Hold Me Closer, Necromancer - Lish McBride [46]
She glared sternly at me. Her old habits died hard too, apparently.
“Um, well, let’s just say you’ve sunk me in pretty deep.” My initial anger was dampening down. I’m just not an angry person. That’s not to say I wasn’t still pissed on some level, or that I’d instantly forgiven my mom, but I could probably avoid any further lashing out. For now. You know, tick tick tick.
She took a shuddering breath. “You shouldn’t apologize anyway. I’ve earned it.” She paused, then patted my sleeve. “I’ve earned it and more.” She stared at her hands. “I’m not sure where to begin.”
“Begin at the beginning,” I said, “and go on till you come to the end. Then stop.”
She let out a shaky laugh. “You and the Mad Hatter.”
“Actually, the king said it. And it’s your fault. Shouldn’t have gotten me a library card.”
She ignored me. “Your father was late to the hospital.”
12
Sweet Child o’ Mine
“I was very upset, you know. Your father was the one who insisted on hospitals and ob-gyns, and then he wasn’t even there. If I’d had it my way—at home, with a midwife—I wouldn’t have been so infuriated by his absence.” She picked at the handle of her cup.
I’d always been surprised my mom had me in a hospital. She had Haley at home and was a midwife herself on occasion. Especially if one of the girls in what Haley jokingly called Mom’s coven got pregnant…wait a minute. I looked up at the ceiling for a minute and cursed my thick-headedness.
“You’re not Wiccan, are you?”
“No, of course not.” She sounded slightly surprised, like I’d accused her of being Baptist or the pope. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
I looked around our kitchen, at the dried herbs hanging from the ceiling and at the seasonal calendar on the wall. I thought of my name, and her workshop with its potions, ointments, and mortar and pestle. I rested my chin in my hand, matching the way she sat. “You know, I have no idea.” The sarcasm was pretty obvious.
“Wicca is a religion, Sam.”
“And you’re just a witch, is that right?”
“Of course.”
I rubbed my face with both hands and tried to not howl in frustration. “When you keep little supernatural details a secret and you tell your kid that you’re a witch, you shouldn’t be surprised when—you know what? Never mind. I don’t have time for this right now. We’ll get back to it at another time.”
She sat up primly and nodded, like everything I said was everyday conversation. Maybe for her it was. I was realizing that there was a lot I didn’t know about my mother.
“I hated hospitals, but Kevin insisted. No child of his would be born using what he called ‘hippie methods.’” He reduced thousands of years of my family’s traditions to a two-word phrase.”
If my mom hadn’t told me, then she probably hadn’t told Kevin. “He didn’t know what you were, did he?”
She shook her head, and I saw her tear up, even after all these years. “I hate secrets more than hospitals.” She got up. “Wait here.” My mom left the table before I could reply. When she came back, she held a dusty shoe box. Her hand trembled slightly as she opened it, but it was steady when it pulled out a folded piece of beige cloth, tied up with ribbon. She untied the ribbon and unfolded the cloth. She sniffed. “I made this for Kevin as a present.”
My mother had cross-stitched a family tree. At the crown of the tree were my maternal grandparents. I used my finger to trace down to my mom, then me. I was a root. There were other roots left blank, which told me me that at one point my mother had been optimistic about her life with Kevin. The Hatfield side was noticeably sparse.
“Why isn’t his side filled in?”
She’d been keeping it a surprise, she said, digging through Kevin’s papers and making phone calls, trying to fill in the gaps. Kevin didn’t talk much about his family. Even so, she was surprised when she found out he had a brother. How could Kevin not tell her? Was his brother a drug