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Chapter Text

Hecate dreaded going home for the holidays. The stress of it. The cheer. The holiday traditions. All of which involved other people. Even the thought of it was exhausting. It was just a lot when half the time all she wanted to do was collapse into bed and curl up with a good book.

Dimity patted her arm sympathetically before taking that moment to charge into the forest. Her sword drawn and blazing, she chopped down the nearest orc with a mighty slash, blood spraying everywhere, and sprinted headlong towards the towering fire giant up ahead and her assured death. Beside her, Maria had knelt to taste a magnificent mushroom. It emitted an eerie green light, glowing with enchantment. The self-proclaimed cook for the merry band of marauders, Maria had been intrigued by the possibility of a new ingredient, and now, she too was lying prostrate on the ground with a beatific smile on her face, irretrievably lost to the land of dreams as a potent poison coursed through her body.

Hecate glanced up to meet curious brown eyes peering out at her from behind large, round frames. Daisy was watching her expectantly, wearing that same perpetual look of confusion, while one hand nervously combed through his thick dark beard. Hecate had no idea what to do. Chase after Dimity, which was surely a suicide mission, or roll her luck at healing Maria?

Luck was rarely on Hecate’s side, and a mere three turns later, Dimity and Hecate were dead, their bodies mercilessly crushed and singed by the fire giant, while Maria remained trapped in her delirious stupor, alive but just barely and unlikely to regain consciousness without significant aid. It had been a blood bath.

Daisy took off his glasses and dabbed at his brow with a handkerchief. “Well, that didn’t go as planned.”

“Does it ever?” Hecate scoffed dryly. “Your girlfriend is too busy tasting woodland flora to help in any of the battles, and Dimity’s barbarian doesn’t bother with strategy.”

“I have a lot of hit points. That’s what I do!” Dimity exclaimed innocently. “Besides, you’re the brains on the team. I’m the brawn.”

“How imaginative,” Hecate drawled. “So, basically, we’re just playing ourselves. I thought the whole point of D&D was to adopt a different persona.”

Snatching up her neglected beer bottle, Dimity released a nonchalant chuckle in response, “Whatever.” To Daisy, she added more encouragingly, “We’ll try again in the new year. Maybe next time, we’ll actually survive.”

“Doubtful,” Hecate intoned.

“I still want to know what it tasted like,” Maria chimed in with a shrug.

“Honey bear, I told you,” Daisy said, wrapping his arm around the petite woman as Maria nestled comfortably into his side. “It was sweet like peppermint but with a bitter aftertaste.”

“I know that’s what you said,” Maria pouted in faux irritation. “But I can’t quite picture it. What’s the point of trying new food if you can’t imagine it?”

Daisy ruffled his messy hair in exasperation. “You weren’t supposed to try it,” he tried to convince his stubborn girlfriend for the hundredth time. “It was pulsing green with a malevolent aura. I don’t think I could have signaled ‘danger’ any more clearly. It’s like you all have a death wish. Next time, I’ll have you wander through some sleepy town.” At that, his eyes swiveled intensely around the room in turn as if daring each one of them to think up a path to death in such a peaceful scenario.

Maria puffed out a laugh and gently tugged on his beard to press a reassuring kiss against Daisy’s cheek. “I promise we’ll be on our best behavior. Send us to a tavern. After a few drinks, Dimity will be caught up in a brawl, and Hecate will be happily chatting up all the pretty barmaids.”

“And you?” Daisy asked dubiously.

“I’ll be at the bakery next door, earning a few gold pieces as their new apprentice,” Maria said glibly. “Don’t give up on us, my cute little Dungeon Master.”

Daisy relented with a good-humored roll of his eyes. Grabbing the last handful of chips from the bowl on the wooden table, he popped one into his mouth, a generous dusting of cheese falling into his beard. As he stood to refill the bowl before the movie, the rest relocated to the couches. Plopping down, Dimity turned a playful gaze to Hecate, “So, Hecate, what’re your plans this year?”

“Oh, you know us Hardbrooms. It’s an election year. It’ll be a lot of posed family photos and campaign events. My mom wants me to come down early and stay through New Year’s. A whole two weeks of family fun,” Hecate said with a grimace. “You and Julie? Are she and Millie coming tonight, by the way?”

Dimity shook her head. “Julie’s got a shift, and Millie’s with her gran tonight ---”

“So, I’m hearing you didn’t have any better plans,” Maria teased as she settled onto the couch opposite.

“No,” Dimity denied, her tone scandalized, as she chucked a pillow in Maria’s direction, but the other woman smartly caught the overstuffed pillow and only tucked it smugly behind her head. “And this is tradition. Have I ever missed Christmas movie night?” Dimity whirled around to face Hecate, wordlessly demanding a third-party defense.

“Not yet,” Maria insinuated. Hecate just shook her head, laughing quietly into her wineglass as she patently refused to get involved.

“Oh, please,” Dimity said, “don’t even joke about that. You all are family.”

“And don’t you forget it when you and Julie get hitched,” Maria said with a nudge of her foot and a raise of her glass. Julie Hubble had been the nurse on duty when Dimity had injured her knee after a pick-up basketball game a year and a half ago, and the two had been inseparable ever since. With Dimity already practically co-parenting Julie’s daughter, Mildred, it was only a matter of time before they made it official.

“Anyway,” Dimity continued with a pointed look, “my gran’s going to come here this year to join us for Christmas, and then I’ll drive her back home before New Year’s. If you need an escape from all the Hardbroom family fun, just give me a call.”

Hecate groaned and sagged into her friend in silent thanks before asking Maria, “What about you and Daisy?”

Maria snuck a glance behind her to check on Daisy in the kitchen. They could hear kernels popping in the background as Daisy yanked open the microwave door. She lowered her voice, “Ugh, you know what my family’s like. They still ---”

“They still hate me,” Daisy interjected bluntly, suddenly sticking his head out of the connecting doorway.

Maria winced. “They don’t hate you.” Maria came from a large, very Catholic, very Italian family, and the brusque Tapiocas had yet to welcome Daisy into the fold. “They’re protective. They’re just warming up to you.”

“It’s been three years,” Daisy replied skeptically, readjusting his slipping spectacles. Maria and Daisy tended to split their Christmas vacation between their two families, and Daisy swore the Tapiocas hated him for it. The Daisys were Hindu and did not celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday but still enjoyed all the secular festivities. “You know, they don’t like to feel left out,” Daisy had offered with a jolly shrug.

Maria and Daisy had met online, and the cerebral, if absent-minded, Daisy in his tweed jacket and round spectacles had not quite fit the rugged masculine mold of Maria’s previous boyfriends. But by that point, Maria had dated her fair share of rough-and-tumble men, and Daisy’s clumsy sweetness had been a refreshing change of pace. While he wooed the mushy romantic in her that she usually kept so well-hidden, she grounded the ever-fanciful Daisy and focused his scattered thoughts, for which the Daisys, including his sister Vinita, were ever grateful.

According to Maria, when she first met Vinita, the woman had pulled her into a tight hug, confiding with palpable relief, “You don’t know how many fires you’ve saved us from!”

“A few explosions never hurt anybody” had been Daisy’s cheerful response. Or so Maria had uncharacteristically giggled in her retelling, finding his whole bit charming. At the time, Hecate had deemed it nothing short of worrisome, but, over the years, she had come to learn that Daisy, albeit eccentric, was as harmless as a kitten and just as doting in his affections. Hecate could wish little better for her friend.

As for the Tapiocas, no matter how loudly Maria proclaimed she preferred Christmas with the Daisys to all their noise and bluster, let alone midnight Mass, which she never dared skip, they did not seem to hear it.

Several hours and two and a half movies later, Hecate and Dimity were snuggled together on the couch. Maria and Daisy had left after Elf, citing an early start the next morning. In the hush, Dimity broached, “So is this the year?”

Hecate sighed. She hoped so. “I’ll tell them after Christmas.”

“That’s what you say every year,” Dimity reminded with a nudge of her shoulder.

“I know,” Hecate acknowledged. “It just seems like a lot of trouble for nothing. It’s not like I have a girlfriend or this changes anything about me, and I can hardly think of what they’ll say.” Hecate squeezed her eyes shut, shuddering at the thought of her white Republican father finding out his daughter was a lesbian. Her parents had not even given her a talk on the birds and the bees, for God’s sake. That thankless task had fallen to her oldest sister, Sloane. Sexuality had always felt like such a taboo in the prim and proper Hardbroom house. You married. You procreated, and everything else, you kept to yourself. That was the Hardbroom way.

Dimity studied her knowingly. “It’s not for nothing. It’s for you. And you don’t need a girlfriend or anyone else to claim who you really are.” She added gently, repeating for good measure, “And we’re here for you, you know, for whenever you feel ready.”

Hecate wanted to toss back that that was all fine and good for Dimity to say when she had Julie Hubble to go home to, but she bit her tongue on the spiteful reflex. She knew Dimity had not had an easy time of it. Not unlike now, the aughts had not been kind to those who were black and queer. Devout Baptists, Dimity’s parents had kicked her out when she first came out as a teen, fearing ostracization by the church, and her situation had been touch-and-go until she had been taken in by her grandmother. A no-nonsense woman of faith, Granny Drill, had been firm in her convictions even then, “No grandchild of mine will be on the street.” Dimity was far braver than she, a grown woman in her thirties, who still had not come out to her family.

With an inward wince, Hecate changed the subject, “I love this scene.” It was a testament to how well Dimity knew her that she let her. Hecate was done talking about this for today, and besides, they both knew there would be waterworks arriving, as if on cue, in just a few short minutes.

Judy Garland’s voice crooned through the screen.

Once again, as in olden days

Happy golden days of yore

Faithful friends who are dear to us

Will be near to us once more

Someday soon, we all will be together

If the fates allow

Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow

So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

Hecate really did love this scene. She did not know if it was the wistfulness of Judy Garland as Esther Smith, decked out in her iconic red dress, her face framed by that glittering shawl in the moonlight, as she sang her bittersweet rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” Hecate’s favorite version if she was pressed, or a young Margaret O’Brien as Tootie, trembling in her nightgown beside her, tears silently pooling in her eyes before the young girl dashed out of the room to massacre the snow people erected on the lawn, her all-too-overwhelming sorrow channeled into that tiny figure and a child’s impotent rage.

But this scene in Meet Me in St. Louis got her every single time. No matter how many times she had seen this movie, every year without fail, her hand would clutch at her aching heart as Esther knelt in the snow to console her angrily sobbing sister, and tonight was no exception. Her voice thickening with sadness, Esther exhorted, almost desperately, “But the main thing, Tootie, is that we’re all going to be together. Just like we’ve always been. That’s what really counts. We could be happy anywhere as long as we’re together.”

Muddling through, that was Hecate in a nutshell. To be fair, on paper, Hecate was thriving. She had her own apartment. She was a journalist for a reputable publication. She had money in the bank. She had found her people, at long last. And all that meant that she was finally able to live her life on her own terms. She was dating … and dating women, or at least as much as she wanted. After the initial frightening exhilaration, she had learned the dating game could be both fun and grueling in its grind. She had not yet found The One, but that felt like a blip, a childish idea she had long outgrown anyway. It was too simplistic, and the odds seemed almost fantastically long. Lies spouted by Big Marriage, she and Dimity would snicker, and a little too rigidly heteronormative for her liking. But that aside, Hecate was living every dream of her closeted teenage self. Independent from her parents’ wealth for over a decade now, she was free to be herself, her authentic prickly, queer, sappy, confident self. And if she still felt a bit of a fraud, especially when she visited home for the holidays, falling back into old childhood patterns long left behind, then it was a small cross to bear for the freedom to be herself the rest of the year.

She did not even know why she liked this movie. None of it reflected her life. The Hardbrooms were no Smiths, even on their best days. There were no older sisters wiping away her tears, despite her having two. And not one of them would claim that the Hardbrooms would be happy anywhere as long as they were together. The Hardbrooms were of the camp that absence made the heart grow fonder. With every Christmas, all the scattered Hardbroom children would make the annual, obligatory trek home, and for a few interminable days, happy smiles would be pasted on happy faces. That was the whole point, after all, for those beaming, picture-perfect smiles to be printed out for glossy pamphlets stuffed into mailers and sent to prospective voters throughout the district. But it made her Christmas movie rotation every year, nonetheless.

And happy golden days of yore. What happy golden days? At the sardonic thought, a familiar face flashed painfully through her mind before she could blink the image away. And faithful friends. She felt a sharp twisting in her heart. Well, those were long past too.

At her muffled sniffle, Dimity teased, “You’re such a softie, HB.”

Hecate shushed her bashfully, dabbing at her damp eyes, “Don’t tell anyone.”

At that, Dimity only chuckled, squeezing her tighter, “Don’t tell anyone? It’s the worst-kept secret around.”

Hecate knew it. There was a reason Mildred Hubble called her “Miss Softbroom” when she joined their movie nights, her tears inevitable. Even Elf made her cry.

