worry about. I allowed myself to become distracted. And I’m sorry for that.”
I was alarmed. “You don’t need to—”
“I do,” she said firmly. “And I will. Because I still see the look on your face. In Caswell, when Gavin left with that… that beast. Your heart was breaking, and I could do nothing to fix it.” She looked away, blinking rapidly. “I should have told you.”
I took her hand in mine. Her skin was cold. “We’re here now.”
“We are,” she said. “At last. Never leave me again. Not like that. Promise me.”
I said, “I promise.”
“Liar,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But I’ll allow it. How did you find him?”
I told her of this thread in my chest, how it pulled me forward. How I’d learned to trust it, even when it went quiet. I told her about the notes he’d left for me, the same notes that were now hidden in a box under my bed. I hesitated before I told her about Madam Penelope, the witch, the psychic, the woman with the bones who hadn’t really been there at all. I still wasn’t sure if it’d been anything more than a dream. But this was my mother, and she wouldn’t judge me. Not for this. Still, it was hard to get the words out. They came in fits and starts.
She said, “Madam Penelope.”
I winced. “Yeah, I know how it sounds, trust me. But I was losing it, you know? I don’t even think she was real. Everything was fraying, and I was slipping—”
Her grip on my hand tightened. “Did she have feathers in her ears? A Mohawk down the middle of her head? Did she have black powder that she told you to inhale?”
Reality felt thin. Translucent. It was like she was in my head. And maybe she was, because that low thrum of packpackpack was growing by the day. “How did you know that?”
She tilted her head back toward the sky and smiled. “You were being watched over. Even when you were so far from home. They were with you on your journey.”
“What? Who?”
“Abel’s mother was a witch. Your great-grandmother. Did I ever tell you that? Her name was Rose.”
I shook my head.
“Before she fell in love with a wolf, she traveled with her pack in a carnival near the turn of the century, featuring magic and wolves. I have the pictures somewhere. These old sepia-toned things with curled edges. There’s one of Rose. She was wearing pants, which I’m sure caused quite the scandal with the good people who came to see what they thought were trained wolves, not knowing what they really were. She has a wooden pipe in her mouth, her teeth bared in a sardonic smile. She’s leaning against a booth made of white willow, which is important to certain witches. There’s a sign above the booth, above curtains she stitched herself. Two words were on the sign, words that signified her stage name. Madam Penelope.”
I gaped at her. “That’s not possible.”
She turned my hand over in hers, tracing the lines on my palm. “Isn’t it? Perhaps you were dreaming. Perhaps when you were young, you saw the photograph I just described, and in your grief, in your desire for a piece of home, you dreamed of her, pulling her from the depths of your memory. Or perhaps those we love are never really gone. Their blood is in our veins, all their history coursing through us. Is it so hard to believe that those that came before could have seen you for all that you are and decided you needed a moment to breathe? A moment of peace and a place to rest?”
I looked down at our hands. Hers were thin and slight, her fingers bony. Mine were large and blunt, almost like a paw. I said, “I saw him. I heard him.”
And she said, “Who?” though I thought she knew. She needed to hear me say it out loud.
“Dad.”
Her smile trembled. “Oh. Oh. Tell me.”
“He said he loved me.”
“He did. So much more than you could even possibly begin to understand.”
“I was lost,” I told her. “Everything hurt. I was dreaming of ghosts in the snow, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to go on. I was fading. I was slipping. And he told me to howl. He told me to sing.”
“Did you?”
I nodded slowly. “As loud as I could.”
“And what did it bring you?”
I gripped her hand tightly. “Kelly. Joe.”
She said, “When you were born, your