“Just as well.” She sighed. “Let me get a look at you.” Bending down, she lifted my chin, turning my face as she studied it. I’d been at the berries again, and a thick drop of wine-colored juicesat on my lip. She wiped it off with a finger that she quickly put in her mouth, tasting. “Stick out your tongue,” she told me, straightening.
I did as I was told. It was no doubt stained a blistering magenta color.
She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Where’s your mother?”
I pointed toward the house, the sliding glass doors that led into the living room.
Without another word, she marched across our lawn and let herself in.
Once she disappeared inside, I crept slowly behind and wedged myself under the kitchen window so I could eavesdrop.
“Can’t just come striding in here!” I caught my mother saying.
“Shall I go back out and knock?” the woman asked.
“No, of course not. But what if Gerald had been home?” my mother continued.
I could practically hear the woman shrug. “I’m sure he’ll learn what you are sooner or later. And then what, Lily? Have you asked yourself that?”
My mother made a disgruntled noise.
I rose on the balls of my feet and peered over the window ledge. My mother was leaning back against the kitchen sink, hands gripping the counter. Before her, the woman loomed, tall as any man and straight as a pine tree.
She picked up a coffee mug from the nearby dinette table. It was Gerald’s favorite, shaped like a football, and was never far from his ashtray. “What are you playing at, Lily?” she asked my mother with a tsk. “You know better than this. We aren’t on an episode ofBewitched.Our magic doesn’t work like that. There is a price for being who we are,whatwe are.”
My mother scowled. She walked over and pulled the mug from the woman’s hand, tucking it against her chest. “Don’t tell me how to live my life.”
“Someone has to.” The woman flourished an arm to indicatethe house. “This is not a life for us. You know that.Thisis not something we get to have.”
“He takes care of us,” my mother stubbornly insisted. “You wouldn’t understand, but weneedhim.” She set the cup in the sink. “You made your choices,” she said quietly. “And I make mine.”
“What would Grandma Laurel say?” the woman admonished. “This is my sister’s fault. Angel was always dreaming of a different life when we were growing up—princes and kisses and fairy tales—running headlong into what she knew she couldn’t have. She never taught you right.”
“This has nothing to do with her,” my mother quietly insisted.
“It has everything to do with her,” the woman replied. “She was a fool. And she’s made you one as well. Took me long enough to find you here, playing housewife while that daughter of yours languishes in the dark with no clue of her heritage, already in bloom, early just like you.”
Suddenly, my mother spun on her. “Leave Piers out of this. She’s a child.”
The woman rolled her eyes again. “If only. She’s one of us, Lily, and she’ll overripen. It will cost her, if it hasn’t already. Just like it did you.”
My mother’s head shot up. “Don’t you dare speak of it.”
The woman sighed and placed a hand on my mother’s shoulder. “I’m trying to help you, Lily. Please let me.”
My mother shook her off. “Like you helped my mother?” She gave a hard stare. “Thank you, but we’ll help ourselves. Piers’s gifts will wither on the vine. Mine have. Muscles atrophy when you stop using them.”
The woman looked sad, the delicate corners of her lips curving down. “You know it doesn’t work like that.”
“Doesn’t matter,” my mother said. “We have drugs now, things that weren’t available to our mothers and grandmothers. We don’t have to bethisanymore. I’m getting better every day. She’s getting better every day.”
The woman rubbed forcefully at her forehead. “You don’t really believe that, Lily. Let me take her before it’s too late. Let me teach her. I know Patrick’s death has been hard on you. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, love happens. No one blames you for that. But this… it’s bordering on unforgivable. Whatever my sister’s faults, even she saw reason in the end. Let me do this for you, forher.To keep you both safe.”
“She’smydaughter. Not yours,” my mother snapped. “How dare you come here and threaten me.”
The woman drew herself up to her full height, stiffening. “She belongs to the venery, Lily. Thefamily.She’s not yours alone. She’s also my great-niece. We have to look out for each other.”
“I don’t have a family,” my mother said coldly.