Chapter Text

A book held limply in her hand, Hecate stared out the window as she watched the retreat of the city. Her head lolled against the leather of her seat on the train, Pittsburgh getting smaller and smaller in the distance. The acceleration of the train pushed against her. She had chosen the wrong seat, again. She never seemed to learn. She did not ride the train often enough, her ticket only ever holding one bleak destination.

Sitting backwards as the train gained momentum, she could feel her body recoiling from the pressure. Going home felt like going backwards in time, her body hardening into the girl she once was, molding into the woman her parents saw. Hecate Hardbroom, typed in black ink. The daughter with regular bylines to her name as her parents never failed to mention in their annual Christmas newsletter, the “successful journalist” as she was touted on the campaign trail. It was in moments like these that Hecate regretted her life choices, at the very least her career choices, her path so deceptively smooth in its ascent without the hint of deviations or missteps, any whisper of doubt or black mark of failure.  

It was a performance and one she knew well, one she wore well. She had practically convinced herself for the first seventeen years of her life. If that was not dedication to the craft, she hardly knew what was.

Before she knew it, hours had passed, and the car was slowing at the top of a circular driveway to an all too familiar house. The large brick house was bedecked with white Christmas lights. Traditional wreaths framed by black shutters dotted each window with another intricate wreath hanging upon the front door. The roof was covered in a light layer of fresh snow, the chimneys puffing smoke from the crackling fires beneath. It all looked like something out of a picture book, cozy and comfortable, an idyllic haven from the winter chill, but it left Hecate cold.

Inhaling deeply, her breath misting the frigid air, Hecate stitched a smile onto her face and dragged her suitcase up the short steps to the front door. Warmth greeted her and, with it, more carefully arranged Christmas decorations, matching ornaments dangling just so from the tree in the corner and garlands gracefully draping the gleaming wooden banisters. As the door snicked close, her mother’s voice carried down the hallway into the foyer, “Hecate, is that you?” followed quickly by the woman herself.

Beautifully coiffed and styled, a classic pearl necklace adorning her throat, Tipper Hardbroom fit the room’s interior as if she too had stepped off the pages of a Better Homes & Gardens photo spread. For as long as Hecate could remember, her mother had been the definition of Instagram ready before there had even been an Instagram. “You get more and more beautiful every single time I see you,” her mother gushed after releasing her from a quick embrace.

Hecate’s face broke into a small smile. “Beautiful” was code for “I love you,” and Hecate had never felt unloved. If anything, she had felt too loved. Loved for her beauty, loved for her intelligence, loved for her ambition. But beauty could fade. Intelligence was relative. And her ambition. Half the time, she did not even know if she was ambitious or just incredibly, incredibly afraid of failure. Maybe they were the same thing. Before her thoughts could spiral any further, a too hot body was smothering her as her older sister Jane snuck up from behind her and enveloped her in a tight hug.

Hecate could hardly suppress a little yelp from escaping her lips at the sudden weight. Her mother’s stern voice could be heard tsking in the background, “Jane, too much. Too much” like remonstrations at a yappy dog. As if the Hardbrooms would ever allow a pet into the home. They barely tolerated Jane.

“I didn’t want to wait one more second to see my little sis!” Jane excitedly proclaimed into her ear, squeezing her impossibly closer as Hecate subtly twisted herself away.

“I’ve asked you not to do that,” Hecate reminded crisply before trying to soften her tone with a strained laugh.

“I know,” Jane acknowledged gleefully. “I didn’t listen.”

No, Jane rarely did. That was the problem with her older sister, running headlong into whatever she wanted.

Boundaries, Hecate’s mind groaned with an exasperated sigh as her sister tucked an arm into her own, talking her ear off about the latest chapter of her book, something about Shadow Dreamers and a gemstone stolen by an evil floam – “sort of like a maggel but with less arms and more powers,” Jane clarified nonsensically – while dragging her towards the kitchen.

Fancying herself a writer, Jane had been drafting a novel for the past ten years, while taking on little odd-end jobs here and there to make ends meet. She had the luxury of their grandmother’s bequest, Hecate supposed, to chase after wispy dreams, and no one, not even her parents, had ever expected much from Jane. No, that burden had lain upon Hecate’s shoulders, and for a time, her eldest sister, Sloane.

But no, not Jane. Jane got to frolic about in her own little world of daisies and buttercups, Shadow Dreamers and evil floams. None the wiser.

Worse still, Jane insisted on sharing every little detail of the fantasy world she had built up in her head with her family. Despite the countless hours Hecate had been subjected to such drivel, nodding along agreeably, Hecate could not tell you the first thing about Jane’s novel. Filled with made-up words and creatures, all with their own painfully intricate histories and idiosyncrasies, it was like they went in one ear and out the other. Honestly, who had time for that sort of thing?

Hecate could already feel her ears starting to bleed from the sense memory when her father poked his head out of his study and beckoned towards her, “There she is, my perfect girl!”

Hecate’s spine straightened instinctively. If perfect was what her father wanted, perfect she would be. Standing just that little bit taller, she entered her father’s office. The familiar scents of polished wood and leather oil drifted through the study, the walls covered in the blue-and-red memorabilia from his college days, framed photographs of him shaking hands with political luminaries, and the occasional nautical nod.

Her father considered himself something of an everyman, or as everyman as a politician could be, she supposed. Ted Hardbroom had followed the well-tread pipeline from the hallowed halls of an Ivy League institution to law school, from law school to private practice and then onto local government, and the long-time councilman was known to proclaim himself a simple man with only two great loves. In public, that pithy phrase ended with his wife and three daughters, the consummate husband and father. “A family man through and through” read the pamphlets scattered across conservative Pennsylvania.

But in private, Hecate could not count how many times the roles of loving husband and father had been condensed to make room for another beloved, his prized sailboat. For generations, the Hardbrooms had spent summers at their house on the lake, and every Hardbroom daughter had been taught to hold her own on the open water. Of course, Hecate had taken to sailing like everything else, “a natural,” her father was known to fondly boast, and that spindly stroke of luck had cemented her coveted position as his favorite as much as anything else.

“What a piece!” her father praised, brandishing a copy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“Thanks, Dad,” Hecate replied with a pleased grin as she nestled into her father’s open arms, allowing herself a moment to revel in his bursting pride. She did not have to catch a glimpse of the headline to make an educated guess. Her most recent piece had been an expose on the graft of a newly elected state senator. The article had hit a nerve with an already disgruntled populace, and Hecate had heard through the grapevine that there were clamors for his resignation among the party leadership.

“I just got a call from Harrisburg,” her father confided conspiratorially before releasing her and gesturing towards one of the leather chairs as he took the other. He beamed, “They think I might have a good chance at his seat in a special election.” Hecate tried to make herself comfortable. She suspected she would be here for a while.

After a long chat with her father speculating about other possible candidates on the party leadership’s short list, Hecate finally had a moment to herself. Carrying her small suitcase up the stairs, she passed the first two doors until she reached her own. The ajar door revealed freshly laundered linens and towels. At her apartment, she may have sprawled out on the comforter, exhausted from a day of travel, and treated herself to a midday nap. But here, the impulse felt inappropriate. She wanted to crawl under the covers, messing the sheets and ducking her head beneath the pillows to hide away from the watching eyes of the world. Even if they were only in her own mind.

In the end, she did neither. Setting down her suitcase, Hecate gingerly perched on the bed and allowed herself to glance about the interior. The bedroom was a time capsule of her senior year, bright ribbons pinned along the walls and dust-free trophies crowding the shelves. Her desk lay bare but for an array of organizers, holding pens and legal pads, her school supplies neatly put away in color-coded compartments.

A corkboard was covered in lists and colorful sticky notes written carefully in her own hand surrounded by a smattering of glossy photographs. The notes were long forgotten, checked off or not. How important it had all seemed, how pressing to get it all done on time. The deadlines, the grades, the elections. It hardly mattered now. She scanned the photos with an air of objectivity. There she was arm-in-arm with Ursula Hallow and Arabella Hempnettle at the club pool. Squished in between the Cackle twins, Ada and Agatha, at a slumber party. They looked so young, so happy. So many bygone faces smiling out at her, including her own. There she was campaigning for class president. Handing out assignments as editor of the school newspaper. Wearing her sash as part of the court at senior prom as Connor smiled out from behind her looking dapper in his black tuxedo, his arms casually wrapped around her middle.

Her stomach lurched, nauseous, bile rising in her throat, as she warded off the memories. How Hecate hated this room. The pressure. The heartbreak. She stared at the hidden gaps on the corkboard, the unobtrusively empty spaces. She winced remembering the photos that were, the people that had been. Like negatives seared in her mind, she could still see their indelible traces. How many hours had she spent arranging and rearranging that display? For her parents, for her friends. For herself. She had wasted so much time trying to curate the story of her life.

Instinctively, her eyes flicked to the corner of the room and lingered upon the bottom drawer of her wooden desk. Hecate bit her lip, a steadying hand coming up to rest on her stomach. Her gaze was mournful, almost considering. But no, she wasn’t ready for that can of worms. She didn’t know if she would ever be. Only heartache lay there.

Pushing the past forcibly from her thoughts, Hecate determined to focus on the matter at hand, and with practiced effort, she returned to the simple, calming business of unpacking her few things. Downstairs, she heard the front door open and close followed by another bustle of welcome. That would be Sloane. After one last look about the room, Hecate made her way across the carpeted landing to rejoin her family. Taking deep breaths, she slowly descended the staircase, and by the time she traversed the long hallway to approach the kitchen, she knew she was the picture of ease, her gait languid with a confident smile draping her lips.

As she stepped across the threshold, she was greeted by a familiar sight.

“Freeze,” an authoritative voice teasingly commanded, and for a second, Hecate felt a childish giddiness cartwheel through her as she spied her oldest sister, Sloane, seated on a stool by the island. Smiling warningly, Sloane said, “Don’t move one muscle before I hug you.” Sliding off her stool, Sloane embraced Hecate in a big bear hug.

At only five foot four inches, Sloane came up to little higher than Hecate’s chin, but five years older, Sloane still loomed large in her mind. As a child, Hecate had idolized Sloane. In elementary school, she had basked in her sister’s legacy. “Oh, you’re Sloane Hardbroom’s little sister,” her teachers would say, their eyes alight with recognition. “That’s Sloane’s kid sister,” the older students would whisper, nudging each other in the halls, and life had been just that little bit easier. No one ever seemed to remember Jane, her other sister’s obvious eccentricities a dash too loud to ignore. But not Hecate. No, Hecate had learned early how to fit right into the Hardbroom mold.

As Hecate grew older, that mold had started to chafe, but how simple Sloane had made it all seem. While Hecate was still in high school, Sloane had already been applying to law school, acing her LSATs and getting accepted into their father’s prestigious alma mater. By the time Hecate, scrabbling to breathe, was graduating from university summa cum laude, Sloane had been a rising star at her law firm, aggressively recruited out of law school and slated for the partner track. More than that, she had been happy. With work. In love. As Hecate had fought to keep her lies afloat, Sloane had announced her engagement to Eric, an up-and-coming black lawyer in his own right that she had steadily dated since law school.

And how Hecate had envied her for it. Sloane had always been five steps ahead, clearing a path for Hecate to follow, planting the milestones for Hecate to chase. It had been comforting and infuriating and exhausting all at the same time, and Hecate had been so tired of running. Until one day, out of nowhere, Sloane had suddenly stopped.

Three years ago, Sloane had blown up her life. In a career about-face, she had quit her job weeks before her long-awaited partnership vote. Hecate had expected some grand unveiling, a revelation that she was striking out on her own, or some ambitious Plan B that her sister had secretly sown on the side, an offer from a rival firm with a heftier compensation package and more generous benefits.

Sloane had always fought tooth and nail to get her way. Hecate had been too young to ever skirmish with her sister, but even she had not missed the sight of girls from other teams limping off the soccer field with bruised shins and grass-skinned knees after a friendly scrimmage. And no one in the Hardbroom family could forget Sloane’s tense, months-long stand-off with their parents, the alternately heated arguments and frosty retorts, when her “little rebellion,” also known as her serious, four-year relationship with Eric, had evolved into an accepted marriage proposal and the prospect of a permanent alliance. Whatever she came up against, Sloane had always played to win. “It’s what makes her such a great lawyer,” their father would always say.

But this time, there had been nothing but perplexing silence. After months of stolid unemployment, Sloane had finally declared that she was going into business for herself. Hecate knew her parents had drawn a collective sigh of relief, their temporarily wayward daughter at last coming to her senses. That is, until Ted and Tipper Hardbroom had learned exactly what that business entailed.

“We create curated gift experiences inside of handmade reclaimed wood vessels,” Sloane had excitedly described to their baffled parents, seemingly unaware of the absurdity of those pretty words. But they fooled no one. It was gift baskets. Sloane was making high-end gift baskets for a living. It was as ridiculous as it sounded.

Jane put in an order that day, her enthusiasm far from infectious in the terse room – “I could be your first customer!” Their mother, on the other hand, had given tepid promises about sharing the news with her friends for possible referrals, while their usually gregarious father had merely nodded mutely in the background. And just like that, Sloane had toppled off her pedestal, and Hecate had been left to run alone without even her hated guideposts to mark the way.

