George was devastated. Carmen told me he'd barely spoken since the arrest—just sat in his den with the door open for once, staring at his half-finished model planes. When the police recovered the diary from Claudia's closet—she'd kept it, couldn'tbring herself to destroy leverage she might need later, which said everything about who she really was—George had asked not to read it. "I don't want to know what Mom knew about me," he'd told Carmen. "I just want to know it's over."
It wasn't over, not for him. But the truth was out, and he was grateful for that in the stunned, hollow way that people are grateful when the surgeon says they got it all.
Paula had called the morning after. No pleasantries, no preamble—just Paula.
"You almost died."
"I'm aware."
"Thank you." Her voice caught. "For not giving up. Even when it looked like me." A pause. "The diary—my secret?—"
"It's evidence now. Sealed." I'd confirmed this with Tony. Whatever Rosaria had written about Paula and everyone else was locked in an evidence room, not circulating through the family grapevine. "Nobody's reading it."
The sound she made wasn't quite crying. It was relief exiting the body, twenty years of held breath finally released.
And then, two days ago, Josie had called. My firstborn, who'd called me a selfish monster and sided with her father and refused to speak to me for over a year. The call lasted four minutes. She wasn't friendly—that was too much to ask, too soon. But she was less hostile. She said she'd been asking Carmen questions for weeks — about the marriage, about what it was really like, about things she'd refused to hear when I'd tried to tell her myself. She said she was sorry she'd needed her sister's version to believe mine, and the wordsorrycame out rough, like she'd had to peel it off something. She said she'd spent fourteen months performing loyalty to her father and she didn't know how to stop, but she was trying.
"I looked at Dad before I looked at you," she said. "Every time. At the house, at the funeral, everywhere. I kept checking if he was watching. I didn't even realize I was doing it until Carmen pointed it out."
I told her I understood. I told her I'd spent thirty years doing the same thing.
She said she needed time. I told her I had plenty.
Now Nick sat at my kitchen table drinking coffee and not quite meeting my eyes.
"I should have called," Nick said. He was turning his mug the same way Tony did—rotating it in his hands, giving himself something to do. "After the divorce, after Nonna died. I should have called and I didn't and that was—" He stared into his coffee. "I took the easy road. Dad was right there and you were up here and it was easier to just..."
"Not choose," I said.
"Not choosing is choosing. I know that now."
Carmen caught my eye from the phone screen and gave me a look that saiddon't push it, let him get there.Twenty-three years old and already the wisest person in the family.
Nick left an hour later with a hug that lasted longer than any hug he'd given me since he was twelve. Awkward. Sorry. Real. Baby steps. I'd take them.
Tuesday night. Bayberry House. The coven gathered for the last time as an emergency response team and the first time as whatever came next.
Tammy had made enchiladas. Jill had brought a bottle of champagne that she'd opened with only minor telekineticassistance—the cork shot across the room and embedded itself in the wall, but nobody was hit, which counted as progress.
"So," Tammy said, topping off everyone's glass. "What now?"
I'd been thinking about this. Between the family calls and the police statements and the sleepless nights, I'd been turning it over—what my life looked like on the other side of solving a murder and nearly dying in a fire.
"I controlled it," I said. "The fire. At the end, I actually controlled it. Not perfectly—I know that. But I held on when it mattered." I looked at Lori. "You said powers awaken during transitions. Mine came with menopause and a murder investigation and my entire life falling apart. But they're here now. They're mine. And I think—" I set my glass down. "I think I want to do something useful with them. The medium thing, the fire thing—there are other people out there going through what I went through. What we all went through. Scared, confused, thinking they're losing their minds."
"You want to help them," Lori said. Not a question.
"You helped me. Amelia helped you. Isn't that how it works?"
Lori's smile was small and warm and—I could swear—proud. "That's exactly how it works."
"Besides," Jill said, "I still break things when I sneeze. Someone needs to stick around for property damage control."
Tammy raised her glass. "To the coven. Still standing. Slightly scorched."
We clinked. The champagne was good. The enchiladas were better. And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Tony pulled up to the cottage at sunset. I heard his car before I saw it—that particular rumble of a sedan that needed a new muffler, which he’d probably been meaning to fix for three years.
