An Unlikely Witch (24 page)

Don’t.  We have to do this together.
 His hands were so very gentle in her hair.  Soothing, just as he did when Kenna faced one of the small hurts of childhood.

This wasn’t small.

She broke away from his arms, needing space.  Distance, and enough oxygen to find her balance.  Her ribs hurt—there might never be enough oxygen again.

He sat down on the bed beside her, all the weight of the horrible truth shining in his eyes.  There would be no little boy. 

She wrapped her arms around her ribs.  There would be no more children at all.  No more awed joy when they discovered they’d made a life together.  No more quickening of a soul in her belly.   No more needy newborns, and never again would she hear her baby’s first laugh.

Her body curled in on itself, rocking in the anguished rhythm of bereaved mothers everywhere.  She felt Jamie’s arms only dimly.

No sweet, gorgeous little boy to build a snowman with his sister.  Nat’s heart found somewhere new to bleed.  She’d grown up an only child, and it had been pure, lonely misery.

Stop.
 Jamie’s mind crashed into her litany of grief. 
There is—
his entire body hitched. 
There’s a lot to be sad about.  But Kenna will never be lonely unless she chooses it.  Not ever.

He enveloped her in his arms now, the two of them trembling like bereft leaves. 
There’s a reason she’s still confused about the difference between a sister and a cousin. 

In the Sullivan family, they were more or less the same thing.  Nat’s eyes squeezed tighter shut. 

Be sad for us,
he sent, wrapping around her grief with everything he had. 
But don’t weep for our girl.
 

She felt that tiny candle cast its wavering light into her darkness.  And with it, she was finally able to let her tears go.  She sank into Jamie, one ball of hot, wild anguish. 

And felt him meet her there.

She had no idea how long it took for them to stop.  She only knew that when they finally did, she was still wrapped in her husband’s arms.  Her heart still beat.

And they had one thing left to do.

Jamie’s eyes met hers, as sad as she’d ever seen them.  He knew.

She needed to be the one to say the words.  “It’s time to let him go.  To say good-bye.”  Something awful grabbed Nat’s throat.  She wasn’t ready.

Her husband’s face wrenched. 
We’re never going to be ready.

Not ever.  But they had chosen to embrace the world they had.  The family they had.  And to truly do that, they needed to let go of what they expected the future to be.  She touched Jamie’s face.  “Let me see him one more time.  Please.”

His eyes glued to hers, just like they had the very first time.  And then he took a breath, laced with enough courage for ten lifetimes, and pulled up the short movie reel engraved on both their hearts.

A small boy, with a smile that said there was nowhere better on earth than right where he was, arms wrapped around a snowball as big as himself.  She pushed through her tears—she would not let this parting come only from sadness.  He felt loved.  He knew happiness.  He touched joy.

She would remember that.  She would remember him.

Jamie quietly tugged on his magic and bathed their boy in light.  So much tenderness.  Nat linked mental hands with her husband.

Together, they sent one final message to the child who would never be.

And then they said good-bye.

Chapter 20

Moira sat at her kitchen table, watching the first hints of light sneak over the horizon.

She wrapped her fingers yet again around her lukewarm tea.  It had been a long, solitary night.  Sentry duty and vigil both.  And sorrow for the terrible forces rending the hearts of some of their strongest.

She wouldn’t sit alone much longer.

The footsteps in the hallway didn’t surprise her.  She knew they would come—she simply didn’t know in what order.

Jamie settled the kettle back on the stove as he came into the kitchen.  The kiss he dropped on her forehead was gentle—the grip of his hands on the table, less so.

His face wore fierce exhaustion.  Moira touched some of the deeper lines, heart aching.  “How’s Nat?”

“Sleeping.”

Said in tones that suggested it had taken a lot of painful work to get her that way.  Moira patted his hand.  “Good.  Sleep will help her heal.”

“How the hell does she heal from this?”  His flailing hands nearly punched a hole in her wall.  “She feels like she chose one child over the other.  We said good-bye last night, but this isn’t nearly over.”

