Chapter 14
Annelise popped the cork on the bottle of Chianti she and Jenna had grabbed at a liquor store in Charlottesville.
They'd considered showering at the house, but the water advisory said it was still going to be about two more days before the water was clean enough.
At least it was running again and, Annelise thought, at least someone else was fixing the water this time. It was a weight off her shoulders.
They’d driven out to Charlottesville, sitting on old towels she pulled from a laundry cupboard.
At least those managed to stay dry and clean.
Annelise squirmed on the drive, feeling gross and wanting to be clean.
She hoped Jenna wouldn’t ask her questions while they were in the car, where she might startle this woman with her answers and cause an accident.
None of them needed that on top of everything else.
But Jenna seemed to feel the same. She’d held off on the drive, waited until they made it to the hotel room and showered and changed. Didn’t ask the questions Annelise could see brewing beneath the surface when they headed out to find this bottle of red and pick up the pizza.
So now, as they sat cross legged on the floor and laid out their food on the small table, she couldn’t contain it anymore.
The pop of the bottle and probably her attitude had Jenna turning to look at her.
Whoever Jenna Brooks was, she read Annelise like an open book, and Annelise was definitely a closed book.
The woman looking back at her with a face far too like her own was almost definitively a Lockheart.
If not that, she was at least a witch, though she didn’t seem to know it.
It wasn’t a secret handshake or anything like that, but the witches she knew—around here at least—quickly acknowledged each other.
Then the conversations would sink a little more into what they could and couldn’t do well, what they had and hadn’t tried, what they’d cast, and what had gone wrong.
Jenna had no such conversation. She clearly didn’t know what ran through her veins.
But all these little looks, the questions in her eyes—they all added up, and with the cork popped on the Chianti, it popped on Annelise’s curiosity too. “Okay, I have to ask: are you adopted?”
“Yes.” The answer was short, sweet, and at the ready. Jenna had driven into town four days ago, and it seemed this was the conversation she’d been waiting to have.
“So you came here to find us?”
“Basically yes. I mean, I wanted to see what was going on, who everybody was.”
“To make a decision if you really wanted to get to know us,” Annelise motioned one hand rolling forward with a quirky grin on her face.
Opening the box, she reached for a slice of pizza.
The smell hit her and triggered every last hunger response.
The sandwiches they’d eaten for lunch and the lemon bars they’d snacked on had not been enough to counter the effort they were expending for the cleanup. She was starved.
“A little bit, yes.” Jenna looked like she was admitting something shameful, but Annelise understood.
“I also wanted to know if it would be horribly disruptive if I came in here and said, hey, I think I’m some long-lost child.
I mean, at least I was told that I had a maternal grandmother here, Astoria.
If it’s my maternal grandmother then I’m not some dude’s love child or from his second family probably.
” Jenna issued the confession between bites of pizza, and Annelise had to chew and swallow and make a decision between the information she desperately craved and the food her body needed.
Screw it. She was here with a woman that she was pretty damn certain was her cousin. She was going to do both. Taking another bite, she held her hand up so no one had to watch her chew, and she said, “So Story is your maternal grandmother?”
Jenna nodded. “She’s Astoria Lockheart, right?”
Annelise nodded back, realizing that everyone just called the woman Story and that Jenna may have still been struggling to snap all the appropriate pieces into place. “Then you and I are cousins.”
Jenna smiled and nodded.
“And Story’s your grandmother too.”
Jenna nodded again, and Annelise noticed wetness forming at the edge of the blue eyes so like her own.
But she didn’t ask the next obvious questions.
Staying silent, she waited a beat, letting Jenna pull back on the emotion hitting her.
It was hitting Annelise, too. Then she pushed one more time. “So how did you grow up?”
“I was adopted by very wonderful parents who are slightly older than my friends’ parents. They told me I was adopted, so that wasn’t a secret, and it made sense. My father is pale with blonde hair and blue eyes. My mother is half Vietnamese.”
Annelise felt her eyes fly open. “What a wonderful culture to have inherited.”
But Jenna shook her head. “My mom’s mother was Vietnamese, and she tried to assimilate one hundred percent. I’m not even sure my grandmother ever spoke the language to my mother. She never learned. I want to find more, but I’m mostly doing my own digging.”
Wild, Annelise thought but didn’t say it. She was looking into a heritage that her own mother had denied and hadn’t passed into Jenna’s genetics, but Jenna still wanted it and still considered it at least in part her own, and Annelise loved it.
“They were pretty strictly religious and yet somehow told me I could do anything or be anything. I just needed to do it in modest clothing.”
Annelise couldn’t help it. She burst out in a laugh. When she finally got herself together, she added, “I’d like to meet them.”
“My father passed just over a year ago.” Jenna’s eyes clouded as she shook her head. “He didn’t want me coming to find anyone. I’ve been sitting on this for a while. But he was very solid that I didn’t need to look further. They are my family—”
It was said with a conviction that told Annelise that Jenna wasn’t here to weasel her way into anyone’s life.
She just wanted to learn. To connect where she could.
But Annelise understood, and she waved her hand around the hotel room as if it were all of Belle Hollow just waiting for Jenna to find its open arms. “—but there’s more. ”
“I just want to know. My mother, now that he’s gone, is coming a little more into her own.” Jenna tilted her head, looking a little wistful. “The family religion is very much about a man leading. I’ve been a great disappointment that I haven’t married and produced children.”
“Even though you could be whatever you wanted?”
