9. Winnie #2
Crystals. Old books. Bundles of dried herbs. A theatrical skull purchased in 1983. Three cloaks. A small, cast-iron cauldron.
Magical communities survived through misdirection. If someone spotted a casket in the back of my car, it was cause for concern. If someone spotted a casket, a cauldron, crystals, and a skull, they usually concluded I was committed to a Halloween aesthetic and didn’t ask questions.
Humans were wonderfully incurious if they thought they knew the answer.
I brought the cauldron inside and set it on the stove.
Billie stared at it with open reverence. “Is that where witches make frogs?”
“Only irresponsible witches.”
“Are you an irresponsible witch?” she asked.
“No.”
“Are you a responsible witch?”
“Why don’t you pull your stool over here so you can help me with the potion?”
That distracted her.
We began with beef because a potion that fed children required substance.
I chopped vegetables while Billie stood on her stool beside me, wearing a black sheet from the linen closet tied around her shoulders.
I had one draped around me too, because she insisted all serious potion work required uniforms.
“Do we cackle?” she asked.
“Only when we stir.”
She nodded solemnly. “Good rule.”
We browned the beef in batches, and I taught her how patience gave flavor time to develop. We added onions, carrots, celery, garlic, herbs, broth, and a spoonful of tomato paste. Then came the roux, which Billie misunderstood with great confidence.
“Is the kangaroo going in now?”
I smiled. “You mean the roux.”
She crinkled her adorable little nose. “That’s what I said.”
“It is not.”
“Maybe kangaroos are secret ingredients.”
“Not in this household.”
She helped sprinkle flour into melted butter, watching the mixture thicken with fascination.
“This is science,” Billie reported.
“Much of cooking is.”
“Bianca should know all about it.”
I nodded. “She probably does.”
“Bianca knows too much. Sometimes facts fall out of her because there’s no more room inside her.”
That was far too insightful for a five-year-old.
“She is full of invaluable knowledge.”
Billie considered that. “CJ is full of fake facts.”
“Stories,” I corrected.
“What am I full of?”
Mud. Questions. Longing. Fire without any fear of what might burn.
“Discovery,” I finally said.
The answer pleased her. She dropped a star anise pod into the cauldron and whispered, “Real stars.”
I let her believe it.
When Conrad returned with CJ and Bianca, the kitchen smelled of rich stew, fresh bread warming in the oven, and the lingering scent of a mud adventure. Billie stood on her chair in her black sheet-robe, dropping carrots into the cauldron one at a time. I tried to be dignified in mine.
The back door opened, followed by voices and laughter, as the kids carried their prizes into the kitchen.
Conrad stepped in and stopped dead in his tracks. CJ bumped into him from behind. Bianca peered around his arm.
Billie lifted both hands. “We’re making a beef potion!”
Conrad gave me a quizzical look.
I stirred the cauldron. “It’s stew.”
“We put a kangaroo in it,” Billie announced.
“We made a roux.”
“There are real stars in it,” she exclaimed.
“Anise seed pods.”
Conrad’s face moved through confusion, relief, amusement, and a softer gaze I tried not to notice. He looked more relaxed than he had in days, perhaps weeks. His sleeves were rolled up, showing off a blue arcade bracelet on his wrist.
“How was the arcade?” I asked.
CJ held up a small rubber alien. “Transformational.”
Bianca clutched a large plush frog under one arm. “I achieved several high scores.”
“Bianca became queen of a maze game,” CJ said. “There were no survivors.”
Conrad smiled at them both, and the sight caught me unprepared.
He looked happy. Genuinely happy, with his children flanking him and Billie vibrating beside the stove and the cauldron bubbling between us.
I looked back down at the stew too quickly.
CJ came around the island and held both fists out toward Billie. “Pick one.”
Billie gasped. “A trial.”
“A gift.”
She studied his hands intensely, then tapped the left. CJ opened it. A ring pop sat in his palm, bright and ridiculously full of red-dye 40 and sugar.
Billie made a sound I suspected only dogs and certain supernatural beings could fully appreciate. “For me?”
“For you.”
She threw her arms around his waist so hard he stumbled back a step. “I forgive you for abandoning me.”
“I appreciate the pardon.”
Bianca set the plush frog carefully on a chair. “We didn’t abandon you. We had separate bonding time.”
Billie stuck the ring pop onto her finger and admired it. “My bonding time had mud.”
“Of course it did,” Conrad said, but I could tell he was grateful.
They had dinner around the kitchen table because the dining room was too formal for potion stew and arcade prizes. I served everyone, including Conrad, who tried to stand and help twice before I gave him a look that made him sit back down.
“I can carry the bowls,” he said.
“You can also relax.”
“I’m not sick anymore, remember?”
“You just spent the afternoon in an arcade with two rambunctious children. Take it easy.”
CJ nudged him. “The queen makes strong points.”
“Arcades are neurologically demanding,” Bianca said primly.
Billie held up her ring pop. “My jewel says sit.”
Conrad sat and turned to face me. “You’re joining us for dinner, right?”
“I’d love to stay and hear about everyone’s day, if that’s all right?” I swallowed hard. “But I’m really not hungry. I ate a heavy lunch.”
The stew had turned out wonderfully, though Billie insisted on calling it beef potion at every opportunity. She told everyone about the garden. Not accurately.
“We buried weeds,” she said through a mouthful of bread.
“We removed weeds,” I corrected.
“And made Filth Elixir.”
“That part is unfortunately true.”
“I got hosed,” she said.
Conrad paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. “You got what?”
“With the outside hose,” Billie said happily. “It was freezing and fun.”
“She was quite muddy,” I explained.
“How muddy?”
“Ecosystem,” Billie supplied.
Conrad looked at me.
I nodded. “Yes, she was so muddy, she became a new ecosystem.”
CJ laughed so hard, he nearly choked on his food. Bianca tried and failed to hide her smile.
The older two told Billie about the arcade, and Billie demanded to know whether the machines had “inside fairy people.” CJ explained pixels in an increasingly fantastical manner.
Bianca, hugging her plush frog under one arm, corrected him in a serious tone.
The joy radiating from Conrad made me want to scoot closer to him.
This was what I had warned myself against.
Contentment.
It had a way of convincing you to unpack your bags. To stop watching the horizon. To believe, even for a little while, that you might be allowed to keep the life you’d built.
I had no business getting tangled up in that emotion, because nothing lasted for me. Not very long, anyway.
I gazed around, my heart aching a little.
It was all so wonderful. The room was filled with steam from the cauldron still cooling on the stove.
Mud-streaked boots sat by the back door.
Arcade prizes cluttered the table. Billie’s black sheet had slipped off one shoulder, CJ had stew on his cuff, Bianca’s frog occupied its own chair, and Conrad looked across the table at me over the heads of his talking children.
His eyes held gratitude, amusement, and something tentative and newly alive.
Mine must have held too much, because a sudden quiet dawned across his features.
I looked away first, reaching for the breadbasket to pass around and pretending the moment had not arrived uninvited between the potatoes and the anise seed pods.
Billie tapped her ring pop against her bowl. “Attention, everyone. I have decided that beef potion should happen every week.”
CJ raised his spoon. “Seconded.”
Bianca lifted her hand. “I support this motion with the condition that future names include ingredient transparency.”
Conrad looked at me, still smiling. “What does the potion master say?”
I should have corrected him. I should have said nanny, cook, employee, any word with sensible boundaries.
Instead, I looked at the ridiculous little family around the table and allowed myself one foolish second of happiness.
“The potion master,” I said, “votes yes.”