Page 87 of Redhaven

They’ll never know.

Opposite me, Mom and Dad are flexing their fingers experimentally. Lachlan shapes a simple warming charm and presses it gently against Mom’s breastbone. She sets his cold coffee boiling again and hands it back to him with a kiss. You can probably hear my eyes rolling as far away as Glasgow.

Aira is mewling by the gate, so I leave my parents rekindling their spark and go to let her in. Mom’s familiar has been acting weird these months she hasn’t had her magic. I daresay the cat’ll be glad things are back to normal, too.

As Aira shoots past my ankles to join the firepit love-in, I realise I haven’t checked the mailbox today. We don’t get a lot of correspondence, being on-the-run witches, but I find a pink envelope inside, franked from a small town near Sanctuary and inscribed in loopy handwriting. Maggie Knight told me about her conversation with Izzy, and as soon as we had an address I texted it to my friend. Her first letter arrived a week later. Despite everything she’s been through, including the loss of the dad who will always be a missing piece of mine and Mom’s hearts, Izzy graduated high school this summer. She’s taking a year to improve her grades and decide on a college course.I’m thinking about social work, she writes.Maybe family therapy. Don’t they say, ‘Do what you know’?

I grin. Tomorrow I’ll write back and say how proud Pierre would be.

There’s nothing else in the mailbox, so I let the flap fall. The cottage name inscribed on the side makes me smile. Dad lettered it fresh one bored, magic-less morning, and Mom decorated it with brightly painted flowers. When people ask if there’s a meaning behind the name, I say it’s because we’re from Connecticut. But that’s not why we chose it.

I run my fingers over the satiny paint that spells outNEW HAVEN.

THE END