The Witch of Belladonna Bay Read Online Free Page A

in—that I told him what happened to my brother. And told him how my father needed me to come back home.
    Ben leaned back easily in the Adirondack chair and stretched out his long legs, cupping his hands securely around his coffee mug. “Why do you suppose he didn’t call sooner? You’ve gotten letters, but no mention of any of this…,” he ventured hesitantly.
    â€œThat’s not how Jackson works, Ben. And it probably wasn’t in the news because Jackson wields a lot of power with his wealth.”
    â€œI can understand keeping it out of the news, but keeping it from you? Why?”
    â€œBecause he wanted me to come home on my own terms. Don’t underestimate Southern pride. I bet he thought he could just fix it all up and I wouldn’t have to know a thing. Remember, Ben—this man let my mother die. I love him, but he practically spoon-fed her drugs. Anything to make her happy. Anything to avoid conflict, to stay in control. He knows I’ll come back now. That man knows I don’t have a choice.”
    â€œAre you going to go?” he asked.
    â€œI have to go.”
    â€œWhy? Why do you have to go?” he asked.
    Because I promised Paddy I’d try to be his mother, and now I have to face the fact that I’ve been a crappy, absent one , I thought. Just like Naomi.
    But Byrd was easier to think about, and easier to explain.
    â€œBecause she needs me. Byrd needs me,” I said.
    My niece I’d never met. Byrd.
    I tried to push away the questions that were tugging at my heart. Sure, I knew the basics from Jackson’s letters: that Paddy’d gone and found himself a crazy, beautiful Italian girl from somewhere in Virginia. Turns out, she had magic in her, too. “I guess us Whalen men can’t love no ordinary type of woman,” he’d written. He said Stella came looking for bits and pieces of her own scattered family, and it brought her to Susan Masters, the one person of Italian descent in the whole town. Later, I’d find out that her searching led her to the Big House as well. The only thing I did know was that Stella died giving birth to Byrd. And I should’ve been there.
    And why wasn’t I? Why hadn’t I gone straight home the second I heard? Why hadn’t I at least called? For a second I felt myself panic, a childhood fear slowly lacing itself through my veins.
    â€œThe mist over Belladonna Bay is inside .… It seeped into me, Mama, I can feel it!”
    â€œHush, Bronwyn, Hush, darling, there’s no mist inside of you. I promise.”
    That old, familiar boogeyman. That same feeling churned inside me now as if Jackson’s voice was casting some sort of memory spell all his own.
    I’d never even seen pictures of Stella or Byrd. Jackson never sent any, and Paddy never wrote. We were in a communication stalemate, my brother and I. First person to give in and contact the other would be the loser. “You two are competitive to a fault, ” Jackson used to say.
    But there, in the safety of Ben’s gaze, I knew the truth. It was me. I should have called Paddy. I should have requested a photo of my niece. Damn , I should have gotten on the first plane back to Magnolia Creek when I found out she was born. I was the abandoner. It was my responsibility, and here I was just living my life and thinking it was their fault for not reaching out. Guilt sits uneasy in the belly, and mine was churning with all I’d missed.
    Byrd. Paddy, Stella … Lottie.
    â€œWhy haven’t you ever gone back?” Ben asked.
    And Lord, if that wasn’t the ten-million-dollar question.
    The one I’d been worried he’d ask, at first, because I didn’t have an answer. Then, after enough time passed, I didn’t think about it anymore. Short memories, remember?
    â€œI don’t know. I guess, as cliché as it may seem, I was running away from everything, and I guess I never stopped,” I