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My reflection gleams back at me, a girl all set for a night out: black leather jacket, peacock-green chrome cat-eye swiped across her lids, and vigilant blue eyes braced for impact. I catch the split-second flicker of disappointment on my round face before it transfigures into familiar resignation.

Why did I expect tonight of all nights to be any different?

The carnival commands the view from my perch in the tallest house on the tallest hill overlooking the town.

Below, the cracks spiderwebbed across the concrete in the vast parking lot where the old mall still stands—long abandoned by department stores and possibly haunted—are well concealed with garish tents and attractions promising enchantment and old-fashioned family fun.

But I know better. I haven’t forgotten that Dad was taken from us seven years ago to the day.

One by one, the attractions light up with starburst splendor; the Ferris wheel is first, followed by flaring streetlamps and twinkling fairy lights on festive front porches.

The shrilling calliope trickles the tune of “Scarborough Fair” all the way up here, the harbinger of the first day of the festival.

My inhale is shaky. Dad’s favorite folk tune feels like a taunt tonight.

Hands still pruny from washing up the dinner plates, I rub my fingers against the ragged edge of a dish towel before opening the weather app on my phone.

I already know what I’ll find. Sundown: 8:23 p.m.

The app is wrong again. Just like dawn. Just like sundown yesterday and the day before and the day before that, too. The town’s forecast has never once been accurate. Or even in the vicinity of accurate.

Out-of-nowhere drizzles on good hair days, surprise electric storms that catch pumpkins on fire in the middle of autumn. Snow flurries when there should be spring showers. It’s all too strange to be shrugged off as a wonky weather model, almost spiteful in its contrariness.

Prior’s End—a place teeming with what the locals call occasional magic and mercurial whims of its own—rarely does what’s expected and almost never on anyone’s schedule except its own.

“You changed your clothes,” Mom says from behind me. “Are you going out?”

I turn away from the window to see Mom coming out from her bedroom.

She’s still in her work clothes but with her lipstick reapplied and her hair in loose waves around her shoulders.

My gaze lingers on the inky violet-colored brocade shawl she wears over the black cardigan, gold tassels dancing against her trousers.

It’s new. I’ve never seen it before, but I can guess who it’s from.

Mom takes in my outfit, too, a confused furrow between her eyebrows, before her eyes flit to the sink. “Oh, Nova, you didn’t have to—”

“I don’t mind.” I really don’t, but I can tell she’s flustered.

She used to cook for us every day, experimenting with different cuisines that Dad would unfailingly declare were all ten out of ten as he helped himself to seconds and thirds.

It’s mostly takeout these days or five-ingredient meals that we eat in front of the television.

Sometimes I think she keeps herself so busy at work that she doesn’t have time to feel anything other than tired.

We don’t talk about it, but her zest for cooking fizzled out without Dad around to be her sous chef, doing all the chopping and washing up, badly serenading her with ABBA songs and stealing kisses when he thought I was engrossed with my coloring.

The kitchen was the room in our house where everything happened.

Now I think it’s the place where we’re both reminded how much it hurts to love somebody.

“Thanks for taking care of the dishes, sweetheart.” Mom pauses and then, with a trace of embarrassment, adds, “And for making dinner. It was delicious. You have your dad’s magic touch.”

It’s a compliment, but her words stab right through me. No magic could revive the too-far-gone brussels sprouts shoved to the back of the crisper. No magic can bring my dad back.

The fact Mom is mentioning him at all sets me on edge. She watches me put the jar of expired fermented black bean sauce and sriracha bottle in the fridge. Her mouth works side to side as I throw out the empty takeout container of leftover white rice.

The way she’s acting…it’s like she doesn’t know how to talk to me.

When I’ve run out of things to do, when my hands do nothing else but fidget against my thighs as I wait her out, she gives me a smile I’ve never seen before. “I’ve been talking to Aurora,” she says.

Again, my gaze is drawn to her shawl. “Yeah?”

I’m careful not to have any kind of inflection, since the last time Aurora’s name came up, apparently I had a tone that set Mom off.

“It’s been seven years,” she says, suddenly finding the kitchen tiles inordinately interesting.

Like I could forget. The second mention of Dad takes me aback.

“Yeah?” I say again.

