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Chapter Text

Near the food court, the tantalizing smell of cinnamon and sugar wafted through the air, and Pippa insisted on stopping, exclaiming, “This is my favorite place in the entire mall. I used to come here all the time as a kid.”

“With Aunt Jane?” Sybil asked.

Hecate felt the world slow as Pippa paused to answer.

“Actually, it was … with your Aunt Hecate,” Pippa replied with a tight smile, “but that was a long time ago.” The declaration seemed to ground the blonde, her lips tipping up into a playful grin, as Pippa said to the girls, “Let’s see if it still holds up.”

Without further explanation, Pippa strode excitedly to a small bakery tucked into the back corner of the food court. Joining the line, they could see an older Indian American woman at the counter ringing up a purchase and passing over a white bag. She wished the customer a good day, and as Pippa stepped forward to place her order, the woman’s smile broadened in recognition.

“Is that you, Pippa Pentangle?” the older woman gasped. There were streaks of gray and white in the once dark black braid and a few more lines around her mouth and eyes, but Hecate thought the woman looked remarkably the same. Time had been kind to Ms. Singh over the years, her wrinkles but the gentle marks of humor and a generous spirit. Hecate remembered countless afternoons spent at the mall that had ended in this very spot, the woman’s eyes crinkling as she heeded a twelve-year-old Pippa’s predictable request for extra frosting, at no extra charge, and offered a young Hecate a knowing wink as she passed her two forks and some napkins. Hecate had blushed every time.

It had been a brief season of frosting and flutters, inexplicably sweet, and one of the brightest in her life. Not too long after, worries about oily skin and extra pounds had stolen away the simple joy, the first of so many and all so young, until the habit had become a treat and a remarkably rare one at that, Pippa hemming and hawing over an extra dollop and Hecate avoiding the woman’s gaze like the plague, the flutters no longer so inexplicable nor so sweet but twanging loud and wrong.

“Happy holidays, Ms. Singh,” Pippa replied with a smile of her own.

The older woman then did a double take, spying the group behind Pippa. “And Hecate Hardbroom! Oh, my goodness.”

“Hi, Ms. Singh,” Hecate greeted warmly.

“Mrs. Singh-Trewitt now. My Ellie finally got to make an honest woman out of me,” the older woman shared, proudly wiggling the fingers of her left hand, her ring finger adorned with a thin golden band that shined radiantly against her brown skin, and Hecate remembered the quiet red-haired woman, who would sometimes poke her head out of the back, a freshly-baked tray of sweets in her hands and a small smile on her lips as she perched on a second stool, leaning her head against the other woman’s shoulder. There had been such an ease to their interactions, and Hecate had envied it, that assuredness. Hecate had chalked it up to adulthood, that mythical stage of life when she would have everything figured out. What a crock that had been. She was still waiting for the day. “What a blast from the past,” Mrs. Singh-Trewitt marveled. “Seeing you two all grown up. Happy holidays! And what have you two been up to? Still stuck together like glue I see. And are these your girls?” Mrs. Singh-Trewitt asked, her eyes alighting on Clarice, Sybil, and Bea in turn.

“Oh, we’re not ---” Pippa quicky corrected with a shake of her head, gesturing between Hecate and herself.

“Ah, my mistake,” the older woman said in easy apology. “I always thought you two might’ve ….” Mrs. Singh-Trewitt trailed off, waving a descriptive hand. Hecate thought she heard a whole imagined history in that ambitious hand wave, but whether the other woman’s or her own, she could not rightly say. She and Pippa had only been in middle school when they used to frequent the bakery, too preoccupied with boy bands and crushes to even brush against the beginnings of anything more. To even dream it.

Pippa shifted beside her, widening the distance between them, and Hecate was jolted from her private reverie into the awkward present. Jumping into the gulf, Hecate smoothly clarified, “They’re my older sister Sloane’s girls. We’re both just home for Christmas, and Pippa’s been helping to take the girls holiday shopping.”

