“Lemon-lime with a hint of mint. We also have a fruit punch love potion and a green apple sleeping potion. There are others in development, but I’m afraid you haven’t signed the confidentiality agreement yet.” The smile she gave me was all grandmother and no business, a kindly old woman delighting in her favorite things and teasing a neighborhood child. “There’s more to see.”
“Actually,” I said, placing a hand on her arm to keep her from moving and launching into another selling pitch. “Could we, maybe, sign those papers? I’ve seen more than enough to know that I would love to work here. Even if I didn’t really need the job, this place is…” I rolled my eyes at myself but said it anyway, “…magical. Assuming you’re going to offer me the job, that is.”
Maysie’s kindly eyes, a warm cinnamon-hazel, twinkled as she said, “Absolutely.”
If nothing else, no foul accident had befallen me since I’d been here. That was something to take note of. That it was something to take note of didn’t say great things about my life, but oh well. “There is one thing I should mention.” I hesitated before proceeding. She might, after all, decide not to hire me on grounds of reckless driving. But I also wouldn’t handle the guilt of leaving without saying something so well, either.
“Yes?”
“I sort of, kind of…ran over your sign on the road. A little…”
The laugh Maysie let out was one hundred percent exactly like what I thought Mrs. Claus must sound like. Santa Claus laughed with his belly, and Mrs. Claus laughed with a youthful delight belying her years, warm and spicy, like fresh gingerbread. “Don’t worry, Tessa. It happens all the time.”
Chapter 6
The drive home seemed to take about two minutes. I drove on a cloud of euphoric relief, my body on autopilot while my brain ran wild with glee. I had a job! After literally years of applications and never getting hired, I finally landed a spot among the well-paid masses. Okay, middling-paid. It was, after all, just filing. And it was only temporary, until I had cleaned up the file room—a file room I had forgotten to ask to see. Maybe it would only be a two-week job. Then again, she said she hadn’t really done anything with it since her husband died, and I had seen no sign of a husband in any of her photographs. That suggested he took the pictures, and the last photo had been at least five years old. A file room that hadn’t been touched in five years could equal a significant clean-up, and thereby a decent temp timeline.
I was too elated to care about the details too much. Even if it only lasted a week, that was a week’s worth of full-time pay. I could do a lot with that amount of money. Like buy new professional attire. Thankfully, Maysie insisted I wear cheap clothes to work so I didn’t ruin anything better with all the dust and dirt inherent to a factory. Cheap, I had plenty of.
Bob’s truck was gone when I pulled into the driveway, so I didn’t worry about walking in on anything. I still opened the door a crack without looking in and called, “Mom? I’m home!” before going in.
She was watching some home improvement show - not actual Home Improvement, which I would have watched happily - in the living room. Destiny lay curled up in a giant, slumbery ball of white-and-black fuzz at her feet.
“Hey, Mom,” I said softly as I set my purse and folio on a chair. Guilt hunched my shoulders even through my elation.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said, just as softly. “How’d it go?”
“Kinda great.” I feigned disinterest. “I got the job.”
The smile she whipped around to give me was as genuine a mom smile as I’d ever seen, and yet something felt off. “That’s awesome, Tessa! I knew they would love you.”
“Just because you love me, Mom, doesn’t mean everyone else in the world will.” I smiled as I said it and slipped off my suit jacket.
Mom glanced at my blouse. “That was a bold style choice for an interview. I always thought it was better to be conservative. But you got it, and that’s all that matters.”
Stomach gremlin grumbled. “Yeah, well, it’s the only blouse I’ve got, so…”
She ignored my comment and went back to her magazine. Her distraction was as real as my disinterest in getting a job. “I hope you have something a little more feminine and less man-eatery to wear for your date.”
My brain froze, then backpedaled. Date? How could I possibly forget a date? Had I told her I’d go out with one of her friends’ sons or something? “What date?”
