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Nessa Kearney is a beautiful woman. She looks like she could be a sister to her daughters, rather than their middle-aged mother. She has raised the girls alone, but the stress of being a single mother hasn’t aged her a day.
Their Sunday mornings are always reserved for practicing their craft. Nessa is a witch raised with the old-fashioned Celtic ways and who has raised her own girls with the craft as well. The kind of witchcraft they practice is less medieval hocus pocus and more natural casting. They worship the earth, use what it gives them to make their lives better, and channel the energy of the world into their intentions. They are just like any other person in their tiny town, just a little better at seeing beyond the surface.
Willow fell in love with her craft before she could even remember. Her mother was so proud of her and said she was truly gifted. Willow knows, though, it is really her mother with the most insight. Her mother is the wisest soul she has ever met and Willow trusts her implicitly. There is no question she ever fears asking her mother and Sunday mornings are always the best times to ask.
“Mama,” Willow speaks, “was daddy a bad man?”
The intricacies of what makes a person inherently good or bad are weighing heavily on Willow’s mind given Emily’s current situation. She knows her father let alcohol rule his life, but Willow can’t remember a single time that he was mean to her. Yet, if he wasn’t bad then why had he not stayed to love them. If her father, even with his failings, was good then could someone who was still a teenager and never really seemed to be drinking or anything of the kind be bad? Was he even grown up enough to be either good or bad yet?
Nessa eyes her daughter suspiciously at this random question. Willow can feel her gaze boring into her. She knows her mother can read her.
Nessa’s hands pause in their work, “You know I will always tell you anything you need to know and I would be happy to tell you the story of how your father became who he was, but I feel like that isn’t what you are really asking.”
Willow smiles at how quickly her mother seems to always know more than what is being said. “Could you tell me about Daddy first?”
“Of course, but only if you promise to tell me why when I am done.”
“Promise.”
Nessa smiles, “Your father was the love of my life. He was not a bad man at all. He was kind and loving and genuine. He was everything I had been asking the universe to send me since I was a little girl. When we met, the love we felt for each other was consuming. It almost swallowed us both up. We had you within the first year and Raven came less than a year after. Our life was beautiful together.” Nessa’s eyes have grown misty, but she is smiling through her tears.
“Did he drink then too? Or just later,” Willow inquires.
“He would drink occasionally, but never anything crazy. It wasn’t until his brother died that things grew worse.”
“Daddy was with him when it happened?” Willow asks.
“Yes, love, he was. They were working together in the woods and your uncle fell from a tree he was cutting branches from. Your father wasn’t nearby and didn’t hear his fall. Because of that he always felt responsible for what happened. There really was nothing he could have done, but he shouldered so much guilt afterward that it ate him up. He started drinking heavily to numb the pain he felt inside and, eventually, he stopped being who he really was anymore. He became someone else. He got meaner and he said and did things he didn’t mean, but that wasn’t really who he was in his soul. Always remember that. He never stopped loving either of you girls. Never forget that either. Sometimes I think that was why he took his life. Because he just didn’t think he was enough anymore. He didn’t want to be what the grief had made him.” Nessa’s eyes are so full of sadness now that Willow can feel it, “I wish I had known how to tell him he was always enough.”
Willow sits quietly and lets her mother have this moment. It is always hard for Nessa to talk about him and Willow understands she needs a moment to just be before she can move on. Once she sees her mother’s hands begin moving to remove the buds from the dried lavender once again, she knows it is safe to continue, “Are there men who are just bad for no reason?”
“What do you mean, dear?” Nessa asks with concern on her face.
“I don’t know exactly,” Willow struggles to find just the right words to convey her feelings, “They are just… dark… inside.”
Nessa frowns and shallow lines form between her eyebrows, “Well, there are very few people in this world that are just bad. Most have a history that turned them into who they are. Darkness begets darkness usually, but those that are like that from the beginning, well they just have a little seed of evil planted inside. They are out there and they are the truly dangerous ones.”
“How do you know that someone is one of those people?”
“You can’t know, really. Not unless you are a true empath that can feel a person’s soul, but that is a gift that takes years of honing to get that good with it. My best advice is to listen to that voice inside you. That voice usually knows a little more than we do.”
Willow takes in all this information and files it away near the surface of her subconscious, making a note to listen to her inner voice the next time she is with him… what will her little voice tell her that she hasn’t already been hearing?
Raven has been on the stairs listening to her mother and sister talk when she finally makes her presence known, “Willow and I already know someone like that.”
Both Nessa and Willow turn in Raven’s direction.
“How do you know that, sweet?” Nessa asks in a shaky voice.
Raven walks down the stairs and answers confidently, “Because I feel it. I feel it in him.”
Willow’s eyes grow wide as she speaks, “What? When?”
“Yesterday when I was on my way to meet you guys. He bumped into me and I felt it in him. He’s dangerous.”
“Who is he?” their mother asks.
“A boy that Emily is dating,” Willow confides. “He seems fine… I just… I don’t know why he sets alarm bells off in my head.”
