“I can see you can’t answer these questions yourself,” Margarete says. “So you know, as much as you don’t want to admit it, that I’m right.”
She finishes her cigarette and drops her butt on the ground. She stubs it out with her foot.
“I just did you a favor,” she says. “I hope you will thank me one day.”
With that, she strides to her car, a silver BMW, starts in and revs off without a second glance at Shannon.
CONFRONTATION
Shannon never realized how much she loves Lucien until she feels her heart breaking and her entire world crashing down.
He lied to me.
No, he didn’t really lie. He just never told you the truth.
But how could he do this to her? Is everything Margarete told her the absolute truth then? Was Lucien simply using her for his sexual pleasures with no intention of making their union permanent?
What a fool you are to hope for anything more. He is exactly what you told yourself he would be when you first met him – a wonderful sexual diversion. Nothing more.
But she had allowed herself to hope.
She had allowed herself – over the weeks they had dated and he had no other in his sights – that she would be the one to land him. She would be the one to tame him. She had even thought that the secrets he shared with her about his family meant that he trusted her enough to share his life with her. She had allowed herself to subconsciously want him to be the one for her.
Her tears are streaming down her cheeks fast and furiously as she drives to the country club. She knows he will be there this evening. Client meeting, he said. So much of her wants him to tell her that everything is all right – that he has no intention of marrying Flora Janssen. That he had been coerced into getting engaged to a witch he hardly knew at the age of sixteen.
Shannon drives up to the gates of the only country club in Dolphin’s Bay. They are wrought iron and ornate. The members of this club are moneyed, and to get in, you’d have to have three recommendations from existing members and a fat bank account. So it is not only what you have but who you know.
The sentry guard at the gates stops her.
“Are you a member, Miss?”
Lucien has never taken her to the club before for obvious reasons. His father is a committee member there and this is where his family conducts most of their business. He never wanted her to comingle with his family members.
“No, but my boyfriend is in there and I have something important to tell him.” She wants to do this face to face, not over the cellphone.
“May I know his name, Miss?”
“Lucien Walker.”
“I can call the reception and he can meet you in the lobby. But he will have to confirm he knows you first.”
“Oh, he knows who I am all right,” she says grimly.
But still, the gates remain closed as the guard makes his call. After about a few minutes, he returns to the Toyota, which still has its driver window wound down.
“Mr. Walker will meet with you in the lobby, Miss.”
He smiles and presses a button in the sentry box console. The forbidding gates open.
The country clubhouse is a sprawling place with several wings and a mixture of sloping and pointed green roofs. The gardens are resplendent, as always. Shannon would not be surprised if someone were to tell her that the Walkers had bought this place, refurbished it and sold it to a conglomerate to fashion a country club.
She parks the Toyota in an empty parking lot next to a hyacinth plant. She gets out. Her legs are wobbly. Before she can go to the entrance, Lucien is already at the door.
“Shannon? What’s wrong? Why didn’t you call me on my cellphone?”
How is she going to do this? She has no plan, really, other than to confront him.
“You didn’t tell me you were engaged to be married.”
He stops short. His face turns pale. That is when she knows, with her heart sinking, that everything Margarete told her was the truth.
“Shannon – ”
“You didn’t deny it.”
An elderly couple carting golf clubs comes out of the double doors. They regard Lucien and Shannon with curiosity.
Lucien takes Shannon’s arm and walks her to a more secluded spot behind a cluster of bushes.
“I was going to tell you,” he says.
“Really? When?”
“I don’t know,” he confesses. “It never seemed like a good time.”
“Now would be a good time.”
“I had no choice in the matter,” he says in a low voice. “It’s a family tradition.”
“To match witches of different lineages together? I thought you said you weren’t a practicing witch!”
“Ssssh.” He tries to take her arm again but she wrenches it off. “Please, Shannon. Let’s go to your car. We can talk there more privately.”