Page 47 of A Spell for Midwinter’s Heart

The Eleventh Day of Yule

Rowan woke up late on the second to last morning of Yule—New Year’s Eve. By the end of the day, she would be on a plane. It had been the cheapest night to fly, because who in their right mind wanted to fly instead of party for New Year’s?

The Rowan Midwinter of Yule Past had. She sighed and pulled out her laptop. It was time to figure out how she was going to face her coworkers on January second. Her heart tripped its way across the possibility that she might never go back, which now seemed like a childish daydream.

When she logged in to her SunlightCorps email, her eyes traveled straight to a message from Lorena titled Holiday Fundraiser Totals. With a shaking breath, she opened it.

Her jaw dropped, her eyes widened, and she picked up her phone, dialing a number she should have deleted but thankfully, procrastination won the day.

“Hello?” asked a groggy voice. “I thought I blocked this number.”

“Dade—are those numbers for real?”

“What numbers?”

“The fundraising totals!”

There was a shuffle on the other end. She could picture him sitting up, disentangling from his sheets. “Uh, I mean, if it’s the email from Lor, yeah. Real enough, y’know, if you ascribe to objective reality as a concept.”

“But it’s so much money! I told off the audience! And then I panicked, and I ran, and…”

“Sure, but it was about more than you, Rowan. There was an entire team of people out there. Yes, your unexpected heel turn into insult comic didn’t help things, but that doesn’t mean the entire night was a fail.”

The statement left her silent.

He barked a laugh after a moment. “You’ve been beating yourself up this whole time, haven’t you? Thinking you fucked it all up?”

“Pretty much,” she admitted.

“Look, as your ex, this is the last time I’m giving you free advice. That thing you do where you think everything’s all on your shoulders? You should really cut that shit out. Taking on too much blame when things go wrong isn’t unfair to you, it’s unfair to all the other people it infantilizes.”

She was stunned for a moment, finally replying, “That…is really good advice. Thank you.”

“Thank my therapist. Anyway, I’m going back to sleep now. See you in a couple of days when we figure out what to do with this pile of money. Maybe we can’t do as much as we wanted to, but we sure as shit can do something. And that’s not nothing.”

“You’re right,” said Rowan. “It isn’t.”

She had barely said good-bye before the call went dead. But it was just as well, because the last thing he’d said sent the wheels in her brain turning.

Only her father was still home, drinking a mug of coffee and working on a puzzle at the dining table: a vintage postage stamp featuring a Santa drinking cocoa by the fire.

“Morning,” she said, kissing the top of his head. He reached up to pat her arm. “Mom already out?”

He nodded. “It’s a big day. She wanted to let you sleep in.” He looked up from the puzzle. “Your plan hasn’t changed? I’m still driving you to the airport?”

Rowan hesitated but nodded. “I need to go back.”

She retrieved a mug of harsh coffee and filled it with milk, which curled and spread to lighten the drink to a pale golden color. As it cooled, she noticed a white envelope on the counter, her name written on it in elegant, flowing script.

“Dad?” she asked. “What’s this?”

“Oh,” said her dad, “it was in the mailbox this morning. Wasn’t there last night.”

It was from Gavin, she was certain of it. His handwriting was unmistakable. She tapped it against the counter.

She would read it later, when all their business was through.

It had been too hard to get to a place where she felt ready to do this, and it wasn’t worth risking whether the contents of the letter could destabilize her.

Her thoughts strayed down well-worn paths, imagining all the worst things he might have written about her.

That power had revealed the worst in her; that deep down, she was self-serving and callous, and that she did not deserve love, trust, or companionship.

No. She pushed back. That was a story. A story she had been living with for a long time, so it would take time, and practice, to stop telling it, but she would do that work.

It was possible she wasn’t going to like what was in this letter. It was still better to wait. But it wouldn’t be anything that extreme.

She tucked it into the pocket of her high-waisted trousers and smoothed down its wrinkles, then took a seat opposite her father.

Pieces of puzzle lay scattered across the table, organized into tidy piles based on general shape, each one a fragment of broken linework and color.

Unassembled, they were nothing but abstract impressions; unified, they had meaning.

She slid one of those pieces around on the table for a minute before she could finally bring herself to ask the question that burned at the back of her throat.

“Dad,” she ventured, “how did you ever know that what you felt for Mom was…real?”

He raised an eyebrow and settled back in his chair, pulling off his glasses and massaging the bridge of his nose.

“As opposed to a love spell?” Rowan nodded, and he let out a long breath.

“Well, there’s a question, because if there’s anything that feels like being enspelled, it sure as heck is young love. ”

“I mean, you moved across the country for her.”

“I moved across the ocean for her,” corrected her father. “Technically.” He had been studying abroad when he found his attention pulled away from the dusty old tomes of Europe’s libraries by a young woman at his hostel, who somehow cured his nagging cold with a piece of candy from her pocket.

“But did you ever wonder? You had to wonder, right?”

“Never.” She raised an eyebrow his way. “Okay, maybe once or twice I might’ve asked the question.”

“Reasonable. Given the circumstances.”

