by Raven Snow
A couple miles down the road and Cooper spoke from his perch on my lap. "This is humiliating."
"This," I said, while Wyatt laughed beside me, "is good parenting. Children need to be reminded that they're not really people. You don't get the right to dignity ‘til you turn eighteen."
"And move out of the house," Wyatt added.
'Precisely." I tapped my chin. "I wonder if we could arrange to drive by your school like this."
"Mom!"
Even a month or so ago, that slip would've sent me into a panic. I never thought I'd be anyone's mom. It still felt strange to me. But, if I was going to play the part, there were worse supporting actors than Cooper. The kid was pretty awesome.
When Nancy stopped the car at the bakery, we all hopped out and stretched our legs. Cooper dragged his grandmother into the bakery, hoping to sucker her into buying him a cupcake. Wyatt was right behind them, reminding his son that we were there to sample wedding cakes.
"He calls you Mom?" Liam asked, grinning. "Must make you feel old."
"Ancient," I agreed. And also warm inside. I must have done something right if a kid like Cooper could love me.
"Did you ask him to?" Charles was ever the skeptic.
"Had to beat it into him, actually," I said cheerfully, following Wyatt. "Kids are so resilient. But I've found, with a little creativity, you can break their spirit."
The bakery did big cakes. And by big cakes, I meant multi-layered extravaganzas. As soon as I stepped into the cool, sweet-smelling shop, I felt like I was the short kid on the playground. Cakes of all shapes and sizes loomed over me, almost threatening. The only one in danger here, though, was my waistline.
I was glad I hadn't brought Vic, my maid of honor. She had a bit of a weakness for doughnuts, and I couldn't imagine keeping her on the leash in a place like this. I would've had to recruit the whole Bennett family.
Cooper tugged on my arm as soon as I was in range. "Can we have a chocolate cake?"
"Sure."
Wyatt frowned. "Harper's favorite cake is carrot. That's what we're having."
"Actually, I just like the tie-dyed colored ones."
The look Nancy and the shop owner gave me was priceless.
"I'm afraid we don't sell...tie-dyed...cakes here," she sniffed.
I winked at Cooper. "Guess we'll have to go with chocolate, then."
Grabbing my arm, Nancy dragged me into a separate room with seating and a large table. On the table, was a sky-high cake. Each layer seemed to be a different flavor with a different frosting combination. It was a masterful creation, and I thought I caught Cooper drooling beside me.
"We're gonna eat that?" he asked.
Ruffling his hair, I said, "Or die trying."
But it was too good to be true, apparently. While the rest of the Bennetts sat down on one side, I walked over to the other side of the table to avoid sitting in between Tom and Charles. My position was also closer to the cake, which was where I wanted to be.
The table lurched only seconds after I sat down and dropped a napkin in my lap. My head snapped up in horror as the cake started leaning towards me. It was like something out of a nightmare, almost too horrible to be true.
Powerless to move, I watched as the cake smashed down over me, coating me in frosting. The force of the impact sent me and my chair to the ground, sprawling under pounds upon pounds of cake. I could hear Nancy and the cake maker shrieking in the background, but I didn't make a sound.
Wyatt came over, scooping the cake off me in great handfuls, while I just laid there. Looking down at myself, I realized I looked like some kind of cake monster—something you'd see on a cartoon. A desperate giggle escaped my lips, and I almost choked on the cake that fell in when I opened my mouth.
Unfortunately for Wyatt's suit, he looked almost as bad as I did, because of his willingness to jump right in and dig me out. I wiped a bit of frosting from his face and stuck it in my mouth. It was pretty good.
"I'll take whatever he's wearing," I said, and that was the end of our cake-tasting adventure.
Cooper picked pieces of cake and frosting off of my clothes the whole way home. I told him multiple times it was unsanitary, but the kid wanted chocolate and by golly he was determined to get it. As the clothes weren't on me anymore–I was in Wyatt's shirt–I shrugged it off. If he got food poisoning, it wouldn't be because I hadn't warned him.
The first thing I wanted to do as soon as I stepped through the door at the Victorian was shower. But fate had other, less pleasant ideas for me. As soon as everyone else had disappeared upstairs, the doorbell rang. Apparently, I hadn't suffered enough that day.
Darkening my doorstep was Hope Casey, my maid of honor's daughter. She was a few years younger than Cooper, had orange hair, cute freckles, and was possibly the anti-Christ. I liked to call her "Despair" for comic effect.
She glared up at me. "Why are you covered in cake?"
"Why are you trespassing?"
Sliding past me, she set her little, pink bag down in the kitchen, helping herself to a bowl of Cooper's cereal. I followed her tiredly, rubbing my eyes and wondering what I'd done in a past life to deserve this.
"I'm staying here," she said.
I opened my mouth to inform her that there was no way in hell that was happening. I already had a house filled with people who hated me. I didn't need to worry about little Suzy Satanist chopping off all my hair in the middle of the night and setting fire to my tea reserves.
The phone interrupted me from telling her this, and I growled into the receiver by way of answer.
"Hope's missing!" Vic wailed on the other end of the line. "She's been kidnapped."
I pinched my nose, letting out a breath of frustration. "I don't think so."
