Dad must have seen Eva’s face fall, because his expression softened. “There’s nothing more Dr. Rosen can do, honeybee.”
“But—”
“I’m tired of tests,” Dad said. He flicked one of the fluttering leaves. “I’m not going anymore.”
Eva’s mind spun. There had to be something Dr. Rosen hadn’t tried. Some angle they hadn’t considered.
“Hey.” Izzy took her hand. “It’s gonna be okay. Right, Dad?”
Eva squeezed her eyes tight. Glass, again. The pity made her stomach twist.
And made her magic bloom.
At her sudden onslaught of emotion, her gift flung itself wide, finding its mark in a burlap sack leaning against the wall. Eva’s palms warmed as bright green stalks carved their way out of the fabric and the pungent smell of onions filled the room.
She swallowed hard.Focus.She couldn’t lose control when Dad was so close. Her gift could make the roots of his tree push even deeper into his chest. What if they pierced a lung, or slipped into an aortic valve?
Or, or, or.
There were endless possible nightmares, and she’d gone over them all in her head a thousand times.
Breath tight in her lungs, Eva locked away her fear. She couldn’t let them see her like this. Brittle. Breakable. Dad had taught her once that she could be more than the storms in her head. Now she had to be. She forced a slow exhale and pictured her anchor: a blue sky full of clouds, slowly clearing.
Izzy squeezed her hand again. That, too, was grounding, even though it hurt to think that her sister had known about her father’s decision and had chosen to keep the truth from Eva.
“I want to show you something.” Dad plucked a roll of newspaper from his back pocket and held it out. Eva stiffly accepted it.They weren’t done talking about this, but she knew if she pushed now, he’d only bar the door further.
Later, when he wasn’t so visibly stressed, she’d bring up Dr. Rosen again.
Dad opened the newspaper to the obituaries. As Eva scanned the line of names, brows furrowed, a honeybee landed on her knuckles.
Connoway.
Heat shot to her spine. Eva sucked in a hard breath, suddenly taut as a bow. No. Not that name. Not his name.
She pulled back, reading again.
Charlotte Connoway.
Relief dulled her panic. The mother, then. Not the son.
It wasn’t a local newspaper but something that must have been sent to him. She hadn’t realized that Charlotte Connoway had put down roots after so many years of flitting from place to place.
When Eva thrust the newspaper back at her father, the bee flew away. Eva hated the flush up her neck, hated the gentle way both of them looked at her.I am not fragile.She wanted to scream it.
Instead, she bit the inside of her cheek, where they couldn’t see her bleed. Dad took the crinkled sheet and smoothed it out. “Lottie called me about her illness last month,” he said.
Surprise hooked Eva’s ribs. He hadn’t told her that.
“She wanted to come to visit herself, but”—his voice cracked—“she couldn’t travel, in the end.”
“Oh.”
The resounding silence told Eva she’d said the wrong thing, and awkwardness stirred between the three of them, thick as molasses. Eva should comfort her father. Yes. No matter her own distaste for the woman, Dad had cared for Charlotte.
For whatever reason.
Eva turned to her sister, desperate for someone to better guide this conversation. Eva hadn’t known Charlotte, not really. If anything, the tidbits she’d gleaned from her former friendship with Charlotte’s son, Arthur, had turned her bitter toward the enigmatic woman.
