Absolutely Captivated (26 page)

“Ky?” Travers kept his voice
soft.

“Did…” Kyle swallowed visibly and had
to start again. “Did Mom run away because of the magic?”

Kid psychology, and reinventing the
past. Kyle must have thought that Travers was denying his magic for
a reason, not because he truly hadn’t figured it out.

“Did she leave me because I’m magic?”
Travers often started by repeating the question with slightly
different wording just to make sure he understood. “I—”

“No,” Kyle whispered. “Did she leave
because of me?”

Travers felt his breath
leave his body as forcefully as if he had fallen from a great
height. Kyle had never asked a question like that before, he had
never once asked if it was his fault that Cheryl left, even though
Travers’ sister Megan, the child psychologist, often asked if Kyle
worried about that.

Kyle must have worried about it and
not said a single thing. How much else had that kid bottled up
inside?

“Your mom and I,” Travers said slowly,
uncertain if he’d ever talked to Kyle about his mother in quite
this way, “we got married when we were seven years older than
you.”

Another tear hung on Kyle’s lower
eyelashes but didn’t fall. Travers found himself staring at
it.

“I know that seems old to
you, but it’s not. Not really.” Travers sighed. He didn’t entirely
understand what happened, either. He knew what broke up the
marriage. He just didn’t know why Cheryl had abandoned her son. It
was inconceivable to Travers that anyone would ignore this child,
let alone never see him again.

Kyle was staring at him as if trying
to memorize every single word.

“When you get married,”
Travers said, “you declare that you’re grown up. My parents made it
pretty clear that I’d be on my own if I married your mother, and
she didn’t have any parents, just a grandmother whom she really
didn’t like. So we were on our own. And it was hard. All we had was
a high school education. We couldn’t get good jobs and we couldn’t
rent a nice place, like they have in the commercials.”

That last was bitter, and Travers
heard it. He had worked all of Kyle’s life to keep the bitterness
out of his conversations about Cheryl. He wasn’t about to let the
bitterness creep in now.

“She was happy when she got pregnant,”
Travers said. “It was just like in the fairy tales, you know?
Babies are part of happily ever after.”

Kyle blinked and the tear fell. This
time, Travers caught it with his forefinger, and then he caressed
his son’s cheek.

“I was the one who was worried,”
Travers said. “I worried about money and finding a safe
neighborhood for you to grow up in and being the best dad in the
world, and maybe in all that worrying, I scared your mom. I don’t
know.”

Kyle’s lips had thinned. He looked
like he was stretched so tight he would shatter.

Still, Travers knew he had to
continue. This was important, maybe the most important conversation
they’d had.

“All I know,” Travers said, “is that
the day you were born, it was like your mom and I switched
attitudes. I was thrilled. I’d never seen anyone like you before
and I thought you were just the best thing that had ever happened
to me.”

“And Mom thought I was the worst?”
Kyle’s voice shook.

Travers’ breath caught in his throat.
He hadn’t meant that, but he understood how his son could hear it
that way. That’s what made this conversation so very
difficult.

“No,” Travers said. “Your mom realized
that fairy tales weren’t true. Babies, particularly newborn babies,
are a lot of work. They can’t do anything for themselves. They
can’t talk, they can’t tell you what bothers them, all they can do
is cry, and eat, and poop. Some newborns can’t even really smile,
but you could. You had the best smile I’d ever seen.”

Travers had told him that before and
it always made Kyle grin. Except this time. This time, Kyle
couldn’t be easily calmed. “So she left because she didn’t like
taking care of me.”

Travers was being very careful to
control his thoughts—he wasn’t even going to think the adult answer
if he could avoid it.

“I don’t know why she left,” he said,
“but here’s my guess.”

Kyle sat very attentively. Even
Bartholomew Fang watched Travers as if the world hung on his
answer.