“We were just talking plans for the afternoon,” Sloane said, filling her in.

Hecate hummed noncommittally. Sloane’s decision had changed everything, and to be honest, Hecate wasn’t quite sure how to talk to her sister now.

“Your father has a meeting,” her mother stated perfunctorily, which surprised no one. She continued with semi-exasperation, “And I have to call the caterer to talk through the menu for the Christmas party anyway. You all should go out.”

“Since we have a few hours before dinner,” Sloane chimed in, “Jane and I thought we might go to the rink.” Sloane looked at her expectantly.

Hecate supposed there was an implicit question hidden in there somewhere. Hecate nodded, “Sure, that sounds fun.”

The act of lacing up her skates sparked Hecate’s muscle memory. The brisk air in her lungs, the callback to eighties and nineties hits on the speakers, the slick ice beneath her feet. The stale scent of chilled sweat and musty leather. It all came back in a nostalgic rush of long hours on the ice, of the many skating lessons in her youth.

The indoor rink was already bustling with the after-school crowds of young families and teenagers. The perimeter was dotted with kids learning to skate for the first time. There were the circumspect, clutching the outer railing on wobbly legs, and the bull-headed, their blades chipping divots and scratches into the ice with each determined stamp. Pre-teens strolled by in leisure clumps, their mouths moving faster than their legs as they chatted about plans for the winter break, while others dashed about with reckless abandon, dodging bodies and tempting near crashes as they zigzagged around the rink. Arms flailed, children landing in heavy falls and swallowed tears or quiet sighs of relief.

A periwinkle blur topped with a poufy pom-pom careened by, a young Asian girl bracing against the wall with a high-pitched squeak as she came to an unceremonious halt, and Hecate could not help but think of Millie. Hecate’s lips quirked at the mental image. Millie’s lanky limbs had jerked and frozen in awkward stop motion poses, her auburn ponytail swinging with each precarious recovery. But over the course of an afternoon, with Hecate coaching her through the basics from a safe distance, Millie had slowly found her groove and started to trust the rhythm of her strides.

Shrieks and gleeful shouts echoed around the domed rink like a noisy snow globe. As soon as Hecate stepped onto the ice though, a transporting stillness seemed to dampen the sounds around her. She savored the smooth glide of her skates, that liberatory sensation of near frictionless movement. She even unthinkingly indulged in a playful little spin.

“Look who’s showing off already,” Sloane teased, effortlessly pulling up next to Hecate.

Behind Sloane, Jane followed shakily, her hands outstretched as if expecting her balance to betray her at any moment. Her sister had never been the athletic sort, trading in her skates for piano lessons at the first opportunity. And truth be told, Hecate had secretly preferred it, having the rink to herself and an easier go at making friends besides.

Jane, in usual Jane fashion, only flashed her a big goofy grin as she plowed onward. It felt almost painful to watch. Like Bambi on ice, doe eyes and all. I’m just happy to be here, Hecate could imagine in Jane’s chipper tone. Suppressing an instinctive twinge of second-hand embarrassment, Hecate squeezed her lips into a pinched smile, and at the next lull, the sisters joined the chaotic procession.

For a while, they skated in an amicable line. With languid movements, Hecate lazily tested the edge of her blades as Jane prattled on in the background. That was another thing Hecate loved about the rink. There was no need for conversation. The noise of the arena drowned out most of her sister’s mundane observations, and offering but a brief comment or two, Hecate left most of the social niceties to Sloane. Hecate instead gave her skates free rein to angle this way and that, reacquainting herself with the feel of the ice, and slowly, her strides began to lengthen. As they rounded the bend, Hecate leaned into the curve, gracefully crossing her outer leg over the inner, and gathering speed. Beside her, she could see Sloane keeping pace, matching her stride for stride.

Oh, it felt glorious. Hecate could feel the strength of her legs, pushing against the ice as she propelled forward with each step. Her heart beating free, adrenaline rushing through her veins, she felt like she was flying.

From a distance, she heard Jane call out, “Hey, I thought we were skating together!” but Hecate ignored her. Sloane merely laughed next to her, and suddenly, with a shared grin, they were off. Sloane sprinted off like a shot in her powder blue jacket, and a giggle bubbling up in her chest, Hecate quickly gave chase. Soon, they were winding through the other skaters. Hecate veered wide of a group of kids all bunched up together and navigated around a mother with her young daughter that was almost at a standstill, while Sloane slowed to avoid colliding with a young boy doggedly cutting across the rink to get to the exit and wove between several hand holding pairs leisurely skating along. Gliding past a teenager in noise-cancelling headphones nonchalantly skating backwards, Hecate saw a broad swath of empty space open. As she sped towards it, she caught sight of a flash of blue zipping by from the corner of her eye, and suddenly, she and Sloane were side by side once more. Trading stride for stride, they whipped around the rink.

“I can skate circles around you!” Sloane shouted with a glint of challenge in her eyes.

Hecate crowed back, “I’ve been lapping you all day.”

Up ahead, a familiar green jacket-clad brunette came into view.

“Hi Jane,” Sloane called out.

Jane turned her head in surprise. “There you two are!” Jane exclaimed. “Let’s ---”

Hecate never heard the rest of Jane’s suggestion, barely deigning to slow down.

Sloane was little better. “Bye Jane!” her older sister said cheekily as she passed her by. If anything, Sloane skated faster. Hecate caught Sloane’s sidelong glance, mischief dancing in her eyes, and in unspoken agreement, Hecate smiled back, immediately kicking into a higher gear. It would be the usual finish line then. The first to lap Jane wins.

As soon as they turned the next corner, Sloane abruptly cut in front of Hecate, forcing her out of the inner lane, but Hecate was unfazed. She had longer legs and youth on her side, she thought with a smirk. She could feel the strain of her muscles as she pushed her body harder and harder along the outer edge of the rink. Sweat beaded at her brow. Her cheeks flushed from the chill, and it felt good. She lengthened her strides to make up ground, and in just a few seconds more, she was soaring past Sloane with a little backward grin.

Sprinting the last few feet past Jane’s green coat, Hecate spun around to gloat, “You were saying?” No one ever said she was a gracious winner.

Sloane merely rolled her eyes as she skated up beside her. “Still cocky, I see,” Sloane drawled amusedly. Off-handedly, she remarked “You know, you should teach my kids to skate. Sybil’s still afraid of the ice, and I don’t know if we’ll be able to afford lessons. What with there being three of them, and our holiday orders being lighter than we’d hoped.”

Hecate felt her chest tighten at the mention of Sloane’s kids. That was another thing that had changed in Sloane’s life as of late. Somewhere in the last year, her oldest sister had become a mother, and in typical Sloane fashion, this new Sloane anyway, she had decided to change the rules again, foregoing the conventional route of pregnancy and carrying a child to term and jumping right into fostering three young girls. And inconsiderately thrusting Hecate into the unexpected role of aunt in the process.

A baby was one thing, Hecate thought. She would have had time to wrap her head around a baby, a whole nine months in fact to get used to the idea that she was supposed to care for a new person in her already dysfunctional family, and what she lacked in immediate words or affection, she could feign. It wasn’t like the baby would know the difference, and by the time, the baby became a child with more cognitive faculties, Hecate rationalized that she would have figured out how to be an aunt.

Instead, practically overnight it seemed to her, Sloane had become a mother to, not one, but three young girls. And Sloane called Hecate “cocky.” If that wasn’t the definition of overconfident, Hecate didn’t know what was.

“That’s a great idea,” Jane chirped. Her sister’s timing was as perfect as ever, Hecate groused inwardly.

Warming up to the idea, Sloane said more enthusiastically, “We could come out again later this week.”

Three walking, talking, human beings that Hecate had yet to even meet. And not without great effort, she might add. Hecate had spent the last few months avoiding Sloane’s outreaches like the plague, begging off invitations to visit with excuses of immovable work conferences and urgent deadlines. This trip would be the inevitable introduction, she knew, but if she was honest, Hecate had been hoping to keep their interactions to the occasional family meal.  

“The girls are so sweet,” Jane gushed. “You’ll love them.”

Of course, Jane had already met the girls, Hecate remembered belatedly. Jane had trekked out to Sloane’s home in Connecticut at the earliest opportunity. Even her parents had spared a few hours for an awkward luncheon, which no one had particularly enjoyed, according to all accounts. Hecate was the lone holdout, and it was starting to show.

“Oh, maybe,” Hecate agreed congenially, scouring her mind for a reasonable delay. “I don’t know if I’ll have that much time though,” Hecate added with an apologetic smile. “I have a lot on my plate with work, and dad’s been asking for my help with the campaign. All hands on deck and that sort of thing,” she joked with a roll of her eyes.

Sloane’s smile seemed to stiffen infinitesimally as she gave a tiny jerk of a nod, “Right. Well,” Sloane said in a more clipped tone, “if you find the time.”

Hecate shrugged lightly. “Let’s see how the week goes,” she suggested amiably, casually inserting, “There’s always after Christmas too.”

Sloane swallowed a scoff, “Sure.”

Just then, a group of oblivious kids swept past, and Hecate sighed in silent relief as she was momentarily separated from her sisters, bringing an effective end to their stilted conversation. For the next half hour, they skated in a facsimile of togetherness. Round and round and round they went, Jane naively chattering on and Sloane alternately responding and sneaking assessing glances her way that Hecate pretended not to notice. Like ceramic figurines in a snow globe destined to follow the same tracks for perpetuity.

Hecate stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, swallowed by the silent echo of the cavernous, tiled walls. She willed the door to stay closed, holding at bay the chatter of festive diners on the other side, including her own family contemplating dessert – “What would you recommend?” – as they weighed the options of butter-roasted pear with honeycomb ice cream, the house pavlova topped with fresh berries, or the triple chocolate bûche de Noël.

What was she doing here? It felt like pure masochism. And not the pleasurable kind. This was no delicious thrill of sensuous torture, that sighing relinquishment of control. This was more like the persistent stretching of a medieval rack, her very self pulled tauter minute by minute, notch by infinitesimal notch. A painful straightening, in every sense of the word. She was the proverbial frog in the boiling pot, except she knew it. She had jumped right in and with a smile to boot.

There was that beautiful smile now, that facsimile of ease and joy. Hecate watched with somber satisfaction as the smile – it did not even feel like her smile – slid off her face, leaving only a baleful glare in its stead. Because honestly, who had she to blame besides herself?

But even trying to muster up anger was exhausting. Hecate rubbed at her face, making sure not to muss her light makeup. It had only been a day, and she was not sure how much longer she could take. Every year, family dinners seemed to follow the same beats in painful repetition.

On the one hand, there was Jane going on about her book that no one would read. If it ever even got published in the first place, that is.

--- “Jane, please,” her mother had finally hushed. “Not while we’re eating” as Jane started outlining a particularly gruesome plot point. ---

They would all mean to, assuredly.

“Hecate,” her mother pivoted, “have you heard from Connor lately?” And her mother none-too-subtly pushing suitable husbands. “I heard from his mother that he might be moving back in the spring. He’s home for the holidays, you know. It might be nice for you two to reconnect.” Hecate highly suspected Connor was getting the same spiel. “You can make plans to reacquaint him with the city."

On the other hand, there was Sloane talking up her business, her marriage, and, this year, her kids.

--- “When is Eric getting here with the children anyway?” her mother had asked brusquely.

“The girls had their last day of school today, so he’s going to bring them over tomorrow morning,” Sloane said.

“Oh good,” her father replied. “They’ll arrive in time then for the fundraising dinner at the club tomorrow night.”

“We’ll take the family picture before we leave,” her mother reminded everyone with a pointed tone. ---

And trying so hard to contribute.

“Daddy, what can I do for the campaign?” Sloane had asked eagerly as her father responded cheerily, “You just bring that beautiful family and show them off.” How Sloane’s brow had twitched at that, her usefulness whittled down to nothing but a pretty display.

Her father turned towards her. “And Hecate, I’ll want you around to talk to the senator ---” Hecate’s stomach curdled at the thought. The woman’s health policies alone were repugnant, but Hecate had only smiled in agreement. I’m a professional. I’m an unbiased professional, her mind had repeated like a dull mantra. It was a thread she knew she did not want to pull, policies and politics and her parents, lest it all unravel at her feet.

With one last doleful glance in the mirror, Hecate wiped dry her hands, stepped out of the bathroom, and almost walked right into another woman.

“Oh!” Hecate exclaimed instinctively as a blonde woman reared back to avoid a collision. “I’m so sorry ---” Hecate trailed off abruptly.

No, not just another woman.

Her ex-girlfriend.

“Pippa.” The name slipped out on a soft exhale. Hecate thought she might have stopped breathing.

Her first girlfriend.

Pippa Pentangle. She had not seen Pippa Pentangle for over fifteen years, since they were both little more than girls. Pippa had always been pretty, but the woman that stood before her was absolutely stunning. Sun-kissed skin peeked out from beneath a pink blazer and a white shirt, her shapely legs hugged by denim jeans that clung to her every curve. But more than that, she held herself with a new self-assurance, at once gentle and strong, that Hecate could not remember from before. Her scent wafted through the narrow space between them, freshly crisp with a lingering sweetness that Hecate could not quite put her finger on. It felt intoxicating.

