Page 33 of A Lullaby for Witches

My mind raced to complete the puzzle. The truth dangled just out of my reach, elusive and shimmering. “When did you first attend to me as a child?”

“I wasn’t called until you were at least six months old.” He cleared his throat, his gaze shifting away.

“Yes, Doctor?”

He fiddled with the looking glass on his desk, turning it over in his hands, unable to meet my eye. “I wondered if perhaps...perhaps you were the product of an affair, and I was kept away so as not to expose a family secret.”

For the first time since storming into his office, my composure started to slip. I’d had my suspicions, but hearing them voiced drained me of all my fortitude.

“Miss Harlowe?” Dr. Hardy was looking at me with something between concern and fear. “That is all that I know, I swear it. Please, please leave now.”

Using the edge of the desk for support, I stumbled toward the door. Gulls shrieked above me as I slowly made my way down Main Street, my thoughts churning. Why had my birth been a secret? I was the youngest of my siblings; it wasn’t as if I had been born out of wedlock. And really, it had been the 1850s, it was not the Middle Ages when my mother might have faced corporeal punishment for a transgression. But for some reason, my parents had not wanted it known that my mother was pregnant.

The pungent smell of roast pork greeted me when I arrived home and let myself into the house. I’d forgotten that my mother was hosting a luncheon for George and his betrothed, Miss Ida Foster. She was a nice enough girl, a little mousy perhaps, but I was in no mood to entertain.

I silently slipped into my seat at the table, too distracted by my thoughts to apologize for my tardiness. My mother shot me an irritated look. I should have been glad to see George, but I was consumed with trying to make sense of what Dr. Hardy had told me. At least Clarence and Lizzie had not come as they had just welcomed their baby boy the previous week, and Lizzie was still recovering.

My parents had visited them the day before. “He’s handsome as anything, and you can tell he’s always thinking,” my mother was saying proudly of her new grandson. “A Harlowe through and through.”

“He’s not thinking,” Henry muttered. “He probably just has gas.”

“Henry!” Mother protested.

“And he has his favorite uncle’s gray eyes,” George said merrily.

I could bear it no longer. “What about me?” I asked suddenly. Everyone turned expectantly in their seats at my outburst. I had to know, and now I at least had some information on my side, some ammunition in the battle to discover who I was.

“What about you, what?” Father asked.

Taking a deep breath, I folded my hands neatly on my lap before I spoke, the picture of a demure and obedient daughter. The daughter they had always wanted. The daughter they had never gotten. “Where did I come from? Am I a Harlowe through and through?”

“Of course you are. What a thing to ask,” my mother said, vigorously sawing at her pork without meeting my eye. Despite my mother’s assurance, I felt my heart turn heavy in my chest. There was indeed something that they were keeping from me about my origins. Was I truly the product of an affair? Why would my father not only tolerate my presence, but raise me as his own daughter? I studied my father, his olive complexion, his dark eyes. My mother was lighter in color, but her eyes were brown as well. I alone had green eyes and dark auburn hair. How had I never realized it before? How could I have missed it? They were neither of them my parents.

George opened his mouth to say something, but my father stopped him with a sharp look.

“Margaret—” he said, his posture stiff, his jaw tight.

“Who. Am. I,” I demanded, cutting off my father’s words.

Now my mother put down her napkin, her dark eyes flashing. “I refuse to play along with your antics.”

“I know that I am not your natural child, so who am I? Why have you lied to me all these years?”

“Who told you that?” my mother asked, her voice dropping to a hoarse whisper.

“Aha!” I cried, my darkest suspicions confirmed. “So it is true!”

My mother and father shared a long look, and suddenly I felt as if I were a child again, small and unsure of my place in the world. My position in the family came into sharp focus, the way I had always felt like an outsider, as if I didn’t belong. The powers which I alone possessed.

I gazed at everyone in turn, studying their reactions. Father was tugging at his moustache, and Ida looked exceedingly uncomfortable. Who else knew beside my parents? Did my beloved George know? They had let me live a lie, pretending all these years to be my brothers. I hated them all in that moment.

The silence prickled. Molly came in with a tray of jellies, and my mother summarily ordered her out of the room again.

When the door had clicked shut behind her, and the only sound was the hiss of the oil lamps, my mother cleared her throat. “You are the illegitimate child of my sister.” She paused. “You are our niece.”

My head reeled as the room slanted and shifted. A small part of me had held out hope that perhaps there was no secret about my origins. “What sister?” I asked. The only aunts of which I knew were on my father’s side, and they all had children of their own.

“I had a younger sister, Eliza,” my mother said tightly. “She got herself into trouble and you were the result. We took you in shortly after you were born to protect her reputation.”

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