Chapter 20 #2
She knocked my arm with her shoulder. “Even without it, he would have been besotted. Your mother could charm the pants off a snake-oil salesman, and I think in the beginning, part of her cared about your father. There was a time, when we were much younger, that she wanted to be a ballet dancer. Our mother squashed that dream real quick. A lot of things were killed before they could take root.” She cleared her throat.
“Anyway, the day of the funeral, I went into the library and found the book of potions I’d used before and decided to try it again.
I understood so much more than I did the first time: order of things, how to stir properly, measurements, and the language.
I have no idea how I pronounced the words you have to speak at the end, but I can promise you, it was nothing like I spoke them that day.
It worked. I could read and understand languages which had been dead for thousands of years.
Now, I’ve always had a knack for languages, but it’s hard to learn something when no one can speak or read it any longer.
We can guess and hope, however, with spells, doing something like that can set off a chain reaction, cause an explosion, or something else.
Magic is not something you should mess with.
” Chuckling softly, she shook her head. “Still tasted like crap, and I still felt sick as a dog for a day or so, but this time, there was no one there to clean up my mess and put me to bed. I had plenty of time to do it myself.”
“Maybe I should try it. I suck at languages.”
“You could. I can show it to you, and you can use my chamber downstairs.”
“How long did it take you to pack up grandfather’s things?”
“Two weeks. Mother had called to inform me they were extending their trip. Dad had been gone for two weeks. I got off the phone with her and slowly trudged up the stairs. The closer I got to his room, Mother stayed in a different room, the harder it was to breathe, and the more I cried. In his desk, I found letters for Kelly, Virginia, Mother, and me. Theirs weren’t sealed, so I read them.
They were nothing more than him saying he wished he could have spent more time with them and telling them goodbye. ”
“I thought he died of a heart attack.”
Nodding, Pat wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“He did, but he’d been sick for a couple of years and had already suffered one heart attack.
He wrote the letters after the first one.
Mine was started then and finished a few days before he died.
He made forty-seven entries and sealed it in an envelope.
I think he understood the end was near. My mother didn’t want to admit it, but he had some magical abilities and could sometimes see into the near future with a precision most seers wished they possessed. ”
“I didn’t realize.”
“Kelly and Virginia didn’t know, and my mother believed she was all-powerful, the sole contributing factor to our magical abilities.
Besides, they didn’t give a shit about Dad.
When they got home, I gave them the letters, and they burned them without reading them.
I knew they would, and they didn’t disappoint. ”
I was utterly gobsmacked. How could anyone do that knowing they would never see their father or partner again?
Pat continued, “You were born, and soon after, your grandmother died, leaving Kelly in charge. To this day, everyone thinks Kelly is the most powerful, but she’s not.”
“You are.”
Shaking her head, she grinned. “You are wrong, my dear boy.”
“But I thought you said?—”
“I said out of the three of us, I was the most powerful. There is someone stronger and more powerful than me, someone who holds more magic in one hand than I do in my entire body.”
I frowned, baffled as to whom she could possibly be hinting about. “Who?”
She nudged my shoulder again. “You.”
The noise coming out of me sounded like a cross between a snort, a bark of laughter, and me being strangled.
“M-Me?” I sputtered. Swallowing hard, breathing in deeply, and releasing it, I tried to keep myself from sounding a bit hysterical.
“Me? Have we been hitting the ‘herbs’ again?” Occasionally, Aunt Pat had been known to either hit the sauce or partake in Mary Jane, which might explain her current delusion.
“I’m probably more sober than you right now.
” She lifted one of her eyebrows and scrunched her nose a little, giggling as she did so.
When she was like this, it reminded me of my childhood, of those times when I would cry because I was bullied or just needed some comfort.
My mother was never there to provide it, but Aunt Pat would hug me, rub my back, and tell me it was going to be all right.
Other times, she would start a food fight or hit me with a water gun when she thought I needed to lighten up because a boy my age shouldn’t be that serious.
Until we moved, she’d been my refuge and my friend.
It physically hurt that I didn’t know whether I could trust this woman when all she’d ever done was help me. But time marched on, and people changed—some for good, and others for the worst. I was not the same person I was when I left, and she isn’t either, even if she looked exactly the same.
“You might be,” I offered with a small grin.
Pat clucked her tongue and scooped up a handful of sand, allowing the minuscule grains to fall through her fingers, returning to the beach.
“Sand, when you step, lay, kick, shovel, and do any number of things to it, goes back to the way it was, but not really. Do you think those little specs are exactly where they were when I picked them up?”
I scoffed as if she’d gone completely mental, which I was honestly beginning to think was a very real possibility. “Of course not.”
“Real changes can happen in someone, and they don’t appear any different.
At some point in time, you are going to have to make the hard decisions, Lorde.
Will you break the yoke that binds you or become the man you were always meant to be.
The power lies deep within you, an ancient magic the likes of which hasn’t been seen on this earth for a long time.
And there may come a time when you have to choose between love and your family.
When the time comes, you can’t hesitate. ”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I dropped my head. “Aunt Pat…” I growled, not understanding what she meant. I’d already made the decision, and my mother was probably not going to like it. Her hate was deep-rooted, and I had to be prepared for her retaliation.
“Life is about finding your own path, making your own mistakes. Be like the sand.”
“Be like the sand? Everything you said before that makes more sense.”
“Sorry, just bear with me for another minute.”
I swore this woman could make the most brilliant person confused and question their life choices. “Get on with it, please.”
“When you were born, your mother expected a daughter. Everyone did.”
“I already know this,” I snapped. Being told I should have been born a girl hurt more than anyone knew. I wasn’t good enough, couldn’t be powerful enough, couldn’t be brilliant enough because I’d been born the wrong gender. My hands were clenched once again into tight fists.
“This family has always been matriarchal from the time before the fuck up with the swan spell. Most married to produce offspring, but not for much more. Rarely has anyone produced a son. In the past, some of the boys were sold off or abandoned somewhere.” She made a noise in the back of her throat before she sneered, “And they want to judge others? We were monsters.”
I’d had no clue that had happened in previous generations.
“Around the beginning of the 1800s, they stopped being so barbaric and would leave them at orphanages without a note or anything to identify them. Some, like your mother, did keep their sons, raising them as they would any of their other children, yet instilling in them that the woman is large and in charge.” She turned her head, her gaze meeting mine and holding it.
“When you were born, there were complications. Your mother bled a lot, and your grandmother tried to stop it with herbs and spells. Nothing worked. She couldn’t have any more children, and Virginia was barren, so there was no way she would produce a daughter.
They didn’t even ask me because I was nothing more than a bumbling fool.
The second I saw you, I knew. I could feel it in you, but I wasn’t the only one.
They could all feel the magic in you. When you opened your mouth and cried, there was a spark, and then all of the lights and power went out.
You took out a whole city block. You were special. ”
My throat felt tight. “I didn’t know that.”
“Of course not. They wanted you to think you were a nobody, that you were mediocre at best.” Pat reached a hand over to cup my cheek. “But, my dear boy, you are so much more.”
“Mother said no one else could do this. That it was my destiny. Why? If it was so important, why couldn’t she come herself?”
“Because she is right.”
“Pardon?” I pulled back as if I’d been hit.
“When she was still pregnant with you, she ran into Christoph, and he had Max in his arms. That little boy was a handful at three, and from what I understand, it got worse.”
I felt my lips pulling up into a smile. “I can imagine.”