You need adventure, Hope. Fall in love with someone other than Lucas, Hope. Live your life or you’ll regret it, Hope.
Hope groaned. She didn’t want to hear it. Not now. Not again.
“This isn’t a life lecture, bunny,” Angela said, giving her a tiny smile. “We’re past those now.”
Hope blinked. “Did you just hear my thoughts?”
“What do you think?”
Irritation made way for pure frustration, and Hope scowled at her mother. “Don’t do this. Not now. Earlier this evening I heard both Joy and Grace’s thoughts, and then just now, you seemed to speak directly into my mind. I have zero patience for games. Just tell me what’s going on.”
Angela placed both of her palms on the table and pursed her lips as she nodded slowly. “I didn’t just come home to celebrate your birthday.”
“Okay.” Hope leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “So why are you here? Are you opening a new business? Met a new guy? Or woman?” Hope’s mother had dated across the spectrum of genders. Her only consistency was that none of them ever lasted longer than a few months. Other than the fact that Hope only dated men, she and her mother had a lot in common when it came to their love lives. Nothing ever lasted.
“No. I’m here to help you with the transition.” She gave Hope a small smile.
“You mean menopause? ‘Cause if so, I think I’ve got a handle on things,” Hope shot back, tired of the runaround her mother was giving her.
“Not quite, bunny.” She ran her fingers along the bottom of her chin. “You might want to get the tweezers out before you head to bed tonight.”
Hope couldn’t help herself; she touched her chin and grimaced. “Thanks for that. Super helpful.”
“I’m always looking out for my girl.”
“If only that were true,” Hope said dryly.
Angela let out a sigh and leaned forward. “It is true, Hope. There’s a reason why I’ve kept my distance, and it’s not because I didn’t want to be here.”
“You don’t have to explain.” The truth was that Hope didn’t want to hear her mother’s explanation. For a long time, Hope had been resentful that her mother cut out of Premonition Pointe, leaving Hope on her own at such a young age. But she’d mostly put all of that behind her and just accepted that her mother had different priorities.
“Hope,” her mother said, sounding exasperated. “I’m trying to tell you something important. It’s about you suddenly hearing your friends’ thoughts.”
Hope blinked, momentarily stunned. Then she placed her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Okay. You have my attention.”
“Three months before you turned eighteen, I turned forty-six and was afflicted with a family curse passed down from my great-grandmother, Moira Anderson.” Angela closed her eyes for a moment and then gulped down some more champagne before continuing. “Every Anderson woman in Moira’s line suffers from the curse right before she turns forty-six years old. Apparently, it was a spell gone bad that no witch has been able to reverse.”
Realization dawned on Hope. “You mean we’ve been cursed with telepathy?”
Angela nodded. “For me, it’s uncontrollable. I hear the thoughts of almost everyone, and it’s overwhelming. It’s gotten a little easier to manage in the past few years, but I still can’t block out the thoughts of people close to me.”
She’s been reading my mind all these years? Holy mother of the goddess, Hope thought.
“That’s why I left,” Angela said quietly as she stared at her untouched piece of cheesecake.
A rush of anger surged through Hope’s body, and she stood so fast that her chair toppled over. “You’ve not only been able to read my thoughts, but you didn’t tell me. And then you left, making me think… oh, hell. Never mind what I thought.” She threw her hands up and hurried from the kitchen, heading straight for her room. There was no way she could talk calmly with her mother. Not right then. Not when she felt like her insides were being ripped apart. Hope spent twenty-eight years thinking her mother had abandoned her. And every time they were together during all of that time, Hope had resented her mother, no doubt thinking terrible things she’d never say out loud, and her mother had heard it all.
“Hope! Wait!” Angela called as she rushed after her daughter.
“Why should I?” Hope spun around, her body shaking from the turmoil racking her emotions. “You kept this to yourself for twenty-eight years. Why do you want to talk now?”
“Because I want to help you navigate this.” I don’t want you to suffer like I did.
It was her mother’s thoughts and not her words that sucked all the anger out of Hope. Her shoulders slumped, and she pressed a hand to her forehead as she made her way into the living room and took a seat in her oversized chair.
Angela sat in the corner of the couch, perched on the edge with her hands clasped together. “I owe you an explanation.”
“I think that’s an understatement,” Hope said, curling up into herself and side eyeing her mother.
There was silence between them for a long moment until Angela finally said, “I’m sorry, Hope. I know what my silence did to you. My only defense is that I wanted you to live a normal life, one that didn’t revolve around this curse for as long as possible.”
Hope’s frown deepened. “I don’t get it. What would’ve been the harm in telling me? At the very least, I’d have been prepared when I started hearing my friends’ thoughts.”
Angela stared at her nails as if they were the most interesting thing she’d seen in ages. “You don’t understand. I knew the curse was coming before it happened. My grandmother told me after you were born. I spent seventeen years stressed about what this would do to my mental state and my relationships. My grandmother Rosie was convinced it was the reason my mother died young. Her death was ruled as an accident when her car went off the road, but Rosie wasn’t convinced. Mom didn’t handle hearing other people’s thoughts well.”
“She thought Grandma Mary drove off that cliff on purpose?” Hope asked, horrified. She’d heard the stories. Her mother’s mom had gone out in a storm, supposedly for milk and eggs, and had never come back. Except Harriet, their longtime neighbor, said she’d never understood why because there was a gallon of milk and a full carton of eggs already in the refrigerator that evening. Harriet knew because she had stayed with Angela that night after she’d gotten the news about Mary’s accident, and she made Angela breakfast the next morning.
“Yes. She was certain of it, but she let everyone think it was an accident to preserve the family name.” There was disgust on her face, making Hope question her mother’s relationship with her grandmother for the first time.
Hope knew Angela hadn’t had a great relationship with her own mother, but she’d thought she was close with Grandma Rosie. Is that why things were so tense all the time? Did Mom blame her for the curse?
“No, bunny. I didn’t blame her, but I was angry at Grandma for a long time for not being honest about what happened,” Angela said, sounding sad. “The truth is that I was angry at everyone for a long time. Everyone except you. It killed me to leave here. But I need you to understand that once I started hearing people’s thoughts, it was overwhelming. I couldn’t shut them out. It was all the time. I needed to live alone for my own sanity and for your privacy. The last thing I needed to be hearing were the private thoughts of my eighteen-year-old daughter.”