Mrs. Singh-Trewitt’s eyes rested upon hers. Sympathy lay in her gaze. The older woman had always had a knack for reading her a little too well. “A happy reunion then,” Mrs. Singh-Trewitt mercifully pivoted. As she redirected her attention to Pippa, her eyes filled with mirth. “Will it be the usual today?”

“I can’t believe you still remember,” Pippa said amazedly.

“Well, you two,” Mrs. Singh-Trewitt noted with irrepressible fondness. “How could I forget?”

“Then yes, the usual times three, I think,” Pippa requested heartily.

Mrs. Singh-Trewitt said with a wide grin, “Three cinnamon buns with extra frosting coming right up.”

Finding an empty table, Hecate led the way, carrying their tray of sticky cinnamon buns. Mrs. Singh-Trewitt had thrown in a few complimentary candy canes for good measure as she wished them a merry Christmas, and Hecate’s heart was still palpitating from the stress of that last conversation. She knew she was not the only one affected. She and Pippa had engaged in a silent game of musical chairs, placing the three oblivious girls between them as some sort of emotional buffer, and were just settling into their seats when Bea shattered that illusion.

Digging into the gooey cinnamon bun with her fork, Bea innocently asked, “Why did that lady think you and Aunt Hecate were married?”

Pippa had been cutting another sticky bun in half for them all to share when the plastic knife in her hand stilled at the question. Trust three pre-teen girls to not read the room. “Oh … that,” Pippa started slowly, stalling for time. Her eyes flicked cautiously up to meet Hecate’s across the length of the table, but Hecate was at a loss, choking on the sweet tea that had caught in her throat mid-sip. “I-I’m not sure,” Pippa said searchingly. If ever there was a time for Pippa to throw her under the bus, to spill their twisted history of why they were no longer friends with recriminations and payback, this was it.

But that had never been Pippa’s style.

“Well, Hecate and I used to come to the bakeshop a lot when we were younger,” Pippa continued vaguely, “and I think she just got the wrong idea when she saw us with you girls.” Hecate breathed a sigh of relief. “She uh … thought we were a family.”

But Clarice’s eyes narrowed at the hole-laden explanation, as if she was arranging stubborn puzzle pieces in her mind. “Wait – did you and Aunt Hecate used to date?”

“No,” Pippa denied firmly.

“Yes,” Hecate affirmed at the same time. Instinctively, Hecate glanced up at Pippa, hurt blooming in her chest. “No?” The strangled question escaped her throat unthinkingly.

“Yes?” Pippa repeated thunderstruck. The blonde’s gaze was studied, focused, and seemed to harden with every second that passed. A thousand memories running through her mind. Rushing questions and accusations dammed at her lips. Her eyes stormed dangerously, clouded with confusion, sparking with anger, and tinged with grief and fear. Hecate could not make heads or tails of it, but she supposed she had long given up the right to understand Pippa’s innermost thoughts. With great resolve, Pippa seemed to will the storm to clear, replying with only a stilted, “I guess we remember it differently.”

Her tone was politely definitive, signaling a close to the conversation, but leave it to Clarice to be like a dog with a bone. “How can you remember it differently? You either dated or you didn’t ---” the girl began to protest when Sybil’s hushed musing cut her off.

“She thought we were a family?” Sybil asked softly, echoing the words Pippa had scrambled to find earlier. Wonder limned her young voice. “She thought you were our moms.”

Picking up the thread of the other girl’s thoughts, Bea swallowed and chimed in, “Yeah, that never happens. People are usually just confused.” Even Clarice seemed to quiet at that, each girl mulling over the assumption of family in her own way, as Bea took another messy bite, “This is so good!”

While Hecate had merely nibbled at the edges, her appetite waning as she replayed the conversation in her mind, Pippa and the girls soon made quick work of the sticky buns, polishing the plate of every last drop of frosting, and before Hecate knew it, they were standing in line for the carousel.

Pulling out her phone, Hecate saw a notification from Dimity.

How’s the mall?

Hecate typed out a bewildered response.

I think I might have accidentally outed myself to my sister’s kids?

Dimity’s reply came swiftly.

What?!?

Oh wow. How did that happen?

