Page 18 of A Time of Witches

Darkness blanketed the room. Mama’s presence lingered there—suffocating, oppressive, absorbing whatever light eked into Lilith’s life. The odor of lilies was still pervasive, a flower Lilith had always despised.

They’d been Mama’s favorite. She’d ordered bouquets of them for herself, adorning the house with crystal vases bursting with their aggressive blossoms and sprinkling the table with thick orange pollen.

Stomach swirling with unease, Lilith stepped into her mother’s room. The bed was piled with floral pillows, positioned exactly as Mama preferred.

Lilith opened the closet, devoid of all the designer clothes once crowded within. Donated to Dress for Success to help women reenter the workforce—a way for Mama to do some good in the world, even if it was post-mortem.

At the top of the closet was a box labeled “Ancestry.”

Lilith pulled the hatbox down and hurried from the room, slamming the door shut behind her. As if the memories could be as easily sealed away.

The box was heavier than expected, weighted with Mama’s hopes that they were related to a Hollywood star, or even nobility in some distant country with an inheritance that could have made them rich.

They weren’t.

All those years of Mama wishing for wealth, and it finally did come—in the form of an insurance payout.

Guilt squeezed Lilith’s chest.

Daddy had died when she was in high school. His life was worth more than his outrageous insurance policy, and though Mama enjoyed spending that windfall, she never forgave Lilith.

As if sensing his death made Lilith responsible.

She’d tried to stop him from going into the office that day, begging him to see a doctor instead.

She shoved the memory from her mind and sank onto the stiff couch. Suddenly the moment seemed too poignant, like she was standing on the edge of a cliff knowing once she leaped off, she could never go back.

Desperate for a mindless distraction, she picked up her phone.

Essie’s last text was unanswered: How did it go at Enchanted? Please don’t tell me you chickened out.

There had been too much to say via text.

She wished Essie was there with her, to rehash the entire weird scene from Enchanted, to get Essie’s real-world advice paired effortlessly with her easy humor for a bit of levity.

If Lilith texted her right now, Essie would be on the doorstep in less than fifteen minutes.

But Sundays were family days for Essie, a chance to enjoy her husband and Amara without phone calls and courtroom drama. Given how hard Essie worked, Lilith would never pry her from that special quality time.

With a sigh, Lilith set the phone down and flipped the top off the hat box.

Sepia-toned photographs stared up at her. Several faded documents, thin as onion skin, and more than a few printouts were piled haphazardly inside.

Mostly documents tracing the women who had owned the house on East Waldburg Street before Lilith’s grandmama, who’d died before Lilith was born. A lineage with wealth that peaked in the 1800s before eventually crumbling into poverty along with most of Savannah.

That is, until Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil came out and breathed life back into their sleepy Southern city. Lilith had been a girl then, when the historic district was transformed into a line of high-end stores, quaint boutiques, and fine dining, and the squares were reinvented with colorful splashes of azaleas and camellias.

She continued to riffle through the box, finding a handful of census printouts and various documents with approved requests to alter the exterior of the house. You couldn’t paint a shade off from the current house color or replace a spindle on the balcony without approval from the Savannah Historic Association. Lord, did she know that…

At the bottom of the pile was a journal.

Floral, of course, blooming with Victorian roses.

The moment Lilith’s fingers grazed the cover, warmth tingled from her fingertips to her birthmark.

The opening had several paragraphs crossed out. Lilith skimmed the writing beneath the bold X of dark ink.

How Mama had always felt she’d been missing something in her life, the same as her mama had felt.