“At the end of the day, I never really ‘knew’ if knowing is something you do with your head, where facts can be analyzed and added up to make informed decisions about what is and what isn’t.

But most of the big issues in life don’t go down that easily.

Least of all love. All you can do is look at yourself, and the world you’ve made, and ask, ‘Is this where I wanna be? Am I happy here?’ Sometimes people find the answer is no, even when the other person’s done nothing wrong, but as for my life with Lili, the answer’s always been yes.

Trust, like love, is not just a feeling—it’s a course of action.

Hard, but for the life you want, worth it.

” He reached over and clasped her hand. “You’ll figure it out, kiddo. ”

“I know,” she said, surprised to find that she finally believed it.

Canvassing for Operation Holly and Ivy continued throughout the morning—one final push toward the afternoon when the meeting would take place.

Many of the flyers they’d put up the day before were gone, replaced with posters for Christmastown and Elk Ridge Every Season.

When Rowan dropped into Coffee Time for a latte, Cal Arthur was there and he reported having seen a “terrifying-looking blonde tearing them down.”

“Hayleigh,” Rowan muttered, remembering that she had unfinished business in that respect. It no longer mattered what Hayleigh knew or didn’t. Everything was in the open now, as far as Gavin was concerned.

“And there’s this horseshit,” he muttered. The older man opened his phone, sliding on thick reading glasses to slowly flick the screen. He revealed a sponsored post outlining how good Goshen Group’s plan would be for Elk Ridge, how many jobs it would create.

“They must be dumping money in this,” said Cal. “Shows up every time I open the damn phone.”

As strong as their magic might have been, the power of Goshen’s money and connections exceeded it. Hopefully, enough people had seen their video before the corporation buried it, because while the Goshen Group could bury a video, they couldn’t bury a vision.

Coffee in hand, she shadowed the front door of the Crescent Inn until a familiar figure in impractical boots emerged.

“You,” growled Hayleigh. It was clear she remembered everything now. The Goshen Group rep wrapped her furry silver coat tight to her body and retreated a few steps back. “You just wait until I tell Gavin what you did, what you are…”

Rowan lifted a hand. “Say whatever you want, he already knows. I came here to apologize. Not for the truth spell, you had that one coming, but for wiping your memory. That’s not who I am. I lost control.”

Hayleigh regarded her closely, hunting for her angle. “Okay. What do you want me to say? ‘Apology accepted’? Because it’s not. And I don’t believe for a second that’s ‘not who you are.’?”

Rowan shrugged. “You know, you’re right, actually. It’s a part of me, even if it’s not who I want to be, and I own that.” Hayleigh stared at her, open-mouthed, continuing to look both perplexed and wary. “Anyway, that was it, so, I guess I’ll go now.”

She spun on a heel to leave, but the other woman barked, “I saw what you all are up to—it’s pathetic. No one is going to show up to your little ‘demonstration.’ Tonight’s going to be a rude awakening.”

The words swept through her, and fear edged its way to the surface. Legitimate fear, but one she knew anxiety would use to assume control of her system and paralyze her better instincts.

She talked it back: There is a risk of that, but let that take the lead, and you will not be ready for what’s coming. Work with what is certain, not with what isn’t.

So instead, she simply paused, turned, and looked Hayleigh in the eye. The other woman flinched, startled by what she saw on Rowan’s face.

“If you’re really so sure of that, why tear down our flyers?

” Hayleigh opened her mouth and then closed it again, face scrunching in frustration.

Rowan almost turned to leave again but paused with a slight sigh.

“Can I ask you something? No, don’t answer that—I’m just going to ask. What’s in this for you?”

A look of confusion passed over Hayleigh’s face. “What do you mean?”

“What do you get—a bonus? A promotion? A line on your résumé? What?”

“I mean, I don’t know exactly what…” began Hayleigh, and then her face shuttered. “Why?”

With a sweeping wave of the hand, Rowan said, “I’m just wondering what it all means to you. What are you getting out of it? Anything material at all? Or are you just getting to keep your job?”

Hayleigh only stared, unresponsive, her eyes darting around wildly.

Rowan nodded, looking to the ground, kicking a bit of snow with her shoe. “I can see why it might seem like it’s worth it, with the way things are right now in the world. It’s you or us, right?”

Again, Hayleigh just looked at her, sharp, caught. It seemed Rowan didn’t need magic to get her to stop lying. Just plain, hard facts.

“So, yeah, maybe things go your way tonight, and you turn back the clock here, and take away our businesses, and drive us out of town, but after all of that? I’ll still have my magic. A magic so powerful it cut through your lies and erased my entire existence from your head? What will you have?”

Not waiting for a reply, Rowan turned and left. Maybe Hayleigh would listen, maybe she wouldn’t, but Rowan hoped at some point, one way or another, she would realize that greed’s hunger was a pit with no bottom, and that those driven by it would always want more.

But Rowan couldn’t concern herself with that.

There was one last thing she needed to do, and then all her unfinished business would be complete. She would face her New Year with a clear conscience, knowing she had done all that she could.