“I was thinking it’s…it’s time that we talked about…” Mom takes a deep breath, still not looking at me. I can only remember one other time in my life that she was this nervous. That wasn’t an easy conversation, either. She finally meets my eyes. “About what happens now,” she says.

We’re the same height. For some reason, my mind blanks, and this is what I focus on. We’re the same height. She doesn’t have to crouch to deliver bad news this time. Because whatever she says next is something I won’t want to hear. I can read it in the set of her mouth, the apology in her eyes.

“It’s…good that we’re moving on.” At my flinch, she quickly says, “Moving forward. Forward. ”

My brow furrows. Whatever it is that we’ve been doing, it feels like the opposite.

“You’re going to the carnival.” She gestures at my outfit. “Right? With your friends? And I’m…putting myself out there again.”

My jaw drops. How Mom is friends with this woman is beyond me. Of all the insensitive, batshit…Thoroughly jolted, I ask, “Aurora encouraged you to go on a date tonight?”

Mom’s face does a complicated, twisty frown. “No! I meant that I’m not going to avoid the festival this year. We used to love it. Don’t you remember, Nova?”

I’m helpless against the onslaught of betrayal that makes my pulse quicken, my fingertips tingle. Life is split into a Before and an After. We were whole. The Marwoods did fun things together. Little Nova loved the carnival.

Before.

Now it’s my turn to not meet my mother’s eyes.

“I made a mistake,” she says. “In the beginning, when the therapist suggested we find a way to honor your dad’s anniversary.

” She worries at her lower lip. “I thought since the festival was always his thing with you, maybe it could have been our thing. The way we remembered him every year. But you were so against it…” Mom’s face crumples.

Softly, she says, “We were both hurting. I didn’t want to push and make it worse. ”

Emotion lumps in my throat. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

The silence that falls between us isn’t comfortable, but it isn’t uncomfortable, either, until she says, “Aurora’s going to take a break from her tent to meet me at Chalice for a quick drink.”

Chalice is the popular, cozy wine bar that my parents inherited from Dad’s favorite aunt. It’s strictly twenty-one plus, so I’ve only poked my head in a few times, and I’ve never really minded, but now I’m annoyed she’s meeting Aurora there.

“She’s been good to me since Dad’s been gone,” Mom says.

Gone. It’s the word everyone uses because it’s better than that other word.

Four letters but far more final.

Mom’s face pleads with me…for what? “I wasn’t sure…but now that you’re moving forward, too, I think Aurora was right,” she says. “It’s the right time. Now that we’re both ready.”

She’s tiptoeing around saying it, and horribly, a part of me wants her to use the words. The other part, the bigger part, wants to cry and tell her that I will never be ready to legally have Dad declared dead.

The vicious talons of torment grip my heart.

How is that something I can ever be ready for?

Giving up? Resigning myself to a world in which I don’t have a dad anymore and never will again?

But she’s not asking me if I’m okay with it, maybe because she doesn’t know what happens if I tell her I’m not.

This is all Aurora’s fault. Madame Aurora, the psychic.

She came into our lives seven years ago and never left.

She showed up at the house one day—looking like a princess-witch-movie star in embroidered bell sleeves and a half dozen gold necklaces and a flamboyant diamond engagement ring—asking if Rhea Marwood was home.

One of Mom’s girlfriends at Chalice had made the appointment as a surprise; otherwise, I know Mom would never have sought out the services of a psychic.

Aurora used to live in the area, but now she travels on her own circuit, visiting clients around Tennessee and North Carolina.

She always comes back to Prior’s End, though, like a bird returning to her roost. I can’t fathom what hold this place has over her because she doesn’t come here for family or the wishing well, and there’s definitely more money to be made in bigger cities like Nashville and Memphis.

Festival time is when Aurora palms off charms and herbal remedies that will inevitably end up squirreled into the nooks and crannies of my home: dried lavender sachets in sock drawers; next to the coffee beans, valerian root tea in shiny tins to help with Mom’s sleep and migraines; thick creams crushed with wild mountain roses from the Blue Ridge peaks where Aurora rambles in the summertime, the scent lingering on pulse points, promising to attract a lover.

She’s not entirely made of crap, but I have had enough. I won’t allow her to do this to me, to my dad. I don’t care if she’s Mom’s friend. This is my family she’s interfering with. If Mom is going to make decisions without even consulting me, then I’m going to do something, too.