“I never want to seem ungrateful for you or your family or all that you have given me. I love you, but I simply—”
“You do not have to explain,” he says, squeezing her hand. “Grief is often too strange and too vast to fit into words.”
Lottie nods. Her eyes turn glassy, but she blinks that away.
“Do you have any other family? Did you ever go looking?” Marigold asks.
“My mother instilled a great fear of our family in me.” Lottie gulps down her drink. “She said we were made of bad blood, and we could only outrun it if we never looked back,” she says sternly, followed by an incredulous laugh. “I don’t know why, but I believed her. Besides,” she says, leaning her head toward August, “the best family in the world found me. Why would I want for anyone else?”
“Aw, we love you, Lots,” August says softly. His words make Lottie’s cheeks flush.
Marigold cannot stop herself from saying, “You are good. You have nothing to outrun.”
A small gasp escapes Lottie’s lips, and she fights against a slight smile. Marigold smiles back.
“Well, that’s my answer,” Lottie says, clearing her throat. “I think it’s your turn to be asked, Marigold.”
“Oh, right,” she says.
“My question for you is: Why are you alone?”
Her lips part as she straightens her posture. “I’m not alone. I’m here with the two of you.”
“You know what I mean. We’re guests. Customers. We’re not constants in your life.”
Each word is a knife wound. A blade to her heart, her stomach, her ribs.
Lottie’s gaze does not leave her when she says, “What about when we’re gone?”
That sentence is a blade across her throat. She is bleedingdown her dress, into the fabric of the couch, watching it drip onto the floor,tap tap tappinglike raindrops.
“When you are gone,” she says, her voice hardly a whisper, “I will be lonely again.”
“What will you do about it?” Lottie asks.
She leans against the couch, nearly bloodless. “Nothing. I can do nothing about it.”
“Don’t you want someone to share your life with here?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says quickly, and Lottie is taken aback.
She twists her body, closing herself off from the others.
August leans forward. “Marigold? What is it?”
Her gaze is now fixed on Lottie. “Promise me to keep any comments of disbelief to yourself, else I will forgo my truth and drink instead.”
Lottie nods slowly.
“I am cursed so that no one can ever fall in love with me. I will always be alone.”
The room goes uncomfortably quiet. Even the fire stops crackling for a moment.
“It’s a curse upon all Honey Witches in our family line,” she continues. “One that my grandmother was under as well. No one can ever fall in love with me.” There is a heavy silence that allows the crickets to sing for what feels like an eternity.
“How could that even work?” Lottie says, slurring slightly.
“It’s as simple as it sounds. No one will ever have feelings of true love for me. I will always be alone in that way.”