“I think being a grown-up
was too much for her,” Travers said. “Me, the lack of money, the
fact it was so different from the way it looks in the movies—I
think she couldn’t take it anymore.”

“But she left after I was born,” Kyle
whispered. “It had to be my fault.”

Travers shook his head.
“It was probably mine. I expected her to be someone she wasn’t. I
expected her to be the fairy tale wife and mom, and she was just a
young girl pretending to be a woman.”

He could tell from the slight frown on
Kyle’s face that the explanation was too adult for his
son.

“Some people,” Travers said, trying
again, “are really good at taking care of other people, whether
they’re married to them or friends with them or related to
them.”

“Like you and Aunt Viv,” Kyle
said.

“Yes,” Travers said. “But some people
need to be taken care of themselves, even though they’re
grown-ups.”

“Like the Fates,” Kyle
said.

“Kinda,” Travers said. “Only worse.
The Fates are trying to take care of themselves. They’re just not
doing a good job of it at the moment. They’ve done a good job in
the past.”

“But they don’t understand this
world,” Kyle said.

“And your mom didn’t understand the
grown-up world of marriage and children. She ran away from
responsibility, Kyle, not from you.”

“But I
was
her responsibility,”
Kyle said.

Travers nodded. He had hoped his son
would miss that part, but Kyle proved too intelligent once
again.

“You were,” Travers said. “But she
didn’t stay long enough to get to know you. She didn’t even try,
Kyle. It was just like if the Fates ran away the first time they
realized their magic didn’t work here. They would never have gotten
to see this world; they just would have run away from the first
thing that scared them.”

Kyle bit his lower lip again. He was
still disturbed. It was obvious from his downcast expression and
his unwillingness to ask the question that was on his
mind.

“Kyle,” Travers said, taking his son’s
hand and holding it tightly. “It wouldn’t have mattered if you were
a baby or a puppy. She wasn’t running away from you. She was
running away from me and the failure of our dreams. That’s why she
hasn’t been back.”

“Huh?” Kyle asked. He didn’t seem to
understand this part.

“If she saw you as a real person, if
she knew what she had actually left behind, then she might feel
some regret. She might have to change her behavior.” Travers gave
his son a rueful smile. “I don’t think she’s willing to do that,
even now.”

“She doesn’t sound very nice,” Kyle
said, and there was anger in his voice. “How come you married
somebody who wasn’t very nice?”

Travers resisted the urge to
contradict Kyle, and reassure him that she was nice.

“I was eighteen when I fell in love
with her,” Travers said. “I didn’t see her any more clearly than
she saw me. I don’t think we fell in love with people. I think we
fell in love with what we made up. And when that turned out to be
wrong, she ran away, and I—”

He took a deep breath, and studied his
son. This part, Travers had never admitted to Kyle.

“—
I let her.”

“You could’ve gone to find her?” Kyle
asked, and there was hope in his voice. He probably wanted Travers
to do that even now.

“I could have,” Travers said. “I don’t
know what good it would have done. Maybe not any. But I
didn’t.”

“How come?” Kyle asked.

“Because,” Travers said softly, “if
she couldn’t stay when she had something as perfect as you in her
life, nothing I had to say would make any difference. She would
never see the good things. She would spend her life thinking other
people had them, and never realize how wonderful the stuff in her
life really was.”

There it was, part of the adult
theory. But Kyle seemed to understand it.

“You think there was something wrong
with her?” Kyle asked.

“Yeah,” Travers said, wishing he had
thought of putting it that simply. “Yeah, I do.”

“Oh,” Kyle said, and leaned back in
his chair. He stared at his half-finished breakfast. “So you
thinking you didn’t have magic, that had nothing to do with
Mom?”

It took Travers a moment to understand
the logic of the question. Kyle had brought all of this up because
he believed that Travers had been pretending not to have magic with
the thought that magic had driven Cheryl away. So in accepting
magic, Travers would have been guaranteeing that Cheryl never came
back.