There was no logical explanation. Hecate had been painted into no corner. The girls had simply asked, childish curiosity stoked by a careless assumption, in the blunt way that only children could. Hecate could have lied. She could have massaged the truth. She could have evaded. These were no sophisticated interrogators. And yet, Hecate had volunteered it. So easily, so intuitively. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. But they had asked, and she had told.

The thought of equivocation had not even crossed her mind. Pippa had been looking at her with those impossible eyes, tentative and fierce, stalling for time in a way she never had before. Pippa, who had once heard her every fear in minute detail, and knew so little of her life since. It had hurt to watch her stammer, fumbling for a reason, and Hecate could not lie. She wouldn’t. Not to Pippa. Not again, the girls dimly forgotten in the sharp clarity of Pippa. Who the girls were and who they would return to fading into the background. Nothing else had felt important. At least in the moment.

How do you feel?

Hecate hardly knew. The whole afternoon since the bakeshop felt like a fuzzy blur. A bell rang out, colorful lights flashing and blinking as painted horses flew by, the carousel whirring to life with organs and whistles playing in dizzying rhythm.

I don’t know.

Her fingers felt clumsy as she typed.

Numb.

In shock.

Terrified.

Surprisingly okay.

Hecate didn’t know what to feel. The disclosure felt like nothing and everything at the same time. The girls were chatting amongst themselves, laughing unperturbed. Pippa was patently ignoring her and stealing glances at her whenever she thought Hecate was looking away. But Hecate saw every one. Pippa really should have known better. She should have known by now that Hecate Hardbroom was never not paying attention to Pippa Pentangle. Hecate didn’t know how not to. The one year she had tried had almost killed her.

The line shifted forward. The bell clanged again as the calliope played anew and the horses swung round and round. Hecate moved forward in time with the crowd as if on auto pilot, not a step out of place. Nothing had changed, and maybe everything had. But she felt anticipation thrilling through her veins, driven by cold prickly fear and an airy lightness coursing through her body in overwhelming tandem. Swirling and heavy, dropping and soaring, dark and glittering like the surface of the pink unicorn Lisa Frank notebook Pippa would carry around with her in the second grade. Hecate had never bought one herself, the designs too gaudy and bright, but it was seared into her memory like a prized possession once removed. A symbol of something inane, she was sure. Like joy or happiness. Childhood innocence. Love. Sparkles.

“Aunt Hecate?”

Hecate startled at the small voice and the small girl to whom it belonged, Sybil staring at her concernedly with wide eyes, her hand not quite reaching out but seemingly loathed to leave her behind. “It’s our turn. Are you coming?”

“Of course,” Hecate said with a smile.

Following after the girl, she awkwardly clambered onto an outer horse, its mane dark against a midnight black body and a golden saddle, her magnificent mount frozen eternally mid-gallop. Liberated and confined in a single mold. Hecate knew the feeling.

Hecate rushed off a quick message to say goodbye.

I’ve got to go. We’re riding the carousel.

But true to form, Dimity got in the last word. Her phone screen brightened immediately with an incoming text, and Hecate’s lips twitched with affection as she read.

Call me tomorrow.

The bell clanged overhead, louder now inside the carousel than when just standing in line, and the jaunty calliope music started up just as her body jerked with the mechanical movement of the horse springing into motion. The carousel was faster than she remembered, the horses higher too, and she gripped the pole tighter.

Hecate pondered aloud, “I can never remember which is better – to be on the inside or the outside.”

Glancing over sympathetically, Clarice promptly replied, “The inside. The inside horses have less distance to cover, so those horses, and by extension their riders, have a slower linear velocity relative to the horses along the outer edge.”

That was just Hecate’s luck. She answered grimly, “I think you’re right,” doing her best to hold her gaze steady instead of getting lost in the swimming faces around her.

“You should have asked me beforehand,” Clarice said perfunctorily, “like Sybil,” the girl added with a jerk of her head as Sybil leaned out slightly from atop her majestic white steed, bedecked in royal purple and cerulean blue, to smile.

“Also right,” Hecate admitted.

“Watch out for Bea though,” Clarice whispered loudly. “She gets motion sickness.”

