The Magic Circle Katherine Neville (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📖

it’s just that I hoped if I kept you apart from all of this, despite everything, maybe at least you’d have some chance of a normal life.” She laughed and added, a little bitterly it seemed, “Whatever that might be.”

“Mother, I’m not asking you to explain the motives for all you’ve done or not done these past many years. That can certainly wait until later.” Much later, I thought. In fact, if I got lucky I might even get to forgo the pleasure of hearing that particular confession forever. “But what I would like tonight is some cold hard facts,” I suggested. “Just a mini-recap, a clue here and there, of what might be going on with your family—our family. If it isn’t too much to ask?”

“I don’t know why I irrationally hoped this day wouldn’t arrive,” Jersey said, almost irritably. “But I certainly never conceived I’d be ambushed long distance by my own daughter, before I’ve even had a chance to toss down a preparatory drink! Do you expect me to apologize for my entire life in three minutes?”

“Okay, take your time,” I told her. “Laf wanted me to speak with you first—but that gives us all night, since I’m not actually meeting Granny dearest till morning.”

“Very well. Exactly what sort of ‘cold hard facts’ did you have in mind?” she asked me coolly.

“Things like why your mother ran off to France and deserted you during the war, and why you then married, or lived with, not one but all three of her brothers—”

“For that, I need a drink,” Jersey cut in abruptly, leaving me dangling on the line three thousand miles away, and on my nickel.

When she came back a moment later, I could hear the ice cubes clinking in her glass like tiny punctuation marks as she spoke. Perhaps it was the liquor talking, but her voice had taken on a steely tone, as if she’d just stepped into a full suit of armor.

“Exactly how much have you been told?” Jersey asked me.

“Far too much for my own good, I’m sure, Mother,” I said. “So you needn’t worry about pulling any punches at this late date.”

“Then you know about Augustus,” was her reply.

“Augustus?” I said.

Though it seemed clear she must be referring to Dacian Bassarides’s true paternity of my father, wasn’t I the one who was supposed to be asking the questions? Nor was I at all sure I should just blurt out everything I knew to a woman—mother or no—who’d kept me in the dark so long about her own parentage. With Jersey’s next unexpected comment, I was relieved I’d had the sense, for once, to hold my tongue.

“I mean,” said Jersey, still able to phrase her words carefully despite the drink, “has Lafcadio explained why I left your father?”

Now, I hadn’t a clue where all this was leading, but of one thing I was positive: Whatever was coming down the pike, it was too critical for me to screw up now.

“Why don’t you put it in your own words?” I suggested—the only compromise I could think of between simply answering yes or no.

“It’s clear you don’t know,” said Jersey. “And to be frank, if it’s to be left in my hands, I’m not sure exactly what to do. I know it would be far better not to tell you any of it. Yet, considering that you said you’ve just been to Vienna and you’re now in Paris, I’m afraid keeping it all secret any longer might only place you in serious danger—”

“I’m already in serious danger, Mother!” I exploded between clenched teeth. Jesus, how I wanted to wring her goddamned neck!

Wolfgang had glanced over at me with one raised eyebrow through the glass wall of the booth. I shrugged my shoulders as if nothing were amiss, and I tried to smile.

“Of course, I realize you have every right to know,” said Jersey.

But she lapsed into silence again as if trying to sort her thoughts. All I could hear was the tinkle of ice cubes in the background thousands of miles away. I’d thought by now I was braced for anything anyone could possibly throw at me. But at last my mother spoke, and as always with my family, I wished to God she hadn’t.

“Ariel, sweetheart, I have a sister.…” Jersey began. When I said nothing, she added, “I should rather say I had a sister. We weren’t close, I hadn’t seen her in years, and now she’s dead. But due to an—unforgivable infidelity on your father’s part all those years ago—” She choked on her next words, as well she might! “Darling, you have a sister too, nearly your own age.”

I really couldn’t believe this was happening. Why hadn’t anyone told me? All these generations of lies and deception spewing from the operatic throat of my diva mother truly sickened me—though clearly the blame was far from hers alone. Augustus had done a pretty good cover-up job, too.

I probably would have done well to hang up and pretend we’d been cut off. But somehow I sensed this was just the left hook, that the right to the jaw was still coming. So I held my breath and waited. I knew that the mother in question—the “corespondent” in my father’s infidelity—couldn’t have been his current wife, Grace. She’d have been too young, twenty-odd years ago when Jersey left my father. But Jersey was still speaking.

“Ariel, I know your father and I should have told you long ago.…”

She paused, as if she had to put down a healthy slug of her drink before she could go on. As I watched Wolfgang pacing near the carousel I was grateful the French baggage system was one of the slowest in Europe, so I still had time to get to the bottom of this—though I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to.

“You asked why my mother deserted me,” Jersey said. “She didn’t, exactly. Zoe had gone into France to fetch my sister Halle, who’d been brought by her father to