The Witch of Belladonna Bay by Suzanne Palmieri

taking formation in one direction or the other. The Whalens call those kinds of thoughts “the crazy fuckalls.” A crude saying really, but accurate.
    Birds. Back to the birds.
    In the Green family we have a lot of traditions. And one of them, my favorite of all, is that when we die our souls become birds. I was kind of excited about getting a chance to be a bird. And when the redbirds came the day they laid me in the ground, I thought they’d take my soul with them. Only … they didn’t. They flew away and left me here. Left me like everyone always did. Everyone but Minerva.
    Even my babies left me.
    Bronwyn left when she was a child. She was right in front of me, but I couldn’t find her anymore. One day she was there, her eyes full of love. And the next, they were vacant. She started to hate me. Then she left again when I died. I suppose I wanted her to go, because being caught in a place where you don’t belong is a special kind of hell.
    Paddy left me when he realized he could count on Bronwyn more than me. And Jackson, dear sweet Jackson, he waltzed me through our happy years, only to leave me for his true love, liquor. See, my husband’s addiction was, and still is, as bad as my own.
    I’ve been watching these people I love lose pieces of themselves, bit by bit, year after year. Maybe that’s why I’m lingering. Maybe I’m supposed to repair what I broke.
    I don’t know.
    At first, when Stella and Paddy got married, I thought I was sticking around to help Stella with her impossible choice. See, she had her own mysteries and sorrows. She knew she’d die in childbirth, but her own sight had shown her two paths. She could have stayed where she’d grown up, and lived to raise Byrd. But that path meant that Byrd would be trapped in some sort of evil web Stella couldn’t show me. Something so dark that she blocked it from her mind. The other path was to leave that place and search for loosely related people to help raise her daughter. But that path meant she’d die, and not get to be with Byrd at all. She was a better mother to Byrd by accepting her fate than I ever was.
    When Byrd was born, and so alone … I thought maybe I was here to protect her. Turns out she’s been more of a comfort to me. Figures.
    Byrd is the girl I would have been if I’d had more people around than Minerva to love me.
    Nothing could explain why my soul lingered—until my first baby, Bronwyn, came back home.
    She’d been gone for the right amount of time. Fourteen years. Seems like an even number, only it’s not. It’s comprised of two sevens. It took her seven years to run away completely, and then seven years to find her way back.
    At first, she looked like a beautiful, poised, grown-up woman … but the little, wounded blond girl, with a bright red bow in her bouncy curls, was standing next to her. Trying to get her attention. Making her whole soul tilt to one side.
    She was in a prison, just like Paddy. A prison she’d created for herself.
    And then I saw the magic, and was relieved, because if she could grow her talents enough to see me, I could set us both free.
    Because I really thought being dead would be way more fun. I’m tired of this game. Maybe there’s glitter in the light.
    Now I just have to get there.

 
    9
    Bronwyn
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    Before Byrd emerged from the secret doorway, I let my hand touch Naomi’s bedding, just briefly. She died here. And in that moment, I felt that tingle I used to feel when whatever bit of magic I did have would riot up to the surface.
    Remembering can be like swallowing glass. Cutting you up from the inside out.
    Emily Dickinson said, “Remorse is a memory awake,” and I’ve never met anyone who’d want to wake those types of things up. Let sleeping dogs lie. Never wake a sleeping baby. Et cetera. Now, add a bit of “shine” to that remembering and it becomes a