Chapter 64
Chapter Sixty-Four
Clara, Now
“Mommy?” Clara asked, taking her eyes off the match. The flame traveled down the stick and brushed up against Clara’s fingers. She yelped and shook it out. Then, she cried harder.
“I can’t do it.”
She felt the failure of the moment in her chest and her throat and her stomach. She wanted so much to save the house and to save her family’s magic. She was so close to doing just that, but she loved the kitten too much to give him up.
“I can’t hurt Ink.”
As the words left her mouth, the house stopped its shaking. The lights steadied, electricity humming softly in the air. Thunder rumbled outside as the rain continued its assault.
One minute Clara’s mom stood at the top of the spiral staircase, in front of Florence and Angela and Owen, the next she was right there beside Clara. She scooped her up off the floor and crushed her against her chest, somehow both gentle and firm and Clara wished she’d never let her go.
“Oh, honeybee.”
“Mommy,” Clara mumbled into Evie’s chest.
Evie ran her hand over Clara’s hair and pressed her mouth to the top of Clara’s head. Her tears dripped onto Clara’s scalp, and Clara sobbed when she realized she was the one who had made her mother cry.
“I wanted to save the house,” Clara said. “It’s not fair we have to let it go. It was trying to keep you safe. It didn’t mean to siphon your magic, and now there’s no one left to protect it but me.”
“You’re right,” Florence said from behind Clara’s mom. “It’s not fair.”
Clara looked up at her aunt. She brushed the back of her hand over her eyes and hiccupped through her tears. “Then why can’t we fix it?”
“We can’t always fix the things other people break. All we can do is find a way to live with the pieces that are left behind.” Her aunt, too, had tears in her eyes, and that only made Clara cry more.
“I wish we could,” Evie said. “But the only way to put an end to all of this is to let the house go. To let it have what it’s wanted all along.”
“To die?” Clara pulled back from her mom, wriggling free of her hold. “No one wants that!”
“No, honeybee.” Evie held her arms out to her. “To make it so we can live the lives we were always meant to have, without the women who came before us getting to choose what that looks like.”
As her mother said the words, the lights in the room glowed brighter.
“See?” Evie asked.
“But this was what my spell was for,” Clara said. “To bring us all back together. We can’t let the house go, now.”
“Your spell worked,” her aunt said. “It brought me home. It opened this room so we could release the house without your mom and me losing our magic.”
The light winked off then back on, almost like a question.
Florence knelt and rested a hand on the floor. “Thank you for protecting us. For saving me. I’m sorry I didn’t understand.”
Clara looked from her aunt to her mom. Evie dropped her arms to her side, then she knelt, too. “Without Clara’s spell, we’d never have known the truth,” she said to the house. “We’d never have had the chance to say goodbye.”
The walls groaned and Clara groaned right along with them as she sat on the floor between her mom and her aunt. She leaned her head against her mom’s shoulder, and Evie wrapped an arm around her.
“I love you, House,” Clara said through her tears. The hardwood softened beneath her, and she sank into it like she might into one of her mom’s hugs.