She shrugged, all nonchalance and totally unbelievable disinterest. At least when I’d done it, I’d been joking. She was clearly trying hard not to pry so I wouldn’t shut down and refuse to tell her. “The one I assume you’re going on with whatever boy gave you the rose in your room. I popped in to put the good linens back in the closet, and there it was. Very pretty.”
Relief swam through me. I dropped onto the overstuffed chair facing the couch and swung my legs over the arm in a very ladylike fashion. Pencil skirt, and all. “Oh, that. I don’t think I’ll see him again. He was very nice, but not my type.”
“Oh, Tessa.” She slapped her magazine closed and swiveled toward me, almost stepping on Destiny in the process. The dog rolled over in her sleep, her ears flopping backward and her forefeet in the air. “How do you know what your type is anymore? You have to give men a chance. I know it’s hard. Believe me, I understand. But you’ll never find out what Adult Tessa wants in a man if you never date any adult men.”
“Elderly men count as adult men, right?” I grabbed a couple cinnamon almonds from a bowl by the chair and popped them in my mouth.
“What?” The look on her face made me snort with a suppressed giggle.
“The man who gave me that rose was at least seventy-five. Do you want me to be that open to possibilities?” I cocked my head and stared at the wall, pretending to consider. “I mean, he was kind of handsome. And he had that English accent and all. I’m sure he’d still make very pretty grandkids for you.”
“Gross, Tess. Even I am too young to date a seventy-five year old. And making babies…ew.”
I mimicked her earlier shrug. “Hey, at least I’m not having sex with him on the tree swing in the backyard.”
“What’s that phrase you use? Mental thinker?”
“Visual thinker.”
“Yes, that.” She shuddered. “Ew. But you’ve made your point, and I’m sorry. I can’t imagine walking in on my parents…but then, I’m not entirely sure they had that kind of a marriage.”
I snorted. “Most women your age don’t have that kind of a marriage, Mom.”
“You’d be surprised. I was talking to Ellie yesterday and--”
“Seriously? You’re going to take me there? With my sixth-grade science teacher?”
She had the decency to blush. “Sorry. I thought it was your brother who was in her class.”
“Nope. That was all me. Suddenly my memories of the sex ed portion of her classes take on a new light.”
Mom grimaced, but it was more because she was hiding a laugh than because she felt bad about giving me a new, unwanted perspective on a past authority figure. It was weird enough they became friends, but did she care? Nope—she was enjoying making me squirm. “Sorry, sweetie.”
I gave her my I am not amused, flat-eyed look. “I don’t think you are.”
She turned a page in her magazine without looking at it. “So…he was old, huh? You’re not just saying that to keep your mom off the topic?”
“He really was. I guess he sells them in the park on weekends to make a little spending money. Kinda sad when you think about it…”
“I’ve never seen a man selling flowers in the park.”
I opened my eyes wide and made a small gasp. “You mean I was given a rose by a ghost? One that comes out in broad daylight? Oh no!”
“I’m serious, Tessa. If he told you that, he was lying. I’ve been at the park almost every weekend since the snow melted. No old man selling roses on any of them.”
“So he lied.” I popped some more cinnamon almonds into my mout
h. “So what? I was having a bad day and he gave me a rose. Where’s the harm?”
Her lips pressed together and worked from side to side as she considered her words. “There’s…bad things can happen. The park…”
I swung my feet back to the floor to level a full-on incredulous stare at her. “You’re not seriously worried about the Trapperstown Trapper, are you? The mountain man who whisks girls away to his ghostly cabin in the woods? It’s an urban legend, Mom.”
“Urban legends begin somewhere, Tessa.” She inflected my name with that annoyance peculiar to mothers everywhere.
“Yeah, like sixty years ago. You really think old man Harry abducted a girl when he was fifteen, and now he’s back with his eye on me?”
My mom’s normally pink skin faded to a sickly pallor. “Sixty years ago. Thirty years ago. Girls really did disappear, Tessa. Seven of them, every time. The only trace they ever found was the rose their abductor left behind.”
“Well, he gave me a rose and I’m still here.”
