Written in Stone Read Online Free PDF

I
     knew who I was and what I wanted, but some women never get to that point.”
    Olivia considered Lori’s words. She too had known women who’d deliberately invited
     destructive men into their lives and then spent their days bemoaning their situation.
     It had once been impossible for her to comprehend why these women didn’t leave the
     louts, but she now knew that people were often anchored to negative relationships
     by fear.
    Her fingertips reached for the starfish pendant. Was it fear that kept her from responding
     to the witch’s summons? Olivia shook off the notion. She was scared of nothing.
    Picking Rawlings out of a group of policemen, she knew that this was no longer the
     truth. What she felt for him truly scared her.
    *   *   *
    Back at her low country–style house overlooking the ocean, Olivia showered and changed
     into a navy sheath dress and a long Paloma Picasso silver chain necklace. The starfish
     pendant was tucked underneath the neckline of the dress, but as Olivia stood in front
     of the bathroom mirror applying bronze-tinted eye shadow and a ruddy beige shade of
     lipstick, she pulled out the gold starfish and stared at her reflection.
    “Mother,” she whispered and closed her eyes. She sensed that the images she’d stored
     of Camille Limoges were romanticized, and she didn’t dwell on the rose-colored memories
     too often, but there were moments when a montage of pictures would play across the
     movie screen of her mind and she intentionally got lost in them.
    Right now she was remembering having been caught by a late autumn thunderstorm when
     she was six years old. In the aimless, dreamy manner of a lonely child, she’d walked
     far down the beach, all the way around the Point where she could no longer see the
     roof of the lighthouse. A squall had swept in from the Atlantic, soaking her within
     seconds. Her pigtail braids had funneled water down her thin chest and skinny legs
     and her sneakers had squelched as they sank into the boglike sand.
    When she’d finally returned home, her mother had run her a hot bath, plied her with
     hot chocolate brimming with plump marshmallows, and then wrapped her in a towel warmed
     by the living room fire. She’d then brushed Olivia’s hair until it gleamed a pale
     gold while she sang
“Ballade à la Lune”
in French.
    Standing in her bathroom, decades later, Olivia could smell the lavender of her mother’s
     favorite hand cream. She could almost believe that her mother was there, an invisible
     force, still promising love and protection. Love and protection. These were things,
     thanks to her mother’s sudden death and her father’s disappearance a few years later,
     that Olivia knew little about.
    “I’ll go,” Olivia spoke to her reflection, knowing how much she favored Camille Limoges,
     though her mother hadn’t lived long enough to earn laugh lines around the eyes or
     a pair of parentheses around the mouth. Camille had been like Edna St. Vincent Millay’s
     candle. She hadn’t lasted the night, but she’d been a beautiful light to many while
     she’d lived.
    Loading Haviland into the Range Rover, Olivia headed off to The Boot Top Bistro. In
     the quiet, air-conditioned cabin, she sang the first verse of her mother’s lullaby.
    C’était dans la nuit brune
    Sur le clocher jauni,
    Sur le clocher la lune
    Comme un point sur un i.
    Ho la hi hi, ho la hi ho
    Ho la hi hi, ho la hi ho.
    Haviland made a keening sound in the back of his throat and Olivia switched to English
     for the second verse, which sent him into a full-fledged howl.
    Moon, whose dark spirit
    Strolls at the end of a thread,
    At the end of a thread, in the dark
    Your face and your profile?
    Ho la hee hee, ho la hee ho
    Ho la hee hee, ho la hee ho.
    Unable to compete with her poodle’s singing, Olivia fell silent, allowing the last
     two verses to float through her head in her mother’s voice, which was far more melodious
     than Olivia’s.
    Memories of