Free Girl's Guide to Witchcraft by Mindy Klasky Page A

miniature truffle into my mouth and let the bittersweet chocolate melt its comfort over my tongue.
    “Jane,” she said, when she could finally draw a breath. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to mislead you.”
    “You did, though,” I said, and even I could hear the sulkiness in my voice. I sat up straighter and pushed my shoulders back. “What’s going on, Gran?”
    “Promise—”
    “Fine! I promise! I’ll do whatever you’re going to ask me to do.”
    She nodded her head, finally satisfied with my pledge. “There’s someone who wants to meet you.”
    “You want to set me up on a blind date?”
    Gran’s smile was small, almost wistful. “Not at all, dear.” She took the napkin from her lap and folded it into a precise rectangle. She set it beside her plate, as if she were through with tea. “The person who wants to meet you is a woman. Her name is Clara. Clara Smythe.”
    Smythe was Gran’s last name. And Clara had been Gran’s sister. Great-Aunt Clara had died decades ago in a car crash, just a month before my mother was born. That was why Gran had named my mother Clara, and it was a terrible irony that my mother had also died in a car…
    “Clara?” I made it a question.
    Gran nodded. “Clara. Your mother.”
    The room had suddenly become too warm. I wondered why they couldn’t control the temperature better in a public space. I felt as if a giant fan had sucked all the air out of the room. I stared at Gran, unable to process her words. I realized that I was tapping my butter knife against the table, and I set it beside my saucer, lining it up precisely with the edge of the table.
    “My mother.” My voice didn’t sound like it belonged to me. It was a little voice. A child’s voice. A voice that was swirled in a cotton candy of hope, spoiled with the sour dust of fear. “She’s dead.”
    Gran shook her head. “She isn’t, dear. She never was. That was a story that we told you—that she decided I must tell you—when she left.”
    “When she left….” I knew that I should say something more, that I should be thinking faster than I was. But my brain seemed stuck in neutral. I could hear my thoughts revving, faster and faster as they chased each other.
    My mother was alive. My mother had left me. My mother had let me think that she was dead for all these years. Gran had let me think that my mother was dead for all these years.
    As I tried to think of something to say, something to ask, something to jolt me back onto the ordinary path of being, the waiter appeared from nowhere. “And how are we doing here?”
    I looked up into his false smile, and I could not think of the right response, the polite words that everyone knew.
    “We’re fine,” Gran said.
    “More tea?”
    “No, thank you.”
    The waiter nodded professionally and transported over to the next table. I looked into Gran’s face. “What happened?”
    “Your mother was very young, dear. She had no idea how much responsibility a newborn would be. She tried—she really did. But she just couldn’t do the job.”
    Job. I’d been a job. For one insane moment, I pictured my mother punching a time clock, her hair wrapped up in a bandanna, her face weary from long hours on the graveyard shift.
    “So she just abandoned me?”
    “Jane, dear, she left you with me! That’s hardly abandonment. She knew that I could take care of you, that I could give you everything you needed.”
    “Except the truth!” I heard how loud I’d become, how melodramatic, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I should have known the truth! You should have told me that my own mother thought that I was too much trouble—”
    Gran cut me off, a clear sign of just how upset she was. “She was sick, dear. She was lost.” For one horrible moment I thought that Gran was going to cry. I had never seen her cry, not ever. She swallowed hard and touched the corners of her mouth with her napkin, and when she spoke again, her voice was even. Quiet, but even. “Your