Chapter Seventeen #2
Deep down, the darkest, most selfish part of me was just as disappointed as my friend.
Ever since discovering the Powells had once been connected to the blessing, with magic of their own, I’d nursed the tiniest hope that Lydia might be the one to share my burden.
Now that light was extinguished for good, I could admit it to myself.
‘Anyway, it wasn’t only the magic,’ Lydia said, drawing me on around the curved footpath. ‘I’d kinda been hoping, maybe, this would be the thing that made me special. Something that was just mine and not Jackson’s. Twins always have to share everything, you know.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and meant it. ‘But you are special. Please don’t ever doubt that.’
‘And you’re a simp,’ she said, throwing an arm around my shoulders and tossing off her moment of melancholy. ‘Don’t matter none anyway. When it’s apocalypse o’clock, I’ll be right by your side, woman or witch. Come on, I told my mom we’d be there by now and I am dying for an Aussie iced latte.’
Collins Quarter was beyond busy, just like always. White tables and teal umbrellas filled the outside patio but when I searched all the customers for the face my mother had kept in a locket close to her heart, I couldn’t see her.
‘Where is she?’ I asked Lydia as she applied another slick of mango balm to my lips. ‘Did she leave?’
‘What are you talking about?’ she replied, pointing to a table only a few feet away. ‘She’s right there.’
I couldn’t believe I’d missed her. More than seventeen years had passed since the photo inside my locket was taken but Alex Powell had hardly aged a day.
Her brown hair was shorter, cropped into an elegant bob rather than pulled up in a ponytail, but I would’ve recognized her anywhere in the world.
When her warm brown eyes fell on me, the rush of emotions that overtook me were almost too much.
The sunshine overhead seemed to swell as my magic rose up to hold me down, and when Alex stood and opened her arms to me, I fell into them without a second thought.
Home. She felt like home.
‘Em,’ she exhaled into my hair, her arms clamped around my body as though she were afraid I might float away. ‘Oh my goodness, here you are at last.’
She smelled expensive but inviting, some medley of shampoo and perfume and lotion that all came together in a warm, floral bundle.
When she let me go and I pulled back to take in her blue jeans and pink button-down, accessorized with delicate jewellery.
Clean lines and clear colours, everything about Alex Powell seemed intentional, especially compared to her chaoticgood daughter.
‘Look at us, blubbing like a couple of babies,’ she said, reaching to wipe away a tear I hadn’t felt fall with a clean handkerchief. ‘I do not know where to start.’
‘You could thank her for saving my life,’ Lydia suggested, clearing her throat when I let out an audible squeak. ‘By moving to Savannah and saving me from boredom.’
‘Thank you for your service to the community,’ Alex replied drily, still standing with her hands on my shoulders while Lydia flopped into a chair and ran a finger down the menu until she found what she was looking for. ‘My daughter hasn’t stopped talking about you since you arrived.’
‘How would you know? You’ve been busy with Jeremy in Charleston.’
Alex was still staring at me as though I was some sort of long-lost jewel, and I blushed under her close inspection.
‘She acts like he’s a monster but her stepfather loves her very much. He would just love to have Lydia and Jackson living with us, but we couldn’t get them enrolled in the school we wanted.’
‘Also we’d rather die,’ Lydia declared. ‘It’s bad enough that you live there.’
Jackson and Lydia didn’t know their father, from what they’d told me.
A touring musician who had given Alex a fake name and a burner phone number that went out of service as soon as he left Savannah and his pregnant girlfriend behind, but I could see more than a little of this petite southern woman in both of her children.
The same warm brown eyes, Lydia’s pointed chin, Jackson’s high cheekbones, and all three of them shared the irritated expression she currently wore all over her face.
‘Charleston is a beautiful city,’ she assured me. ‘Jeremy and I would love to have you out to visit. With or without my ungrateful children.’
‘That sounds amazing,’ I said, a scratch in my throat as I tamped down my magic, a nascent patch of camellias threatening to force their way into existence in the big concrete planter at the side of us.
Alex’s eyes followed my gaze and I thought I saw the slightest hint of a frown trouble her face, but it resolved itself immediately when a tattooed server appeared with a handheld device to take our order.
‘What can I get you?’ they asked, eyes squarely on Lydia.
‘We’ll have three Aussie iced lattes, the French toast, chicken and waffles and a side of bacon,’ my best friend replied before giving me a look when I opened my mouth to make my own selection. ‘Trust me.’
