Fable pulled up to the house around 6 o’clock after a hard day at work. Salem was sitting in Olympia’s front porch rocker, picking petals off an orange daisy in her lap. The summer sun was not yet ready to close up shop for the day, but it was showing signs of exhaustion by casting its reds and orange hues all around. Salem looked troubled, Fable thought. Of course, she’s troubled. She’s been through more than anyone else could bear.

  “You okay?” Fable asked, taking the seat beside her.

  “I called Travis today,” Salem said. “I’m going back to Atlanta. I need to get back to work.”

  Fable didn’t understand. “Why? You should just stay here. This is your home. You shouldn’t be alone right now. You just lost your husband and son. The last thing you need is to go back to Atlanta, to the place where you lived with them. The thought of you in that house alone…”

  “If I sit around here anymore, I’ll go crazy,” Salem said. “I need to join my life again. It’s too easy to sit back in this chair and sink back into my old life.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Fable asked. “Here with your family. Maybe that’s what you need.”

  “It’s the last thing I need,” Salem snapped. “Fable, if I stay here and fall back into the old dynamics of our life here, I will lose myself. I am not Salem Blanchard of Daihmler anymore. That was a whole world ago. I am Salem Lane, art director…widow. I have to go back. Staying here would be like erasing everything I built in Atlanta.”

  “But Salem, back there, especially in your house, you’ll be surrounded by memories. The pain of everything you lost will be everywhere. Here, you won’t be reminded at every corner of what is missing.”

  “I want to be reminded of what is missing, Fable. I know it will hurt but I’m too numb here. This was another life—a life without David and Michael. Back home was our world. I need to be there, in that world, no matter how hard it will be. If I do not go home, it’s like I am erasing them.”

  Fable leaned her head onto Salem’s shoulder and grabbed her hands with her own. They sat quietly for several minutes as a family of squirrels raced back and forth between two of the oak trees by the driveway.

  “I guess I just don’t understand,” admitted Fable. “I think you’re leaving behind the very thing that will help you heal right now. But I trust you know what’s best for you.”

  “I do,” Salem said. “I can’t heal here. This is a dream world. The mysterious Blanchards. The people in town coming here for help with their problems. Walking through the shops of Daihmler and hearing whispers. People treating us like we are something they are simultaneously afraid of and grateful for. In Atlanta, I am just Salem. No magic, no ghostly parents on the wall. I liked being Salem Lane. I liked who she was. I am not ready to give her up yet. And if I stay here, I lose her. And that life, the one with my husband and my baby, will start to feel less and less real. I can’t let that happen. For now, at least, I need to go home and feel everything no matter how hard it will be.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  She didn’t agree with Salem’s decision, but it was Salem’s decision to make. She couldn’t understand why Salem would want to remain separated from the Blanchards when there was nothing left in Atlanta for her but work. Then again, Fable had never really left Blanchard House to go anywhere except the few times she’d driven to Birmingham to visit her father’s family. She had no concept of what life on her own could be like. Sensing Salem wanted to be alone, Fable went inside, leaving her cousin on the porch.

  Salem continued to sit in the rocker listening to the orchestra of crickets and katydids. In the distance, she saw the late afternoon fireflies filling the garden. She sat there for quite a while. So long in fact, that the bats came out for their evening swoop over the pool water to dine on mosquitoes and bugs—the last of the fading day’s creatures arising before night took over. Nacaria’s shadow passed over the wall of the house beside the rocking chair, just under the now lit porch lamp.

  “I saw him, Mother,” Salem said aloud, hardly believing herself that she was speaking to her. But she felt like speaking to her. In her loneliness and grief, she had lost some of the resentment she’d long held towards her.

  The shadow lingered under the light, as if waiting to be confided in, or perhaps even forgiven. It had all but given up hope of that. Or perhaps it was simply whatever remained of a mother’s love, sensing that her baby needed her.

  “He is still very handsome,” Salem went on. “I liked him. I didn’t want to, but I did. I won’t be seeing him again. He belongs where he is, with his family. He always did. And he still loves you, Mother.”

  Salem paused, wondering if she should continue. Were her words only causing more pain? She thought it funny she would now be concerned with how her mother might feel. Never before had she regarded the shadow as having feelings. Now as she looked more closely at it, she was reminded of something she had only really noticed when she was little. The shadow had form and shape. Her mother’s shape. Salem could almost make out the hair curling at the shoulders, her long legs and arms. She began to feel empathy for the shadow. Somewhere in that opaque silhouette was a heart. She may not be able to see it or hear it, but it was there.

  “I’m leaving soon, Mother. Going back to my own house. I have a lot of issues to deal with, and it is too complicated here. I hope—” she stopped. Tears filled her eyes. She decided to say it, to say what her heart had long refused to let her say for years. “I hope one day I will see you in the flesh again. I forgive you, Mother.”

  The shadow inched closer to the chair. Hopeful.

  “I think I understand a little why you were driven to do what you did. I did something wrong, too. I tried to tamper with the Natural Order. I tried to play with fate. I have learned love will stop at nothing to save itself. So, I do forgive you, Mother. And…I love you.”

  A black hand reached from its shadowy form and outstretched one-dimensionally across the plank-board wall of the house. Salem stood up and placed her hand flat against the cold board atop the shadowy hand of her mother. For one fleeting moment, she felt warmth emanating from the spot. She felt her mother’s love.