The Enchantress Returns (5 page)
“Those are beautiful! Where are they from?” Alex asked.
“They were delivered when I got home from school,” Conner said. “They’re for Mom… from
Bob
!”
Alex’s eyes widened. “Oh dear,” she said and gulped. “Well, that’s very
sweet
of him.”
“Sweet?!”
Conner said loudly. “This isn’t sweet, Alex! It’s downright
romantic
!”
“Conner, you don’t know he meant it in that way,” Alex said. “People send other people flowers all the time.”
Conner searched through the bouquet. “Daisies are friendly, sunflowers are friendly, a Venus flytrap is friendly—but
red roses mean romance
!” he said. “And he sent a card. It’s in here somewhere—I read it like a hundred times before I threw it back in—here it is. Read it.”
He passed a small card to his sister, and to her horror it was heart-shaped. She looked down at it like it had the results to an exam she knew she had flunked.
“I don’t want to read it,” Alex said. “I don’t want to invade Mom’s privacy.”
“Then I’ll read it to you,” Conner said and tried snatching the card out of her hands.
“Fine, I’ll read it!” Alex said and reluctantly opened the card.
Alex quickly closed the card as if trying to stop the truth from escaping it. Conner leaned close to his sister and studied her face, waiting for a reaction to surface.
“Weeeeeell?”
Conner said.
“Well,” Alex said as she ran through a dozen unlikely theories, “we don’t know that this means they’re in a
relationship
.”
Conner threw his hands into the air and paced around the kitchen. “Alex, don’t do that!” he said, pointing his finger at her.
“Don’t do what?” she asked.
“That thing you do when you try to ignore a situation by making light of it!” he said.
“Conner, I think you’re overreacting—”
“Face it, Alex, we were blinded by a Border collie!” Conner exclaimed loud enough for the neighbors to hear him. “Mom has a
boyfriend
!”
Hearing
Mom
and
boyfriend
made Alex squirm. In her opinion, the two words didn’t belong in the same dictionary, let alone the same sentence.
“I’m not going to get too worked up about something until I hear it from Mom herself,” Alex said.
“What more proof do you need?” Conner said. “Mom got a dozen red roses delivered with a heart-shaped card specifying an amount of time! What do you think ‘six months’ means? Do you think Mom and Bob joined a bowling league and didn’t tell us?”
Both of their heads abruptly turned in the same direction when they heard the garage door open. Charlotte was finally home from work.
“Ask her,” Alex mouthed at her brother.
“
You
ask her,” Conner mouthed back at her.
Charlotte stepped inside a few moments later. She was still dressed in her blue scrubs from the hospital and carried a bag of groceries. She walked right by the flowers on the table without noticing them.
“Hey, guys, sorry I’m late,” Charlotte said. “I stopped by the store on the way home to pick up something for dinner. I’m starving! I was thinking of making a chicken-and-rice something or other; sound good? Are you two hungry?”
Charlotte looked up when the twins stayed silent.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you okay—
wait
, where did those flowers come from?”
“They’re from your
boyfriend
,” Conner said.
In the thirteen years of being her children, Alex and Conner could count on one hand how many times they had seen their mother become speechless. This was one of those times.
“Oh…” Charlotte looked like a deer in headlights.
“You have a lot of explaining to do!” Conner said and crossed his arms. “You should probably have a seat.”
“I’m sorry, did someone promote you to parent?” Charlotte said and glared at her son.
“Sorry,” Conner said and lowered his head. “I just think we need to talk about this.”
“Is it true?” Alex asked with a half-concerned, half-horrified expression.
“Yes,” Charlotte said with difficulty. “Bob and I have been seeing each other.”
Conner slid into a seat next to his sister. Alex’s forehead hit the table.
“I was going to tell you,” Charlotte said. “I was just waiting—”
“Let me guess, until we were older?” Conner asked. “If only I had a nickel for every time we heard that. Alex, watch out—we may be two-thirds of a set of triplets but won’t know until we’re thirty.”
Charlotte closed her eyes tightly and let out a deep breath. “Actually, I was waiting until I could figure out
how
to tell you,” she said softly. “You guys have been so worried about not seeing your grandmother. I didn’t want to add anything to your plate.”
She took a seat and let the news sink in for a moment.
“I know this is hard to swallow,” Charlotte said.
“Hard to swallow? We need an emotional Heimlich, Mom,” Conner said.
“I actually think finding out our grandmother is a fairy in
another dimension was easier to process than this is,” Alex added.
Charlotte’s eyes fell sadly to her hands. The twins didn’t mean to make her feel bad, but they were feeling so many things, they were forgetting to be considerate.
“Bob and I have known each other for a very long time,” Charlotte said. “When your dad died, he became a very good friend. He was one of the few people I could talk to about everything that I was going through. Did you know Bob’s wife died just a year before your dad?”