“Hi Hecate.” Once girlish tones had deepened into a richer timbre, but Hecate’s heart felt soothed, nonetheless.

The simple greeting hung expectantly in the air between them. But before Hecate could pull herself together enough to form a single sentence, Pippa was distractingly quirking an eyebrow, and Hecate was struck mute all over again.

After an awkward beat, Pippa gestured behind Hecate. “So, I’m just going to sneak on by you.”

It was at that moment that Hecate realized she had just been standing stock still, her mouth dumbly agape, as she thoroughly blocked the doorway to the restroom. With all the grace of a lumbering buffalo, Hecate staggered automatically to the side, and as Pippa slipped nimbly past, her sleeve brushed Hecate’s arm. It was the most contact they had had in over a decade. The door swung closed behind the blonde, and Hecate felt her hand grasp for the valley of her throat as her breath caught for the second time that night.

Chapter Text

What was Pippa doing here? Pippa never came home for the holidays. As far as Hecate knew, Pippa never came home at all. Not since … everything. From what Hecate could gather, in recent years the Pentangles far preferred to spend their holidays abroad, happily trading Pennsylvania’s snowy winters for more tropical climes.

It was a fitful night of restless sleep, and Hecate found herself grumpier than usual at being woken by a thunderous clamor of voices the next morning. Unfamiliarly high-pitched ones at that. Hecate groaned into her pillow. It all felt like more than she could handle, and so after taking her time in the bathroom, she slipped soundlessly down the steps and out the front door for an uncharacteristic morning run.

Hecate almost never ran in the city. It was too crowded and too cold. She preferred curling up on her cozy armchair and sinking back into her overstuffed pillows, fluffy socks warming her feet, a mug of coffee in one hand and the Sunday crossword open in the other to occupy her mind. But the paper would be in the kitchen, and so, Hecate ran.

She jogged along familiar paths, around cul-de-sacs and down quiet side streets, navigating the circles upon circles of homes mapped out by memory. She passed by the cemetery, well-kept and undisturbed, crumbling stones worn nameless by wind and rain standing amidst the gleam of polished marble headstones, and over planned walkways weaving through a copse of trees, a tiny haven of permissively wild green space in manicured suburbia. Her feet pounded against the pavement in time to her thoughts, at once scattered and muddied. Her body was bundled up beyond recognition, a hat secured tightly over her ears, a scarf wrapped around her bare throat, her hands clad in fleecy gloves, and her clothes that universal athleisure wear that seemed to serve as some sort of uniform for the active. She certainly did not want to attract friendly conversation. It was much too early and bitterly cold for anything so neighborly, but it never hurt to be cautious. Dressed like this, she felt incognito, freeingly invisible.

Hecate instinctively avoided the turn for the high school. No matter the well-maintained trails, it held no fondness for her. Still, she found her feet following an oft-tread route, and she was hardly surprised when she spied a white brick house rising up ahead, a distinctive blue hatchback parked in the driveway. Her heart skipped a beat at the sight, but her legs kept a steady pace. From afar, she supposed she looked like any other morning jogger. No one else could hear the roar in her ears. She was here. It had not been a dream after all. And somehow, it calmed Hecate to know it, to see it confirmed in the bright, morning light of day, in the simple, indisputable details that felt perfunctorily right.

It seemed but moments later that she was coming up to the kitchen door, her meandering run somehow determined to be complete without any conscious decision on her part. Her body, now warmed from the exertion, instinctively tensed as she hit the short stone path, and it was all Hecate could do to will her shoulders to relax, a careless smile adorning her face as she opened the door.

“Hecate! There you are!” her mother cried.

“Up bright and early, I see,” her father noted with a chuffed raise of his coffee mug as he perused the morning paper.

“Were you looking for me?” Hecate asked innocently. “It was such a beautiful day. I just wanted to get in a run before we needed to head out to the club.”

“Hecate?” At the stove, Sloane called for her attention. “Eric, can you …?” Sloane wordlessly directed her husband to take over the pancakes as she wiped her hands on an apron. “I want you to meet the girls.”

“Morning,” Eric said with a bemused grin. Smoothly plucking the spatula waved in his direction, her brother-in-law brushed a quick kiss to Hecate’s cheek before she was unceremoniously dragged away.

Sloane’s grip was tight on Hecate’s arm as she pulled her towards the dining room, where Jane was sitting cross-legged at the table surrounded by three awkwardly pubescent girls. They were older than Hecate had expected, not quite surly teenagers but neither rosy-cheeked children, in that vague phase of the murky in-between. Maybe ten, twelve. Hecate knew in that moment that she should have read Sloane’s annual family newsletter with greater care. She had barely skimmed the enclosed holiday card. There had been something about Sloane smiling with her picture-perfect family, three young girls posed in front of her, that had felt jarring to see. Strangely familiar and familiarly strange, like looking at her sister’s attempt to recast her own dysfunctional past, and Hecate had tucked the photo and folded letter into her cabinet, neatly filing them amidst the others under a family tab, more out of habit than anything else, where they would all be pristinely preserved for obscurity.

“Girls,” Sloane announced sunnily, “meet your elusive Aunt Hecate! Hecate,” Sloane said with a smile, both too broad and a little stiff at the edges, “this is Clarice, Bea, and Sybil.” Sloane’s introduction was vague, assuming too much. Hecate struggled to put faces to names. The tallest, a brunette, stared back at her, perspicacious eyes assessing behind black frames. A petite girl with blond braids seemed to peek out from beneath her lashes, while the last with dark skin and springy black curls offered a wide smile and a hesitant wave, “Hi.”

“Hi,” Hecate echoed. “Happy holidays,” she greeted with a warmer smile, gathering her bearings. “It’s nice to finally meet you all. I wish I had gotten a chance to earlier.”

Jane chimed in, “Your Aunt Hecate’s a hard-nosed reporter.” Hecate bristled at the back-handed demotion. A hard-nosed reporter. Like she was some common news hound or merely an anchor reading headlines from cue cards between getting her nose powdered and her hair fluffed instead of ideating and researching for her own articles, investigating and interviewing sources over weeks or even months.

Jane continued thoughtlessly, “So her schedule’s not always her own.” Hecate tamped down her irritation at the glancing defense, as if she needed to be apologized for. “Hecate, we were just figuring out sleeping arrangements.” Jane turned back to the girls, already redirecting the conversation. “You three can stay in my old room, so you’ll be more comfortable. There’s a queen-sized bed in there already that’ll fit at least two of you, and one of you can take the air mattress. I think it’s somewhere in the basement.”

“I can sleep on the air mattress,” the tallest girl asserted quickly. “I don’t really like to share space.” The curly-haired girl rolled her eyes knowingly, eliciting a muffled giggle from the bashful one.

“Perfect,” Jane replied. Her eyes sought out Hecate’s. “Hecate, can you help Clarice set up the air mattress? It’s probably in one of the storage boxes by the washing machine. And Bea, Sybil, you two can help me find some extra sheets and pillows upstairs.”

Hecate agreed, discreetly searching for the face of her assigned assistant.

“I’m Clarice,” the bespectacled girl stated, abruptly standing up.

“Of course, we know you’re Clarice,” Jane interjected with a ringing laugh.

“She didn’t,” Clarice said bluntly, pointing a finger in Hecate’s direction. Hecate wasn’t sure whether to laugh or shrink from the accusation – “Clarice,” the blond girl whimpered under her breath, her grimace one of pained horror – and settled on a placid expression instead. Hecate did not have to turn around to know Sloane was glaring daggers into the back of her head. 

The set-up was quick and fairly painless, her mother having made good use of her faithful label maker, and Hecate and Clarice lugged the mattress to Jane’s old room with minimal difficulty. The girls seemed far more comfortable on their own, polite with Jane and too shyly curious to offer more than simple answers with Hecate. It suited Hecate well enough, and she was soon excusing herself to prepare for the fundraiser that evening.

To her mother’s extreme displeasure, the family photo was postponed. Eric had had a last-minute work call go long, his hours stretched impossibly thin between his ongoing legal cases and supporting Sloane’s fledgling business, and the girls had needed help with their dresses and hair, bows to be tied, barrettes to be pinned, shoes to be found, and hair to be braided and twisted, all of which their eager Aunt Jane happily supervised. Sloane and Eric had disappeared behind closed doors, hushed voices whispering furiously, and Hecate had opted to ride ahead to the club with her parents, preferring her mother’s last-minute instructions over the ensuing chaos of the house.

There had been the usual schmoozing, standing by her father’s side and greeting guests, making sure glasses were filled and distilling her prepped talking points into the ears of influential donors. She chatted with her mother’s friends, asking about their children and grandchildren, their many committees and philanthropic causes. She accepted embraces and kisses, deftly fielded well-meaning if intrusive questions about her private affairs with good-natured chuckles and a cheery disposition. Never perturbed, never offended. Never caught off guard. Her smile never faltered. And as the room began to swell with chatter, the outpouring of flowing wine and plentiful appetizers, the heat flushing her cheeks, the overpowering scent of perfumes and colognes assaulting her senses, Hecate finally ducked out to sneak a breath of fresh air.

Hecate shivered as the heavy door shut behind her, muting the sounds of revelry inside. There was a stillness to the quiet of the empty patio, the bright stars overhead alighting the tops of snow-covered trees with only the dim rush of unseen cars in the distance. She dug her hands into the deep-lined pockets of her winter coat and drank the cold air into her lungs, a cleansing shock to the system.

“Hiding out?” A familiar voice cut through the darkness, and a certain blonde pushed off the wall from where she had been leaning, stepping out of the shadows.

“I didn’t realize you were here,” Hecate stammered, her breath coming out in small puffs of air.

“I know,” Pippa replied casually, almost blasé. “That’s why I announced myself. I didn’t want you to think I snuck up on you. I was here first.”

“I can go,” Hecate offered. It was the last thing she wanted to do.

“No, it’s fine,” Pippa said dismissively. “We’re both going to be here through New Year’s, and we’re not kids anymore.” She shrugged matter-of-factly. “I figure there’s no point in trying to avoid each other.”

“Pippa …” Hecate started, her tongue clumsy and hesitant.

“Don’t,” Pippa said with a slight shake of her head. “It’s ancient history.”

“Still, I feel like I owe you an apology. I’m sorry ---”

Pippa’s laugh exploded through the darkness. It was bitter with a tinge of meanness. “I don’t need an apology from you.” The blonde then paused coolly, giving her an almost disdainful glance. “I don’t need anything from you. Not anymore.”

Hecate flinched as if she had been slapped. A slap would have been preferable to this coldness. Worse, Hecate knew she deserved it. The time for apologies had long passed. Her courage had failed her, and then time had swept the rest away. Until now. With Pippa standing in front of her, the blonde’s whole body bristling with hostility.

Not anymore. There had been a time when Hecate would have known what to say, when Pippa would have listened and given her every benefit of the doubt.

Hecate remembered that Pippa had been laughing at something she had said. What, Hecate could hardly recall, but those sparkling brown eyes, that playful smile shining upon her, that was clear as day. Hecate was under no illusions about her sense of humor, or lack thereof. She was not a funny person. She could have a dry wit, bordering then on the sarcastic. Prickly, they had called her. Pippa had always been the nice one. But with Pippa, Hecate had almost believed she was funny.

They had stopped by Hecate’s locker between classes, and their friends had all been gathered. Squeezing in between Ursula Hallow and Arabella Hempnettle, Hecate had only been half-listening as she prepared to swap out her books and grab her notes for her English presentation next period. The upcoming junior prom had been the talk of the day, and Ursula, Arabella, and the Cackle twins, Agatha and Ada, had been engaged in the usual gossip about who would ask who when a small pink card had tumbled out of her locker. Before she could retrieve it, Agatha had already snatched it up.

Hecate remembered Pippa attempting to take the card back. “Agatha, that’s private,” but Agatha merely dodged her grasp.

“Does Hecate have a secret admirer?” Agatha cackled with relish, cracking the card open. “Dear Hiccup,” Agatha read aloud in a cloying voice. Until then, Hecate had not been paying much attention, preoccupied by her upcoming presentation, but her stomach had dropped at the familiar epithet.

“A pet name?” Arabella snickered. “How cute,” she said, her tone indicating anything but.  

“I think I’m falling in love with you,” Agatha read with mock emotion, her eyebrows raised with intrigue. “Scratch that. I know that I am.” Agatha paused dramatically. “Hiccup, will you go to prom with me?” Then her brow furrowed, the singsong tone falling away as she concluded, “It’s signed ‘Pipsqueak.’ Wait.” Agatha swiveled towards Pippa, who seemed struck in place, her mouth half-open in shock. “What is this? Don’t tell me you couldn’t find a date,” Agatha asked almost quizzically.

