Page 70 of Big Witch Energy

She took a deep breath and thought of Emily—who had to work every day for someone who tried to convince the whole town she was a murderous, poisoning husband-seducer. By comparison, having an emotionally difficult conversation with her own relatively harmless father wasn’t so scary.

“Well, I’m glad that’s your attitude, because I’m here to give you the same advice.”

Her dad practically did a double take. “What? What are you talking about?”

“I love you. I’m saying this because I love you,” she said, fighting back the sour, wet heat gathering over her eyes. “Chris’s death was…awful, just freaking awful, but it’s been years. And while I understand you needed us to support you and take care of the things that you couldn’t for a while, it’s time for you to give a little of that support back. Mom has carried the weight of the family and the bar and everything for so long that I don’t think she remembers what it was like not having everything on her.”

“That’s not fair,” he shot back.

“No, you’re right. It’s not fair that we lost Chris. It really, really sucks. But you’re not being fair to Mom,” she told him. “She needs you. She needs her partner back. Even if it’s just small stuff like covering a shift at the bar or cleaning the house or having dinner ready when she gets home. She needs you to do more than sit in the dark and stare.”

He stood up and turned on her. “You don’t know what it’s like to lose a child.”

“Again, you are right, I don’t know what that’s like, but I know what it’s like to lose a brother. And I know what it’s like to lose a father to grief. And I know what it’s like to lose a mother to work and regret and stress. I’m not saying you have to ‘get over it,’ because that’s not how it works. Ever. But you have to try more,” Caroline said.

“Well, if you’re so worried about your mother, why don’t you help more?” he asked testily.

“When?” Caroline asked. “I’m working my shifts. And then when the boys don’t show up for their shifts, I work those.”

“So ask the boys to show up for their shifts,” he said. She stared at him for a long, silent moment, before he added, “OK. That was a stupid thing to say.”

“Asking us to do more is not a more reasonable solution than you leaving this house and getting involved in our business and our lives,” Caroline told him.

Her father seemed to sink in on himself, becoming even smaller. “It’s my fault. It’s my blood that got Chris killed. Nobody else on the island has had this happen to them. Maybe your mom should have married some other man, so you would have been safe.”

An anger rose in her, a burning, acidic fury that she didn’t know she was capable of—and then the frustration that she couldn’t explain about Rose or her insanity because…her dad would never believe her. For most of her life, he’d been a “brick and mortar” man. Unless he could see it and touch it with his big, scarred hands, he refused to believe it existed. Until Chris died, he’d called the curse “superstitious bullshit.” She wasn’t entirely sure he believed it now, but he needed to blame his son’s death on something—even if it was himself. And even if she showed him what the coven could do, acknowledging the existence of magic and hateful ghost grudges could be too much for him.

Caroline felt the temperature in the room change, like she was drawing the heat into herself for some sort of magical storm. She could feel it in her hands, gathering, and she didn’t know what was going to happen. Riley could move haunted objects with her mind, but she didn’t think there were any of those objects in this room. And if this energy had nowhere to go, would it hurt her dad? She took several slow breaths, focusing on letting that magic drain away into the air around her.

“Chris dying—Was it because of anything you did? A choice you made?” she asked him.

“No!” Denny exclaimed.

She swallowed heavily. “And if Chris had died of a heart defect or a tumor or anything else he could have inherited from your genes, would you have blamed yourself like this?”

Her dad nodded. “Maybe.”

“Would you have processed it a little quicker?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he sighed.

“Dad, I’m not saying you have to work through it right this second. I know that’s not how it happens, but you have to start trying, OK?” Caroline asked.

He whispered, his eyes welling with tears. “I don’t know if I can.”

She wrapped her hands around his. He clung to them like a lifeline, as if she could pull him out of this undertow of despair that had him trapped. She cleared her throat. “Are you going to make me give you the Batman advice?”

He groaned, lowering his head until it was almost touching their joined hands. “No.”

Denny looked up at her. For the first time in years, her dad’s smile was genuine, a shadow of its former self, but there and sincere. It was such a promising first step that she couldn’t help but take the next step and the step after it. She nudged him with her shoulder. “It always worked on me.”

“I don’t need the Batman advice,” he huffed. “And for the record, I gave some version of that advice, even before the movie came out!”

She grinned. Once she had Denny Wilton indignant, she had him.

“It’s not even Batman speaking,” Denny sighed.

“And yet, we call it the Batman advice,” Caroline said, throwing up her hands. “And what advice is that?”

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