Chapter 4
Diverging Paths and Unexpected Love
At eighteen, Gillian elopes to Maryland against the aunts' wishes. Sally helps her escape through the window using tied sheets, and though they've grown apart, they cry and embrace before separating. Gillian begs Sally to come along, warning her she'll "get all crumpled up like a piece of paper" if she stays. Sally refuses, knowing "only two people can elope." After Gillian leaves, Sally collects the dirty sheets, wondering why she's always the one left behind doing laundry. For two years, Sally receives occasional postcards from Gillian without return addresses, while her own life stagnates at twenty-one, with trips to the hardware store being her most exciting activity.
On midsummer's eve, the family waits for the annual sparrow to appear - a bird that mysteriously enters the house each year despite all preventions, circling the dining room three times as a sure sign of trouble. But for the first time, no bird comes. Sally takes this as proof that things can change. She runs to the hardware store where she crashes into Michael, the clerk, and falls instantly in love. Michael charms the aunts by kissing them and offering to take out their trash. Sally marries him quickly and they move into the attic.
While Gillian continues her nomadic lifestyle through multiple marriages, Sally finds contentment. Michael helps the aunts with gardening and repairs, earns their affection, respects their privacy about visitors to the back door, and loves Sally deeply. With Michael, the house transforms - roses climb the porch railing, drafts disappear, and warmth permeates the home. When their daughter Antonia is born during a snowstorm, the chandelier sways on its own as if a river flows through the house. Following family tradition, she takes the Owens name. Three and a half years later, Kylie arrives at midnight, displaying unusual sensitivity - listening to rain before it falls, noticing dragonflies before they appear, and remaining untouched by mosquitoes and the aunts' cats.
The family seems wonderfully normal, hosting parties at the hardware store and becoming accepted by neighbors who once avoided them. But Sally's happiness shatters when a deathwatch beetle appears beside Michael's chair - an omen the aunts immediately recognize. Despite Sally's dismissal of their superstitions and the aunts' protective measures - placing myrtle under Michael's pillow, adding rosemary to his breakfast - the beetle's ticking continues. Michael seems to sense his fate, stopping his watch and pulling down shades as if to halt time. On a mild spring evening, Michael is killed by drunk teenagers while walking home from work.
Chapter 5
Grief and Reinvention
After Michael's death, Sally stops speaking for an entire year. She avoids the aunts, whom she now sees as powerless charlatans. At the drugstore, she recognizes herself in the white-haired girl who once begged for help and now must communicate by writing notes. Sally withdraws completely - letting bees nest in the rafters, snow pile on the walkway, and her appearance deteriorate. She loses the ability to see certain colors, particularly orange and red.
Only Gillian's weekly Tuesday night calls provide comfort, though Sally never responds. After exactly one year of grief, Sally notices green leaves outside her window and finally leaves her bed, brushes her hair, and walks outside, gradually regaining her perception of colors, though orange remains elusive. When she discovers the aunts in the park with her daughters and sees a boy push Antonia down, Sally speaks for the first time in a year, shouting "Stop it!" That night, she decides to leave town, seeking a normal life for her children.
Despite the aunts' warnings that the past will follow her, Sally packs up and leaves with her daughters - angry Antonia who loved the aunts and baby Kylie who's confused by the sudden move. Sally settles them in a normal suburban neighborhood where children play kickball and neighbors wave. Though she buys the girls ice cream and toys, it takes years before they forgive her. Every August, Sally takes the girls to visit the aunts, where there are no rules, only chocolate cake and midnight bedtimes.
During these visits, the normally antagonistic sisters become allies, playing together in the garden and attic. But each year, Sally wakes one night to find her daughters in the moonlight garden among toads and caterpillars, and knows it's time to leave - cutting their visit short without regret, determined to keep her daughters from the Owens legacy. She never regrets leaving, believing that sometimes running away means heading in exactly the right direction.
Chapter 6
When the Past Returns
Despite creating a normal life as an assistant to the vice principal and raising her girls to be ordinary teenagers, Sally can't shake a growing sense of foreboding. Strange occurrences begin - window shades snap shut on their own, her angel food cake mysteriously flattens, and an odd wind rattles through the house despite the heat. As night falls, a double ring appears around the moon - a sure sign of coming disruption.