‘Three of my favourites,’ the server enthused. ‘You’ve got great taste.’
‘My daughter always makes good decisions.’
The tone was unmistakable. There was no confusing the warning edge to her words and no mistaking the fact this woman wasn’t just Lydia’s mom. She was also Virginia Powell’s daughter. The server’s head bobbed up and down like a puppet on a string as they walked quickly away.
‘Thanks, Mom,’ Lydia said, tilting her head to check the server out as they went. ‘They were cute.’
‘Cute and too old for you.’ Alex rummaged around in her fancy black leather purse, not interested in debating the topic. ‘Well, I’ll be. Lydia, honey, I seem to have forgotten my wallet. Would you be a doll and run back and grab it for me?’
‘No. You can pay with your phone.’
‘I don’t have the right card set up to do that.’
‘You really want me to go all the way back home for your wallet?’
‘I have my wallet, I can pay,’ I offered when the two Powell women locked into an acrimonious stare-down.
‘That is very sweet of you, Emily, but I couldn’t possibly allow it,’ Alex replied before turning directly to her daughter with a meaningful look. ‘The house is two minutes away. I would very much appreciate it if you would go get my wallet. Thank you.’
‘If it’s so close, why don’t you go?’
‘Lydia.’
Alex was all out of warnings and Lydia all out of comebacks.
With a host of complaints muttered under her breath, she pushed back her chair, the legs scraping against the brick patio.
‘If the food comes while I’m gone, don’t eat all the chicken,’ she said before climbing directly over a planter box full of ferns instead of walking around to the exit. ‘And tell them to hold my coffee!’
A new server came over to deposit big plastic tumblers of ice water in front of each of us and Alex gave me an exasperated smile.
‘I’d love to say I don’t know where she gets it from, but I do. Only difference is, I would have never gotten away with speaking to my mother the way she does. Virginia would’ve grounded me for a month.’
‘You would need round-the-clock guards to keep Lydia in the house.’ I laughed nervously, picking up my napkin and rolling the edges between my fingers for something to do. ‘She really has been an incredible friend to me. I feel like we’ve known each other forever.’
‘In a way, you have. You and your mom were with me when I gave birth.’
‘We were?’
She nodded and I seized onto this new piece of information, tucking it away for safekeeping.
‘Was my dad there?’
‘He was around. Mostly he took care of the snack runs. Paul had no interest in what was happening at the business end. He stayed out of the way until me and the twins were cleaned up and presentable. Your daddy always was a little squeamish.’
‘That’s so true,’ I agreed. ‘You should’ve been there when I got my period for the first time.’
‘I know,’ Alex said softly. ‘I should.’
‘Oh, no, that’s not what I meant,’ I replied quickly. ‘I was only joking.’
‘I wasn’t.’ She lowered her head, a delicate pink flush colouring her cheeks.
‘Your mom and I made a lot of promises to each other when it came to you kids. I swore I would always look out for you if anything happened to her. At the time, I didn’t imagine anything ever would, not even for a second.
But before I knew it, you and Paul were gone. ’
‘He didn’t tell you he was leaving?’
‘He didn’t tell anyone. You’d been gone six months before I heard from him.
We were all losing our minds.’ She picked up her glass of water and took a small sip.
‘You must forgive me for not coming to see you before now,’ she said.
‘Catherine and I have never gotten along well and I couldn’t imagine her being too thrilled at my being involved in your life.
But when Lydia mentioned she was out of town …
Do you happen to know when she’ll be back? ’
I shook my head and she pressed her lips into a thin white line.
‘Will she be back?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘We haven’t really been in touch.’
We both sat quietly when our coffees arrived, Alex watching me while I studiously avoided eye contact.
‘You really do look like her with that red hair.’ Alex’s words were whisper soft. ‘But I can see your mom in there too. Paul would be so proud of you.’
‘Were you in touch with him the whole time?’ I asked, so uncomfortable under her gaze, I felt the temperature drop by a few degrees as a heavy cloud blocked out the sun directly overhead.
‘More or less. Occasionally there would be gap when y’all were moving around, but I always heard from him eventually.
Sometimes emails, mostly with letters, but never anything that came to the house.
Paul always used a third-party address and he insisted I keep a PO box at a post office over in Hardeeville. ’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Across the state line in South Carolina.’