The Witch of Belladonna Bay Read Free

even those of us with a little magic. Sitting in that pastry shop, I wondered if Ben had read my mind, had somehow seen Grant there. But in all my travels I hadn’t yet met another person who shared the “ways” of my mother’s people, so I ignored it.
    He pressed me. “Who was it? How long? Do you still know him?”
    â€œI don’t talk about it,” I said. “I don’t talk about where I’ve been, only where I’m going. How about we pretend there’s no past at all. We can be the present.”
    â€œAnd future,” he’d finished, smiling. We kept that promise. It’s easier than you think to put blinders on and move forward.
    Humans have short, selective memories. If we tuck away something important, put it in a safe place … we always end up spending hours trying to find it. Let it stay out in plain sight, and you never have to look for it.
    Add that to the things I wish I’d known back then.
    And now, seven years later, we still lived together in the confines of the blissful domesticity we’d created that first July day in Manhattan. Ben was my safe haven. My protector. But most of all, my escape.
    *   *   *
    He stood in our kitchen that morning, comfortable and worry-free, with a dish towel carelessly thrown over his shoulder and his bare feet solidly on the wood floor. For a moment I thought I might say yes to his seven-year open-ended question: “Marry me?”
    But then the damn phone rang, bringing me back to the life I’d left behind.
    It was my father. I hadn’t heard his voice since we said goodbye face-to-face. But every month, like clockwork since the week I’d left home, I’d gotten a letter and a check. No matter where my vagabond legs carried me, no matter how many years passed, those letters found me. They never asked me back, and though I’d long since stopped needing the money, he sent it anyway. But he never called, so I knew I had to talk to him.
    Damn Southern manners.
    And there it was, the trouble I’d never expected, all wrapped up in a little girl who shared my name but saw fit to call herself Byrd.

 
    2
    Byrd
    Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again.
    â€”The Little Prince
    The Old-timers and Towners all think I’m crazy. They say I act too old for my age, and that my strange ways (even though the whole damn town depends on them) curdle up my thoughts. But that’s not the thing that bothers me most. I swear, I’m kept up nights just thinkin’ on how anybody could manufacture such an evil thought about a girl. You know what they think?
    Everyone in this godforsaken town thinks I’m a tomboy .
    Damn it. They don’t know much about anything. When I grow up and get my woman boobies, they’re gonna be surprised. Everyone but Jamie. He’s always told me how pretty I am. Well, and Jackson (he’s my grandpap). My daddy, too. They tell me I’m beautiful. But they have to because they’re related to me, and I’m the only person they got in this whole wide world who loves them. Also, it don’t hurt that I look just like the one true love of both their lives, the grandmother I never met—at least while she was alive and everything—Naomi.
    And then, there’s Minerva (or Minny, “ Minny with the red, red hair ,” as Jackson used to tease her), she’s sorta old now. I tell her she’s old as dirt ), but I can’t not love her because she’s Naomi’s aunt who came down this way when Naomi and Jackson got married. So she’s family too, and “blood is blood,” my daddy always says.
    Minerva’s husband is Carter. He’s like another grandpap to me, and another father for my daddy ’cause Jackson’s mostly livin’ in his own world. Thing is, they all live with me. They’re my