Chapter 11 #2
“And you must be the man my mother accidentally summoned from another continent.” Sophia extended her hand with the confidence of someone who’d been raised by a woman who’d spent twenty years pretending to be smaller than she was and had decided very firmly not to repeat the pattern.
“Nice to meet you. Mom says you make excellent tea and you don’t run away when the toaster judges you. ”
Liam shook her hand, visibly recalibrating. “Your mum talks about me?”
“Constantly. It’s actually kind of sweet. She gets this goofy look on her face.” Sophia demonstrated—a dreamy, slightly unfocused expression that Cassie absolutely did not recognize as her own. “Like that, but with more blushing.”
“I don’t blush.”
“Mom. You’re blushing right now.”
She was. She could feel it. The walls were pink again too, which wasn’t helping.
“Right,” Liam said slowly. “Well. I should probably wash off the construction debris before dinner. Cassie, your daughter is terrifying.”
“Thank you,” Sophia said cheerfully.
“It wasn’t entirely a compliment.”
“I know. I’m taking it as one anyway.” She turned to Cassie as Liam escaped upstairs. “Okay. He’s hot. Good job, Mom.”
“Sophia—”
“I’m serious! He’s got that whole ‘grumpy but secretly soft’ thing going on. Very Mr. Darcy. Very ‘I will build you furniture with my bare hands and also emotionally support you.’” She stole a sip from her mother’s mug. “I approve.”
“You don’t need to approve. This is my life, not a—”
“Mom.” Sophia set down the mug and looked at her with an expression that was suddenly, unexpectedly serious. “I spent my entire childhood watching you make yourself invisible. Watching you apologize for existing. Watching you shrink every time Dad said something cutting.”
Cassie’s throat tightened.
“And now you’re glowing. Literally glowing. You have a magic house and a sarcastic cat and a man who looks at you like you’re the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.” Sophia’s eyes were bright. “You’re not invisible anymore. You’re finally not invisible. So yeah, I approve. I approve so hard.”
The tears came then—the happy kind, again, because apparently that’s who she was now. A woman who cried at her daughter’s approval and glowed when she was emotional and made champagne glasses levitate slightly when she wasn’t paying attention.
Sophia caught the glass before it drifted too high.
“Also,” she added, “this explains so much about my childhood.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mom. The time all my birthday candles relit themselves? The ‘static electricity’ that made my middle school bully’s hair stand up for a whole week?
The fact that every plant you’ve ever touched thrived despite you literally forgetting to water them for months?
” Sophia shook her head. “I just thought our family was weird. Turns out we’re witches. It’s actually less confusing this way.”
“You’re taking this very calmly.”
“I’m a Gen Z kid who grew up with you as a mother. My threshold for ‘weird’ is very high.”
Dinner was chaos in the best possible way.
Margaret arrived with ambrosia salad, lasagna, and a crystal pendant for Sophia that she claimed was “just a little something for protection” but was definitely enchanted based on the way it hummed when Sophia put it on.
Diane stayed, because Diane always stayed, and spent most of the meal making Liam increasingly uncomfortable with questions about Scottish traditions and whether he owned a kilt.
(“I own a kilt.”
“Do you wear it?”
“On appropriate occasions.”
“Define ‘appropriate.’”
“Diane.”)
Luna contributed running commentary from her perch on the sideboard, mostly judging everyone’s table manners and occasionally interjecting with observations about the energetic quality of the food.
“The lasagna has good vibes. The ambrosia salad is chaotic neutral. The bread is aggressively enthusiastic.”
“How can bread be enthusiastic?”
“Ask your mother. She’s the one who made it.”
Sophia, to her credit, took the talking cat in stride. Took everything in stride, actually, with the easy acceptance of someone who’d learned long ago that fighting reality was a losing battle.
“So,” she said, helping herself to seconds of lasagna, “when’s the next gnome growth spurt? I want to document it for posterity.”
“The gnomes are stable,” Cassie said. “I grounded the residual magic last week. Margaret says they’ll probably stay at three feet.”
“Probably?”
“Magic isn’t exact.”
“Comforting.”
