Page 64 of Cursed By Fate

“Was her magic as powerful as yours?”

She glanced away. “No, and that’s what killed her.”

“A spell?”

“My sister had more ambition than talent. She overestimated her ability to complete a spell that probably required another decade of experience.” Meemaw grunted. “I was the one who found her.”

My chest constricted. “Oh, Meemaw. That’s terrible.”

“I thought the spell knocked her unconscious. I wasn’t strong enough to lift her, but I’d mastered a levitation spell the week before. I used it to bring her home.” Her eyes were downcast. “My mother blamed me. I wasn’t even there when it happened, but she blamed me for the rest of her life.”

“You were the messenger,” I said.

Meemaw nodded. “She tolerated my existence until I left home at sixteen. We never spoke again.”

“Mother wounds cut the deepest,” I said. “Ask me how I know.” I paused. “Or don’t. It isn’t something I like to think about, let alone talk about.”

“Genevieve is the reason I chose to only have one child. I couldn’t bear the idea of Margie losing a sibling. Or that I might turn on her instead of dealing with my own grief.”

“And here you are all these years later, living together. Frick and frack.”

Her pruned lips mustered a gummy smile. “I did okay, didn’t I?”

“For the record, you’re a great mom. You never would’ve turned on her, not for any reason.”

“I’m glad I was never tested.”

“I’m sure you were, many times. You’re built different from your own mother, that’s all. If I had kids, I’d be a completely different kind of parent because I’m a completely different kind of person.”

My mother had been selfish and greedy and narcissistic. She put her own needs before anyone else’s. I hadn’t been a person in her mind, only an extension of her. An object to trade or sell, which she eventually did.

“For the record,” Meemaw said, mimicking me, “I think you’d make a great mom, but you’re not getting any younger. If you want to pass on that absurdly straight nose of yours, you’d best get moving.”

I touched my nose. “Absurdly straight?”

“Have you looked at yourself in the mirror?”

“Not my profile.”

“Well, it’s like half of an isosceles triangle.”

“I think you mean a right angle.”

She gave a dismissive snort. “Whatever. Geometry wasn’t my subject.”

I’d known Meemaw for more than five years and only today did I discover she’d had a sister. Shame pricked my skin. The crone was my main source of support, yet I still had so much to learn about her.

“I’m sorry I never asked.”

“What were you supposed to ask, Maya? Gee, Meemaw, any dead sisters in your past?”

My cheeks burned. “No, but maybe if I talked to you about more than spells and card games, you would’ve told me sooner.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, kid. It isn’t the kind of thing I mention very often.” She started to pull her bedazzled shirt over her head. “You should probably go now, unless you’re into boobs the length of a football field.”

She didn’t need to tell me twice.

I grabbed an extra layer to shield myself from the wind and rode the morning ferry to the mainland. I wasn’t one for favors, so that meant not requesting Vale’s yacht. There was also the small matter of not wanting Vale to know I was about to have a private meeting with his right-hand vampire.