The knives that chopped up his heart sliced at Moira’s too.  “Grieving isn’t a fast journey.”  But it was very good news that they’d taken the first steps, however painful.  “I yelled at the stars last night for you.”

That brought a touch of light to his eyes, and some of the jagged magic streaming off him eased.  “Is that why it’s cloudy this morning?”

She was just an old woman with no power over the heavens.  “It’s a fine thing to be angry.  I imagine I’m not the only one carrying some of that.”

He nodded slowly.  “Fury’s a hard one for Nat.”

“Aye.  And peace will be a hard one for you.”  She took his hand.  “But you will help each other, just as you always do.”

“She’s worried about Ginia.”

That, at least, she could ease a little.  “Children raised in love are very resilient.  She sleeps, and Nell says she no longer clutches at guilt.”  She ran her fingers over Jamie’s hands as they trembled.  “Nat did a beautiful job of making sure of that.”

He looked down at the table, but she felt something settling.  “It took me until two o’clock this morning to realize that Ginia’s answer wouldn’t have changed our decision.”  Love moved across his face.  “Nat knew that yesterday.” 

So Moira had suspected.  “You would never have let Ginia shoulder that weight.  Either of you.”  But the child would be far more whole today because she’d been allowed to try.  “I think Nell knew that too.”

He managed a flicker of a smile.  “Playing catch-up again, am I?” 

She could see the words kicking around in his head and gut.  “Natalia Sullivan knows how to take the hard steps of a journey as well as anyone.  And the importance of finding the fullest stretch.”

“She walked through fire.  And took Ginia with her.”  His hands were shaking in hers again.  “God.  Always, she gives.”  He paused, throat visibly knotting.  “She woke up last night.  She was having a dream. Where she chose one child over the other.”

Moira’s heart bled for them both.  In a very real way, that’s exactly what Nat’s body had done.  “She chose to protect Kenna.”

Jamie’s eyes were full of shards she couldn’t read.

She needed to know. 
He
needed to know.  Moira reached out and touched the cheeks of the man whose eyes had not yet closed this night, and asked him to look into the dark.  “Are you angry with her?  For choosing as she has?”

Jamie froze, every smidgen of color draining from his cheeks.  “No.”  His voice raked out over a thousand nails.  “Of course not.  No.”

His horror was balm to Moira’s soul—and it would be to Nat’s as well.  “She needs to know that.”

Very slowly, his face came back from the dead.  “I’ll make sure.”

So very gently, she led him to the next step.  “I’ve always counted your wee boy as one as my own.”

Jamie’s hands covered hers.  “But he isn’t real.  And Kenna is.”

The Irish had a far more fluid definition of “real”, but she took his meaning.  “Your daughter’s magic is fierce.”

“Yeah.”  He nodded, following the cookie crumbs of her words.  “And hard enough to keep under wraps as it is.  Nat still keeps her safe.”  Conviction, now.

Moira’s healer instincts quieted.  Good.  This would not come between them.  “Kenna chose her parents incredibly well.” 

He played with the fringes of a napkin, a smile tickling the edges of his mouth.  “Ginia says that what Nat did for Kenna—it was magic.  That for one, tiny moment, my wife was a witch.”

So had gone the quiet theories spoken in her pool in the dead of night.  “Perhaps.”  Moira paused, and then added a dollop of good healer intuition.  “Or perhaps Natalia Sullivan knows things about the power of love that the rest of us are just beginning to discover.”

“Yeah.”  His face was losing some of the awful pallor he’d arrived with.  “It fits her, you know.”

Now it was an old Irish witch trying to catch up. 

He took the lukewarm tea out of her hands.  “Standing on the cusp of Kenna’s power and meeting it with love.  She’s spent her whole life learning how to balance.  If anyone could pull that off, it would be her.”

Moira had seen the graceful joy of Nat upside down, standing on her hands as easily as most people walked.  But she had also seen the adaptable, energetic boy grow into the man across the table.  “She’s not the only one who knows how to balance.”

He nodded slowly.  “Witch Central is already rallying around us.”

