I smiled. While I had been desperate to get out and see the world, my sister loved this house. Loved it so much that I’d once teasingly told her she’d spend the rest of her life in it.

“That sounds good. Oh, before I forget, these are for you.” I reached into my utility belt and pulled out the diamond studs. Evie’s eyes darted to my ears, and I filled her in about Harriette and mom’s jewelry box.

Evie carefully placed the earrings on the table, obviously with no intention of ever wearing them.

“Mom built protection spells into them, Evie.”

She could feel them, I knew she could. Could feel the love mom had for us. She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

“Samael saw her soon after she was killed. He’d gone to the area because he was worried it was a witch he was seeing. I made him show me his memories.”

“Why would you do that?” Evie was fighting to sound disinterested, but her hand tightened around her mug.

“I’d seen pictures, but I’d never seen what really happened. She… fought for her life. She was brutally slaughtered. Anything she’d wanted to achieve throughout the rest of her life, any secrets she finally wanted to tell us, any bridges she wanted to rebuild… all that was ended. I don’t know why she came back here— maybe she’d decided that we could move back. Maybe she wanted to see you. Maybe someone lured her here to kill her— I dunno. But she didn’t deserve to die that way. No one did.”

Evie sniffed, glancing away. “Why are you telling me this?”

I needed to be careful here. Evie and I were finally repairing our relationship. “I think you’ve been so busy being mad at mom, that you’ve never truly grieved her. And I get it, believe me I do. I was so, so mad at her for such a long time that when she died, we were barely speaking. The last thing I said to her–”

I cut myself off and took a deep breath. “She may not have been perfect, and she may have done a lot of things that hurt us both, but she was our mom. Burying it all down only means that it’ll come up when it’s the least convenient.” My panic attack the other day had proven that.

I pulled out the other set of earrings from my pocket. Grief flashed across Evie’s face as she took in the blue beads, and then she ripped her gaze away and stared into her coffee. “I’ll think about what you’ve said. That’s all I can say.”

I placed the beaded earrings on the table next to the diamond studs. “That’s all I ask.”