She was. She could feel it. The walls were pink again too, which wasn’t helping.
“Right,” Liam said slowly. “Well. I should probably wash off the construction debris before dinner. Cassie, your daughter is terrifying.”
“Thank you,” Sophia said cheerfully.
“It wasn’t entirely a compliment.”
“I know. I’m taking it as one anyway.” She turned to Cassie as Liam escaped upstairs. “Okay. He’s hot. Good job, Mom.”
“Sophia—”
“I’m serious! He’s got that whole ‘grumpy butsecretly soft’ thing going on. Very Mr. Darcy. Very ‘I will build you furniture with my bare hands and also emotionally support you.’” She stole a sip from her mother’s mug. “I approve.”
“You don’t need to approve. This is my life, not a?—”
“Mom.” Sophia set down the mug and looked at her with an expression that was suddenly, unexpectedly serious. “I spent my entire childhood watching you make yourself invisible. Watching you apologize for existing. Watching you shrink every time Dad said something cutting.”
Cassie’s throat tightened.
“And now you’re glowing. Literallyglowing. You have a magic house and a sarcastic cat and a man who looks at you like you’re the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.” Sophia’s eyes were bright. “You’re not invisible anymore. You’refinallynot invisible. So yeah, I approve. I approve so hard.”
The tears came then—the happy kind, again, because apparently that’s who she was now. A woman who cried at her daughter’s approval and glowed when she was emotional and made champagne glasses levitate slightly when she wasn’t paying attention.
Sophia caught the glass before it drifted too high.
“Also,” she added, “this explainsso muchabout my childhood.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mom. The time all my birthday candles relit themselves? The ‘static electricity’ that made my middle school bully’s hair stand up for a whole week? The fact that every plant you’ve ever touched thrived despite you literally forgetting to water them for months?” Sophia shook her head. “I just thought our family was weird. Turns out we’re witches. It’s actually less confusing this way.”
“You’re taking this very calmly.”
“I’m a Gen Z kid who grew up with you as a mother. My threshold for ‘weird’ isvery high.”
Dinner waschaos in the best possible way.
Margaret arrived with ambrosia salad, lasagna, and a crystal pendant for Sophia that she claimed was “just a little something for protection” but was definitely enchanted based on the way it hummed when Sophia put it on. Diane stayed, because Diane always stayed, and spent most of the meal making Liam increasingly uncomfortable with questions about Scottish traditions and whether he owned a kilt.
(“I own a kilt.”
“Do youwearit?”
“On appropriate occasions.”
“Define ‘appropriate.’”
“Diane.”)
Luna contributed running commentary from her perch on the sideboard, mostly judging everyone’s table manners and occasionally interjecting with observations about the energetic quality of the food.
“The lasagna has good vibes. The ambrosia salad is chaotic neutral. The bread is aggressively enthusiastic.”
“How can bread be enthusiastic?”
“Ask your mother. She’s the one who made it.”
Sophia, to her credit, took the talking cat in stride. Took everything in stride, actually, with the easy acceptance of someone who’d learned long ago that fighting reality was a losing battle.
