You can do this. You are twenty-eight years old and you have run a business by yourself for six years and you have organized the same tournament eight times and you are not afraid of your mother.
That last one was a lie.
I walked through the house. Familiar smells from my childhood rose up: salt spray, my father’s coffee brewing, and smoke from a recently extinguished candle.
I went out onto the back deck.
My mother was standing barefoot at the edge of the bluff with her hands held slightly away from her body, palms down. A gentle, cooling breeze stirred across the deck. Beyond the railing, however, a flurry of wind and ocean spray churned in a rapid spiral stretching into the sky, turning the air into a column that caught the late-morning light and made it shimmer.
The hum of her magic was almost overpowering.
She wore a linen dress. Her hair was twisted into a pair of low buns. She was, I had to admit, absolutely stunning. Her golden skin showed only the smallest hint of wrinkles around her eyes, and her dark black hair was smooth and straight, unlike the brown curls I’d inherited from my father.
When we went out together, she often got asked if she was my sister.
Mostly by waitstaff looking for a bigger tip. But she ate it up.
“Mija,” she said, without turning around. “Watch this part.”
Not hello. Not you’re upset.Watch this part.
The column tightened, glittered, threw a rainbow across the deck, and she held it an extra few seconds—for her audience of one—before letting it collapse.
“The circle is doing a ritual at the solstice.”
The column of air collapsed completely and she turned around.
“Sandra wanted to lead it. Sandra. So I had to remind everyone what the position requires.”
She crossed the deck in three steps and kissed me on both cheeks, hard, and held my face in her hands for a beat. Her hands were warm.
“You’ve been out in the sun too much. You’re getting so dark.”
“Mamá…” I tried not to let my exasperation show.
She released my face and walked past me to sit on the porch swing she’d had my father install last summer. She patted the seat next to her.
“Sit. You look tired.”
I did not sit.
“The dates conflict,” I told her.
She said nothing.
“RipTide’s broadcast weekend. It’s the same weekend as my tournament.”
“Oh.”
She checked her phone.
Actually checked it, mid-sentence, a flick of her thumb.
“Yes, they’ve been holding it since February. It’s going to be enormous. National coverage. Do you know they asked for me specifically? The network wants local color, somebody told them about the matriarch on the bluff?—”
She laughed, delighted.
“I said I’d allow it if they shot the house from the good side.”
