Epilogue
One month later, I am in bed, slowly awakening to the scent of coffee.
My favorite flavored coffee of all time, one that brings memories that are happy—me and Nadia dancing in the kitchen after we figured out how to replicate it for a fraction of the price—and sad: me, a ghost, conjuring this coffee like a spell alongside prayers of desperation.
A coffee I haven’t had in a long time—raspberry chocolate.
I push up, fully expecting Sage to be there, cup in hand.
After all, this was the exact kind of coffee I used to bring her as a ghost, especially when she forced herself to stop crying for years.
Please don’t forget me was my prayer with this gift.
And she didn’t. Even though it seemed like both she and Teal had forgotten me because of their anger with one another, they never did, not really.
Instead, though, it’s Nadia, the big white mug in her hand.
“Here, mija,” she says, and I hold back a wince from her calling me that. My daughter. Most times, I hardly feel like some cousin she’s never met.
Even after that night when I returned from St. Theresa’s with Adam, and my sisters all greeted me crying and shrieking, so much so that we accidentally scared poor Oak, and then Tenn had to go take him on a little walk down Catalina Street to get him to calm down…
even after that, things with Nadia returned very quickly to how it had been. Her being gone all the time.
And while it’s better now, with Adam keeping me company, and I’m seeing my sisters more and more…I still don’t like her calling me that. I’m no one’s daughter. That’s how it’s always been.
Even Amá Sonya has been kinder to me. She took me out to brunch at her favorite spot, the spot where she always takes Teal, right in the middle of town.
She told the server I was her granddaughter.
And sure, she looked around to see who was listening to this scandalous reveal, but it shows me that she wants to be better.
So I take the mug from Nadia, but I don’t say anything. She pulls a sheet of paper around from seemingly nowhere and gives it to me.
“Uh—” I say, rubbing my eyes to read. I nearly drop the paper when the words on it register. I take a big sip of coffee, because maybe I’m reading it all wrong and surely caffeine will help. But nope. Even after that enormous glug, the words have remained unchanged.
“This is the deed to the house,” I say.
She nods. “It is.”
“And it says it’s mine.”
Nadia nods again. “It is. All yours.”
I choke up. My eyes fill with tears. I can’t help it. “Why? But why? You’re not dying, are you?”
Nadia laughs and shakes her head. “No. I’m in good health.
But I’m also closer to eighty than seventy, Sky.
And I think this house belongs to you.” She pauses.
“Can’t you feel it? Of all your sisters, you’ve been firmly rooted with this place.
Even when you were a spirit, asleep in the woods.
” She looks me over, at my jaw still dropped.
“Drink your coffee before it gets cold.”
I obey her, taking another long sip. The coffee is perfect—the perfect balance of the raspberry and chocolate flavors, with the bitterness of the dark brew all marrying together. She even put a little bit of whipped cream on top.
After my next sip, I place the mug at my side table. “I—I don’t know what to say, Nadia.”
“Say nothing. Because I’m not done yet.” She nods toward me. “I’m sure you have questions about what you discovered under the church.”
I frown. “Questions? Church? There’s something under the church?
What?” Adam and I both agreed that we’d say I found exactly nothing under the church.
The story was, I had just gotten locked in the director’s office while looking for Nadia that night.
Naturally, I told my sisters the truth, but I didn’t want the cult—whoever they were, wherever they were—to figure out I’d been snooping around.
From the look on Nadia’s face, I’m not doing the best job convincing her I don’t know what she means. “The old gods have told me that one day, you’ll join us.”
I gasp. “Join you?” I lower my voice to a whisper. “So the cult is real?”
Nadia smiles. “It’s not a cult. Not the way you’re thinking.”
“But it’s something. Where you get together with other women and dance naked in the woods? Right? And you have been, for decades and decades? Right?”
Nadia laughs this time, placing a hand on her belly. “You’ll find out. You will.”
I shake my head. “I—hold on. I don’t understand how you’ve been in a cult…
or whatever you want to call it…basically our whole lives and somehow we never found out?
” Even as a ghost, I only remember Nadia’s grief, and how she started going to the church even more than usual.
Granted, I didn’t feel compelled to follow her and watch her pray and whatnot, but surely something… culty…would’ve stood out?
Nadia raises an eyebrow. “You really think a community of brujas wouldn’t have protections in place? Secrecy? Logistical as well as magical ways to keep anyone from finding out?”
