And for a second I think, okay, maybe him thinking that is enough. But in my heart I know it would still feel like I was lying to him.
I take a deep breath and I blow it out.
“No, not like that. Crystals are useful sometimes. But I mean real magic, Caleb.”
He gives me a quizzical look and I can practically see the gears turning in his head as he sorts through this new information in the same cold, calculating engineering man way he always used to. And the way that makes him an excellent coastal conservation officer, in a way that I loved when we were growing up and he could always find the solution to a problem no matter how impossible it seemed.
“Okay, so you think you can do magic?” he says, expression no-nonsense, tone slightly patronizing. Which honestly is better than I expected it to go, but he clearly still doesn’t believe me.
“Caleb, I know what you’re thinking and I appreciate you trying to deal with this.”
I pause because I’m floundering for words. It all sounds absurd, but I need him to understand that it’s real.
I look at Gunner.
Gunner puts his paws over his eyes where he sits on the floor.
“Gunner, you know I didn’t want to do this and I didn’t plan for this.”
Gunner lets out a long whine and Caleb looks between me and the dog suspiciously.
“Gunner, speak.”
Gunner barks and Caleb laughs.
“If that’s how you prove that you’re magical to me, then frankly that’s all I need.”
I hold up a hand.
“Caleb, stop talking. Gunner, it’s time, buddy. I know. I know how you feel about this, trust me. But you miss Caleb. I know you miss Caleb, and I miss Caleb. And he needs to know. He needs to know.”
Gunner stands up, comes over slowly, and puts his chin on Caleb, who still looks completely mystified but indulgent, as though I’m a small child who’s trying to show him a card trick and simply cannot pull the right ace of spades.
“Gunner,” I say softly. “You know my magic isn’t showy. It’s not like Posey’s. It’s not like Rose’s. It’s something that happens quietly.”
I look at Caleb, very serious, even though the absurdity of the situation is making me want to laugh out loud. My heart’s beating a mile per minute and my palms are sweating in spiteof the fact that I’ve long since left my hot cocoa mug sitting by itself, steaming on the table.
I rub my palms against my dress and look back at Gunner.
“Gunner, you’re gonna have to show him.”
Caleb’s petting his soft head slowly the way he always has, because Gunner has just about the most velvet heist ears in the entire world.
And Gunner looks up at him with his chocolate brown eyes and says, “Yeah, she’s right, Caleb. She’s magical. I can talk. It’s a secret. You said I looked good for my age. Well, I’m always going to look good for my age. So now you’re going to have to figure out how to lie to the whole town so that they don’t know that I’m Ivy’s familiar and not some regular dog.”
I put my hand over my mouth because the little monologue is just so typically Gunner, so matter of fact, that I can’t think of a better way to have told Caleb than to have Gunner lay it out for him like it’s some kind of a math problem.
Caleb looks between us, his mouth open. I don’t say anything. I wait.
I’ve never told anybody that I’m magical. My sisters and I, there was no reason to. We had each other. We had my grandmother. And the only other people that we needed to explain it to left us.
So I wait.
I wait for the moment that he flips out.
And I stare at him, then I look at Gunner. And I don’t wish the words back into my mouth. I don’t regret it. In fact I feel relieved, relaxed. I don’t remember the last time I felt so certain that I’d done the right thing, even if it might have the most extreme, terrible consequence, which would be Caleb telling me that I was crazy and making me leave in the middle of this storm.
“How did you do that?” he asks me, his eyes wide. “Is it some kind of ventriloquist act?”
