Surviving in Harmony

Chapter Sixty-Four | Hester House, January 2021

Chapter Sixty-Four

Hester House, January 2021

The shadows were long, stretching across the clearing; their grey fingers reached for the magical house. The light was low and the air frigid, nipping at Ella Bowen's bare face. She was home for the evening, feeling less queasy than she had in the past few days since discovering she was pregnant.

Letting herself in, she kicked her boots to the side and left her jacket on a foyer chair. Her short curls were a disaster, spinning out of her head in an un-brushed bush. "Ma?" she called into the house, shoving her hands deep into her hoodie pockets.

"In the library, darling." Her mother's voice reached her from the top of the circular tower, and Ella climbed the dizzying spiral staircase. The room always seemed taller than it really was; with it's round walls completely covered in shelves and windows with shutters opening out from various rooms built around it. The narrow space at the top was one of Amara's favourite places, as she loved to curl up on the window seat that curved all the way around the tower, reading or just looking out the window. The top of this tower could be seen from Ivy House.

"Hullo Ella," said Amara warmly. "Come sit, I've missed you."

Ella folded herself onto the seat, resembling Amara all those years ago at a café in London when first meeting Andrew. As Amara chatted about what she had been working on with her students, Maeve and Andrew's outing that day, and various things that needed to be fixed in the house, Ella watched her. She had always loved how her mother looked, with hair a lighter shade of Hester's, silky curls always tame, unlike Ella's. She had that kind of skin that was golden, from her Roman ancestors. She looked Roman, too with that elegant nose and tall, willowy figure that Ella had luckily inherited. Hester had received her father's more gangly features.

As beautiful as her mother was, Ella's favourite feature of hers where her hands. They were always a little cool, and where a luxury on a fevered forehead or a hot summer night. The fingers were long, adorned with several rings beside her wedding bands.

"Ma?" asked Ella, the question that had been bugging her rising in her throat uncontrollably.

"Hm?" She was picking lint off her shirt.

"Did you want me?"

Amara's head jerked up, her eyes wide and startled. "What sort of question is that, Ella?"

"One I've been thinking about for a long time."

"Of course I wanted you, silly girl." Her hands stayed busy, moving across the velvety surface of the cushions.

"I remember the fights," Ella started, voice soft. "Before and after Hester was born. You were angry."

Amara's expression crumbled. "How could you? You were so young." Her tone voice broke on young.

"Pa said he remembers being that young, I must've gotten my memory from him." Ella searched her mother's face for answers. "I remember you went away, and broke all the plates and glasses in the kitchen. Being left in my crib."

Amara covered her face with her hands, ashamed. "Ella. That was so long ago."

"Just answer me, please. Did you want me?"

Lowering her hands, Amara gazed out the window. "Not at the time, no. I had a plan." The words were stones being lifted from her shoulders, the weight of what had only been half a secret was so intense. "Your Pa doesn't know this, but – you were an accident. Don't look at me like that." She had glanced at Ella's face, seen the hurt. "Sort of, anyway. I hadn't even gone off my contraception yet, your aunt always told me that the magic could overpower the Muggle stuff. I should have listened. We were going to start trying, really – but not for another six months or so."