“Maybe that’s how it started. Maybe he lured them with the rose and—”
“Mom. Stop. Nobody’s abducting me, especially not Harry Roundtop with his shaking hands and unsteady feet. He needs a cane to walk, for crying out loud!”
She got up and paced to the kitchen and back. “He could have a partner. Make a girl feel safe with the old man and the rose, and meanwhile the muscled goon is hiding in the bushes.”
I rolled my eyes. “There was no goon, Mom. There is no serial killer waiting to grab me, whether from a thirties gangster movie or otherwise. You’re freaking yourself out for nothing.” Her reaction seemed over the top, but I could tell she was legitimately scared. I had no desire to get her hopes up or open a door for her to pry and pick at me about it every day, but I also didn’t want her this worried every time I left the house. So I took a deep breath and shrugged like it was no big deal. “Besides, I kind of think the rose might be a good luck charm.”
Mom dragged her attention away from an open window to fix it on me. “Why’s that?”
“I kinda, sorta, maybe…” I hesitated, then ran through the rest of it as fast as I could, “…ranintoNickyMikkelsenwhoaskedformynumberandinvitedmetocoffee.” I took a breath and added, “Tentatively.”
That seemed to take the wind right out of her. She sat down hard in the chair she’d been leaning against. “Nicky Mikkelsen? The one you had such a huge crush on in high school?”
“I don’t know that I’d emphasize it that much, but yeah. That Nicky Mikkelsen.”
“What’s he up to these days?”
I eyed her. Did she know something I didn’t? “Taking care of his mom. She had a stroke, but he said she’s getting better.”
“You should have invited him to the party.”
Yeah, ‘cause both of us walking in on my parents having sex in the backyard would have been such a lovely bonding experience. “I did, actually, but he said he was on call so he couldn’t make it.”
“On call? Is he a doctor?” The breath seemed to leave her body as she said the last word. Was she really that desperate to have me remarried so fast?
“I didn’t ask.” Which, now that I thought about it, seemed like a significant oversight on my part.
“And you said something about going for coffee?”
“Well, to Peppy Poppy’s. It doesn’t have to be coffee.”
She searched my face for a long, silent moment. I glanced around the room feeling as awkward as possible when having a conversation about dating with your mother, having recently seen her half-naked and straddling a— “Tessa,” she said, graciously ending the inevitable spiral of my thought process. She slid out of her chair and came to cup my face in her elegant hands. After smoothing back a few tendrils of my hair, she looked me straight in the eye and with the ring of emphatic iron said, “Promise me you will never talk to that man again.”
I searched for some hint of what the hell was going on in her face. The only thing I found was dead seriousness backed by a slight trace of fear. “Nicky? I hardly think he’s a bad—”
“Not him. The old man. Harry Whatever.”
“Roundtop,” I supplied.
“Yes, him. Stay away from him. Absolutely do not accept anything else from him, and go nowhere with him. Promise me.”
Dude. I hadn’t ever seen my mom this wigged out. “Um, sure, Mom. I promise not to let the geriatric man seduce me.” I tried to pull away, but she held me firmly in place, refusing to let me blow off her concern.
“I’m serious, Tereza. Never, ever. I will get your grandmother’s brooch if I have to.”
There was no more sacred oath in our household than swearing on Grandmother’s brooch. The heirloom had been passed down for six generations, alongside a rhyme and a story of the first blood oath sworn over it. It was all very Old World. Then again, I believed in everyday, real-world magic for a reason. The magic of a first kiss. The magic of love between two people, romantic or otherwise. The magic of an evening snow when everything was quiet and soft. It had nothing to do with pretty animation or princess gowns and everything to do with family heritage. “If it means that much to you, I promise I won’t talk to the old man ever again.”
“Thank you.” She hugged my head to her chest, tight enough I couldn’t quite breathe. “I don’t know what I would do if I lost you to something like that.”
I hugged her back, but pulled away before I blacked out. “Anything for you, Mom.”
She paused, still looming over me. “Then…will you destroy the rose, too?”
I laughed. “It’s not like it’s a tool of evil. It’s just a flower.”
