His words hit her like a gust of cold wind. Marigold blinks tightly. She knows that feeling well—she was brave enough to follow it all the way to Innisfree, but she did not do it alone. Perhaps she would not have been able to. It’s one thing to go on adventures with someone older and wiser guiding the way, but to go out into the great big world alone?
She couldn’t do it. She knows, deep in her bones, she couldn’t. That’s why she hasn’t visited her family. She is too afraid to go alone.
August opens his eyes and clears his throat. “That’s what I would say.”
“What about your travels with your father on business? Does that do anything to scratch that itch?” Marigold asks.
Shaking his head, he says, “It’s always the same routes, same ships, same people. And like you said, it’s always business.” He paces, hands in his hair. “I want to see art. Music! Food! Culture!”
“I think you should,” Lottie says, finishing her drink and refilling her cup. “Selfishly, I admit that I hate when you are away. But, because I love you and I know you better than I know myself, I think you should go somewhere. Love someone. Chase something. You can do that, August. I know you can.”
He smiles softly, like he knows that it won’t happen. “Maybe I will.”
“You will,” she says.
He sits on the floor across from the couch. “Here’s your question, Lots: Why are you so adamant about not believing in magic?”
Oh yes.Marigold would give anything to know the answer to this.
“I choose to drink,” she says, downing her cup.
He throws his hands up. “Oh, come now! Why is that so hard to answer?”
She swallows hard. “Because it is sad.”
“You can be sad here. It’s a good place to be sad,” Marigold says, smiling softly.
She gestures to her empty cup. “But I have already drunk. It’s against the rules to answer now.”
Marigold takes the bottle from the table, refills the cup, and whispers, “We won’t tell anyone.”
The moment stretches and thins, threatening to disappear until Lottie sighs. “Fine.”
Marigold leans in, perfectly silent, barely breathing.
“I do not believe in magic because my mother believed inmagic, and now she’s dead. If magic was real, she would be alive, and I would have had a life with her and my father.” She picks at her nails, her pointer finger sliding up her hand and tracing a faint scar. “I would have happy memories with them. A story of us that I could share with people. I would have had a real birthday. I imagine my mother would have given me something to cherish—a necklace or a hair ribbon or something—and I would still have it today. And I would fidget with it constantly and say things like, ‘Oh, this? My mother gave it to me ages ago,’ and I would smile. But I have none of that. And so, I do not believe in magic.”
Marigold has heard, over the years, many people share their disbelief of anything whimsical.
It’s all charlatanism, smoke and mirrors.
“Folklore is born only from the mind of a poet. It is all our imagination,” George once said.
Those people, their skepticism is born out of the fear that something could be more powerful than what they can create. Lottie, though, she’s different. She is not afraid of magic. She is angry with it.
“I understand,” Marigold says.
“Do you?”
“I think I do. I think you are allowed to be angry. Perhaps that is the consolation for such a loss—you can be angry forever if you want. No one can ask you to move on from that. It’s like asking…” She stumbles over her words, her drink sloshing in her hand. “Oh, I can hardly be coherent. But it’s like asking the skies to stop holding rain clouds because they’re too heavy. It can’t be done. It doesn’t matter how hard it is to carry; that grief cannot be let go.”
Lottie is frozen still.
Oh, dammit.Did she say the wrong thing? Again? She always says the wrong thing to Lottie. But Lottie does not run or scowl. She smiles, nods softly, and sinks back into the sofa.
“Yes. That’s how it is. That is how I grieve.”
“You never told me that,” August says, reaching across the table and offering his hand to her.