Arabella interjected, “What about Egbert? Hellibore’s been chasing after you for weeks. I thought he asked you this morn ---” Arabella abruptly stopped talking, her eyes cutting side-long to gauge Ursula’s reaction, but Hecate had beaten the oblivious girl to it.

Hecate could see the wheels turning in the other girl’s head, Ursula’s penetrating gaze rapidly putting two and two together. Hecate had hoped for mercy out of sheer desperation, but as soon as Arabella spilled Egbert’s name, how Egbert had chosen Pippa over Ursula, she knew it was a lost cause.

It was only then that Hecate had thought to steal a glance at Pippa. She had expected to see Pippa rolling her eyes at their friends’ antics in confident conspiracy. Pippa had always been the adaptable one. Hecate had expected Pippa to toss her hair and laugh it off, as she did so many things. “Of course, it’s a joke,” she would say, plucking the card from Agatha’s hand. “Hecate and I were talking about the cheesiest proposals last night, and I thought I’d give it a try. You should see your faces.”

She had expected her to spin a story – “Egbert’s all hands and a sloppy tongue. I’d much rather go to prom with Hecate. Wouldn’t you?” the unspoken “as friends” hanging loudly in the air before they strode off arm-in-arm like they always did. Hecate and Pippa. Pippa and Hecate. They had been inseparable since kindergarten. Pippa the VP to Hecate’s class president.

Or to deflect with humoring admonishment – “Was this one of you? Who planted this? You know Hecate hates pranks.”

Something.

Anything.

But for once, Pippa had just stood there, and then Pippa had done the unthinkable.

“It’s mine,” Pippa had said quietly. Pippa’s words had shuddered through the group. Hecate could faintly remember Ada’s tentative voice in the distance, “Pippa?” reaching out to the blonde. But every other pair of eyes had swiveled curiously in her direction, and Hecate had felt frozen in time, pinned silently to the spot. It had felt as if she had been encased in a block of ice, her limbs unmoving, her mind screeching to a halt.

But it had been Pippa’s eyes that had frightened her most. Gone was the shock, the fear, the hesitation. They were alight with a fiery resolve, and that had terrified her.

Hecate supposed in retrospect that Ursula had seen it too. “Is this some sort of joke, Pippa?” Ursula had inserted silkily, and even the dullest of ears could have heard the dangerous edge to her tone. It had been a subtle challenge. For the longest time, Hecate had assumed it a gesture of goodwill, one last magnanimous offer to let the whole matter slide – why, oh why, hadn’t Pippa taken it? – but the years had chipped away at her fretful attempts to deny the obvious.

For as long as Hecate had known her, Ursula had never been kind. Ursula had merely wanted to keep her hands clean, to goad Pippa into writing her own destruction in that house of cards known as the high school social hierarchy. Hecate suspected Pippa had known it too, even then, and made the hard choice. Pippa had refused to shy away.

“No,” Pippa had swatted the offer away like the flimsy life raft it was, “it’s not a joke. Come on, Hecate,” Pippa had said boldly, brightly, her hand assuredly stretching out across the small distance to clasp hers as it had a hundred times before. It was only when her hand caught air that Pippa had faltered. Her eyes had lifted to meet Hecate’s, and that once confident smile had flickered with doubt at what she saw there. “Hiccup?”

Hecate pulled her coat tighter around her middle, her ungloved hands clenched in her pockets. It hardly helped. She was freezing, but she could not let it go. She had to try. Her breath came out in short bursts. “I was afraid,” Hecate confessed.

For a moment, Pippa seemed to suppress the ghost of a scoff, the wounds too deep. Hecate could relate. But after an effortful beat, the blonde acknowledged, “I know.” There was a simplicity to Pippa’s response, laden with old accusations set aside with begrudging gentleness. It was the echo of affection, a fragrance of forgiveness that suffused Hecate with rushing relief.

But Pippa was not done. Her tone hardening ever so slightly, the blonde’s next words pierced Hecate anew. “So was I.”

They had both been so young, two girls just trying to find their place in the world. If Hecate could turn back time…. It was an empty wish. She could not change the past, and truth be told, Hecate feared her younger self would just make the same mistakes. Over and over again. For she had made choices too. To be fair, they had not much seemed like choices at the time, but memory had a funny way of making fools of even our staunchest arguments.

A pregnant pause filled the air when the door suddenly scraped open, bringing with it all the unfiltered sounds of the party inside. And her sister Jane.

“There you are!” Jane exclaimed to the blonde. “I've been looking all over for you. Oh!” her sister stopped short at the sight of Hecate. “Hi, Hecate,” Jane greeted more tentatively. “Am I interrupting something?”

Yes! Hecate wanted to scream, but Pippa was quicker.

Standing tall, the blonde replied, “Not at all. I think we were about done here.” Pippa’s tone was definitive, without a hint of a question, but also somehow intangibly softer. Or maybe Hecate was imagining it. Either way, Pippa was speaking to her, and that felt like a win. “Good night, Hecate,” Pippa said in a return to that odd mix of casual politeness from before.

“Good night, Pippa.”

I have time, Hecate reminded herself. She would have over a week to repair what she could, and Hecate would have been more than satisfied if not for Pippa comfortably wending her arm through Jane’s as she walked away. There was an intimacy to the gesture that cut Hecate to her core. Jane to the rescue. Again. Hecate watched as Pippa leaned into her sister. The memory twisted in her gut as she heard Pippa gush excitedly without reservation, “Tell me more about this next chapter,” over the music of the band as the two women stepped back in through the doors. 

Dammit, Jane!

“Hiccup?” Pippa’s voice had trembled, and Hecate could scarcely remember what had happened next. She remembered Pippa’s outstretched arm, the gap between them suddenly a dizzying chasm. Too many seconds had passed. The sequence skipped jerkily. One moment, she was standing in front of Pippa, speechless. She could hear the bell clanging overhead, and in the next, Hecate had been numbly walking away, swallowed up in the tide of students rushing to class like an aimless piece of battered driftwood. But not even she could forget that low chuckle that had haunted so many of her nights.

“I guess that’s a no then,” Ursula had said, her voice poisonously sweet. “Dyke.”

The slur had thundered through Hecate’s whole body. If she tried, she could feel it still, a visceral pain that reverberated through the years.

The news had spread like wildfire, and judgment had come swiftly, Pippa’s fate sealed. By lunchtime, Pippa had fallen from being one of the most popular, well-liked, desirable girls in school to persona non grata.

That first day, Pippa had stood there defiantly as the lunchroom drew to a quiet hush, peppered only by titters and poorly muffled laughter. From her seat among their friends, Hecate remembered waiting, Ursula’s heavy hand possessively resting on her arm, not enough to restrain her but somehow enough to hold her all the same. She remembered waiting and watching as the interminable seconds ticked by. Friendless and alone, Pippa had stood tall, as if she too had been waiting, until suddenly, a familiar figure was at her side.

Jane had slipped an arm around Pippa’s and guided her towards an unobtrusive corner. As conversation resumed anew in the lunchroom, the whole school abuzz once more, Hecate released a breath that she did not even realize she had been holding, but something new clenched tightly in her stomach too. Pippa was being held by a Hardbroom but the wrong one, and everyone knew it.

Hecate could feel the curious stares itching at her skin, that something had irrevocably shifted in the high school social landscape, but her own eyes remained fixed on that lone corner. The students at the sparse table, a ragtag band of misfits, had reshuffled to make space, but Pippa had stuck out like a sore thumb.

She doesn’t belong there, Hecate remembered thinking. More quietly, and neither do I.

Pippa’s car was gone by the last bell, and when, with shaking hands, Hecate was finally able to dial Pippa’s number from the safety of her bedroom – to brainstorm, to salvage, to apologize, Hecate was still not sure – it had been too late. She remembered the receiver trembling against her ear, the cord tangled around her finger, as the phone rang and rang until she had heard Mrs. Pentangle’s gentle voice on the line. “Hecate honey, Pippa isn’t ready to talk tonight.”

Unsurprisingly, the blonde was absent from school the next day, but the rumors were far from over. Whispers had followed Hecate through the halls. Was she a willing participant, they viciously sniggered, or a betrayed friend, rose the indignant outcry, her fate hanging in the balance. By the time newspaper club rolled along, she had felt emotionally wrung dry, and when Connor with his crooked grin had asked her to the prom, Hecate had been only too relieved to say yes. It felt like she had been given a gift.

Little did she realize then that that would break them. She could still conjure Pippa’s stricken face, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “You said yes to Connor?”

The rest of junior year was a blur. Prom came and went. Connor was nice enough, a friend when those seemed in short supply, and if there were rumors the next morning, they only solidified Hecate’s sexuality. Pippa had skipped prom altogether that year.

May had rolled into June, June into the summer, and with summer, the Pentangle house had stood empty, the whole family traveling for most of July and August. Or so the story went. And suddenly, the impossible, this gulf between them, had become the new normal. There had been no more Hecate and Pippa, Pippa and Hecate. Only Hecate. And only Pippa.

Perfect on paper, Connor and Hecate became something of an item, and from then on, Hecate saw Pippa mostly from a distance, hearing snippets about her life from the most unwelcome of sources, the gossip mill. And Jane. Hecate did not know which was worse.

“Did you know Pippa’s starting a Gay Straight Alliance?” Jane would say.

“No, Jane. I didn’t,” Hecate would reply through gritted teeth.

Actually, Hecate did know.

Jane was worse.

Of course, Jane, having landed at a local university in Pittsburgh, and Pippa had remained close after her sister’s graduation. Like most topics Jane brought up at the dinner table during her too-frequent visits home, nobody asked about the Gay Straight Alliance, the topic lying flat without any questions to buoy the conversation, but Hecate surmised that the club was mostly comprised of Jane’s old motley crew.

With the arrival of spring, Connor asked Hecate to senior prom with all the assurance of a steady boyfriend, while Pippa went with some girl named Abby. Gangly and awkward, Abby was a new transfer, and the only thing anyone seemed to know about her was that she was an orphan. Not that Hecate had asked around. She never could figure out what Pippa saw in her.

Before Hecate knew it, June was here, then graduation. She gave her practiced valedictorian speech. She dutifully walked across that stage for the last time, and diploma in hand, she tossed her mortar board in the air. Less than two weeks later, Hecate fled to the city, to the anonymity of Philadelphia, a blessedly inconvenient five hours away by car, and never looked back.

Chapter Text

The mall was bustling, brimming with rippling excitement for the holidays. Shiny silver tinsel lined the railings. Evergreens and apple reds burst from every storefront window. Motifs of snowflakes and ornaments, snowmen and reindeer, elves and candy canes displayed their wares within and shouted their door-busting winter deals in bright splashes of color or tastefully stenciled black-and white script. Holiday classics played over the speakers, an endless repeat of familiar carols in a hundred different iterations – crooners and pop princesses, big bands and jazzy ensembles, a cappella choruses and traditional choirs – each trying their hand at the age-old tunes. The jingles and orchestrations, the catchy bops and the heartfelt ballads. From the height of the second floor, Hecate could see the line for visits with Santa winding through the eastern wing, a snow-laden path dotted with glossy, oversized gift boxes adorned with perfectly sculpted ribbons. It all glinted and shimmered with Christmas exuberance.

Hecate had only been here for a few minutes, but she could already feel a headache building from all the heavy-handed merriness. Bah, humbug.

“It’ll be a good chance for you to bond with the girls,” Jane had said when Sloane had somehow managed to wrangle her into this impromptu shopping trip. Hecate had been all too ready to bow out, happy to have the house to herself as her sisters and brother-in-law and the three young girls prepared to tromp out the door. But Sloane had received a mysterious call, and suddenly, plans had abruptly changed.

“Hecate, please. Jane can’t take the girls herself,” a harried Sloane had said curtly before disappearing with Eric behind a closed door. It was less an entreaty than an order, and Hecate had been swept into Jane’s car along with the others.

The first stop was the frame shop on the second floor. White Elephant was a tradition at their family’s annual Christmas party, and this year, it seemed, Jane had taken it upon herself to make her gift. Now Hecate knew that Sloane had likely brought one of her gift baskets, but at least, that was unobtrusive. This was a painting. And not a small one at that, hardly unnoticeable among the many bottles of wine and chocolates, perfumes and dishware. Hecate had looked upon the thin cardboard tube with dread when Jane had excitedly grabbed it out of the trunk. While light, it was long and once framed…. Well, Hecate could only imagine how big the final product would be, a creative monstrosity on display for all to see. Her mother would be thrilled.

But that had been a nightmare for another day as Jane had wended through the crowds, the long cardboard tube tucked beneath her arm like an awkward joust. There had been Jane, never particularly socially aware at the best of times, getting stuck in doors and bumping into strangers as they moved about the mall. There was Jane, poking unsuspecting shoppers in their soft sides and knocking knees as she spun about like a broken weathervane struggling to find her north. Her cheery apologies received harumphs and glares in return, and it had been all Hecate could do to politely wrest the tube away – “I insist” – beneath a guise of help. Hefting it against her shoulder like a silly toy soldier, she had finally followed her sister and their three charges through the boisterous holiday crowds.

As Hecate effortfully propped the unwieldy painting on the ground against the railing, she heard a small gasp.