Both of the twins shook their heads.
“You could have talked to
us
,” Conner said.
“No, I couldn’t,” Charlotte said. “I needed another adult to confide in. You’ll understand one day when you have kids. Bob and I each knew what the other was going through. We talked every day at work and became very close, and recently, that friendship has grown.”
The twins couldn’t decide if what she was saying was helping or making it all worse. The more she explained, the more real it became.
“What about Dad?” Alex said. “Your and Dad’s story was literally a fairy tale, Mom. He traveled from a different world to be with you. Don’t you still love
him
?”
The question was heartbreaking for all of them, especially Charlotte.
“Your father was the love of my life, and always will be,” Charlotte said. “And these years without him have been the hardest of my entire life. We were married for twelve years, and
in that time we talked about a lot of things, a lot of
possibilities
. I know for a fact that if I spent another year missing your father, he would be so disappointed in me. He would want me to move on as much as I would want him to move on if the roles were reversed. It was a promise we made to each other.”
Charlotte went silent for a moment before continuing. “The first year after he died, I thought I never would be able to move on,” she said. “I thought part of me died with him and I would never be able to love anyone again. But then Bob told me he and his wife had made the same promises to each other just before she passed away, and he felt the same way. For some reason, just knowing someone else was in the same boat as me made everything feel so much better.”
The twins shared a hopeless glance, knowing there was nothing they could do to ease their mother’s heartache. “I know this is difficult for you two,” Charlotte said. “I’m not saying you need to be okay with it. You can feel however you want, and rightfully so. Just know that Bob makes me really happy, and it’s been a long time since I’ve felt this way.”
Conner unsuccessfully tried keeping a question that popped up in his mind to himself.
“Conner, what’s your question?” Charlotte asked and dabbed the corners of her eyes with the edge of her sleeve.
“I don’t have a question,” Conner said and shook his head unconvincingly.
“Yes you do,” Charlotte said, knowing her son better than he knew himself. “You always purse your lips like that when you have something to ask.”
Conner immediately repositioned his mouth.
“It’s okay, honey, you can ask anything,” she said.
“It’s really childish and lame,” Conner warned. “I guess it’s something I’ve always wondered about people who lose their husbands or wives. But one day, if we’re all in… well,
heaven
, I guess, isn’t it going to be a little awkward with Bob and Dad there?”
Alex was about to let out a disapproving sigh but held it in. Even she had to admit it was a decent question. Although she felt horrible for feeling it, a part of her felt like her mom was being unfaithful to her dad.
A smile came to Charlotte’s face and she let out a soft laugh. “Oh, honey, if there’s ever a time or a place when we’re all together again, I imagine we’d be too happy to let things be awkward.”
Alex and Conner looked at each other and knew they were both thinking the same thing. The thought of their family being together again made them both smile.
Charlotte placed her hands on the tops of theirs on the table. “Nothing any of us do will ever bring your dad back,” she said. “And nothing we do will ever push him further away, either. He’ll always be with us in our hearts, no matter what.”
“I guess putting it that way makes me feel better,” Conner said.
“Me too,” Alex said.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Charlotte said and smiled at them. She got up from the table and grabbed her car keys. “I don’t feel like cooking anymore. Let’s go get pizza instead. It’s good to eat something heavy after a heavy conversation.”
The next day at school Alex was still having a hard time digesting the conversation (and the pizza) from the night before. The news of her mother’s new relationship was a heavy thing to process and did nothing to help the gloomy state she was already in.
She felt like she was slowly losing control over everything in her life, and she hated it.
Alex desperately needed someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t her mom or her brother, but an outside source who could hug her and tell her everything was going to be all right—she
needed her
grandmother
. She would have given anything just to see her face again. However, since that was impossible at the moment, Alex settled on seeing a
form
of her grandmother instead.
At lunch she went to one of her favorite places in her world: the school library.
“Hi, Alex,” the librarian said as Alex passed her desk. “You’ll be happy to know I just ordered a new set of encyclopedias!”
“Really?” Alex said. “That’s wonderful!”
She smiled for the first time all day. It faded a second later after she realized “new encyclopedias” was the most exciting news she had had in weeks.
“Thank you for your enthusiasm,” the librarian said. “Earlier today I told another student I was getting new encyclopedias—he asked me how long I’d be in the hospital! Can you believe that? Times are definitely changing.”
“They sure are,” Alex said under her breath.
Alex went to the very last aisle of books, where the children’s literature was kept. Students weren’t allowed to check out these books, as they were mostly used as reference for the English classes. From the top shelf, Alex pulled down an old book that was several hundred pages thick. It was exactly where she had left it on her last visit to the library.
