Free Darkmoon (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 3) by Christine Pope Page B

seen my birth certificate; Aunt Rachel had taken care of the paperwork when I got my driver’s license.
    “What is it?” Connor asked, setting down the last bit of his burger. “You look like your brain’s going a mile a minute.”
    “The beginning,” I said slowly. “My beginning. There has to be something…something important. Maybe it’s something I need to figure out in order to break the curse.”
    His eyes begin to gleam. “That makes sense. You really don’t know all that much, do you?”
    “Hardly anything. I tried asking a few questions when I was younger, but my aunt said she really didn’t have that much to tell me, that my mother had barely said a word about what she’d been doing in California.” Talking about it now, I realized how strange that was, how little Aunt Rachel had claimed to know.
    “So what’s the plan?”
    “Finish lunch,” I replied, pulling the dish of mac and cheese toward me now that I’d thoroughly killed my burger and fries. “Then I think we need to go back to Jerome.”
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    W e took my car , and Connor packed his beat-up old Northern Pines athletic bag with some toiletries and a couple changes of clothing, just in case. As I drove us back to the highway, he called Lucas and let him know where he was going. I could tell Lucas was more than pleased about the reconciliation, but Connor ended the call before his cousin could wax too effusive.
    “I think he’s ready to start planning the wedding now,” Connor remarked, slipping his iPhone back into his pocket.
    “He’d probably have to arm-wrestle Sydney for the privilege.”
    Out of the corner of my eye I saw Connor’s mouth turn up in a grin, but then it faded. “I want that, too,” he said quietly. “I want to make this official.”
    Something in my chest seemed to turn over. Maybe it was just that everything seemed to be happening so fast. Then again, Connor and I were meant to be together. We’d hit a bump in the road — a little parting gift from Damon, I supposed — but we were back on track now. Marriage was just the next step, a practically foregone conclusion.
    “I do, too,” I told him. “But I think we need to focus on — on making sure that we’ll have a real future. You and me and the baby. The wedding can come later.”
    Talk about your role reversals. Usually it was the woman charging gung-ho into wedding planning and choosing flowers and menus and bridesmaids dresses and all that, but as much as I wanted to be married to Connor, I also wanted to make sure our marriage would last. And that meant breaking the curse so it would no longer be a threat to us…or to our child’s spouse, or any more of the Wilcox wives.
    “You’re right, of course.” He turned to look out the window, at the ranks of ponderosa pines flashing past. Here there weren’t many wildflowers yet, but grass gleamed green between the dark pine trees.
    Spring. A time for beginnings…including my own.
    It was not quite four o’clock by the time we pulled into my garage. I’d left the house just six hours earlier, and yet it felt as if everything had changed in those few short hours. Then again, I supposed it had.
    The house was quiet and still, the only sound the hum of the refrigerator as we came in through the back door. In less than a week this stillness would be effectively destroyed by the arrival of the contractors and all their equipment, and I was glad that the start of the remodel had been delayed until after Memorial Day. It would have been awful to come back here with Connor, only to have a bunch of workmen knocking out walls and tearing out countertops.
    “I’ll call my aunt,” I said as Connor dropped his bag on the kitchen floor. “She’s working, but since it’s Tuesday, she’ll be closing up at five. Then we can go over and talk to her.”
    “Is she going to be okay with that?” he asked, expression dubious. “I mean, I have a feeling she wasn’t too sad about my being out of the picture