Payback's a Witch (The Witches of Thistle Grove #1)(55)

Smiling, I picked my way between the perky morning glories and swaying stargazers to the porch, settling beside her to the whining protest of the springs. Fortunately for everyone involved, I didn’t detect any awkwardness in her smile as she scooted over to make room; she must not have heard anything untoward last night.

Thank the goddess for small mercies.

“I think it’s safe to say you’ve outdone yourself,” I assured her. “That ghoul guy? Outstanding work.”

“Thank you,” she said, with real satisfaction. “Macabre little bugger, isn’t he?”

“Totally grotesque,” I agreed. “I wish I had half your gift with this type of stuff. If I’d made him, he’d be less living nightmare, more sad stick figure.”

For all my witchy blood, unlike my mother and Delilah, I couldn’t craft my way out of a literal paper bag. And my poor mom, who’d borne witness to countless pasta elbow and papier-maché disasters over the years, was well aware of my tragic limitations.

“I don’t know,” she mused, eyeing me askance. “There’s a certain innate horror to the idea of anything you might contrive to make by hand.”

I laughed, my teeth chattering as the wind picked up. She glanced over, immediately all maternal concern. “Are you chilly, love? Would you like a cup of something warm?”

“I would,” I said, starting to rise. “But I can just get it myself—”

“No, no, you stay put,” she said firmly, pressing me back down. “Let me get it for you. Please. I wanted a refill anyway. Tea or cappuccino?”

I settled back down, stifling a multilayered sigh. I couldn’t deny her the extra mothering after how long it’d been since she’d last had a chance to do it. But it made me feel like three different kinds of asshole to let her cater to me like this.

“A cappuccino sounds amazing,” I relented, wrapping my arms around myself. “Thanks.”

Ten minutes later, we were sipping side by side, watching a pair of inquisitive crows that had come to roost on the ghoul’s scraggy head.

“How are you feeling about arbitrating again tomorrow?” she asked me, cupping both hands around her mug. “Ready for another go?”

“I am a little nervous, after last time,” I admitted. “Feels like anything could happen.”

“I would be, too, in your shoes, I’m sure.” She flicked me a meaningful glance from the corner of her eye. “And have you lot cooked up anything dastardly-yet-not-quite-prohibited this time around? Not that you’ve any obligation to clue me in, of course. But it would be rather nice to know what your father and I might expect.”

I licked my lips, staring down at my lap. “And when you say ‘cooked up’ . . . ”

My mother rolled her eyes, reaching over to pat me briskly on the thigh. “Come now, my love, give your old mum a little credit. The one thing I can’t quite grasp is the why of it. It must be about just deserts for you, of course, after what that Blackmoore git did to you back in school. But what of your accomplices? You and Linden have always been close, but surely it would take more than just the prospect of righting old wrongs against you to get the Avramov girl on board.”

She paused at my dumbfounded stare, patting me on the leg again, like, Welcome to the conversation. One of the crows twitched its head at us, cawing starkly and fixing us with a beady eye, as though it took a special interest in fraught family affairs. I tried to remember what two crows meant as an omen; something transformative and good, from what I recalled. Which, nuts to that.

“You . . . knew?” I managed, feeling like the tectonic plates of reality were being reshuffled under my feet. “About Gareth? Gareth and me?”

“Not the particulars, obviously. But that something had happened between the two of you, something rather significant? Of course I did, how could I not?” She gave a wry laugh into her mug, muffled by the china. “You managed to slip his name into conversation what, several hundred times over dinner that summer, all twinkly eyes and innocence. I’m not so decrepit I can’t still recognize the telltale signs of the hopelessly enamored, you know.”

I sat with that for a moment, stomach bunched up like a dirty rag, utterly at sea.

“But you never said anything,” I finally said. “You never mentioned him, after, you never—”

She shot me a severe look, tinged with hurt and accusation. “Because you didn’t choose to tell me about him, my darling, and you were old enough that it wasn’t right to pry. But it changed you, didn’t it? He changed you. Damaged you, somehow. You were happy here with us, before. And then . . .”

She shook her head, and I realized with yet more noxious twisting of my gut that she was struggling for composure. My mother was not, by definition, a crier; the opposite, if anything, more of a stalwart stoic, devoted to her dignity and the nearly sacred concept of bucking up. But there was no mistaking the glistening in her eyes, the trembling corners of her lips.

As rarely as I’d seen it growing up, I still knew what my mother looked like when she was doing her very utmost not to cry.

“And then you could scarcely wait to get away from here,” she whispered, reaching up to dash angrily at her eyes with her knuckles. I recognized the gesture, the irritable impatience with her own emotions, as yet another thing I’d inherited from her. “Away from us. I thought you simply needed space, at first, that nagging at you would only make it worse. But if I’d had any idea that you wouldn’t come back to us . . .”