The next morning, and the days that followed, little Estella asked her grandparents many questions about magic and what they could do with it. Mostly she wanted to see her grandparents do magic and so they showed her the basics of magie domestique, domestic magic, the most common type you will likely encounter in any witch household: how to hold items in the air next to you, to flip a page, use a broom, or water plants. If you’re her grandfather it was usually a pen in the air that floated just behind him that he frequently lost sight of and so another pen would join its brother, lost in the air until the old man was being followed by a small army of black, blue, red, and glitter pens. He never did much more than hold objects in the air but her grandmother… Marguerite worked spells to bring plants to life, spoke sweet words to them that enticed plump harvests.

This simple magic, according to her grandparents, was the most fundamental use of their abilities.

“Most people now don’t even bother with the harder stuff. If you ask them, they will guffaw and demand why you need to know more,” Timoteo told Estella with an angry wave of his hand. “Witches have long memories. After the persecutions we pushed aside all that knowledge. Let it die.”

When asked if she could use magic her grandmother told her, “Why Estella! Of course, you can do magic, everyday life has its own magic in its rituals and love. That’s true for anyone, witch, human, vampire, werewolf, whoever — they have access to the magic of mundanity.”

“But Mémé, I’ve been trying to flip a page in my book with magic like nonno and I can’t get a flutter!”

“Oh Este, no no — let me explain better. One day, when you are big and older, you will be able to do what I can do and what your grandpapa can do. Right now, you can only enjoy the magic of the… of the bonds between people and the physical objects of those bonds.”

Estella stared at her grandmother, a crease deep between her eyebrows that showed when she was trying to understand her grandparents — often the two adults in her life forget how to speak to someone so small. After a moment of hesitation, Estella told her grandmother, “non. Je ne connais pas.” I don’t understand.

“Let me try again.” Her grandmother told her, walking over to the cupboard that held her books she picked up the old family book — the one she had shown Estella on that pivotal night of truth — and invited her granddaughter to sit with her on the couch. “Estella come look at this book and tell me what you see.”

Estella studied the old book, with its homemade cover, frayed pages, and fading ink that wrote out foreign names of plants she was only just being introduced to by her grandparents — lavande, célestine… She focused on the inside of the front cover, wondering if there was a name there like in the other books of the house. Estella didn’t find her grandmother’s name but an inscription written in a poor hand, “Pour mon centre.” For my center. She didn’t understand what that line meant so she flipped through more pages and at the start of the recipes she found a name written next to each label, Estelle. Estella kept flipping through the book — she hadn’t gotten to look so closely at it before. For many of the entries she found the same name, Estelle, over and over, in the same neat, small hand with blotches of ink here and there. Sometimes there were different names, a Genevieve, a Blanche, and even once a Matthieu.

“Who are these people, grandma? Who is Estelle? Why does she have my name?”

In her particular French accent, which to a modern northern French person would sound a little off, a not quite right northern dialect — the accent her granddaughter is adopting in her own French voice — Marguerite explained to her grandchild, “Those are my family members, Estella. Genevieve and Blanche were my older sisters. I was the bébé of the famille, like you.”

“And Matthieu and Estelle?”

“They are my parents. Your papa is named after our friend Jacques and my papa and you are named after my maman and godmother. Your parents did not know what to name you so your grandpapa and I settled on a name that respected both of our families — a moderne Italian version of my dear maman’s name, Estella.” And then her grandmother laughed lightly, “of course, with my accent I sometimes forget the a in Estella me amore.”

“Where are they now?” Estella watched her grandmother as she looked over the book. She looked…tender and sad as her veined hands lightly caressed and fingered the worn pages.

“My family? Oh they’re gone, Estella, gone for a long time now.”

Being so small, Estella did not yet grasp the meaning of gone. To her, that simply means her great-aunts and great-grandparents were not there but were still somewhere, much like her own parents. They weren’t gone, just not here, never here. Estella had time yet to learn more about the finality of death — she would have a few more years to learn what gone could mean but for now she would get a start on that particular education.

“But can’t they come back? Mama and papa are gone but they can come back or call if they want.” Poor bébé, Marguerite was never more angry at her son than when she listened to her granddaughter speak of him.

“Oh Estella! No no, my maman, my papa, each and every one of my siblings are not gone like your maman and papa.” In a moment of revived fear of that fateful event that changed her life forever, Marguerite gathered her granddaughter into her arms and held her fast to her chest. “Ma famille est morte.” My family is dead.

Estella stayed silent, eating the word morte, tasting its form in her mouth, feeling its ugliness slide down into her stomach. She didn’t understand the meaning. Morte? “Qu'est-ce que cela signifie?” What does that mean? “What happened?”

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Her grandmother answered her in a deep voice that croaked with sorrow, “When I was a girl, Estella, witches and magic were accepted as a fact of life but we were not always welcomed. And some men, some strangers, from outside our village decided we were no longer welcomed.”

“What did they do?”

“They came in the bright of day, with arms and beasts, and killed my family. When they arrived my maman and my sisters hid me — hid me so well that I didn’t know how to go home again — so that I was the only one who survived. All I had was the clothing on my back and the family recipe book: this book…” Marguerite jostled the book in the space before her, her weathered hands holding tightly to the binding, the softness of her arms swinging slightly, “to remember them by.”

Estella didn’t know what to say to her grandmother. She thought over what her grandmother told her and she said what she felt as the grief of her beloved mémé bled into her small heart. She wiggled around in her grandmama’s lap and folded her little hands in front of her like her nonno does when he tells her something important, “but mémé they’re still with you. Are they not in the air? When you and nonno are gone I can still feel you around, like a piece of you stays with me always. Is that not how you feel about your maman?”