After dinner, after Margaret had gone home with promises to return for Tuesday’s lesson on protective wards, after Diane had finally left with plans to return tomorrow for “moral support and gossip,” after Sophia had claimed the guest room with her bags and her exhaustion—Cassie found herself in the garden.
The sun was setting, painting everything gold and amber.
The roses—still impossibly lush, still blooming in colors that didn’t exist in nature—caught the light like stained glass.
The gnomes stood in their usual formation near the gate, fishing pole and wheelbarrow and the third one she still privately called Gary, all three feet of ceramic judgment.
Liam found her there, standing among the flowers she’d accidentally created, watching the sky turn pink.
“Long day,” he said.
“Good day.”
“Aye. That too.” He came to stand beside her, close enough that their shoulders brushed. “Your daughter’s something.”
“She gets it from me.”
“The terrifying parts?”
“All the parts.” Cassie leaned into him, feeling his arm come up automatically around her shoulders. “She approves of you, by the way.”
“I gathered. Though I’m still not clear on whether that’s a good thing or a warning.”
“Both. Definitely both.”
They stood in comfortable silence as the sun dipped lower. The garden hummed with residual magic—not chaotic anymore, just alive. Present. Part of her, the way Liam was part of her now. The way the house and the cat and the ridiculous toaster were all part of her.
“I have something for you,” Liam said.
She turned. He was holding a small box—wooden, clearly handmade, with delicate carvings along the edges that she recognized as protective symbols from Margaret’s lessons.
“What is it?”
“Open it.”
Inside, nestled in velvet, was her grandmother’s music box.
The one he’d fixed months ago, during those early chaotic days when she’d been convinced he would leave the moment he could. The one she’d cried over, because Derek had broken it and she’d never had the heart to throw it away.
But it was different now. Along the lid, carved in careful letters, were four words:
Never too much. —L
Her vision blurred.
“Liam—”
“I know we haven’t been together long,” he said, voice rough. “And I know this isn’t—it’s not a ring or anything. It’s too soon for that. But I wanted you to have something. A reminder. For the days when you forget.”
“Forget what?”
“That you’re exactly enough. That you always were.
” He took the music box from her trembling hands and wound the key.
The familiar melody began to play—slightly different now, richer, like the magic in the house had seeped into it too.
“I spent twelve years with someone who made me doubt myself. Made me small. Made me think my feelings weren’t real unless she said they were. ”
He met her eyes.
“You’re not her. You’ve never been her. You’re chaos and sparks and too much emotion and magic that sets things on fire, and I choose you. Every day. Not because of spells or binding or any of that. Just because you’re you.”
The tears came.
She didn’t try to stop them.
She kissed him instead—soft at first, then deeper, feeling the music box melody wrap around them like a blessing. The lights in the house flickered. The roses seemed to lean closer. And somewhere in the garden, she heard the distinct sound of ceramic hands clapping together.
She pulled back.
“Did the gnomes just applaud?”
Liam looked over her shoulder. All three gnomes had repositioned themselves to face the couple directly, their painted smiles somehow wider than before. The one with the fishing pole appeared to be giving a tiny thumbs-up.
“That’s unsettling.”
“That’s my life now.” But she was laughing, tears still wet on her cheeks, heart full to bursting with something that felt a lot like joy. “Get used to it.”
“Already am.”
They kissed again, and the garden glowed. Not from Cassie this time—from the flowers themselves, petals luminescent in the fading light, magic responding to happiness the way it always responded to her emotions.
Luna appeared on the porch, silhouetted against the warm light spilling from the house.
“If you two start glowing again, I’m leaving. I mean it this time. I’ll go live with Margaret. She has better treats.”
“You love us,” Cassie called back.
“I tolerate you. There’s a difference.” But the cat’s tail was curled in that pleased way it got when she was lying. “Now come inside before you scandalize the gnomes any further.”
Cassie looked at Liam. Liam looked at her. Both of them rumpled and emotional and probably glowing at least a little, standing in an impossible garden while ceramic lawn ornaments watched with unnerving approval.
“Shall we?” he asked.
“We shall.”
They walked back toward the house together, hand in hand, the music box melody still playing softly from where Liam had set it on the garden bench.
And Cassie—forty-seven years old, divorced, chaotic, magical, finally visible—let herself glow all the way there.
She was done dimming her light.