Where A Witch Goeth

Chapter Nineteen: Letter to Nick

April 9th, 1924

Sanguine Springs Resort

Oh, Nick-

This is a letter sent for no other purpose than to say, I wish I were there with you. I wish we were arguing over work policies and picking up takeout and making out like kids in the places you flash your blue lights at kids for making out. I wish we were pondering the perfect Christmas gifts to buy each other, and I wish I was stressing about being invited to your parents' holiday dinner and meeting your daughter for the first time.

I wish I weren't a witch that got you into the monstrous mess you will be in. I wish we were in love and contemplating a perfectly mundane life.

But we're not any of that. No matter what you are now, or will be, we will never have a mundane life together. I would never be a fit mother for your daughter. Where I am now, a witch has died, because someone wanted to steal her power. It has made me realize, your daughter will never be safe with me because I am a witch. I can never not be that, and other witches might try to hurt me and anyone I love to steal my power.

Where I am right now, you and Hannah don't exist. I wonder if I stayed here—what would happen? Would I never be there, in the future at all? Would you never meet me? Would you have loved Hannah's mother more, tried harder with her, if it "hadn't always been me?"

Or maybe it will all happen the same. Maybe I will still love you at seventeen and maybe I will want to try to love you all over again at twenty-five and maybe my father will still get you killed or made into a werewolf or whatever happened when I disappeared. The future is still my past, isn't it?

Oh god, I don't know.

I don't know if I can get back, Nick. I don't know if it's even possible—I haven't had time to try to work that out yet. This time and place where I am, it's like a whirlwind sucking me in. There are people here that I feel like I've always known and things happening that I feel like I am a part of. I think I'm supposed to be here, now.

Even so, I can't leave you to your fate by staying here. I want to stop what happened to you. I never wanted what happened. You were perfect and good just as you were before my father tried to make a monster out of you. And maybe it's too late for me—maybe he made a monster out of me a long time ago, but you do not deserve this life we monsters must make.

So I'll try to save you from it. I swear I will.

I loved you, too, you know. You were the first boy, the only boy, I have ever loved.

Always,

Celie