I slump back in bed. I mean, I should’ve guessed. I straighten my back once more, though, when a thought occurs to me. “But I got into the top-secret underground chamber. That means it wasn’t that protected, was it?”
Nadia scoffs. “That’s because you’re destined to join us, and it was time for you to learn. If it had been anyone else, they couldn’t have gotten through.”
I know that’s all she’s going to tell me, so I push down all the questions bubbling up inside me. She gestures behind me, beyond the walls and out there. “Your sisters and their husbands have arrived.” She raises an eyebrow. “Adam’s here, too. Your soon-to-be husband, no?”
Nadia and her knowing. Adam and I aren’t engaged, but…
it feels like it will happen sooner or later.
And I’m so okay with that, I can’t help but grin, even as I say, “Shit. I’m not dressed yet.
What time is the baptism, again?” Sage wasn’t keen on getting Oak baptized at the church, but she decided she wanted to welcome Oak earthside in a better kind of way.
We’re going to the Finger Lakes to bless his head with lake water, and then we’re having a cookout and celebrating his beautiful new life.
Me, Adam, Teal, Carter, and Sage and Tenn.
Nadia declined, naturally, blaming her knees.
Amá Sonya thinks beach cookouts are for plebeians.
But that’s okay. With the seven of us, it will still be awesome.
“They’re early. Don’t stress out.” She stands. “You know, once I’m gone, there is plenty of room for them and all their families here at your home.” She nods toward the deed in my hand. “I always thought you sisters were at your happiest when you were together.”
With that, Nadia leaves. And I think, maybe in this way—I clutch the deed tighter in my hands—I do have a mother figure.
Not someone who would make sure to have meals with me and just hang out while watching Gilmore Girls surrounded by bowls of junk food.
But someone who checks that I’m safe at a quarter till midnight every night.
Someone who gives me a whole flipping house because she senses this house loves me as much as I love it.
And someone who makes room for the maybe of one day, my sisters rejoining me here with their families.
I stand up, stretching, and that’s when Teal and Sage come in, followed by Adam. “You’re not ready yet?” Sage asks.
“It’s early!” I echo Nadia, even though I’ve no idea what time it is.
Adam’s eyes crinkle up in a smile and I can’t stop smiling back at him. “I just came up to see if you needed anything,” he says.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “And by the way. Good morning.”
“Good morning.” His husky voice makes me grin even more, and Teal rolls her eyes and huffs.
“Come on,” she tells him, pointing toward the stairs. “You’re gonna slow her down even more, and I’m starving.”
“Starving?” I ask. “It’s going to be at least a couple of hours before the cookout’s ready, Teal.”
“Exactly,” she says. “We decided we needed breakfast beforehand. No one felt like cooking.”
Adam winks at me as he descends the stairs, which makes Sage mouth Aww while clutching at her chest.
“Bye!” I call to him. “See you in five minutes!” I grab my swimsuit and stuff it in a bag.
“Wear your necklace,” Teal tells me, lifting up hers from her chest.
Sage made these for us three years ago. They are crafted of the same slice of agate, one that looks like a wide, wild landscape.
When we were little, Sage used to show us the view outside this attic’s very balcony, and tell us that we were out there, as well as in here, all along the horizon—the green of the woods was Sage.
The ocean in the distance was Teal. And the sky, of course, was me.
I clasp the necklace on immediately. Before they leave my room, I shout, “Wait!”
“What’s the matter?” Sage asks right as Teal says, “What the hell, Sky?”
I don’t answer. I grab both of their hands and go toward the balcony.
“Oh man. Not this again,” Teal mutters.
“Not too close to the edge, Sky. Remember my nerves,” Sage adds. “Things have only gotten worse since I had Oak.”
Sometimes I like my sisters and me to stand here, just like when we were little, and watch us out there—the green, the sea, the sky.
They both act like they hate it, but the truth is, they secretly love it.
I know they do, because after we spend time here, holding hands and staring out, they both have glassy eyes. Just like right now.
“Okay, enough of this sappy crap,” Teal says. “Let’s go eat. And then grill food and eat some more.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Sage says with a smile.
I close the doors of the attic balcony and click the lock shut, noting the sage and teal and sky of the landscape once more.
Nadia was right about us sisters. Our happily-ever-afters have always included each other.