Unknown to you, Mom suspected you either found her late brother's lab or he gave it to you shortly before he had died, despite her begging him not to. She remembered Jack was older than her by 14 years and the two weren't close due to the age gap. The distance increased as she and her sister, Catherine, learned they had magic powers, and that Jack didn't.
Her mom tried to bring them closer by regressing Jack to mom's age but, alas, all attempts to have a closer relationship, by the use of magic, failed and the family fell apart. Unknown until later, Jack had stolen a magic book from Catherine, and during the years of isolation, created a science that rivaled magic, eventually writing a book near identical to Catherine's.
However, he did make contact in the last 3 months of his life, and both, she, he and Catherine parted on good terms, especially after he revealed his secret, though both your aunt and mom thought the secret of how he maninulated magic, although highly unstable, (though Jack never knew this) as a guy, died with him.
Inside her study, mom cried silently. "You just couldn't let go of your anger, could you, Jack?" tearfully, she asked, holding a picture of her late brother. "We never meant to start a war with you, though that is what you took it as." a tear falling onto the picture, she added, "... now I have to prevent a war with my son, if I can..."
Unknown to mom...