Hecate followed Clarice’s sight line to Bea, who was sitting beside Pippa in a cherry red sleigh, their shopping bags tucked between them, and talking excitedly. The girl seemed perfectly fine to Hecate, but a few minutes proved her woefully wrong. That would teach her better than to doubt Clarice’s wisdom, Bea turning a worrisome shade of green when she stumbled back onto solid ground some short rotations later. Thankfully, Pippa rummaged in her bag to retrieve a stray peppermint candy cane from earlier, and that seemed to stay the girl’s nausea.

Better safe than sorry with the afternoon dwindling down, they finally joined the still long line for Santa’s workshop.  

“It will give you all time to think about what you want to ask Santa,” Pippa remarked, putting a positive spin on the wait.

To which Bea patiently explained, “We don’t still believe in Santa Claus.” Her tone spoke volumes, incredulous as if Pippa was the absurd one. “We’re not little kids,” she clarified.

“Oh, I see,” Pippa said amusedly. “Then…?” she prompted with a slight tilt of her head.

“It’s just …,” Bea paused with a shrug, “my dad used to take me before he died. And I missed it.”

“Well, then, we’re just going to have to make sure you see Santa today, aren’t we?” Pippa replied warmly, giving the girl a side-armed squeeze. “And the rest of you?”

Clarice shook her head. “I’m just here to support Bea. Santa Claus, at least these days, is mostly just a symbol of commercialism and Christian imperialism anyway,” Clarice stated pragmatically. Then Clarice tacked on, as if responding to some unasked question, “I grew up in the system. I don’t remember my parents at all.” Hecate supposed there might have been a gleam of curiosity in her eyes, or perhaps Clarice had simply gotten used to sharing her story, but either way, the girl volunteered as if by rote. “They said it was a car crash.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Clarice,” Pippa murmured.

Clarice continued matter-of-factly, “Nobody wanted to adopt me. Not until Sloane and Eric.” Unprompted, Clarice gestured towards Sybil, who was found curled into Pippa’s other side. When exactly that had happened, Hecate could hardly say, but the girl looked even paler than usual. Fair lashes blinked back tears, her mouth twisting determinedly above a wobbly chin. “Sybil had a few chances, but ….” Clarice petered off as she clocked the other girl’s discomfort.

After a moment, Sybil, still clinging to Pippa, quietly finished, “It didn’t work out.” The somber admission hung heavily in the air, and Hecate instinctively sought out Pippa. Pippa would know what to do, but Pippa seemed struck silent herself, her chin tucked against Sybil’s hair as she held the trembling girl closer.

Thankfully, they were saved by Bea. Without hesitation, the girl stepped around Pippa to catch Sybil’s gaze and firmly asserted, “They just didn’t know what they had.” Giving the other girl a tight hug, Bea declared, “But we definitely do.” Over her shoulder, Bea sent Clarice a pointed look and shifted over to make space.

“Sorry, Sybbie,” said a contrite Clarice, joining the clustered hug to pat Sybil gently on the back.

Standing on the perimeter of their intimate circle, neither quite here nor there, Hecate could only marvel. From Sybil’s tiny nod of acknowledgment and Clarice’s slumped shoulders, she had the distinct feeling that this dynamic had played out more than once before, these girls tied together by a history that far outdated this Christmas or their recent folding into the Hardbroom clan. She was supervising in name only, these girls long used to taking care of each other, and her heart twinged at the thought.

It was dangerous, she knew, and Hecate shook her head to break that unwelcome train of thought from taking hold. She snagged Pippa’s eyes in the process, and in a mutual unclenching, they exchanged an unexpected sigh of relief. They were the two ostensible adults in the room and in utterly over their heads. Thank goodness for Bea. Hurt feelings assuaged, Bea’s exuberance won the day, and they whiled away the rest of the wait hearing about how exactly the girls had wound up meeting Sloane and Eric.

“We were always worried about being sent off to different homes,” Sybil relayed with a residual shudder.

“Eric was nervous,” Bea recounted. “I overheard them talking in the hallway one visit. He thought we would be too much. He wanted someone younger, a baby. That’s what they all say,” Bea informed them. “But then Sloane said they couldn’t break us up, that we were like a bonded pair but a bonded trio instead, and that’s when we knew she was the one.”

