by Lumi Laura
*
Late that afternoon, they came in from working in the garden, bathed, ate dinner, and sat before the fire. Her grandmother loved to brush Alex's hair, and Alex had mountains of it, a great mass of golden hair, of which her grandmother was tremendously proud. Nălucă came to sit in Alex's lap and purr.
"I've never seen it so radiant," her grandmother said, running the brush from her scalp down to the end of her flowing mane below her shoulders. "What a glorious gift."
Alex loved a fire, but sundown brought apprehension, not from fear of the dark but because of her attraction to it. She felt a wildness growing inside.
Her grandmother again broke the silence. "I have some things in the attic I need to show you. Something strange has gone on up there in years past. Your grandfather and I could never figure it out. It's always been another of our big family secrets. Let's wait while. I can't face this all at once."
While her grandmother brushed her hair, Alex thought of Jaklin, her mounds of chocolate hair, and Mikhail's small beard and short black hair, the one curl that fell onto his forehead.
Alex asked her grandmother, "Do I seem different? Have I changed?"
"I must say, you do seem more yourself, more an extrovert. You are not the lost little girl I've known you to be in the past."
"That's me. I know who I am now, and it's frightening. It happened all at once."
"Don't worry about growing up. That's a good thing."
"I made some friends a couple of nights ago, Bunică. They make me so happy when I'm with them."
"My one concern when you stay with me has always been your solitude. How happy it makes me to know that you've found friends here. You're a grown woman. Have fun with them. Youth is such a fleeting state."
"They are also descendants of the Cantacuzene family. We're distant cousins."
"As is half of Romania, or so it seems. But that's wonderful. You'll have to bring them to meet me. Queen Marie once told my mother that we should be glad to not be a recognized part of the royal family. 'Your life will be your own,' she said. 'What a treasure!' Take her advice, Alexandra. Enjoy life, dear girl. Enjoy your friends in whatever way you choose. Just live it with passion and without regret."
They didn't speak for a while, the crackle of fire the only sound in the room other than the whisper of the brush through Alex's hair. She wondered what her grandmother would think of her friends if she knew they weren't Romanian, one a Russian and the other a Bulgarian.
"We can think about rebuilding the gazebo," her grandmother said, quietly. "I've been missing it lately myself."