“It had nothing to do with your mom,”
Travers said. “Just my own blind stupidity.”

“You’re not stupid, Dad,” Kyle
said.

“Thanks,” Travers said.

Kyle nodded. He slid his
plate back, grabbed his fork, and scooped up a large bite of
whipped cream and strawberries.

But before he stuffed it in his mouth,
he looked at Travers. “Dad, I’m really glad you stayed.”

Travers ruffled his son’s hair. “Best
decision I ever made, Kyle.”

Kyle grinned, then set about finishing
his breakfast. Travers watched him, feeling even more disconcerted
than he had all night. Kyle was feeling the changes too, just not
in the same way. And the stresses on Travers would influence his
son as well.

Travers just didn’t know how to
prevent it.

Zoe felt like she was a
general in charge of too many troops. At ten a.m., she went to the
hotel to find the Fates still lounging over breakfast and no sign
whatsoever of Travers and Kyle. Zoe wasn’t sure who to be more
irritated at: the Fates, who seemed to think that there was no such
thing as time and a schedule; or Travers, who knew there was, but
apparently ignored it.

She packed the Fates off to their
separate rooms for showers, and was about to pick up the phone to
summon Travers and Kyle, when a knock came at the door.

Since the Fates were
singing the same song in three different showers (which would have
been creepy even if the song hadn’t been “Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy
of Company B” [which the Fates mispronounced, in three-part harmony
worthy of the Andrews Sisters, as “Boegie-Woegie Bugle Boy”]), Zoe
decided it was the better part of valor to answer the door herself,
rather than interrupt one of the three chanteuses.

Zoe pulled the door open to find Kyle
and Travers standing before her. Kyle looked subdued; his glasses
had slid to the end of his nose and were smudged, his hair was
badly combed, and he sniffled. Zoe wanted to smooth his hair and
ask him what was wrong, but she felt that would be inappropriate,
at least in front of his father.

Travers looked even better
than he had the day before. His light blue polo shirt and dark
jeans emphasized his lean, elegant body, and made his blond hair
seem even lighter. The clothes also accented the blue of his eyes.
He smiled at her as if nothing was wrong.

“You don’t look like a Fate,” he
said.

“That’s because I’m not one, thank
heavens,” Zoe said, and stood aside.

The first one across the threshold
wasn’t Kyle or Travers, but Bartholomew, whom she hadn’t even
noticed. The little round dog waddled past her as if he were king
and she was his servant.

“He seems to be doing pretty well,”
Zoe said.

“Considering how much he’s eaten, it’s
amazing he can walk,” Travers said. “What are familiars supposed to
do? Eat all the calories in the room so the mage doesn’t have
to?”

“Only some familiars,” Zoe. “And only
if they’re named Bartholomew.”

“He’s still hoping for
‘Fang.’” Kyle’s voice was a bit watery, too, as if he had been
holding back tears.

Zoe closed the door. The singing
continued as if it were in surround sound, and Travers looked from
one closed door to the next.

“They’re not in the same shower, are
they?” he asked.

Zoe shook her head.

“They decided on the song and the
misinterpretation of the lyrics before they went in,
right?”

Zoe shook her head again.

Travers sighed. “Some things I’m never
going to get used to.”

He stepped farther into the main room,
and stopped. He was clearly as appalled as Zoe had been when she
first walked in.

The living room was a
disaster. Zoe hadn’t even tried to clean it up. It looked like the
Fates had hosted a group of visiting thirteen-year-old girls.
Pillows rested on the floor, along with a pile of blankets. Empty
A&W Root Beer cans leaned against Hires Root Beer cans which
leaned against one or two regular beer cans, all apparently empty.
A box of chocolates, with all but the center two pieces picked out,
lay open on the coffee table, and pizza crusts littered the floor
near the couch. The television had been turned so that whoever
leaned against the pillows could see it, and a bunch of DVDs were
stacked next to the DVD player.