Spells & Stitches by Barbara Bretton Page B

way it should be.”
    “Or you can have two husbands or two wives,” Kim said with a wink.
    “What’s wrong with you, Kimberly Marie? You know better than to get him started on that,” Bunny chided her oldest daughter, to applause from the rest of the family. “Let’s all just agree to disagree with your father and be done with it.”
    Personally I was all for a rousing discussion of gay marriage and civil unions. Anything to take the spotlight off the subject of Sugar Maple, but the MacKenzies were back on topic.
    Me.
    “So you were saying you were born in Sugar Maple,” Bunny prodded me while I prodded my waffle with the tines of my fork.
    I gave her my best smile. “Almost thirty years ago.”
    “Where are your people from?”
    My people ? Now things were about to get tricky. I didn’t have any people.
    “My mother was born in Sugar Maple also.”
    “How about your father?”
    “C’mon, Ma,” Luke broke in. “You sound like a prosecuting attorney I used to know.”
    “Not that awful David Devaney,” Jen said with a shake of her head. “I dated him before I met Paul. The man had a comb-over you could hide Donald Trump under.” She shuddered and everyone laughed.
    “You’re being rude,” Bunny snapped. “All of you. We’re getting to know Chloe, not talking about old boyfriends.” She shot her daughter a meaningful look, the kind meant to bring a grown woman to her knees.
    I didn’t know about Jen, but it definitely worked on me. I was moving swiftly into a state of high anxiety and I knew what that meant. My fingertips were starting to tingle and I hoped I wasn’t about to spontaneously flambé Jack’s omelet.
    I’d managed to explain away the flamethrowing incident during the Black Friday sale at Sticks & Strings, but there was no way Bunny would buy it a second time.
    “And your father?” Bunny persisted. “So where was Mr. Hobbs from?”
    Mr. Hobbs? There was no Mr. Hobbs. Why hadn’t I thought this through? I had been so busy memorizing MacKenzie photos and mini bios that I had totally forgotten to get my own highly edited bio in order.
    “He . . . uh . . . my father wasn’t Mr. Hobbs.” I told myself there was no reason to be embarrassed, but I felt exactly the way I had during my brief enrollment at BU. A half human, half sorceress with a size nine foot firmly planted in both worlds and unable to explain my position in either one.
    “Your mother married twice?” Bunny kept her eye on the ball.
    “Only once,” I said. “Guinevere kept her own name when they married.”
    “Guinevere,” Kim said with a theatrical sigh. “That’s a beautiful name.”
    I flashed a grateful smile.
    “So what’s your father’s name?” Jen asked, spooning oatmeal into the mouth of the very small child who had suddenly appeared on her lap. “I’m guessing Arthur.”
    “Ted Aubry,” I said, maybe a tad more harshly than intended, but the stress was definitely getting to me. I wasn’t sure if I had imagined the note of snark beneath her playful words.
    “Where was he from?” Bunny asked, leaning forward.
    “Maine.”
    “Are his people still up there?”
    I could feel the air leave my lungs on a whoosh of surprise. “What?”
    “His people,” she repeated. “Brothers, sisters, cousins. You must have relatives up there, right?”
    Suddenly English was no longer my first language and I struggled to make sense of her question. All the planning, all the years of parroting the same story over and over again, and here was the one question nobody had ever asked me.
    I could feel myself coming apart like a poorly knit sweater, loose ends flying everywhere. I was a Hobbs woman through and through. My memories of my father were sweetly fading shadows compared to the vibrant light cast by my magick heritage. No Aubry had ever shown up in Sugar Maple searching for Ted or the little girl he left behind.
    Years of longing rose up in me like some monster wave and brought with them memories I