“Why do you always have to nitpick?”
My shoulders raised defensively as I forced another laugh and snapped, “Because it’s kind of silly, Mom. I mean, you could have just told me to chuck it. To throw it away, or get rid of it. ‘Destroy’ is a pretty strong word to choose. For a flower.”
“Fine. Get rid of it. I don’t want to argue. Just…will you do that for me?”
I found myself hesitating. Weird. “I…what if it really is a good luck charm?”
“Now who’s being silly?” She tsked at me. “That’s your grandmother talking.”
“You’re the one who said ‘destroy that tool of evil.’ You started it.” I chewed on my tongue a little, trying not to say what threatened to spill out. Didn’t do any good; out it came, anyway. “But…I did run into Nicky immediately after I got it. Well, he hit me with a Frisbee, but you know what I mean.”
“Is that how you got that bruise? I thought you’d hit yourself with a cupboard or something.”
I made a face at her. How clumsy did she think I was? “The point is, I’ve been miserable. My life is in the toilet. And I get the rose and I run into—”
“The cutest boy in school,” she oh-so-helpfully supplied.
“—the boy I used to like, all grown up. Then I got home and…well, there was all of that…that, but then I found the want ad and called and now I have a job.” Yes, it was dumb. Childish, even. But damn it, I needed something to hold onto. Gently, so as not to take a gash out of my hand on the thorns.
“You don’t need a charm to be successful, Tessa. You are smart, capable, professional—”
That was my cue to leave. I pushed out of my chair, stepping around her gently. “I love you, Mom, but that’s a load of crap. If it were true in any way, I would have had a job three years ago. I would have been able to pay my bills and buy new clothes and my husband would have landed roles and we might actually have been happy. But none of it happened.” I gave her a hug to show her I wasn’t mad, even if irritation growled through my stomach gremlin. “The rose will wilt soon enough, and then I’ll burn it to ashes if you want me to. Now, I’m going to change. Maybe when I get back, we can watch that new comedy with Sookie in it?”
She smiled at me and nodded. I headed for my room like that was that; no harm, no foul. We heard each other and communicated like adults. Compr
omise and all that, right?
With the first step into my room, anger rushed from my head to my feet. Leaning out the door, I called back upstairs to her, “Hey, Mom? Would you please stop hanging that sand picture every day? It’s extra creepy now, after…you know.” That incident I would never speak of again, even if I would be seeing it in my head until the day I died.
She appeared at the top of the stairs with a glass of iced tea in hand. “What picture? I haven’t been in your room in weeks, except for this morning when I put the linens back, and that’s all I touched.” I respect your privacy, her clipped tone said.
My stomach gremlin burst into a raging ball of atomic fire as she and I came to the same realization at the same moment. My mom held up a placating hand. “I’ll talk to him.”
I nodded in thanks but didn’t dare open my mouth for fear of what kind of upset words might fall out. Then I went back in my room and locked the door behind me. Which I would be doing from now on, even when I wasn’t home.
Creepiest stepdad of the year award goes to…
The rose on my dresser looked as gorgeous and alive as it had when Harry first gave it to me, and smelled just as amazing. The fragrance filled my whole room, permeating even the dresser itself so that when I pulled on a clean shirt, I smelled like it. Who needed perfume?
I knew it was an illusion, the idea that I could control any circumstance just by keeping a flower. Good luck happened or didn’t happen on its own whim. I couldn’t force good things to happen to me no matter what I did, and anyone who said differently had never been as screwed as I had been. But I also knew that I needed that illusion, just for a few days. And besides, who wouldn’t want a magical flower to make all their dreams come true?
My phone rang as I stood there, admiring the rose’s rich coloring and pondering the nature of luck and life and my own sorry lack of both.
It was Nicky.
We scheduled to meet at Peppy Poppy’s at eleven on Saturday morning.
“Nope,” I said to the rose as I stood there grinning like an idiot afterward. “There’s no way I’m getting rid of you. Not yet.”
One Good Wand Page 6