“Exactly,” Jenna replied, admitting the dichotomy. Didn’t Annelise know about those?
“I see my mom now starting to figure out who she is. Just herself. She went online and got a Vietnamese recipe the other day, and I didn’t ask, but it made me think maybe my dad was the one who didn’t want her culture really coming through.”
Ouch, Annelise thought, but she knew more than most that no one was all good or all bad, and many people did oppressive and hurtful things with the best of intentions.
“I didn’t want to wait until I was her age to figure out who I was, and luckily when I brought it up to her last month, she told me it was time to come.”
There was something in those last few words that Annelise understood. It was time to come, and Jenna had shown up for the flood. Like Story had said: Change was coming to Belle Hollow, whether they wanted it or not. Maybe it wasn’t all about the flood and the damage and the devastation.
“Well,” Annelise replied, shifting the subject slightly and raising her glass.
The little hotel tumbler had come with the room but they’d scrubbed the glasses thoroughly before they put wine in them.
After watching the flood waters rise, Annelise’s trust in cleanliness was low.
“Story already knows about you. I think she understood the moment she saw you. And I’m happy to have another cousin. ”
“Another cousin?” Jenna asked, eyes wide, but Annelise shook her head.
“Yes and no. My mother, Melissa, and your birth mother, Monica, had a third sister. Marina has a daughter Teagan, who’s also our cousin, but they left Belle Hollow a long time ago.
One or the other might come back to meet you, though.
” She raised the glass again and also an eyebrow, only just now considering that option.
Story would be glad to have her only surviving daughter come home. Even if it was just for a bit.
Jenna smiled at the thought, but Annelise felt the need to warn her.
“You’re walking into a lot with the Lockhearts.
Story and I are the only ones still in the Hollow.
The family used to be a lot bigger. In fact, they used to run the tiny town of Belle Hollow.
” If the stories were correct, they produced only female children, and there was so much more to it.
Annelise didn’t tell that part. “Story makes a modest living off helping out the community. I own a business, which I’ve closed for this last week to clean up after this natural disaster.
” She waved one finger around as if indicating everything in the air conspiring against her.
Then she told herself not to think that way.
She continued with what she felt she could share.
What wouldn’t make Jenna concerned about Story—though maybe she should be.
Annelise wanted to tell the truth but didn’t want to lay her biases at her new cousin’s feet.
“Story wouldn’t let me do much for the house when I started making more money.
I think she’s concerned about appearing better than the neighbors. ”
Maybe it was that her stomach was finally full.
More likely it was a combination of exhaustion and the wine.
Annelise hadn’t realized she’d built and fortified a dam to hold everything back until the moment that it cracked.
She let go, shoulders shaking, tears coming freely as it all came out.
So much for protecting Jenna. “She’s going to bankrupt me! ”
“What?” Jenna asked, leaning forward, offering emotional support, arms coming up and around.
Hugging her new cousin, Annelise let herself lean into the hold.
There was too much between them, unsaid, too many secrets old and new that Annelise shouldn’t be telling.
She shouldn’t be airing the dirty laundry, except she didn’t have the will to hold it back.
And the laundry was all dirty and all getting aired after the flood.
Jenna asked softly, “Why? I don’t understand.”
At this point, she’d screwed it up and it would be rude not to tell Jenna the rest. “Because she let the homeowners insurance lapse. Literally just a week ago!” She would have put her hands to her temple, but Jenna was hugging her, and Annelise was holding on tight herself.
“I wish I could help,” Jenna said, and Annelise heard that it was fraught with emotion.
“No, no.” She pushed back, looking at her new cousin. “I am not asking for money. I will not accept money. I am just venting.”
Jenna laughed. “Good. My family was very anti-prosperity gospel.”
Annelise laughed then, too.
“I have an apartment and a roommate, and it hadn’t even occurred to me to buy my own home until just a few years ago. You know, not married, no kids.” She waved her hand up and down herself as if this were some moral failing, and Annelise realized she’d been brought up to believe that it was.
“What you need is a lawyer,” Jenna declared, and Annelise nodded.
FEMA was coming in. They were starting to set up their tents and help people fill out forms. Annelise had already tried to get Story to go down and at least get some help, but Story kept putting her off.
Even if they qualified for the assistance, it probably wouldn’t be enough.
So Annelise had been racking her brain for days trying to figure out how to save her grandmother without sacrificing herself.
“I’ve been hearing rumblings around Charlottesville,” Jenna added.
She’d been going back and forth, staying up here, driving into Belle Hollow, Annelise thought.
She been out and about, acting the good neighbor for the past couple of days.
Probably had no idea that half the women she met were bona fide witches and that she was one, too.
Annelise hadn’t decided yet whether or not to tell her new cousin about that part of the legacy she’d inherited.
Maybe tonight, depending on how much of this wine she drank. Maybe tomorrow, if Jenna asked the right question. Or she could just let Story do it.
“The news about the insurance policies could be helpful,” Jenna offered, unaware of the turmoil in Annelise’s head.
She swallowed and looked up.
“After the flooding in Asheville,” Jenna started, “apparently the insurance companies were trying to get out of this area. There may have been some shady practices involved.”
The first ray of hope hit Annelise like sunlight, and she found herself praying her grandmother had been scammed. “I’ll look into that.”
Then Jenna said the one thing that was like a switch flipping the light off. “Rowan Velasco’s a lawyer, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Annelise answered softly. “Yes, he is.” And there was more behind her refusal to accept that help than she ever wanted to tell her new cousin.