As they should.  There were Solstice celebrations and birthdays and life to get on with.  But the Irish knew that grief could walk hand in hand with life.  “There will still be tears.  Seek them out and honor them.”

He would.  They all would.

She imagined that when it came to the face of the boy they all loved, even the snowman wept.

-o0o-

Nell knocked quietly at the door to her daughter’s room.

Healing had begun—but there was a long road ahead yet.  And they were all doing the careful dance of allowing Ginia enough space, but not too much.

“Hi, Mama.”  Said by a girl curled up in a window seat, eyes on something far away. 

But it was welcome enough.  Nell crossed over to the nest of comfy pillows.  “Hi, yourself.  Want some of Lizard’s eggnog?”  It was a true measure of her siblings’ love that there was any left.

“Maybe later.  I’m not very thirsty right now.”

Yeah.  Still a long road.  Nell set down the glass on a low bookshelf.  Sometimes mamas knew better than to take “no” for an answer.  “I’ll leave it here.  I bet it tastes a lot better than one of Sophie’s green smoothies.”

Ginia managed a decent eye roll.  Threat received, loud and clear.

Smart kiddo.  Nell found herself a spot on the window seat and cuddled a shiny red cushion to her chest.  “You guys have some new pillows in here.”

“Mia sewed that one.  Helga showed her how, from this cool old dress with a hole that we found at the thrift store.”

That was news.  The girls’ world was expanding, and their mama didn’t have tabs on all of it anymore.  “I didn’t know Helga knew how to sew.”

“She can do everything.”  Ginia grinned, momentarily distracted.  “She even jumped out of an airplane once.”

Only in Witch Central could an eighty-one-year-old woman be a source of maternal terror.  “If you guys decide to try that, do me a favor and make Uncle Devin go first.”  Right after he duct-taped her children to the plane.

It was a good line—and nobody heard it.  One preteen girl, sunk back into her funk as fast as she’d come out.

That was okay.  The words would come when they were ready.

“Auntie Nat had to say good-bye to one baby so she could keep her other baby safe.”  Ginia’s eyes were lost in deep, sad thought.

“Yes.”  Nell tried to keep her tremors internal.  “She’s one of the bravest people I know.” 

Ginia’s arms hugged her knees.  “Being a grown-up is really hard.” 

Fury sparked in a mother’s veins.  Nat wasn’t the person who’d thought she held the power in her hands to fix the impossible.  The universe had tried to use her daughter for cannon fodder.  “Sometimes it’s not very easy to be an eleven-year-old girl, either.”

Ginia’s soft smile could have melted half of Antarctica.  “Or that girl’s mama, I bet.”

Nell gathered her wise, fierce daughter into her arms, wanting to lock her into a bubble of safe forever.  And knew that neither the universe nor her daughter would permit that to happen.  “I’ll be okay.  Just like you will, and Auntie Nat will.”

“She said I helped her.”  A pink lip quavered.  “When I was sitting right beside her, I kind of believed it.”

Nell wished furiously for a target and a really sharp weapon.  And hated that in this moment, she had neither.  “A lot harder now, huh?”

Ginia nodded, one very forlorn kiddo.  “I think maybe she was just trying to make me feel better.”

“She was.”  But Auntie Nat didn’t lie.  Ever.  And her girls knew it.  “But I bet that wasn’t all she was trying to do.”

Blue eyes pondered a scrap of thread sticking out of a well-loved pillow.  “She was trying to make herself feel better, too.”

Yeah.  Trying to find the good in a deep ocean of crap.  Nell’s desire for something to break wasn’t only on behalf of her daughter.  “Sometimes, when really big, hard things happen, it takes a while for people to feel better.”

Ginia only looked sadder.  “Aunt Moira says we all have journeys.  Sometimes they’re pretty ones with flowers.”

And sometimes they were down through the lava flows of a really angry volcano.  “This one’s going to be pretty hard for Auntie Nat.”  Nell reached for her daughter’s hand.  “And for the people she thought were brave enough and smart enough to walk beside her.”