“Wow,” Bea gaped as her wide eyes took in the mall interior from above.

At Hecate’s questioning glance, Clarice explained, “We don’t really go to the mall. Too commercial, Sloane says. She likes to take us to craft fairs.”

“How very granola,” Jane chuckled to Hecate. “Sloane touting small business. Whoever thought we’d see the day?”

Who indeed. Who was this woman her sister had become? Comfortable casual wear had replaced the hard-angled corporate suits in varying gradients of gray and black. Sloane was still as pushy as ever, indomitable at times, but also worn at the edges, less out of exhaustion and more out of some willingness to be less implacable. Sloane had never been harried. Sloane had never needed help. She had been brusque, impatient, demanding. That brisk “please” had been the closest thing to a request that Hecate had heard come out of her sister’s mouth in years. Hecate’s head only ached more.

“Oh, finally!” Jane exclaimed, and Hecate turned to come face-to-face with a vision in pink.

A flushed Pippa was shrugging out of her winter coat and unwinding a woolen scarf from around her neck. “Am I late?” Pippa asked, checking her watch confusedly. “I thought you told me to meet you here at half-past, although I thought Sloane---”

“Oh, never mind. You’re right on time,” Jane rushed on before pulling the befuddled blond to the side in a private tête-à-tête.

“I need to ask for a favor,” Hecate heard Jane say more quietly. Snippets of conversation drifted through the air – “I have to drop this off at the frame shop” and “Stevie wants to meet this afternoon.” There were hushed protestations. More than one exasperated “Jane” was met with earnest replies of “edits” and “the deadline” and an exceedingly irritating, wheedling “please” that annoyed Hecate even by proxy. It was a whispered battle of the wills, mighty and furious and just as swift to resolve, as the pair returned to the awaiting group in a united front.

Her sister’s toothsome smile should have been her first clue of disaster.

“I have to run off,” Jane explained apologetically.

Her sister’s suspicious avoidance of any eye contact should have been her second.

Hecate was inwardly seething, roped into babysitting duty by not one but two sisters in one afternoon. “I got a call from my editor about some last-minute changes, but I’ve called in reinforcements. Pippa here,” Jane gushed with a small squeeze of the blonde’s arm, “is the best shopper I know, and she and Hecate are going to help you all find the perfect gifts for White Elephant.”

“And visit Santa?” Bea interjected hopefully.

“And visit Santa,” Pippa affirmed with a warm smile.

The girls seemingly assuaged, her sister was already backing away with her cardboard tube in hand when Hecate, not so easily mollified, hissed warningly under her breath, “Jane. Jane, don’t you dare leave me here.” But her sister seemed deaf to her growls – “Jane” – offering up but a fluttering wave before disappearing into the stream of shoppers.

With Jane gone from sight, Hecate’s annoyance seemed to vanish with her, leaving only a strange clamminess in her hands.

“All right, so where to first?” Pippa asked gamely.

Met with only uncertain shrugs, Pippa suggested, “Well, that’s okay. Why don’t we look around to stir some ideas?”

“That’s pretty,” Pippa complimented over Sybil’s shoulder.

At a loss for ideas, the floundering group had been drawn into a chic home furnishing store by an eye-catching window display. The boutique shop was, as expected, beautifully decorated with comfy oversized pillows, lush blankets, trendy totes and sun hats, polished picture frames, glass-blown ornaments, and hand-crafted jewelry. But it was all wrong. Hecate doubted the girls would find anything here. She did not need to check more than a discreetly tucked away price tag or two to know that almost everything in the store was far beyond the girls’ limited budget. But Pippa seemed in no hurry, content to let the girls browse, and Hecate was determined to follow Pippa’s lead, albeit from a nervous distance.

Hidden behind a tall rack of fashionable hats, Hecate heard Sybil murmur, “I don’t know,” gently replacing the necklace she had picked up for a closer look. “What if they don’t like it?”

Pippa seemed to give the girl’s concern its due consideration, nodding thoughtfully. “Jewelry can be tricky,” she said sympathetically. “Everyone has their own style, and it can be hard to predict what other people might like. My tip for White Elephant,” she said conspiratorially, “is to buy something that I wouldn’t mind keeping myself. That way, everyone wins. So, the question is, do you like it?” Pippa asked, drawing the necklace in question out once more.

Sybil nodded with a hesitant smile, but when she flipped the small white tag attached, she added, “But I can’t afford it.”

Pippa winced exaggeratedly as she took a quick peek at the tag. “Well, it is beautifully made,” Pippa admired, then flashing a playful smile, “but I think we might need a different store.” And just like that, Sybil was suppressing a giggle and falling into step behind the taller blonde like a gosling after its mother as they gathered Bea and Clarice for their next stop. Pippa spared but a silent glance in Hecate’s direction to see that she had gotten the memo before heading out of the shop. Hecate supposed no words were needed. The implication was clear, and she and Pippa had long since mastered the nuance of wordless communication, first in muffled giggles and wiggling eyebrows across classroom aisles, then stolen touches in the backseat of crowded cars, and finally in hurt glances and pointed dismissals. Hecate could read Pippa with a fluency she had never forgotten. But the silence felt immense, nonetheless.

A few shops down, they entered a cozy aromatherapy store, its wooden shelves lined with hundreds of fragrances infused into candles and sprays. The interior was laden with a myriad of powerful scents – woodsy and warm, cool and fresh, fruity, botanical. Woven baskets piled high with soaps and lotions sat atop tables with lavender tabs encouraging patrons to “TRY ME.” And try they did. Pippa modeled stepping into a mist of a scented spray, and Bea and Sybil eagerly followed suit, twirling into fragrances. Even Clarice could be seen dabbing lotion upon her hands and wrists with an investigative sniff. The complimentary washing stations showcased products boasting kitschy names like winter wonderland, toasted marshmallow, crisp apple, gingerbread cookie, and evergreen bough. Or so Hecate gathered from the excited squealing as Bea and Sybil rushed to a newly open station with Clarice and Pippa bringing up the rear.

Pippa swiveled the soap bottles about so the labels all faced the girls, offering each girl a generous pump of her soap of choice. “I know Jane’s so bummed to miss out on this day with you all.”

“Really?” Sybil said.

“Yes, really,” Pippa confirmed warmly. “She was texting me about it all last night.”

Bea gushed, “Aunt Jane’s the best.”

Hecate swallowed a scoff. How besotted the girls already were by her sister’s over-the-top antics, but Pippa only nodded, as if the girl was stating the obvious. “She is.”

Lathering her hands with soap, Bea asked curiously over the sound of the open tap, “How do you know Aunt Jane, Pippa?”

“Are you old friends?” chimed Sybil.

“Oh, I’ve known your Aunt Jane a really long time. We’ve been best friends since high school, and now we work together too.”

Hecate wondered if she had imagined the slight stutter around “best.” The word slammed into her all the same, a familiar blow to the gut that threatened to knock her breathless, but it was the second part of that sentence that gave Hecate pause ---

“You do?” a chorus of voices replied, the girls all giving Pippa their avid attention. But it was Hecate’s lower tenor that seemed to catch Pippa’s.

Pippa raised a single eyebrow in surprise, her next words more carefully measured with her larger audience in mind. “I do,” she repeated slowly. “I’m her agent, so,” she clarified for the girls, “I was in charge of helping her find a publisher for her book.”

“That’s so cool,” Bea awed.

“It must be nice to be able to work with your best friend. I think I would like that,” Clarice said somewhat wistfully. “But,” and then the girl scrunched her nose skeptically, surveying Bea and Sybil, “I don’t think it will happen.”

Sybil shook her head with a rueful chuckle. “Probably not,” she agreed, and Hecate got the strong sense that this wasn’t the first time Clarice had expressed her sidelong disappointment.

As the girls ventured further into the shop to debate the various merits of soaps, lotions, and candles for a potential purchase, Pippa seemed to linger. Long fingers skated over the different bottles of facial refiners, eye serums, toners and hydrators on display in feigned interest, and for lack of anything better to do, Hecate grabbed the nearest bottle towards her – snowflake something – and washed her hands again. Pippa tentatively continued, “You know, Jane’s the one who convinced me to come home for Christmas this year. Said she might need a sounding board as she finished up rewriting some of her latest chapters. I thought she would have told you.” Pippa’s eyes suddenly lifted to meet hers, her gaze searching, but for what, Hecate could hardly guess. At Hecate’s genuinely flummoxed expression, the blonde’s gaze sharpened. “You still don’t listen to her at all, do you?” Disdain shadowed every word, and without waiting for a response, Pippa just shook her head and walked away.

Hecate stared momentarily after the blonde, slowly turning off the tap and wiping her wet hands on the proffered towels. Pippa had become a literary agent. It was the first new fact Hecate had learned about Pippa in more years than she could say. All Jane’s prattling about Pippa reading through her newest chapter or connecting her with this person or that, Hecate’s mind wandering off before she got bogged down in the details, brushing it off as pity or a favor, started to make a bit more sense. Pippa had always been a bookworm, a storyteller, and Hecate remembered the young blonde girl snuggling under the covers beside her, asking for her take on the books they had read together in class and regaling her with detailed summaries of the stories that she had not, painting pictures so vivid that Hecate could almost swear that she had. Hecate had never tired of listening to Pippa talk, rapt until her childish eyelids were heavy with sleep and ready when she awoke to do it all over again.

And yet, even this new piece of information felt tainted by Jane, her insinuation into Pippa’s life as palpable as ever. Pippa’s approval, her mere company, all dependent upon Jane.

Hecate wandered aimlessly through the aisles, taking the obligatory sniff of a candle here and there, but her initial amusement at the chemical acumen required to recreate the scent of freshly baked bread or bubbly champagne in candle wax had fizzled out by the half hour mark, leaving only a slight throbbing in her temple.

Hecate suddenly felt a small tug on her sleeve, and there stood Clarice at her elbow.

“I don’t want to look around anymore,” Clarice stated. “I already gave my input. They’re just taking forever to decide,” she said with a shrug. “Can I go outside?”

Nearby, Pippa stood with Sybil and Bea as they narrowed down their finalists, a decision that seemed to warrant exhaustive discussion, especially taking into account any holiday discounts. “Why don’t you go with Clarice,” Pippa proposed, “and I can stay with Sybil and Bea as they finish up here?”

Hecate internally balked at the suggestion. There was something about the forthrightness of the girl that put her ill at ease.

As if sensing her reluctance, Pippa suppressed an impatient eye roll. “Or, I can keep Clarice company, and you can stay here.”

Hecate felt trapped between a rock and a hard place, and she suspected that Pippa well knew it. There had been a small kindness embedded in that initial offer, whether the blonde had meant it or not, and clipped frustration, barely masked, at Hecate’s bullheadedness now.

“You are being so stubborn right now. Stop digging in your heels,” Pippa used to tease when the blonde had never been a pushover herself. Hecate had a love-hate relationship with aromatherapy shops. That might be too dramatic. An appreciation-at-best-nauseous-at-worst relationship, the unrelenting smells easily overwhelming her sensitive nose, and she was rapidly approaching her limit for the day. Which would be unpleasant for everyone. A nauseous Hecate was an irritable one.

In the face of Pippa’s challenging stare, Hecate decided quickly. “No, you stay,” she replied amiably. “We’ll explore a little nearby until you’re all done.” It was the same chipper voice she used with her parents, and Hecate realized it was a misstep immediately. Pippa’s expression seemed to pinch reflexively, her pink lips pursing and her brown eyes flashing with a hint of anger. Pippa had always hated when Hecate had adopted that tone, her “politician voice” she had called it, fake and performative, designed to placate and please everyone but herself, Pippa had said.

In the past, nothing had stirred Pippa’s protective side quite like Hecate putting on her Hardbroom persona, a steady hand at the small of her back, a firm presence standing shoulder-to-shoulder to remind her she was not alone. Pippa had been like a guardian, her usual sunny self but coiled to intervene with a well-placed distraction or a fierce show of bolstering solidarity. Whatever the situation had called for.

Whatever Hecate had needed.

“Not with me,” Pippa had whispered one night. Straddling Hecate’s lap, Pippa had brushed away her tears with the pads of her thumbs and caressed her cheek. “I don’t want you to ever feel like you have to hide yourself from me.” And a teenage Hecate had only shaken her head wordlessly. Never. It had seemed so easy at the time.

It was another promise Hecate had broken.

Unable to bear Pippa’s gaze any longer, Hecate looked away, and turning to Clarice instead, she confided with an easy smile, “I was about ready to leave too.” In for a penny, in for a pound. Almost claustrophobic, Hecate could feel her pulse racing with the urge to run away.

Making a steady beeline for the exit, upon reaching the vast corridor, Hecate breathed a sigh of relief, freed at last from the sensory overload of the tiny shop and too many suffocating memories. Next to her, Clarice released a deep breath of her own, and Hecate’s lips quirked at the unexpected feeling of déjà vu. Across the short walkway beckoned a store with eccentric odds-and-ends, featuring a combination of random gadgets and old school puzzles. It was the type of store Hecate had loved as a child, a tactile playground, where every item could be touched and tested, and Clarice seemed similarly intrigued. Hecate was grateful. It was as good a place as any to pass the time.