Clarice talked about their later meetings with Sloane and Eric. To Hecate’s ears, they sounded more like interviews than conversations, although not in the way one would expect. Clarice, it seemed, had peppered Sloane and Eric with probing questions about the caliber of the neighboring schools and their proximity to public services like the local library and the nearest park, and she puffed with approval even now as she retold Sloane’s responses, how Sloane had apparently answered each and every one with alacrity. Hecate’s mind blinked and flickered at the picture. She tried to envision her sister cheerily humoring the girls’ questions, endeared at their thoroughness and sensitive to their deep attachment to one another, but the image fuzzed with noisy static. It struggled to compute. Ever the interrogator, never the interrogatee, the Sloane she knew, that Sloane, had had all the patience of an aggrieved viper. 

As the minutes ticked on by, their group made their way to the head of the line, and soon, Bea was skipping up the short steps, coming to a stop in front of a familiar, red-suited man. It had been a while since Hecate had had the chance to glimpse a mall Santa up close, but this man fit the bill. With a thick white beard and golden spectacles framing eyes that crinkled with good humor, the man cut quite the magical figure, and he even had the iconic laugh down pat. From her vantage at the bottom of the small dais, Hecate watched as Clarice shook the man’s hand with an assured pump, saying something Hecate could not quite hear about “receiving a fair wage for your services.” At that, a loud chuckle escaped the Santa’s lips, shaking his belly like that obligatory bowl full of jelly, before Clarice moved past to allow Bea to take her seat on the Santa’s lap.

Hecate dutifully snapped some candid photos of her own, for Sloane and Eric, of course, capturing Bea’s animated smile as the girl chatted away, and from behind her, Hecate could just make out Pippa’s voice where she kept Sybil company.

“Isn’t there anything you want to ask Santa for?” Pippa broached gently.

There was a pause before Sybil spoke. “I don’t really like to talk to strangers,” Sybil confided. “Besides, I already have everything I wished for. I always wanted Bea and Clarice to be my sisters, and now they are. And we have Eric and Sloane and Debbie,” the girl listed earnestly.

Who’s Debbie? Hecate did not mean to eavesdrop, only half-listening. Probably a social worker, Hecate supposed in passing, when Sybil added with all the magnanimity of a child, “You can take my spot though if you want.”

“Me?” Pippa asked.

From her tone, the generous offer seemed to have taken Pippa by surprise, and Hecate suppressed a tiny smile behind the lens of her camera phone when Sybil observed.

“You seem sad.”

“Do I?” Pippa remarked. “I’m n---” Pippa started to deny, but she seemed to change tacks at the last minute. “Maybe a little,” Pippa demurred. “This time of year can be hard for me.”

Hecate felt a stab of guilt, wondering if her mere presence today had contributed to Pippa’s sadness. But no, she stopped herself. How awfully presumptuous. It might be something else entirely, someone else. Hecate knew so little of Pippa’s life now. The recent past was filled with blank spaces. The more distant past was dense with scratchy scribbles and scrawls, cross-outs and blotted tears and erasure marks digging through the paper of memory. Neither answer settled her spirit.

“Yeah,” Sybil sighed, the soft exhale burdened with an empathy too heavy for her years.

“But I think these holidays,” Pippa continued more optimistically, “are already looking up.”

“Yeah?” Sybil asked, a hopeful lilt to her voice.

Hecate could almost hear Pippa’s affirming nod. “Mm-hmm. I got to meet you and Bea and Clarice and go Christmas shopping together.” Sybil released a giggle, and Hecate knew Pippa had just squeezed the girl in an easy hug, her eyes warm with boundless affection. There was something so powerful about being caught up in Pippa’s bright smile, a feeling of being awash in love that few could resist with any immunity, if one even wanted to try. Hecate had never found much success, and she missed it terribly. “Looks like we’re up.” Hecate’s eyes re-focused. Bea had hopped off the mall Santa’s lap and was enthusiastically waving them over. “Why don’t we go together?” Pippa invited. And with that, Pippa and Sybil were walking past Hecate hand-in-hand to greet the friendly mall Santa from a respectful distance.

