Jasmine lowered her voice. “Not you, too, Auntie.”
“Your mother would not want you to be alone.”
The sisters froze at Auntie’s words. She rarely butted into their personal lives; though she was free with her help and guidance, her one very short marriage hadn’t qualified her to give advice to the lovelorn—according to her. So this was rare.
“I’m not,” Jasmine insisted. “I have you, the girls, Rosie. What do I need a man for?”
“I love the little one, too, and all you girls,” Auntie said. “But you keep yourself tucked away, protected. Your mother, despite everything she lost, still pushed forward and allowed love in. She would want that for all of you.”
Jasmine studied her sisters, who looked at each other slightly abashed. Theirs was a tight circle, and other than casual dates in high school and college, no man had ever infiltrated it. No man had even come home for dinner. And the sisters had always lived together, even through college.
They were their own island oasis. The thought of that changing sent a streak of unease through Jasmine.
As if reading her mind, Auntie nodded at her. “Keeping your circle small is not going to protect you from pain, Jasmine.” She smiled sadly. “It’s time, my sweets.”
“For what?” Willow asked when no one else would.
Jasmine didn’t want to know. Rosie was all the change she could handle in her safe little world. Her only challenges were in her career and she preferred to keep it that way. But when Auntie spoke in that all-knowing voice, things usually happened. Whether anyone wanted them to or not.
The older woman got up and crossed to the door. Jasmine could hear her progress up the stairs and eventually back down in the historic, but sturdy, home. Auntie came straight to Jasmine, leaving her with the feeling she’d been found by an unerringly accurate arrow.
Dropping into the chair next to her, Auntie held out a small jeweler’s box. Willow and Ivy leaned across the table for a better look.
“Your mother wanted you girls to have this,” Auntie said as she opened the box. “I found it with her things, packed away with a letter.”
Inside lay a ring with a teardrop-shaped emerald stone surrounded by decorative gold filigree. They all gasped—Jasmine included. It was an involuntary reflex. The ring was gorgeous. Not only that, it seemed to have something...something special that Jasmine couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“Wait!” Willow said. “I remember Mama wearing that—she said it was an heirloom or something...”
“Indeed,” Auntie confirmed. “It was passed down to her from her mother, who received it from her mother, and so on.”
Jasmine stared at the beautiful jewel, a sudden memory of it on her mother’s hand filling her mind. Her mother had been dressed up. An anniversary dinner, maybe? She and their father hadn’t ever gone to fancy parties and such. About as fancy as it got was her father’s Christmas gathering for the professors at the university where he taught. But she remembered her mother letting her stroke one small finger over the emerald. What had she said?
Then Auntie spoke, “Legend has it—”
Willow squealed. Jasmine groaned. Auntie gave them both an indulgent smile. Willow was the resident myth and legend hunter. She’d truly followed in their father’s footsteps, teaching history at the local community college. She loved tall tales, mysteries and spooky stories. She propped her chin on her palm, avidly awaiting Auntie’s words.
Jasmine just shook her head.
“Legend has it,” Auntie started again, “that this ring was given to the woman who founded your family line by the man she married.”
“Here in Savannah?” Ivy asked.
“Oh, yes. He was a pirate, you see, and she was the beautiful but shy daughter of a prominent family here.”
Jasmine had tried hard to forget that their family had once been wealthy and respected. Long before the scandal that had rocked their safe little world.
Auntie went on. “He didn’t think he had any chance to catch her eye, so he simply admired her from afar. But on his travels, he came into possession of this ring. He was told by the old man he bought it from that the ring would bring the person who owned it true love.”
“Ooh,” Willow said, her grin growing bigger and bigger.
“Sure enough, he was able to win his woman’s hand...and the ring has been passed down to every generation of your family ever since. Each has claimed its power is real.”
Ever the skeptic, Jasmine couldn’t help but add, “And look how that worked for them. Scandals, death. Our family has some of the worst luck ever.”
When Ivy’s hopeful expression fell, it made Jasmine feel like a big bully.
“It’s said to bring its owner true love, not an easy life,” Auntie gently admonished, ever the voice of wisdom. “Besides, if the scandal hadn’t driven your grandparents out of Savannah, then your mother and father might never have met.”
Jasmine didn’t want to disrespect the memory of her parents, but... “A ring did not cause them to find each other—being in the same place at the same time did.”
“Maybe so—”
“Don’t be a realist, Jasmine,” Willow complained. “Embrace the magic.”
Ivy reached over to take the sleeping baby and snuggled her close. Rosie gave a shuddering sigh. “Is it really healthy to teach Rosie that there’s no magic, no romance in the world?”
“She’s only six months old,” Jasmine protested. “Besides, I didn’t say that—” Jasmine created magic every day with her events, or rather, the feeling of magic.
Willow added her two cents’ worth, even though Jasmine considered her biased. “Yeah, Jasmine, haven’t you ever heard of Cinderella? Rapunzel? Beauty? Wendy? Dorothy?”
“You want me to convince Rosie there’s magic in the world by indulging this nonsense and snaring a man?”
“No—the man is just a bonus,” Ivy said with a giggle.
“An uptight CEO?” Jasmine couldn’t believe she was hearing this.
Ivy wasn’t deterred. “The uptight CEO with thick hair, muscular build and a tight a—”
Willow gasped and covered the sleeping baby’s ears. “Ivy!”
Ivy grimaced. “But yes—that is a bonus. You just need to sweeten him up a little.”
“For Rosie?”
“Yes!” her sisters said in unison.
“She needs a man around,” Ivy went on. “After all, we didn’t have one. How can we possibly teach her anything about men?”
They all paused, silently weighing the loss of their father. The only man they could remember being part of their family...and that was a long, long time ago.
Auntie finally weighed in. “She’s already going to hear enough reality when she gets older and learns what happened to her birth mother,” she reminded Jasmine with a sad look.
“Or are you just afraid the ring will actually work?” Willow jumped in.
Was she? Jasmine secretly admitted that all the loss she’d suffered in her young life made her reluctant to let someone else in. Only dire circumstances had brought Rosie to her. Jasmine had adopted her as a newborn at the behest of the little girl’s dying mother. A woman Jasmine had come to know at the City Sanctuary mission where she’d volunteered—and then lost when Rosie’s mother succumbed to the cancer she’d never been able to afford to have