A collection of rain sticks sat in the corner. “How does this work?” Clarice wondered. Rotating the faux-wooden pole in fascination, Clarice looked at Hecate expectantly, and Hecate was startled by the innocence in her eyes. Clarice looked at her as if she might have the answers, extending an instinctive trust that Hecate felt certain she had not earned, and it was then that Hecate was reminded of how young these girls actually were, even Clarice. Hecate was almost sad to admit she had no idea, but Clarice accepted her ignorance without fuss, making a note to research it later.

One shelf was lined with the oddest of toys, a rectangular assortment of dull metal pins that could take the impression of any solid shape. Other children had clearly been here before as the metal pins captured the form of a variety of hands – open palms, fists, and a peace sign or two – and even a few faces twisted into grotesque grimaces. One had its eyes closed like a mask, while another preserved the remnant of a tongue sticking out. Hecate withheld judgment, lest she deter Clarice, but the whole display seemed like a petri dish crawling with bacteria. How many sticky hands, sniffly noses, and open mouths had been crammed into those pins, and how often had they been disinfected? By the looks of the few staff milling about the store, including the new seasonal hires, and, of course, the impressions staring out at her, not often enough.

As if echoing her unspoken thoughts, Clarice assessed, “Seems unhygienic,” and after a beat, “Bea would love it though.”

A set of telescopes caught Clarice’s eye in the back of the store. The models spanned across a wide range, from simpler models for beginners to those with more sophisticated designs and more powerful lenses and the price tags to match. And Clarice was still exploring the different functions, pointing the telescope into the interior of the mall, when Sybil and Bea finally joined them, a three-wick winter wonderland candle proudly in hand, and Pippa trailing their steps.

“Where to next?” Pippa asked lightly, her tone bright and betraying none of the anger of before.

This time, the girls led the way, their steps more confident with their first purchase, and following their noses, they stopped at the corner artisanal chocolate shop. Hecate had not been to this chocolate shop in years, but the rich bittersweetness in the air combined with the timelessness of the interior, dark walnut and maple wood framed with golden accents, felt comforting. On the glass counter lay a familiar sight, a long array of samples. Unchanged, the sample tray featured truffles of every flavor, hunks of homemade fudge, pieces of chocolate-covered pretzels, and even some dark chocolate-dipped caramel apple slices. Hecate remembered her childhood self peering through the temperature-controlled glass at the rows and rows of perfectly shaped chocolates, at distinct dimples and swirls, marveling at how each one could somehow be both unique and utterly alike. She recalled reading through the different descriptions, and how Pippa, who would inevitably rush first to the free samples, would thoughtfully set aside a caramel apple slice, decadently dipped in dark chocolate and sprinkled with sea salt, for her each trip.

“I don’t want them to get all snatched up,” Pippa had once said, popping into her mouth a bite of truffle flecked in coconut flakes while she cradled a small white paper baking cup in her other hand. She offered it to Hecate. “I know they’re your favorite.”

Standing by the sample tray, Pippa invited the girls to taste whatever struck their fancy. As she spoke, Pippa helped herself to a piece of raspberry truffle. For a moment, the blonde’s gaze seemed to flick down to the nestled slices of caramel apple resting at the far end of the tray, but in the next, Pippa’s placid eyes had slid past them. Pippa moved by without a second glance, her attention already given over to Bea, who was delighting in her introduction to marzipan. Picking up a baking cup of her own, Hecate tried to savor the tart apple. She willed the salty sweetness of rich chocolate coating her tongue to quiet her rosy memories, her fickle imagination. It was nothing but a dash of wishful thinking, she told herself, her eyes playing cruel tricks on her.

The girls had wanted to try a little of everything, enamored by the option of each getting to choose a few to make their own assorted box, but the price had quickly stopped them short. Their excited faces had fallen with disappointment, but thankfully, the girls had bounced back soon enough when Pippa started enthusiastically talking up the more affordable tins of peppermint bark stacked nearby. It was a “limited seasonal flavor,” she had touted, and the striated blocks of dark and white chocolate, sprinkled with crushed candy canes, had easily won the girls over.

Pippa’s endorsement, Hecate knew, was far from disingenuous. The whole Pentangle family loved peppermint bark and would stock up each year. Pippa grabbed three tins for herself and her parents, and the girls happily landed on two of their own, one to share with the family and a second to add to their White Elephant gift. But as Bea, Sybil, and Clarice prepared to stand in line, Hecate surprised herself by saying, “Why don’t you all pick out your favorites for an assorted box for yourselves too? My treat.”

Bea clapped her hands with an elated smile, bouncing on the balls of her feet, while Clarice reported she would return to the samples for a second, more systematic, test, a smiling Sybil in tow.

When all was said and done, the box of handcrafted truffles was rung up, and Hecate opted into an elaborate bow for the occasion. It was probably the most expensive box of chocolates she had ever bought, and she could feel Pippa’s unspoken amusement, or perhaps it was more judgment, as she waited by the register. But Hecate could only give a mental shrug. Bea’s never had marzipan before, she justified, pulling out her wallet and tapping her credit card. It’s a culinary education.

It had been meant to be a single semi-extravagant purchase, an exception, not the rule, but to her shock, Hecate soon found herself falling into the time-old trap that had snared many a new aunt. She was not trying to buy the girls’ affections, per se, or at least, she did not think she was. It was just those infectious smiles, that halting moment of disbelief followed by pure joy. At a nearby stall hawking winter accessories, it was a pair of woolen mittens for Sybil, the young girl carefully stroking the different patterns and textures; earmuffs for Bea, who almost immediately picked out a fuzzy baby blue pair that would keep her ears “warm and toasty all winter long”; and a chunky knit hat for Clarice. Clarice had not been enthused at first, deeming her current winter wardrobe “sufficient,” but after being coaxed into a quick fashion show of beanies, bucket hats, and berets by Sybil, Bea, and Pippa, by the end, she was grinning with the rest. Winter necessities, Hecate thought to herself, as the girls rounded out their White Elephant gift with a beautiful knit scarf.

To her chagrin, Hecate’s generosity was repaid with her appointment to the role of reluctant model. The girls circled around her, wrapping one scarf around her neck only to replace it with another and another, swapping out colors and lengths and designs. Hecate felt like a life-size Barbie doll, a mannequin on display, and sat just as stiffly. Hecate certainly felt scrutinized enough, stuck in place as much by Pippa’s inscrutable gaze as by the girls’ explicit direction. When asked her opinion, Pippa would dutifully turn her head to offer her take on color palettes and styles with an engaged smile, but when the girls scattered to scour the stall for any other contenders, her open smile would vanish, Pippa’s expression settling into something else entirely. Hecate thought she saw a flash of something like warmth and felt herself blush self-consciously. Sometimes the blonde’s eyes seemed contemplative, at others pained, and Hecate felt discomfited by their unreadability, not least because of Pippa’s own evidently growing distress. Each time, the blonde’s body appeared a touch less languid than before, her limbs held rigid and her hands twisting in front of her middle until, at last, Pippa effortfully tore her eyes away. Latching onto a scarf hanging nearby, the blonde toyed instead with the scarf’s fringe, and on the mumbled pretense of finding a mirror, Pippa whipped around to the other side of the stall. As the blonde disappeared from view, Hecate felt suddenly bereft.

It was a ridiculous reaction, she chided herself. Overblown, utterly disproportionate, her logical mind reasoned. It was only a few minutes. Pippa soon reappeared, empty-handed, but the ache in Hecate’s chest remained. At ease once again, Pippa stood beside the girls, smiling, laughing. Those peals of laughter felt so familiar. Hollow, Hecate responded instinctively. Whole, she countered as closer to the truth, the sound panging against her heart with every stuttered beat.

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.

Chapter Text

After their trip to the North Pole, at Bea’s behest, they had popped into a baking wares shop. With a second peppermint candy cane tucked into her mouth, this one courtesy of Santa’s elves, Bea had oohed and aahed over all the shiny bakeware. Deciding to buy some fun cookie molds with her pocket money, Bea, in her enthusiasm, had planned out a whole menu of sugar cookies for her, Sybil, and Clarice to bake tomorrow. As Bea had mused a mile a minute about the different recipes they could try, the frosting and food coloring they might have on hand at the house, Hecate had watched Pippa out of the corner of her eye.

You seem sad, Sybil had observed, and Pippa had confirmed it. Hecate found herself searching Pippa for any trace of sadness, but nothing in Pippa’s interactions seemed definitive either way. She still had Sybil nestled under her arm, attuned to the girl’s need for comfort, and was responsive to Bea’s running commentary. Bea hoped Sloane and Eric would not have another meeting and speculated that Aunt Jane would likely be free, wouldn’t she? Pippa could only guess but encouraged her to ask. Her smile reached her eyes, and her laughter rang carefree.

But Hecate knew that looks could be deceiving. Pippa had always been protective of her sadness. Even when they were younger, everyone had counted Pippa as a dear friend, until they had shunned her en masse, but few had been invited into her confidence. Pippa had been generous with her happiness, her joys, her infectious lightness and precious with her tears.

It was only behind closed doors that Pippa had permitted herself to cry, to really cry. Pippa had not been made of stone. She had cried out when she had fallen at the playground, woodchips sticking to a bloodied knee. Her brown eyes had welled with unshed tears at her grandmother’s funeral, her skin pallid and her shaky hands clutching tissues to dab at stray streaks. There had been tears of frustration indignantly brushed away when she had gotten a demerit for breaking the strict school dress code, a gendered double standard Pippa had decried before submitting a proposal to overhaul the whole policy, lengthy citations and all. Pippa had won a few concessions from the stodgy administration for her efforts and had pushed its boundaries ever after with rebellious dashes of color every chance she got.

But the gut-wrenching sobs as she had mourned her beloved grandmother for months on-and-off throughout the eighth grade or the angry sniffs when she had overheard some boys from the newspaper club talking about her behind her back their junior year – “She’s pretty but doesn’t have a lot of substance. A bit silly, isn’t she? Did you read her column?” Pippa had written a fashion column for the high school newspaper, an entertaining way to decompress and spend time with Hecate after school once she had become editor. “It’s a win-win,” Pippa had said when she had handed in her first submission, a self-satisfied grin stretched across her face – those had been a part of her that only Hecate had been allowed to see.

Hecate remembered her shoulder damp with tears as Pippa had alternated between furiously pacing her bedroom floor and trembling against her on the carpet. Hours later, Pippa, her eyes red-rimmed and finally dry, had lain her head across her lap, and Hecate had stroked her hair as the blonde muttered, “Silly, like I’m some sort of joke. I just want to be taken seriously, not humored and patronized or flattered and hit on.” Pippa had punched her fist into her fluffy pink pillow for good measure before clutching it back to her chest. “I hate that I care,” she had confessed. Then turning vulnerably towards Hecate, Pippa, her brown eyes swimming in doubt, had asked in a voice so small, “You don’t think I’m silly, do you, Hiccup?”

How she had responded, Hecate could hardly recall, but Pippa had stridden into the newsroom the next week, boldly staking her claim as she arranged her desk with pointedly pink accessories. She had brought a fresh column in hand, both cutting in its critique of the male gaze and palatably funny, and the column, a clever sartorial satire, had caught fire. Setting the school aflame with trends and debates, people had loved it, though few had gotten the joke. And Hecate had snickered helplessly as she edited every issue, often secretly saving Pippa’s columns for last.

Pippa had always laughed through her pain in brilliant and worrisome ways, and Hecate knew better than to trust her rusty eyes now. Ahead, Sybil had her arm slung around Pippa’s waist and seemed to snuggle into her side as Pippa leaned her cheek against the girl’s plaited hair, and Hecate wondered for a moment who exactly was comforting whom.

“Aunt Hecate?” Bea’s voice corralled her meandering thoughts. A stunned Hecate focused her sight and briefly met a pair of brown eyes, so familiar and so unfathomable. Pippa’s gaze had instinctively skittered in her direction at the sound of her name and had spun away just as quickly. “Aunt Hecate, will you come?”

Blinking, Hecate looked down, and two expectant young eyes stared up at her in bated anticipation surrounded by shelves of gleaming cookie trays and muffin pans. How could Hecate say no to those round eyes bright with hope and those cherubic cheeks? Strangely enough, she found she did not want to. Besides, Hecate could bake circles around Jane any day. Not that it was a competition, of course.

“Yay!” Bea cheered, and Hecate felt a puff of affection for the girl. Bea had hardly taken a breath though when she was suddenly whirling around, another invitation at the ready. “Pippa, will you come too? Please,” Bea wheedled. Hecate could not help but sneak a peek at the blonde, who was still studiously avoiding her gaze, and felt a surge of something like hope herself when Pippa graciously accepted.

