Magic and Macaroons by Bailey Cates Page A

expect.
    “Is this Jack fellow an intimidating sort?” I asked.
    Her cool green eyes regarded me. “It depends on whether he likes you or not.”
    “How can you tell if he does? Like you, I mean. Me, I mean.” Good goddess, I was babbling like an eight-year-old on the first day of school.
    A humorless smile quirked her lips. “Oh, you’ll know soon enough.” Taking a deep breath, she stepped around the corner.
    Paused, staring.
    I rounded the corner, too, as a wide smile broke out on her face. “Oh, Poppa Jack!” And she was running down the hallway, arms open to embrace the man standing in the doorway of a room on the right. She flung her arms around him, burying her face in his neck. He swayed at her impact, but caught himself with the cane he held in one hand and embraced her with his other arm.
    “Cookie. It has been so long. Far too long.” The way he said it made me feel warm and fuzzy. I’d never met any of Cookie’s family. Her brother was several years older and lived in Florida, and her mother had left Savannah to live near him and her grandchildren. But this man had family written all over his face, in sentiment if not by blood.
    “I’m sorry, Poppa. I should have called before.” She stood back and beckoned to me.
    Poppa Jack turned slowly as I approached. Despite the deep lines carved in his mahogany face and the gnarled fingers that gripped his cane, his back was straight and his gaze steady. A ruff of still mostly black hair ringed his shiny pate like a monk’s tonsure. Close up, I saw that his eyes, though trained on me, were both filmed with cataracts.
    He was not nearly as enthusiastic in his greeting to me. “This is the woman you told me about,” he said. Not a question.
    Cookie nodded. “Katie Lightfoot. She needs your help.”
    “We will see.” His tone was mild but firm.
    “You’ll like her,” she said.
    “We will see,” he said again.
    I pasted a smile on my face and held out my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Pop—”
    Cookie shook her head, just once, and I brought myself up short. Apparently Poppa was a title I, an outsider, was not supposed to use.
    “Um, Mr. . . . I’m afraid I don’t know your last name.” My eyes cut to Cookie. Why hadn’t she told me how to address him?
    “Call me Jack,” he said, turning toward the paned double doors at the end of the hallway. “Let’s retire to the garden to talk.”
    “Outside?” I asked, instantly regretting it.
    He turned and looked at me with cloudy eyes. “Yes. Outside. They keep it too damn cold in here for old bones like mine.”
    “The grounds here are beautiful,” I said. “Lead the way.”
    Whether he detected my false enthusiasm for sitting out in the ninety-eight-degree heat in ninety-five percenthumidity, he didn’t say. He simply nodded and, with Cookie’s hand on his arm, went outside.
    I followed behind, thoughts as to what to tell this man about Franklin and Dawn Taite already racing through my mind.
    The back door opened into a courtyard, charming in its simplicity and lush with the sun-warmed scents of lavender, sage, basil, and jasmine. Cookie and I exchanged glances as we realized it was laid out in the shape of a five-pointed star, a classic witch’s pentacle. Each of the points was devoted to plantings, while the center was paved with smooth stones, upon which wicker furniture clustered in an intimate seating arrangement. With increasing curiosity, I took in the plants, realizing as I did so that they were grouped much as I had arranged the beds in back of my carriage house.
    In one section, savory herbs offered their leaves. In another, roses and lavender circled around a five-foot stone obelisk. Pink flowering jasmine climbed toward the point, all surrounded by sweet woodruff and the spent leaves of fragrant lily of the valley. A fountain formed of stacked, spherical marble burbled in another triangle, with lotus leaves floating along the edge and King Tut grasses reaching fuzzy