Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(52)
“Oh, I’m sure. Marisol doesn’t exactly believe in nuance.” He pulled a grimace, widening his eyes. “Neither does Meghan—only in the other direction, kind of. So at least Sol comes by it honestly.”
“Wonderful,” I muttered, reaching out to take back the flowers and the cake box—if I was already in the doghouse, I might as well make a more formal gesture out of my offerings. “Already getting off on a fantastic foot with your family.”
“Oh, it’s gonna be great,” he assured me, leaning in for a light hello kiss. I could feel that warm, blithe confidence lapping at me reassuringly through the bond; he definitely believed his own optimism, at any rate, enough to ease my misgivings just a touch. “You’ll see.”
I trudged after him through a comfortable family room, featuring a huge flat-screen TV displaying an atmospheric crackling fireplace—presumably since lighting a real fire at the current ambient temperature would have melted everyone’s skin off—well-loved brown leather furniture, pastoral landscapes, and an array of thriving houseplants clustered beneath the windows and suspended from the ceiling. Someone in the family had a green thumb, and gravitated toward the kind of sturdy, leafy plants that had very little in common with the dainty and demanding flowers I’d brought.
Down the narrow hallway, I spotted a home office off to one side, likely where Morty’s mother kept the books for the bar, a tiny guest-bedroom-cum-library to the other. Sometimes I managed to forget that other people—the vast majority of people, in fact—lived in normal houses like this, with narrow corridors, zero picture windows, and ceilings that didn’t soar theatrically above your head, to the extent that the lack of space seemed a little shocking to me, almost claustrophobic.
This particular knee-jerk reaction was not one of my favorite things about myself.
“Used to be my bedroom,” Morty remarked as we passed the guest bedroom, waggling his eyebrows at me. “Teenage kid’s dream, pretty much. First floor, easy access to both the front and back doors, window that opened into the yard. Perfect for sneaking out to engage in questionable activities . . . should one be so inclined.”
“Something Teen You never even contemplated, I’m sure.”
“Of course not, do you even know me?” he retorted, fluttering a hand to his chest in mock outrage. “I was an exemplary youth in every respect.”
“Right. Super circumspect.”
As we walked, I also noted that every door we passed was flung open, as if even the concepts of privacy, secrets, and solitude were foreign to this house.
Morty led me to the open-plan kitchen and dining room, where everyone was already gathered, with the kind of comfortably familiar energy that indicated that this was the true heart of the house, the room where the most time was spent. The massive, clearly heirloom dining table was loaded with food: a shepherd’s pie topped with creamy mounds of potato, a steaming Instant Pot of chili responsible for the pervasive savory aroma, a glass bowl of what looked like Greek salad, a tray of empanadas with sauces on the side, and a gorgeously crusty loaf of sourdough presiding over the center of the table, slices already missing. There was no rhyme, reason, or general theme to the dishes, besides the fact that they all looked mouthwatering.
A ponytailed brunette with a striking, strong-jawed face, her flannel shirt unbuttoned over a white tank and low-slung jeans, was lifting Marisol onto a booster chair—so this was Meghan, Morty’s older sister. At the head of the table sat a burly man with graying dark hair, with the same heavily dramatic bone structure as his daughter but with Morty’s magnetic azure eyes under bushy, white-flecked brows; Morty’s dad, Armando. A cane rested against the table next to him, within easy reach.
On his other side sat Morty’s mother, Fiona; bird-boned and slim, her light brown hair pulled back into a low bun, her delicate features reminiscent of Morty’s in a resemblance so pronounced it was almost jarring.
I could see what Morty had meant, back at the Shamrock, when he told me there was no way his parents weren’t his parents. He looked like the clearest possible amalgam of the two of them, with the balance tipping toward his mother. The way that I was unmistakably my father’s daughter, at least when it came to looks.
Yet another faux pas for which Lyonesse had never quite forgiven me.
“Why don’t we wait until after you’ve had something healthy to eat first, huh, baby?” Meghan was saying to Marisol, in the kind of strained tone I associated with parents reaching the outer limits of “gentle parenting.” “Then we can discuss how much cake you really need in your life.”
“All of it!” Marisol insisted, thumping the table with an emphatic little fist. “I need all of it, Mommy! Apples are healthy, anyway, and Nina Blackmoore said I could!”
Gritting my teeth, I paused in the hallway behind Morty as Meghan’s face tightened, wondering if it was officially too late to beat a retreat—and, alternatively, whether Marisol would feel obligated to call me by my full name every single time she mentioned me, just in case anyone might forget who I was.
Given children in general, and my luck of late, chances were solid that this trend would continue.
“Meggie, sweetie,” Morty’s father said, his s’s just the slightest bit slurred. I’d stayed up late last night reading up on MS, and I knew it could affect speech as well as movement during flare-ups; other times, it was all but invisible, a malevolent lurker hiding in the nervous system, preparing to mount its next guerrilla offensive. “It’s just cake. She’s not really going to eat—”