4. Chapter 3
Sweat trickled down her neck as she grabbed the last box from the back of her hatchback before weaving past the two other cars parked in the driveway at her parents’ house.
The old, deep blue Dutch Colonial hadn’t been updated since she was a child, but her parent’s caretaker, Betsy, kept it maintained well enough.
The sun hung low in the sky behind the two-story home, casting shadows on the small front yard.
From one side of the home, a faint blue light mixed with gold glowed between the parted curtains in the living room, while the kitchen had bright lights seeping from its open windows.
She was leaving for Arcania tomorrow and wanted to store all the things she wasn’t planning on bringing with her in her parent’s attic. She'd also leave her car parked in the garage, since Arcania was nearly eight hours away.
The door swung open as she pushed the box gently against it, and she groaned, dropping the box with the others she had brought. She brushed her hands along her neck, sending a simple cold spell across her hot skin, and she sighed with relief.
“It’s a scorcher out there, huh?” Betsy called out from the kitchen.
“Brutal,” Ivy said, moving to the next room where Betsy was stirring a pot on the stove.
Her short salt-and-pepper curls were pushed back with a multicolored headband, and a small desk fan at the highest speed was blowing next to her on the counter.
The house was kept warm for her parents’ sake, and Betsy said she’d grown used to it after a while, but a sweltering day like this one was too much.
“So you must’ve picked a school if you’re moving some things here?” Betsy asked, tilting her head toward Ivy for a moment.
She nodded, grabbing a glass and filling it with water from the sink. “I did.” She took a few gulps before placing the glass on the counter. “I got into Arcania this year.”
Betsy gasped and spun on her heel to gape at Ivy, her rosy apple cheeks dimpling as she smiled. “Oh, sweetheart, that’s amazing,” she said, wrapping her arms around Ivy to pull her into a warm hug. “It…is amazing, right?”
“Yes,” Ivy choked out as she hugged her back.
Betsy was more than just her parents’ caretaker.
As Ivy’s grandmother’s health declined ten years ago, they hired her as an in-home nurse, and she quickly became part of the family.
She’d been there for many of Ivy’s graduations, birthdays, and believed everything about Briar’s disappearance.
She wasn’t sure if Betsy was just placating her, but it kept her sane regardless.
“Even after everything…I still want to go,” Ivy said, pulling back from the hug slowly.
Her eyes darted to the side before glancing back at Betsy’s kind face.
Betsy didn’t know exactly why she had been hellbent on Arcania.
It was a secret she kept to herself. Mostly because she knew how she’d react if she told her there was an answer to getting her parents’ magic back and it was only at the school.
“I’m so proud of you, Ivy,” Betsy said, patting Ivy’s cheek for a moment as tears welled. She pulled back from the embrace and returned to her spot at the stove.
“Thanks.” Ivy grinned gently before taking a deep breath. She had to say something. She wanted her parents to know about her leaving for Arcania. To actually know, not just be told. Her fingers played with the hem of her white tank-top and she shifted on her feet. “I want to tell them.”
Betsy’s smile faltered momentarily before she looked back to Ivy. “Of course. You can tell them over dinner.”
“No, I want to really tell them,” Ivy said, tapping her fingernails along the countertop. “I researched a new remedy over the summer which should make them more lucid an—”
“Ivy, the last time you tried…” Betsy said, her words drifting off. “Well, you know what happened.”
The last remedy she tried caused her parents so much turmoil and sent them into a rage like she’d never seen from them before.
Screaming, cursing, and crying for whatever memories came to the surface to disappear and blaming Ivy for bringing them back.
They tried to strike Betsy before she calmed them, but in their weakened state, the only damage was emotional.
“I know,” Ivy choked out. “I only want them to be proud of me.”
Betsy placed her hand on top of Ivy’s. “And they are proud of you. How could they not be?”
“But I want to know they are.” Ivy scrunched her eyes shut, pushing the tears back, and only opened them until they could crush beneath the pressure.
