lot of people have necklaces like that.”

“They probably do. That’s why I double-checked. I looked her up, and I worked backward. Your great-grandmother had gotten married again and had her children with her second husband, but I figured it out.”

It fit, as much as I couldn’t believe it. My mother had told me about her rich grandmother, who had left an abusive husband in New York and gone far, far away. Her grandmother who talked sometimes of the luxury she had given up but wouldn’t talk about so many other things. She was the reason Margot and I were here in this bedroom, having this conversation.

Margot looked at me, so vulnerable all of a sudden, and for the first time I realized how much power I had.

“So then, what?” I asked. “You stalked me?”

“I just made sure that our orbits overlapped,” she said.

“This is so fucked up, Margot,” I said. “Why this whole rigamarole, with me needing to prove myself, me needing to screw over Libby? Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“You’re guarded, Jillian. A skeptic. I’ve learned my lesson about telling people all of this before they’re ready. If I’d told you right off the bat, you would have run screaming in the other direction.” That was true. Part of me wanted to run screaming even now, while another part thrilled as Margot kept talking. “You had to want to come yourself, to think it was your idea. Besides, you needed to prove yourself to Caroline. I could talk you up to her, sure, and fudge your background check, but you still had to impress her on your own merits. I couldn’t have her knowing who you were too soon because, if things went wrong, it would just be another unforgivable mistake from me.”

The room spun as I tried to process it all. I was someone who belonged. Someone who still had a family of sorts after all. When I’d felt that communion around the circle at Samhain, it wasn’t just delusion. It was written in my blood.

“I think that the lost coven member returning might be the only thing that could make Caroline come around. But if she doesn’t, well, one member related to a founder can’t kick out another, but two . . .”

Her words hung in the air between us for a moment. Outside, a car screeched down the avenue. I swallowed.

“If I’m going to do this,” I said, “and I’m not saying I am, but if I were to, I would need to know that you really trusted me. No more sending people to follow me around or sneaking into this apartment at night without letting me know that you’re coming. It freaks me out.”

“Of course,” Margot said.

“And I need to know the extent of things. I need to know exactly what happened with Nicole Woo-Martin.”

She nodded. And then she told me what they’d done.

FORTY-SIX

Caroline had fallen in love with Nicole at first speech. She saw her give a talk at some luncheon, when Nicole had been a lowly public defender, and had beelined for her afterward. That humor! Those brains! The clear, good head on her shoulders! Had Nicole ever thought about running for a higher office?

Nicole hadn’t. She liked her life as it was—working hard to do small, good things during the day, coming home to her husband at night. But if Nicole did decide she was interested, Caroline ran an organization that wanted to support female candidates. Plus, she had a lot of . . . influential friends. Caroline planted the seed, and eventually Nicole came around. It was a long shot, but why the hell not?

So Caroline set Nicole up with a campaign manager, held fund-raisers for her, introduced her to the other women in the Coven. They all hung out with Nicole, brought her with them to their events, and introduced her around to