She exhales heavily and rests against the stool behind the counter. It takes her a long time to answer, but she finally says, “Drew was the love of my life. We were going to run away together after we graduated from high school. Your grandmother caught us and put a stop to it. Told his parents. They were furious. Made him enlist in the navy, and he got shipped off to the Persian Gulf almost immediately. That was that. One day he was there, and the next, he was just … gone.”

“Oh my God,” I murmur. Like me and Lucky.

She sighs. “Oh, in retrospect, maybe she was right. Maybe we were too young to get married. I don’t know. I wasn’t sensible like you are. I was ‘Wild Winona,’ who made a lot of mistakes and did a lot of impulsive things. Running off to Florida with no plan seemed like something fun to do, so I’m not even sure if I was in it for the right reason. But then I went to college, where I met your father, and the rest is history.”

Right. Everything went to shit after that. Now I’m starting to see the root of the problems between Mom and Grandma.

“Still, I think about him a lot,” she says, wistful.

“Have you kept in touch with him?”

“Not a peep. I saw him once, at your uncle’s funeral last year. We didn’t speak. I was shocked to see his face again, honestly. I think he was shocked to see me, too. I know he was married to a woman when he was stationed on a naval base in Japan, but they later divorced. I don’t know what’s going on with him now. I’ve made an effort to steer clear of him since we’ve been back in town. The Saint-Martin curse … ,” she says weakly.

A little tingle starts in my fingers and races up my arms. “Mom … what does Drew do now that he’s retired from the navy?”

“He took over his family’s business.” She gives me an uncomfortable, awkward look. “On Lamplighter Lane.”

The portal to hell. The place mom avoids. It’s not the root of all evil in town—it’s the place where she left her broken heart.

And I know exactly one business on Lamplighter Lane.

The blacksmith where Lucky is apprenticing.

“Drew … Sideris,” I guess.

She nods. “Lucky told you?”

“No,” I say. “Actually not. He’s apprenticing for him, though, and I think he must know, because he’s been cagey about it.”