“I know it’s selfish, but none of this is fair.
It’s not fair they had to live decades of their lives separate from themselves.
I’ve spent my whole life either hoping their magic will return or I’ll get it back for them. And nothing’s worked.”
“You’ve tried so hard, and I know your parents would love that spirit of yours. Somet—”
“Sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to,” Ivy interrupted.
She already knew what Betsy was going to say.
It wasn’t the first time she’d said it. She gritted her teeth, her throat aching as the tears she held back sent pressure into her chest. “I only wish I could do something before they…before they…” She couldn’t say the words. She couldn’t even think them.
“Hey,” Betsy said in a hushed tone, leaving the stove and wrapping her arms around Ivy. “None of those thoughts. They’re still okay.”
Okay. Not good. Ivy slipped out of her embrace and sniffled before gesturing back to the entryway. “I’m going to bring the rest of my things to the attic before dinner is ready.”
Before anything else could be said, Ivy left the kitchen to grab a box.
She hurried up the stairs as her tears silently fell, the old dusty-pink carpet silencing her hard steps.
Old, pale blue striped wallpaper and photos from when her parents were younger lined the walls.
There were also more recent additions thanks to Betsy, mostly upstairs where her parents didn’t frequent.
Some with her parents at her various graduations, some from her parents’ favorite beach—at least according to her grandmother years ago.
In the center of the hall was a pull-down ladder leading to the attic.
Ivy climbed it slowly, balancing the box on each rung above her until she reached the top.
The attic was stuffed full with decades of things collecting dust that she swore she would help parse through one day, but she hadn’t gotten around to it.
She pulled herself up, then the box, and carefully navigated through the maze to find an open spot.
Once she found one in the back, she set it on the floor and brushed her hands on her denim mini-skirt to clean off the dust. It probably wasn’t the ideal thing to wear when climbing up and down, considering the fabric chafed against her thick thighs.
As she pulled at her skirt, she bumped into an old lamp, which toppled an old shoebox from its tower, scattering pictures and knick-knacks kept inside.
She cursed under her breath before crouching to flip the box back over to collect its contents.
Mostly pictures and small trinkets which were, thankfully, not broken.
The pictures were from when her parents were young, maybe five years older than Ivy is now.
They were in bustling cities, in the quiet mountains, on warm, sandy beaches, and some mundane cities like Paris and Rome.
Back before they lost their magic. Back when they smiled, laughed, and danced.
A cry fell from her lips, and a tear dropped onto the photo.
She wished she had memories of them like that.
Or taken vacations, practiced her rudimentary spells together, listened to ghost stories around a campfire.
If only she could time-travel and observe her parents as they were so she could know them.
She set the one of them in Paris aside. Her brows crinkled when the next was of a small baby instead of her parents. She would’ve assumed it was her if the date stamped on the back of the photo wasn’t 1947. There was no name written, nothing to show whose child it was.
“Dinner’s ready!” Betsy called from below.
“Coming!” She glimpsed at the photo again before returning the contents to the box. “Just another unknown memory, I guess.”
The four of them sat around the round dining table.
The old mosaic apples-and-grapes chandelier glowed warmly on them and their dinner.
Ivy picked at her spaghetti as Betsy carried on a solo conversation with her parents.
In her periphery, her mother sat to her right.
Her long white hair in a braid along her back and her pale skin, paper-thin across her high cheekbones.
There were faint blue and brown bruises on her lithe hand that weakly grasped the fork.
Ivy thought back to the photo sitting in her room now, how youthful and full of life her mother had once looked.
Her hair was burnt orange, just like Ivy’s, though it had voluptuous curls instead of shallow waves like her own.
Her father sat across from her. He’d once been broad and muscular from his time spent in the military.
Without his magic, his muscles had shrunk, and his shoulders rounded as if he were too weak to hold up the frame of his own body.
His dark brown eyes had faded, and he stared at the center of the table as he ate his dinner silently.