That night, Sally wakes suddenly to a knock on her screen door. Despite eleven years of doing all the right things, she recognizes the sulfurous odor of trouble outside. She finds her sister Gillian on the porch - beautiful as ever but dusty, jittery and weak in the knees. Gillian has cut her blonde hair short, smells like sugar and heat, has sand in her red boots and a green snake tattooed on her wrist. Her voice is squeaky with nervousness as she confesses her problem: Jimmy, her abusive boyfriend, is dead in the car after she had been secretly giving him nightshade in his food to keep him from drinking and becoming mean.
Sally decides to help her sister bury Jimmy beneath the lilacs in the backyard. They work rhythmically with their shovels, though Sally cannot close Jimmy's eyes - a sign that a dead man wishes to see who will follow him next. That night, something extraordinary happens - the lilacs bloom again, out of season, with such fragrance that the air turns purple and sweet, drawing neighbors from their homes, reminding them of desire and real love.
Chapter 7
The Awakening of Kylie Owens
On Kylie Owens's thirteenth birthday, she wakes before dawn with an electric anticipation coursing through her veins, feeling she's been racing toward this moment her entire life. Standing five-foot-eight and already wearing her mother's clothes, Kylie could easily pass for eighteen. She studies her reflection in the morning light, convinced she'll be a better teenager than she ever was a child - especially after her aunt Gillian's recent tarot reading where the star card appeared prominently, promising transformation and destiny. The cards had scattered across her floral bedspread like fallen stars, and Gillian's eyes had sparkled with secret knowledge.
Gillian has been sharing Kylie's bedroom for two weeks, bringing with her an air of mystery and adventure that has transformed the ordinary space into something magical. Despite the stifling ninety-degree heat that makes the wallpaper curl at the edges, Gillian sleeps bundled under heavy quilts like a child hiding from monsters, her presence both comforting and unsettling. She's everything Kylie dreams of becoming - beautiful, free-spirited, with a laugh that sounds like silver bells and a way of making even mundane moments feel extraordinary. Kylie studies her aunt's every movement, from the way she applies lipstick to how she tosses her glorious blonde hair, while touching her own mouse-brown strands with increasing dissatisfaction.
For Kylie's birthday present, Gillian orchestrates a clandestine makeover at the Hamburger Shack's grimy bathroom, armed with professional scissors, purple-tinted shampoo, and industrial-strength bleach. The transformation takes hours, with Gillian working meticulously while sharing stories of her own rebellious youth. When they finally arrive at the birthday dinner - Kylie radiantly blonde and looking years older - Sally's fury erupts immediately. Her mother sees beyond the surface change, recognizing it as the first step in a dangerous dance away from childhood innocence, just as Gillian had done years before.
But the physical transformation merely mirrors a deeper metamorphosis occurring within Kylie. Her senses have begun to sharpen in inexplicable ways - fireflies no longer flee from her but gather willingly in her cupped palms, their light pulsing in sync with her heartbeat. She sees auras surrounding people like ethereal halos: her sister's jealousy manifests as a sickly green edge, while her mother's fear radiates a dense black cloud that seems to follow her through rooms. Most disturbing is the dark, bloodstained purple aura that drifts like woodsmoke from the lilac bushes, carrying with it the scent of decay and vengeance.
The weight of her newfound abilities makes Kylie feel suddenly young and vulnerable, nothing like the sophisticated teenager she'd imagined becoming. As darkness falls on her birthday, she senses an unfamiliar presence in the yard - a cold spot that makes the summer air shiver. Retreating toward the house's safety, she glimpses a man beneath the lilacs, his "gorgeous cold eyes" reflecting moonlight like mirrors. His aura pulses with malevolent purpose, and Kylie knows instinctively that Jimmy's vengeful spirit has returned, waiting patiently "to make somebody pay" for the wrongs of the past. The night air grows thick with the weight of impending darkness, and Kylie realizes her thirteenth birthday marks not just her entrance into adolescence, but into a world of supernatural power she never knew existed.
Chapter 8
The Ghost in the Garden
If a woman is trouble, she should wear blue for protection - blue shoes, a dress, a sweater, or even just a ribbon threaded through her slip. But when a candle burns blue, it means a spirit has entered your house, and if the flame grows stronger each time it's lit, the spirit is settling in, wrapping itself around your home.
Sally and Gillian begin experiencing strange occurrences - lamps turn off by themselves, cars run out of gas despite full tanks, showers turn icy, milk curdles, toast burns, and mail arrives torn in half with blackened edges. Each sister begins losing what matters most - Sally's photo of her daughters vanishes from its frame, her diamond earrings disappear, and bills she'd prepared to mail are gone. Gillian loses her prized red cowboy boots, her tarot cards, and even her car, which mysteriously reappears at the Hamburger Shack.