Hecate tried not to read anything into it, into this tentative opportunity for another afternoon with Pippa and this time of the blonde’s own volition. It was not nothing. Hecate’s mind swept back in time. Waving Connor genially ahead with excuses of tidying up, she had sat alone in the empty classroom they called their newsroom. Pippa had skipped another club meeting, demurring her regrets and sending in her final few columns via e-mail. Always on time, always impeccably written, but gone. The only evidence of her setting foot in the newsroom was the mysterious clearing out of her desk after hours, the pristine wooden desk looking so piteously bare without even a trace of its former pink.

Giant swirling lollipops dangled overhead, and tiny feet scampered past the rainbow twist lollipops intermittently sprouting up from the neon floor, checkered with orange, pink, and red tiles. Concentric circles of clear cannisters teemed with gumballs and sour candies, displayed gummies and jellybeans. It was a psychedelic ecstasy of sugar, otherwise known as a candy store, a bizarre mix of chaotic overindulgence and almost industrial geometry. Loud splashes of color blared their siren call under powerful fluorescent lights, and it seemed like every child in the nearby radius had come running.

To Hecate’s quiet relief, Sybil, Bea, and Clarice were no exception. If she had begun to think of them as adults in miniature, a little too knowing and wise beyond their years, the candy shop was the great leveler, she thought sardonically. Pippa had offered to treat the girls to a small bag of sweets to share, and Hecate had endured the girls’ delighted squeals with a grateful smile. They were but kids after all.

Hecate stood with Pippa by the entrance, away from the stamping feet of jostling children. She watched giddy hands pulling levers, mouths agape and eyes widening with enchantment, as sugar – dyed, twisted, and reshaped into every form imaginable – tumbled into their open bags. Listening to Clarice, Sybil, and Bea weigh the pros and cons of peach gummies to raspberry licorice, warheads to everlasting gobstoppers, Hecate had the uncanny sensation of feeling so very old.  

Not in a bad way. Her age seemed to clothe her like an armor, oiled and battle weathered. Her years had served her well. Where the kids saw a candied paradise, Hecate saw a strategic business. Maybe she felt a little wearier, childish fancies long behind her, but with them, the old confusions and insecurities felt lighter too. Pippa’s voice echoed in her mind. We’re not kids anymore. It had felt like an indictment at the time, clanging with too late and not enough, but it rang differently now. No, they weren’t kids anymore. And that felt like choice.

Taking a measured breath, Hecate peeked a glance at the stoic blonde beside her. Against the clamor and garish colors of the candy shop, the blonde seemed muted, almost blanched in contrast, and Hecate built up the courage to break the silence.

“Thanks for helping out today,” Hecate said belatedly, realizing she had yet to say it. “Thank you” was not quite “I’m sorry,” but it seemed a close enough place to start. “I know it probably wasn’t what you expected.” Hecate let the understatement hang in the air. Spending the day with her had probably been the last thing Pippa had expected to agree to today and not without some mild subterfuge.

The conversation must have seemed harmless enough as Pippa smiled back. “The girls are sweet.” After a beat, Pippa observed, “I didn’t think you’d be babysitting.” It was as near an admission as Hecate supposed Pippa, who seemed determined to tread lightly, would give. “You never did like kids,” she mused, tacking on as if an afterthought, “or the mall.” Hecate thought she detected a hint of a question in the addendum, a skipping thought as to whether Hecate had changed.

Not never, her mind corrected reflexively. She had liked the mall … sometimes, Hecate thought, her mind quick to supply a reel of memories she did not dare speak. For a moment, Pippa’s eyes seemed to glaze over, and Hecate wondered if she was remembering the same.

“I was coerced,” Hecate joked wryly.

At that, Pippa’s lips quirked into a strange half-smile, and a small laugh escaped her throat.

It was a choked little noise, nothing like the easy laughter Pippa had shared with the girls, and Hecate smiled back uncertainly. Whether Pippa was charmed by her or thought her selfish, Hecate could hardly tell. Maybe a mix of both, she conceded. Pippa had always found Hecate inexplicably funny. Thankfully, Hecate did not have the luxury to ruminate when Pippa responded a moment later.

“You’re good with them,” Pippa complimented. “Better than you think,” she added somewhat stiltedly, as if she knew Hecate’s doubts and could not help but address them, and Hecate warmed at the sentiment.

“I think you did most of the heavy lifting,” Hecate replied lightly. “You always did have a way with kids.” Kids universally adored Pippa. The summer they had worked as counselors at the camp by the lake, girls had made a habit of trailing after Pippa around the grounds like some impromptu game of follow the leader. Hecate had had her own cadre of mini admirers. She had woven a mean friendship bracelet, could map the hiking paths in her sleep, and had been the reigning chess champion, among the staff, for three weeks until Pippa had spectacularly unseated her. Her blonde hair had still been damp from giving swimming lessons at the lake earlier in the day, curling at the ends against her pink tie-dyed t-shirt, and there had been an impish twinkle in Pippa’s eyes. Hecate might have been a little distracted that first time, although that had not kept Pippa from re-stealing her tenuous title every other week. The blonde had taken immense pleasure in stymying Hecate’s best laid plans and those of any other stray counselors that had dared tried to contend. But there had been something about Pippa that had evoked in the campers, boys and girls of every stripe alike, a deep sense of trust. Whether forged over daily meals or in the blink of a single afternoon, those ties had endured the whole summer long until the last buses were driving away.

Hecate swallowed that thought, her throat suddenly scratchy and dry. Adoration, however innocent, felt like it was skirting dangerously close to love, too close to all the things they had left unsaid. Scrabbling for a topic less loaded, Hecate settled on work and broached, “I thought you might have gone into teaching.”

Pippa exhaled sharply in a short bark of a laugh, and Hecate immediately regretted the question. “I did used to want to teach,” Pippa responded, a slight cynical edge to her voice. “Today’s been --- talk about memory lane,” Pippa acknowledged obliquely. “No, I think I soured on the whole school thing a while ago.” Hecate felt her entire body wince and could only look on in silent anguish.

“Pippa ---”

Pausing to compose herself, Pippa waved her concerns away. “It’s fine.” She continued more blithely, “Books seemed a safer way to reimagine the world anyway. And with YA trending – I work with mostly YA authors – I guess you weren’t too far off.”

Hecate opened her mouth to ask about the books Pippa had worked on, a safer thread she hoped, but was cut off by a friendly greeting.

“Hey you!” Jane exclaimed, slinging an arm around Pippa’s shoulders. Instinctively, Hecate took a step back, too used to the wild recoil of her older sister’s flailing limbs. Jane’s bounding presence, blending so neatly into the candy shop’s subtle décor, felt like a pail of cold water thrown over her, painful and unpleasant, yet Hecate could not help but clock the relief passing over the blonde’s expression as Pippa’s face broke into a genuine smile. “I’m finally done for the day. Thank you for covering,” Jane said emphatically to Pippa before poking her head around the blonde’s to acknowledge Hecate with a cheeky grin, “And you too, Hecate. You all must be exhausted.”

“I could do with a cup of coffee and maybe getting off my feet,” Pippa allowed candidly.

On Jane’s suggestion, Pippa and Jane agreed in short order to stop at the café in the local bookstore before heading homeward, Hecate merely nodding her assent at her sister’s questioning glance.

“By the way,” Pippa relayed to Jane, drawing away her sister’s attention once more. Jane had always had the attention span of a half-witted gnat. “We’re baking tomorrow.”

“Are we?” Jane replied, her eyebrows raised in curiosity.

“Oh yes,” Pippa nodded bemusedly. “Bea has big plans for us all,” and Jane’s eyes crinkled with laughter, her mouth dropping open with admiring humor at her niece’s tenacity.

Having finally made their decisions, the girls came over to join them, their shared bag filled to the brim, and Jane, swept up in the girls’ excitement and with an apologetic squeeze to Pippa’s arm, walked off with them to the register to ring up their purchases. Returning with a small pouch of peach rings in her hand, Jane held out the candy to Pippa as an offering.

“For your time, milady,” Jane jested gallantly.

Pippa chuckled, asking semi-incredulously, “Are you trying to pay me in sugar?”

Jane adopted a faux-meek expression of penitence. “Sugar … and caffeine?”

Pippa then laughed in earnest. “Ah, be still my heart. I feel so seen,” she joked, graciously accepting the peach rings and immediately popping one into her mouth.

They all started for the café, the girls chattering with Jane to fill her in on the adventures of the day, and as Pippa and Jane strode away, side by side, Hecate could only watch on. Just like that, she had been replaced.

Surrounded by towering shelves filled with books, Hecate sat on the carpeted floor. A book lay open on her bent knees, grabbed haphazardly from the display of staff recommendations. The words on the page blurred to her unseeing eyes. It was a pretense to be left alone more than anything else, a ward to satisfy even the most solicitous employee and their cheery offers of help.

The girls had drifted off to browse, Clarice mentioning something about saving for a new journal, while Pippa and Jane had settled with their drinks at a small, round table in the cozy café. And Hecate, well, Hecate had given some very reasonable excuse to wander away on her own. She had felt like the extra piece of a finished jigsaw puzzle and had been too tired to even attempt any new contortions, to try to force herself into a picture in which she no longer had a place.

This neglected corner of the bookstore, the stuffy religion section with theological treatises and apologetics, a stark contrast from the trendier Bible section, had always felt like her own private sanctuary, and if the irony made her smile, firmly agnostic as she was, then all the better. The Hardbrooms, for all her father’s talk of faith on the campaign trail, were hardly regulars at the local church, their spiritual contemplations strictly limited to Easter and Christmas Sundays and fading just as quickly away after the obligatory lunch. No one she knew would ever venture here. Save the occasional Buddhist, who peaceably let her be, the corner was reliably empty.

A shadow suddenly fell across the page.

Well, maybe one someone.

Hecate glanced up into familiar brown eyes. She found me. A greeting tripped against her tongue, and instead she asked, “How did you find me?” They felt so far beyond hello.

Pippa replied with a shrug, “You forget how well I know you.” Light seemed to dim from Pippa’s eyes. “Knew you,” she amended clumsily. “Your old haunts anyway.”

Pippa’s momentary stumble seemed to embolden her tongue. Hecate murmured, “I think you had it right the first time.”

The blonde let that assertion dangle forlornly in the distance between them, Pippa’s expression tightening and then settling into something that looked distinctly unimpressed. “The girls are ready to go. Jane tried to call you, but you didn’t pick up.” At Pippa’s reproving stare, Hecate felt a tiny flush of embarrassment but did not bother to respond with any false niceties. There was no point. They both knew Hecate had just ignored Jane’s call. Twice. “Come on, let’s get you back,” Pippa said matter-of-factly.

A million little moments, half-forgotten memories, burst through Hecate’s mind. The phantom weight of Pippa’s head resting against her shoulder as she asked about her day. Their hands brushing as they alternately turned the pages, their bodies pressed together like a seam. Pippa’s exuberant smile breaking through her quiet reverie like a warm hand reaching out to yank her from her gloomy thoughts when Hecate had hidden away for too long. Pippa had always had a sixth sense about these things.

“Only when it comes to you,” Pippa would say with a fond shake of her head, glossing over Hecate’s questions. 

Pippa had had an uncanny insight when it came to Hecate’s capricious moods, showing up right before, it seemed, her calming, self-imposed solitude could spiral into unchecked misanthropy. Or maybe that had just been the effect of Pippa’s presence. Hecate had never been able to stay mad at the world when Pippa was around. She missed that.

“Jane wanted to make sure we didn’t leave without you,” Pippa explained unnecessarily. If the other woman had hoped to make her intentions plain, Hecate wished she could have told her there was no need. She had received the intended message loud and clear. This overture was nothing but another favor.

Jane. Always Jane. There had been a time when Pippa, her Pippa, would not have needed a reason to find Hecate. Hecate would have been the reason. In another time, Pippa would have slipped away with her. It had been a long day, and this felt like just one more stab to Hecate’s fragile heart. 

Rising to her feet, Hecate bit her lip. “Can we …” she fumbled, her wispy thoughts trailing off into obscurity.

“What?” Pippa asked softly, as if reading her cloudy mind. “Start over?”

Was that what Hecate was asking for? A fresh start? She hardly knew herself.

There was a quiet incredulousness to Pippa’s tone, as if she could not believe what Hecate was asking, and a touch of sadness, as if she had known all along that Hecate would. “Of course not.”

Hecate’s heart lurched with the definitiveness of Pippa’s response, the resounding denial like a slab of concrete slamming shut on the prospect. A fresh start felt impossible. Even Hecate could admit as much. There was so much history between them. One could not un-walk footsteps in the snow, the good brushed away with the bad. Pippa continued, “We can’t just … erase what happened.”

Hecate rebutted, “That’s not what I meant ---”

“Isn’t it?” Pippa asked, a little bite to the rejoinder, and Hecate’s mouth snapped shut on any futile defenses. No, that isn’t what she had meant. Of course not. How could Pippa even think that? But that was where Hecate’s arguments floundered. If she wasn’t asking for erasure, a blanketing of her past mistakes, and she wasn’t, Hecate couldn’t quite say what she had meant. 

Pippa waited expectantly, and when Hecate could only respond with thick silence, Pippa released a tiny sigh and repeated tiredly, “Come on, let’s get you back.”