Maggie sighed as she found herself unable to fight his pull, following the path as though she had been taking it all her life. The truth behind her nerves rested on the tip of her tongue, but she could hardly say it aloud. Anything that read as any sort of complaint felt oddly ungrateful, as though Maggie couldn’t dare to question the gift she had just been presented. But she felt as though she was bursting at the seams, and the only person she found herself leaning on was Peter and Peter alone.
“Maybe Hazel lost me when we were in that storm,” Maggie began in a quiet voice, as though the trees might overhear, “but who says that she would ever want to change that?”
Peter frowned. “I’m not following.”
“How can we be so sure that she willloveme?” The words tumbled out, and suddenly there was no way for Maggie to try and stop them. “How do we know that she would evenwantme anymore? All this time Hazel has thrived on her own! She practices her magic in freedom, goes where she wants, does what she wants. Won’t a daughter throw a wrench in her carefree life?” Maggie frowned and shook her head. “Not to mention an over forty year old daughter.”
“I think you’re making a lot of assumptions about a woman you hardly even know,” he replied.
Maggie opened her mouth to argue but quickly shut it. It was the truth behind his words that stung her, how well he already could understand her, despite only growing closer recently. Though she very much enjoyed being understood by someone she planned on eventually spending the rest of her life with, Maggie couldn’t help but feel her stubbornness grow.
“Maggie,” Peter said as the cabin could be seen through the trees. “Why do you think Hazel lives out here, in the middle of nowhere? Literally miles and miles away from Cricket Hollow?”
She looked up at him with wide eyes. “Well, I suppose I never really thought about it.”
“You have every right to wonder about how Hazel will react to you,” he continued. “If you acted any differently, I might’ve been more worried. But I don’t think you should hold her in such a regard, Maggie. Hazel built this cabin all the way out here for a reason, even if it is difficult for us to understand why.”
Maggie raised a brow. “You don’t know?”
“I have my own assumptions,” he murmured with a wink. “But I think your mother should be the one to do the talking, don’t you?” Peter motioned to the cabin.
As Maggie pulled away from Peter’s arm, she stepped out of the line of woods, and onto the cabin’s front yard. In the same second, the front door to the yellow cabin snapped open, revealing a short and narrow figure. Hazel stepped into the growing afternoon light, her brown eyes as wide as the sun above their heads. Maggie inched forward but hesitated, her hands nervously fidgeting at the base of her stomach.
Across the way, Hazel left the cabin’s threshold, her shoulders falling as the breeze drove by. And though there was a front yard in between them, the words that slipped out of Hazel’s mouth somehow managed to reach Maggie.
“You know.”
Hazel ran across the yard and Maggie met her in the middle. They collided like a pair of galaxies, a burst of emotions and fears surging into the air around them. Hazel’s thin, wiry arms collapsed around Maggie with the force of the waves she experienced the night before. She grasped onto the back of her head, Hazel’s fingers twirling throughout Maggie’s thick curls.
Though Maggie hesitated before, she only fell into her mother’s embrace. No matter what came next, no matter what Hazel said, Maggie would not let the moment go to waste. She hugged to make up for every moment lost, to heal every wound that went unbandaged, to fix every tear that was left broken and hurt. Perhaps none of it could ever be erased, but Maggie did not want it to. The scars that riddled her heart and soul built her into the woman she was then, into the woman her mother could finally see, into the woman her mother had saved all those years ago.
Hazel pulled out of the embrace, her palms pressed against Maggie’s damp cheeks. “After all the years I spent looking for you,” she breathed, “it wasyouwho was always meant to findme.”
“You…” Maggie felt her heart become full again. “You were looking for me?”
Hazel’s lower lip quivered. “My dear daughter, I have been searching for you every second of every day. There wasn’t a single moment that wasn’t devoted to finding you.” Tears streamed down her face rapidly. “There wasn’t a single moment where I didn’t love you. And now, if it is at all possible, I am only bound to love you even more.”
Maggie’s knees trembled, almost bringing her rushing down to the floor. After all the time she spent living alone, there was always someone looking for her. Every day was another painstaking moment alone. No one dared claim her as family, not with her lingering magic and unknown abilities. The foster homes that housed her as a child were quick to move her on to the next, the very moment they had the chance to. Maggie never once complained, never once ran away, never once let her despair and need for love grow into something dark and hateful. People she believed to be her friends turned away from her the first chance they got. Suddenly, on the mythical islandof Neverland, Maggie was given everything that had been kept away from her.
A love to call her own. Friends that would never leave her side. A family that went far deeper than blood. And someone who wanted her as their own, who wanted her as their blood, who wanted to belong to her. After believing that her parents were long gone, Maggie had found her mother. And her mother had wanted her all along. She had not been given up by her mother after all. She had beenlost.
Hazel rested her forehead against Maggie’s. “I love you more than life itself, Marigold Broomlin. And now, you are finallyhome.”
Peter came up behind them as Maggie cried. “Care to let a straggler in on all the love?”
“Come here, you King.” Hazel grappled at Peter’s hand before jerking him into the group hug.
Laughter and tears passed between them as time seemed to slow. Maggie had never felt more blessed in her entire life. On one hand, she found someone who wanted to spend the rest of his life at her side. On the other, her powerful witch Mother was only a few miles away, ready to pick up where they had left off at the first moment they could. Maggie tightened her arms around both of them. She did not know what she had done to have deserved such wonderful things, but all she could do was thank whatever higher power had granted her a fate like this one.
Hazel pulled away after a few more moments, swiping at her stray tears with the edge of her sleeve. “Luckily, I’ve got some tea already ready inside. Come along, you two.” She hooked her arm around Maggie’s, holding her close to her side. “There are some things I’d like for you to see, my dear.”
When they entered the cabin, Maggie was filled with the overwhelming sense of belonging somewhere. At first she wasn’t quite sure what that even felt like, but as the sensation settledinto the center of her chest, Maggie was almost brought to tears for another time that fateful day. There wasn’t a thing she recognized in the house from her childhood, but she didn’t need to recognize it. Everything felt like her mother, and her mother only meant one thing.
Home.
As Peter went into the kitchen, gathering the tea onto a wooden tray, Hazel led Maggie into a small library inside the cabin. Tall bookcases sat at every wall, housing books until it was considered overfilled. Recipes were scattered across a desk, ingredients left askew across the floor. Hazel scooted things out of her way before landing on a wooden chest that had been stowed inside a closet. She pulled it out by the handles, brushing away the dust from an inscription on the center.
Hazel ran her fingers along the letters. “Marigold,” she whispered. “My favorite flower. I had planned on painting your nursery full of them, you see. It was what this room would’ve been.” She grew wistful as she pulled a key off a chain from around her neck. The iron key fit into the chest’s lock, and it swung open with a quiet exhale.
