Page 115 of Persephone's Curse
“Evelyn,” Mom said. “Oh, sweetheart, that’s magnificent.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Clara said helpfully.
“Or me,” I said. “Not yet.”
“It’s a lot of changes,” Mom said, nodding her head, somehow satisfied with these answers. “It’s a lot of changes and you’re all just processing.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “We’re processing.”
“I think it’s fantastic,” Dad said, and raised his wineglass. “Cheers to my beautiful, bright young women. I’m so proud of all of you.”
“Persephone would be proud, too,” Mom added, winking, raising her own wineglass.
What happened in the months that followed:
I turned seventeen.
I blew out birthday candles on cupcakes and Evelyn put on the bravest face she’d managed in months, and all of us tried to be normal, at least for one night.
It was the first day of spring.
Seventeen years ago, on the night I was born, my parents watched the full moon through the hospital window and my motherdeclared, “For my next one, I’m doing it at home.” (Okay, so maybe Clarahadbeen a distant thought.)
“Let’s focus on this one,” my father said.
“Trust me, I’m focused,” she replied. “And in alotof pain.”
My father brought her more ice chips.
It was the very tail end of winter, and the past two weeks had brought hope that the world would not always remain such a cold, uninhabitable hellscape.
Persephone was returning from the Underworld, ushering in the spring.
In the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the magnolias were having their moment: Yulan magnolia, saucer magnolia, star magnolia. The hellebore was blooming alongside its unfortunately named cousin, the stinking hellebore. The daffodils, the Korean rhododendron, the Japanese quince.
The winter honeysuckle. The winter aconite. The buttercup winter hazel.
The week before, during a particularly warm afternoon, our parents brought my sisters (and me, technically), to the gardens and our mother noted all the flowers with the wordwinterin their name. It was our grandmother’s name, our mother’s mother, the original owner of Evelyn’s watch. Another Farthing woman; another Farthing ghost. Our father squeezed our mother’s hand in front of all these winter flowers and they remembered her.
Then an old lady, passing by, remarked to my mother, “How are you even standing at this point, you’re as big as a house!” which kind of dampened the mood, and they all had lunch and went home.
“Remember thathorriblelady at the gardens,” my mother said now, in the hospital, about two hours away from delivery.
“You can’t let people like that stay with you,” my father said. “Let’s remember the flowers, instead.”
“You try staying Zen with contractions,” she replied sulkily, but even so, she closed her eyes and remembered the flowers and then she knew what they would name me, just moments before my father arrived at the exact same conclusion.
And so I had been born on the vernal equinox and my parents had named me Winter, after a Farthing woman whose ghost I would never see again.
And now winter was officially over, behind us, and I felt a certain sense of relief at that.
It had been a long winter, to say the least.
It had been the longest winter of my life.
And now, on the night of my seventeenth birthday (the age Henry was when he died, the age Evelyn was when she realized she was in love with a ghost), I couldn’t sleep.
The moon was big tonight, it would be full in a few days, and the moonlight came through my window at the perfect angle, falling across my pillow, landing squarely in my eyes. No matter how I adjusted the curtains or threw an arm over my face, it somehow reached me, turning impossible corners and penetrating what I swore was, just the other night, light-blocking fabric.