When Kylie describes Jimmy lighting a cigarette and tossing the burning match on the grass, Sally notices smoke spiraling from the lawn and smells something burning. She realizes Jimmy could burn down their house if he wanted. Determined not to let him threaten her daughters, Sally decides to take action. After everyone leaves for the day, she takes hedge clippers and a stepladder to the backyard and cuts down all the lilacs, leaving only stumps. The branches and flowers are tied neatly at the curb for trash pickup. When the women who were drawn to the lilacs arrive to find them gone, they'll finally be free.
Chapter 9
The Legacy of Maria Owens
Two hundred years ago, Maria Owens arrived in Massachusetts with only a small satchel, her baby daughter, and diamonds sewn into her dress hem. Young and pretty but dressed in black without a husband, Maria had enough money to hire twelve carpenters to build her house on Magnolia Street. She confidently directed them on details like mantelpiece wood and window placement.
People grew suspicious, especially when Maria's baby never cried, even when bitten by spiders or stung by bees. Her garden remained free of pests. During a hurricane, every house on Magnolia Street suffered damage except hers - not even laundry left on the line was disturbed.
Maria cared only for herself, her daughter, and a respected man in Newburyport unknown to her neighbors. Three times monthly, she bundled her sleeping baby, donned her wool coat, and walked across fields and orchards to meet him. People claimed to see her coat billowing as she ran so fast she barely touched the ground.
When a farmer wounded a crow that had been stealing from his cornfield, and Maria appeared the next day with her arm in a sling and bandaged hand, people felt certain they knew why. They remained polite when she shopped but made the sign of the fox behind her back to unravel spells.
Every Owens woman since Maria has inherited those clear gray eyes and the knowledge that there's no real defense against evil. Maria wasn't a crow harassing farmers - love had wounded her. The father of her child, whom she'd followed to Massachusetts, had tired of her and sent money to keep her away. Refusing to believe his rejection, Maria went to his Newburyport home despite his forbidding it, injuring herself by pounding on his door.
Until her death, Maria wore a sapphire given by the man she'd loved, reminding herself what mattered and what didn't. Long after she died, people claimed to see an icy blue figure walking the fields at night. They swore if you knelt quietly by the apple trees as she passed, her dress would brush against you, bringing lifelong luck to you and generations of your descendants.
Chapter 10
Finding Love Despite the Curse
Gillian finally takes a chance on love with Ben Frye, Kylie's biology teacher who fell instantly in love with her. Though she'd planned to tell him she wasn't looking for anything serious, once inside his hallway, Ben - done with patience - began kissing her immediately, pushing her against the wall and slipping his hands under her blouse. The experience contrasted sharply with her relationship with Jimmy, where she'd learned to get him aroused quickly before his anger escalated, telling him whatever he wanted to hear.
With Ben, everything was different. His extended kissing drove her wild, reminding her how it felt to want someone as much as they wanted you. Their relationship transforms Gillian. She drops coffee cups at work thinking about their lovemaking. For the first time, she wants someone more than they want her, visiting Ben at school when desire overwhelms her.
Meanwhile, Kylie has a frightening encounter with men following her through a field, escaping before being touched but deeply shaken. This incident unexpectedly brings her closer to her sister Antonia, who helps her clean up and hide the evidence from their mother. In the days following, they develop a mysterious bond that transforms their relationship. They laugh together in hallways and kitchens, no longer fighting over bathroom time or calling each other names.
As August ends, the family gathers at the aunts' house for Thanksgiving. Sally and Gillian cook while Antonia and Kylie chase squirrels in the garden. Ben and his rabbit Buddy are upstairs, Scott Morrison is coming from Cambridge with roommates, and the ancient cat Magpie watches the turkey with his one good eye.
Earlier, Gillian had received a letter from the attorney general's office in Tucson stating that James Hawkins had been found dead in the desert, apparently having rolled into his campfire while drunk. The body was identified only by his silver ring. Gillian immediately recognized this as Gary Hallet's handiwork - the investigator who had been tracking Jimmy had arranged for justice to be done without implicating the sisters.
Under the stars, Sally and Gillian realize this moment - looking up at the night sky without fear - is exactly what they'd wished for as children. This is their future, right now. Despite the family curse that "love is a curse," the Owens women have found their way to happiness, proving that sometimes the most practical magic of all is the courage to embrace love despite its risks.