After a brief chat, Sybil and Pippa were posing for the photographer, beckoning Bea and Clarice to join them. Clarice declined with a scrunch of her nose, but Bea jumped up beside Sybil, slipping her arm around the other girl and beaming widely. Hecate raised her phone to snap another photo of the girls with Santa and Pippa. For Sloane and Eric, she reminded herself. But something gave her pause, her finger hovering over the shutter button. It felt uncomfortable to take a picture of Pippa without her consent, intrusive in some way, like she was some voyeur peering into Pippa’s life from the outside. Peering in – that was how she had felt almost this entire day with Pippa, together but not quite, hovering at the edges of each other while keeping a discreet distance. It was how she had felt that whole last year of high school and, she supposed, ever since. Even today, with their small interactions – a passing glance, the exchange of a few words – it was like there was still this invisible partition separating them. Hecate had erected it, she knew.

But Pippa had maintained it.

Reinforced it.

In high school, it had been a flimsy, haphazard thing, hardly more than a plastic tarp, shoddily made and structurally unsound but weighty in its newness. In its sheer existence. Nothing had ever stood between them before. But in the years since, the flapping sheet had been retrofitted with gleaming glass, sturdily designed and beautifully crafted, so unobtrusive and equally impenetrable. It had no beginning and no end, as far as Hecate could see. Frighteningly, it stood as if it had always been. And Hecate did not know how to crack it.

Or even whether she should try.

Her fleeting passion for photography now properly abandoned, Hecate dropped her arm and simply took in the scene. Pippa, Bea, and Sybil bordered the jolly mall Santa in his red velvet suit and cap on either side, smiles alighting their happy faces amidst the sumptuous backdrop of a magical winter wonderland.

“Are you and Pippa fighting?” Hecate startled at the voice, Clarice suddenly at her side.

“Wha--?” Hecate bumbled, baffled at the non sequitur. “How did you ---?” Questions ran amok in her mind. Were they? Were she and Pippa fighting? Ever precise with words, Hecate was not sure one could call a fifteen-year estrangement a “fight” in good faith. How long was it before the statute of limitations on a fight ran out and it had to be called something else? A fight. It was such a simple childlike way to frame her and Pippa’s non-existent relationship. She and Pippa were barely on speaking terms. Surely a fight involved more yelling, more talking. More something. Not this cautious restraint and these tense silences. An impasse, perhaps, cold and impossibly wide. That felt more fitting.

Clarice just shrugged nonchalantly. “Sometimes Sybil and I fight. But it doesn’t mean we don’t still love each other. And Bea always helps us. Maybe you need a Bea.” Clarice reflected thoughtfully. “What about Aunt Jane?” she proposed oh so very unhelpfully.

Hecate scoffed, muttering under her breath, “I hardly think Jane will help.”

Clarice, unfortunately, apparently had the ears of a bat. Without missing a beat, the young girl agreed, “You’re right. She’s already doing her best.” It was a cryptic comment, but Hecate had scarcely begun to even attempt to decipher it when Clarice seemed to lose her interest in the topic. With a dubious look upwards, Clarice said flippantly, “Good luck,” before wandering off in the direction of Sybil and Bea.  

While Clarice rejoined Pippa and the other girls, Bea and Sybil admiring their respective photos, Hecate remained dazedly in place until a staff person in an elaborate elf costume ushered her towards the register. The elf’s pointed shoes jingled with every step. The black-and-white image of an older man in a long, ruffled nightgown drying off by the fire flashed through her mind. Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings. Oh, Clarence, Hecate thought wryly, imagining the flurry of heavenly goings-on incited by just this one overworked elf’s jangling shoes alone. But cynicism, pragmatic realism, could only ground her so much. Tugging at the collar of her suddenly hot turtleneck, Hecate hurried to pay for the photos. All this talk of Christmas wishes. It was starting to feel a tad stifling, and by the time they exited the glittering exhibit, Hecate was ready to leave Santa and the North Pole far far behind.