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They left the crime scene, and again Hazel felt a sting of wrongness to just leave the body of the poor man there. Hopefully, they’d close this case soon, and then they could dump the corpse somewhere, call in the police, and make sure the man received proper rites.
“You’re very smart,” Rose suddenly said as they got in the car.
Surprised, Hazel looked at her.
“You know all these things.” Rose nodded at the greenhouse.
“Well,” Hazel said, starting the car, “I grew up learning to wield magic, and I’ve got decades of practice. But beyond that, it’s all in reading the books. Going through witch literature and absorbing the information there does most of the work already.” She glanced at Rose again. “You have a lot to catch up on, but you’ll get there, too.”
Rose gave a curt nod, then looked back out the front window. She was silent for a while before she spoke again, her eyes trained on the road, her voice quiet. “What is it that is wrong with me?”
Hazel jolted. “What?”
“What fault did you see in me?”
When Hazel glanced at her again, her heart hammering in her chest, Rose regarded her with eyes full of pain.
“What do you mean?” Hazel whispered.
“When you chose to give me away. You chose me, not Lily. It was because I have a fault, right? Something is wrong in me.” She tapped her chest.
“Oh my gods.”
Hazel couldn’t see straight anymore. Her pulse thundering in her head, hands shaky, she managed to steer the car to the side of the road before she crashed it. Turning off the engine, she whipped toward Rose.
“No!” She reached out to her, grabbed her hand. “Nothing is wrong with you!” Eyes burning with tears, she shook her head. “You are perfect. You were a perfect baby. I loved you from the moment I held you in my arms.”
“Then why did you choose me to give away?” Rose’s voice cracked.
“Oh, honey.” The tears spilled over now, pain lancing her heart. “It wasn’t really a choice. The fae forced me to decide which baby to give her. I didn’t want to! I told her I couldn’t possibly choose. When I refused to pick one of you at first, she…” Hazel swallowed hard, a sob building in her chest. “The fae said she could make the decision for me, but she’d kill the one she didn’t take with her.” She squeezed Rose’s hand, needing the touch of her daughter to chase away the haunting shadows of the past, needed to reassure herself that her baby was here now, alive and healthy. “Do you understand? She would have killed one of you!” Her breath caught, and she had to pause, the pain of the memory hijacking her mind. “You know how cruel the fae can be.”
Rose blinked, a tear running down her cheek. “I do,” she whispered.
“When I handed her one of you,” Hazel continued, her voice raw, “I didn’t think. I didn’t really choose. It could have been either of you. I didn’t weigh my decision, because it was impossible. You were both perfect. The fae’s cruelty demanded I choose, but it was pure coincidence which one of you it was. I did not deliberate on it and make my decision based on a difference in you.” Her voice broke. “There is no fault in you. There never was.”
Tentatively, she laid her hand on Rose’s cheek, and when her daughter didn’t shy away, Hazel inhaled a ragged breath, her heart hurting with too much love. “You are whole, and good, and I am sorry you ever thought there was something wrong with you. I am so sorry.”
Rose sniffed, her chest rising and falling with her quick, erratic breaths. “The fae said…I was flawed. That’s why you chose me to give away.”
The pressure inside Hazel erupted in the only words fitting her fury. “Those fucking bastards!”
Rose’s eyes widened at Hazel’s unusual outburst.
Sucking in a breath, Hazel tried to calm down a bit. She stroked Rose’s cheek, then laid her hand on her shoulder. “They lied to you, honey. They said those things to play with your mind and hurt you as part of their games. It’s not true. You’re not flawed. Please believe me when I say I did not choose you because I thought you were less than Lily somehow.”
Grasping both of Rose’s hands in hers, Hazel squeezed, trying desperately to make her daughter understand. “I know it might take time for you to see, to really feel the truth, but just give me a chance and I will show you, for the rest of my life, how worthy and good you are. It hurt me every single day to think of you so far away from me, and I would have given everything to have you back. You are my perfect, amazing daughter, and I am so proud of you.”
Rose’s breaths turned choppy, sobs breaking out.
“Come here, sweetheart,” Hazel rasped and leaned over the console to pull Rose into a hug.
Stiff at first, Rose softened after a moment, her arms wrapping hesitantly around Hazel’s back. Hazel pressed her close, her hand stroking soothingly over Rose’s back while her own tears flowed freely. With a huge sob that sounded like it broke down walls inside her, Rose leaned into Hazel, buried her face in her shoulder, and clutched her like a life buoy.
They cried and hugged like this for moments that seemed frozen in time, while a knot of pain and guilt and sorrow Hazel had carried for twenty-six years unraveled itself deep inside her, and a missing piece of her mother’s heart fell back into place.
* * *
Back at the house, in the room dedicated to rituals and spell-weaving, Hazel set a black tourmaline crystal on the first point of what would become a pentagram enclosing the power circle with the container and a sheet of paper in the middle.