Marguerite stared at her granddaughter for a moment in shock before breaking out into a low chuckle, “you have a bit of knowing about you huh bébé?—for one so young…but I suppose children are closer to the seams of life than we know. Donc let me show you something Estella.” Her accent became thicker the longer Marguerite spoke about seams and knowing so by the end of her sentence Estella came out more like I-stel. “Let me show you something, mon amie.” And she proceeded to search through the family book until landing on a page with her mother’s name written in the margin and what looked to Estella like a large inkblot. Pointing at it, the grandmother held it closely to Estella’s face for her to inspect. “See this? This splotch?”

“Oui, Estelle spilled her ink.”

“Yes, probably—or papa was bothering her and caused her to spill it. They were always teasing each other like teenagers.”

“Like you and nonno!”

“Ha! Oui, like me and nonno. I like to think my papa and maman would like my husband… Donc—look closer, Estella. What do you see in the inkblot?” She inspected it closely, not wanting to take as long as she did to find the bowl in the kitchen but still wanting to be right. “Start with what you see, plainly.”

In a quiet voice, Estella began “well I see…a spot. It kind of looks like a spill, like what my paint looks like when I knock it over. I can’t see it good, mémé — I need more light.” After shuffling around so the sunlight filtering in through the window shone on the page Estella resumed her inspection. “The paper is weird and there’s a pattern in it.”

“Ah! A pattern. Suivez-moi.” Follow me. Her grandmother led Estella to her ink stamp collection that she liked to use on her letters and pulled out a stamp tray and some paper. “Donne-moi ta main.” Give me your hand. Estella provided the commanded appendage and complied as her grandmother took her forefinger and proceeded to fingerprint her. “Look at the patterns of your fingerprint and the inkblot. What do you see?”

Examining closely the two documents Estella saw what she thought was a similarity, “Hey! The inkblot looks like my fingerprint! Is it a fingerprint, mémé?”

“Oui! It’s a fingerprint of either my maman or my papa — look at the past living with us now!” And then Marguerite turned somber when she looked at her granddaughter with a deep and unabiding seriousness. “Estella what you said earlier, I had let go of that, had let it slip from me — you must never forget Estella that I will be with you always. And your nonno, he will always be with you, in the way you talk and hold yourself, in the way you have relationships with others, in the very way you love others and books and music, we will be there in the foundations of your life, holding you up when you do not know how to hold yourself.”

This speech was very pretty and very heartfelt but Estella, being so young, did not grasp it yet but she did feel the magnitude of the love pouring out of her grandmother and so she threw herself around her waist.

“I will write that down for you so you won't forget and put in our family recipe book that is yours as much as mine, no? We will call it a ‘recipe for a strong foundation,’ yes?”

The kitchen table is where Timoteo found them, pouring over the names and searching for pieces of the lives of their loved ones when he came in from the garden.

“Grandpapa! Grandmama is sharing her maman and papa with me! Look at their names in the book!” With the pride and delight that only a child could display, she held up the pages to Timoteo, her tiny hands grasping the outside cover to hold the paper out to him. Those pages were very familiar and well worn to the old man who had held his wife as she obsessed over those names decades ago…longing for a life that was impossible for her to go back to. He smiled down as his grandchild and drank in the happiness of his wife. No, they were not making a mistake this time.

He was pulled from his thoughts by a little hand grabbing his sleeves, “Nonno! What about your family? Mémé said that her family were all witches. What about yours? Do you have brothers and sisters too, nonno?”

His old, gravely voice came down to her. “Si, I did. I had two brothers and a cousin, Sophia, who I was very close to. Magic was there but it was unimportant to my family. Not at all like your grandmama whose family bled it from their depths, eh Marguerite?” One eyebrow quirked at his wife.

“Do they live in Italy now? Can we go see them?”

Her grandfather laughed, delighted by his little grandchild’s eagerness and then sighed. “No, no. Estella, I’m afraid that isn’t possible.”

“But why?” As you can imagine, Estella asked ‘why’ for many things. From the trivial to the difficult. And then more quietly as she thought about her grandmother, “Is it because they’re gone like mémé’s family?”

Her grandfather paused, grasping for how to explain the early twentieth-century Italian political landscape that destroyed his family to his young grandchild. “You see Estella…My family and I… we didn’t get along very well.”

“But why?”

“Hmm. You know how your papa and mama…they call.”

“Yeah but they don’t come to see me.” And the truth was, they barely called.

“Exactly. They love you but they don’t…” He paused. Unsure of how to say what was on his tongue. “They love you but they don’t love you good. You know? Our friends Esther and Eleanor, they call weekly and ask after you. Or our friend Jacques, who we have spoken so much about.” Esther and Eleanor were old friends of her grandparents. Estella wasn’t sure how long their friendship had existed but to her it felt older than the earth itself. She didn’t speak to them much herself, but they brought her candies when the couple visited. What her grandfather was saying started to make sense to Estella in a sad, intangible sort of way. It was a feeling that you felt in the center of yourself. She knew Jacques better than either of her parents combined despite never speaking to him. Some of the books on their shelves bore his name or were annotated with his marks. Her grandparents spoke about him as family more than as a friend. “When it came time for your grandmama and I to make a choice about who we wanted to be, we fled the country with Jacques's help during the war and they stayed behind. My family never tried to reach out when it was over. And we wrote once. They wrote back. We did not like what they had to say and that was that. Sometimes people take different paths Estella and you have to let them or they might drag you along with them. If that’s the case…then it’s better to let go, bambina.”

But Estella knew her grandparents didn’t let go completely, not of their son or her mother. Many nights Estella left her bed to find her grandparents crying in the kitchen, whispering about her parents, wondering what they did wrong.

She began to wonder if she should be the one to let her parents go instead.