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“Do you think Mother had a knack for it, or it was just expected of her to learn how to cook well?”

There was silence, and she wondered if she had gone too far. Then her aunt gave her a small wan smile, and her chest unknotted.

“You always saw too much, Rosie.”

She sighed in relief. If her aunt was calling her Rosie, that meant she was probably not that angry at her gentle rebuke. Reaching out, she squeezed her aunt’s hand.

“You still make the best tea though,” she said with a grin. “I can’t get it right even when I prepare it exactly like you taught me.”

Aunt Maeve waved her hand dismissively.

“That’s because you don’t love tea enough yet!” she claimed. “Once you love it the way I do, you’ll make the best tea even when you’re not trying.”

“Serena?”

Serena looked up. Her aunt was watching her with wide eyes. No, she had to remember her aunt was gone, and this was a stranger created by the curse. It was then she realized there were tears on her cheeks. Wiping them away quickly, she apologized.

“No need for that,” came the reply. “But are you quite sure you’re all right? You haven’t seemed like yourself tonight.”

Herself. What did that even mean in this world, where someone resembling her aunt was alive living with some version of her. Or perhaps neither had ever existed and the world only spawned with her arrival. And yet none of it mattered because after the wolf appeared it would all be gone.

She suddenly felt so tired. Stars, her head hurt, and she just wanted all of this to end already. Standing up abruptly, she pushed back from the table.

“I think…I think I’m going to lie down.” She pretended not to see the hand that reached out in concern.

It was too hard—she couldn’t act as if her aunt was truly here; it was too unfair, too difficult.

Exiting the kitchen, she hesitated, realizing she didn’t know which one was her room.

There was nothing resembling a bedroom on the lower floor, so she made her way up the stairs next to the kitchen and came across two doors facing each other.

She looked between them and then pushed open the one that had a paint smudge on it, like a design that had faded away.

Stepping in, she gave a tiny little gasp, because the room there was the exact same as her room in Primrose Cottage.

She looked back at the paint smudge on the door, and another memory flashed.

Aunt Maeve pushed open a door and ushered her inside.

“This room can be yours,” she said, giving her a quick glance. “It’s-it’s the one you always like staying in, so I thought you might like it to permanently be yours.”

There was a questioning note in her aunt’s voice as well as hesitation, as if she was not quite sure how Rina would react.

There was a lump in her throat, and her chest was a swarm of emotions.

Hurt at her mother’s parting words, homesickness, gratitude to her aunt, and also just exhaustion from everything that had happened.

All she could do was nod, as she approached the bed and sat on it, rubbing a hand on the cool sheets, trying not to think of her room back home.

“Will you be all right, Rosie?” asked her aunt softly .

Serena looked at her aunt, who was hovering at the doorway with concern. It was hard to believe this was the same woman the rest of the family called aloof and emotionless, but Serena supposed she had been misunderstood the same way all her life as well.

“I think so,” she said, blinking back tears. “The room just doesn’t feel like mine yet, I suppose.”

Her aunt frowned and then turned and left.

Serena wondered if she had offended her aunt with her words, but a moment later she heard the telltale swish of skirts, and Aunt Maeve appeared holding a brush and what looked like a pot of.

..pink paint. Dipping the brush in the pot, she faced the door, furrowing her brow in concentration.

Then she quickly brushed a few strokes on the door and stepped back with a pleased look on her face.

“There,” she announced. “Now you have no choice but to consider it yours.”

Confused, Serena walked over to see what she had painted and then the tears spilled over unchecked.

Her aunt had painted a single rose on the door, similar to the one on the cottage entrance.

“That’s your door now, Rosie.” There was a hint of pride in Aunt Maeve’s voice at her own genius.

Serena shook her head, the tears blurring her vision.

“You’re so silly, Aunt Maeve,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “What an odd thing to do.”

Her aunt gaped at her, and it was too much for her at that point. She threw herself at her aunt intending to hug her tight.

“Careful, careful,” chanted her aunt. “I have—”

Wet liquid sloshed all over her front.

“—paint.”

Both of them looked at each other, each with paint down their dress.

“Well, this is a colorful situation.”

“Aunt Maeve, that was a horrible joke even for you.”

They had ended up laughing for a solid ten minutes, before her aunt fetched them both some tea, and they stayed up for hours talking in that room, until Serena had passed out on the bed, sound asleep.

In the morning, she had woken up with the feeling that she was very much at home.

They had ended up throwing the dresses away, although Serena had cut a small scrap from each and made handkerchiefs out of them, as a memory of how her aunt had turned one of her most horrid nights into a special memory.

Collapsing on the bed, she let the tears fall freely.

Being here in this cottage, with someone who looked like her aunt, a room that was just like hers back home, it felt like time had rewound itself to before her aunt had died.

Her chest hurt, and it was hard to breathe.

It was like all her grief was rearing its great sorrowful head anew.

“I miss you, Aunt Maeve,” she whispered into the room, which suddenly felt too cold.

She didn’t know how long she lay there, just staring at the ceiling before she finally dozed off.