Then flung the phone into the couch cushions.
She got up to toss the takeout box, stepped on something wet in her socks (please be water, please be water), and?—
Paused.
The book was on the coffee table.
Open. Pages fluttering gently, even though the windows were still closed and the air was perfectly still.
One page glowed faintly. Just a shimmer. Like the idea of light.
Next to it sat a small velvet pouch she definitely hadn't seen earlier. Hadn'townedearlier.
She frowned. "Great. Someone's pranking the divorced lady. How original."
But she opened the pouch anyway.
Inside was a silver spoon. Old. Tarnished in all the right places. Etched with a symbol that looked like a star having an emotional breakdown—all angles and swirls and something that whisperedpossibility.
Cassie held it up to the light.
It pulsed.
Just once.
Like a heartbeat. Or recognition. Or like it had been waiting for her to be ready.
Or desperate enough.
Same thing, really.
The spoon warmed in her palm, just for a second. Or maybe that was the wine. Or maybe it was menopause. Who could tell anymore?
She looked at the spellbook. At the spoon. At her dead-but-now-blooming aloe plant.
She didn't know it yet, but the universe was done watching her fall apart quietly.
Something was about to shift.
And it was not going to ask permission.
She kept the spoon.
Just in case.
1
MIDLIFE MELTDOWN. CUE MAGIC
Three days after the universe dropped a mysterious spellbook on her doorstep, Cassie was starting to think the wine had been stronger than she'd thought.
The book sat on her kitchen counter now, innocently closed, looking like something from a yard sale rather than a cosmic intervention. The silver spoon she'd found with it was tucked in her junk drawer between expired coupons and batteries that might be dead.
Her aloe plant, however, was still blooming.
That was harder to explain away.
This morning'scrisis was more mundane… her kitchen sink was leaking. Again.