"You never take me seriously," she said heatedly. "Not even when my daughter's life is on the line! I think I know when my own kid is missing."
"Pipe down, Vic. Your little flower is sitting right in front of me. Eating me out of house and home, I might add."
"I'm not leaving," Hope said.
"She says she's not leaving," I reiterated. "Help."
Wyatt came down the stairs and into the kitchen. His shortly-cropped hair was damp, and he was only wearing a pair of pajama bottoms. At the same time that I hated him for being clean while I had cake where no one should have cake, I wanted to lick the moisture off his chest. Being an adult is complicated sometimes.
He did a double take when he saw Hope sitting there, probably recounting the number of kids he thought he had in the house. After a shrug, he ruffled her hair and put extra eggs on the skillet.
No introductions were necessary between them. Vic had recently joined the Waresville police force and had been assigned as Wyatt's junior partner. Likely, he saw more of Hope than I did—and I was more than happy for it to continue that way.
Hope shot a death look at the phone I was holding. "I won't come home while he's around."
When I repeated that message to Vic, she sighed. "Hope and Peter haven't been getting along so well."
Peter, or the man I knew as that awful Officer Kosher, was a hard man to get along with. We had a personal rivalry. So much so that when I wrote my letter to Santa that year, I asked for his untimely demise. Gift wrap optional.
"Can't imagine why," I said dryly.
"Peter is a good man." Vic defended her boyfriend to the very end.
I took the phone into the living room where I wouldn't be overheard. "Fine. Good man or not, maybe you should ask him to stay at his place for a while."
I could almost hear her biting her lip. "It's not that easy. If I give in to Hope now, she'll own me."
Sneaking, I peeked at the unpleasant little girl. I noted the way she stabbed her food multiple times before popping it into her mouth and chewing like the eggs had personally wronged her.
"No arguments there."
She blew her nose aggressively. “Oh, Harper, what am I going to do?”
It wasn’t really a secret wh
at she wanted me to say. A woman knows when her best friend is hedging for a favor of epic proportions. I wanted to pry my teeth apart and tell her I had enough on my plate without adding her kid like a side of rancid meat.
But Vic was having a hard year. Her husband had left her for their teenage babysitter, leaving her and Hope without a steady income in Miami. She’d moved here after we’d reconnected at our high school reunion, and Hope had yet to forgive her for it.
Saying their relationship was strained was a vast understatement.
“I guess I could—”
“You’re the best, Harper. Thank you; thank you; thank you!” she squealed. “It’ll only be for a few days. I promise.”
A few days?
But she had hung up line before I could tell her a few days was a few days too long. I listened to the dial tone for a moment and then hung up, feeling very tired and wound up at the same time.
God, I needed sleep.
The next morning before Hope–who was staying in Cooper's room–could come downstairs and torment me, I snuck out of the house. Getting past Wyatt's arm in bed, which was wrapped around me, was difficult. I had to put a pillow in my place, not even daring to breathe, because if Wyatt woke up the whole house would too.
Oliver was predictably in my grandmother's magic shop, napping at the register. I took a moment to appreciate the fact that he didn't have a naked man or woman in there, which was usually his MO. Moment over, I shook him awake, knocking him from the chair and flat on his ass. If I was going to have a crappy day, so was everyone else.
"Why do you smell like frosting?" He wiggled his eyebrows. "Or do I want to know?"
I stole his chair from him, plopping down in it. "I had a cake fall on me."
"While you were having sex on the table?"
"No."
Patting my knee, he said, "Better luck next time, love."
Since we weren't getting anywhere with my sex life, I filled Oliver in on the changeling hunt. He laughed at the retelling of the cake incident and swooned whenever I mentioned Charles.
"That man is just too fine."
Maybe if Oliver slept with him, he might remove that stick from up Charles’ ass. It wasn't a sure thing, though, and Oliver had a nasty habit of leaving his conquests heart broken. Deciding I didn't want to see Charles when he had a reason to be angry, I discarded the idea.
"I need to figure out which one of them it is. For my sake of mind, at the very least."
Oliver disappeared into the back room for a moment, returning with piping hot tea and another seat for him. Shrugging, he said, "It's supposed to be impossible to tell the difference. And you haven't even met the real brothers."
"There must be some way," I said. "Some way they're different."
"The fae aren't fond of iron. Pure, that is."
My entire outlook on life opened up, and I took a sip of tea. "Yeah?"
"They're also supposed to be pretty good at avoiding it. Magically good."
"Oh."
We sat there and sipped our tea. Oliver had a faraway look in his eyes, meaning he was probably thinking about my future brother-in-law. Funnily enough, I was thinking about him too. About how to stick him with an iron prod without anyone noticing, that is.
But I couldn't stay at Oliver's and linger on my dilemma for long. I checked my watch and winced. Vic's final fitting was supposed to be in fifteen minutes, and I was supposed to be there for mine a half hour later.
I only had four bridesmaids. Oliver and Jeb were wearing a tux, and Amber, my office girl, was having her mother hem her dress. Vic was the only one that needed special attention. As per usual.
She glared at me when I walked into the dress shop, her eyes bulging from behind a style magazine. We'd been natural enemies in high school, Vic the pretty cheerleader and me the scruffy stoner. Back then, she was built along the lines of an underwear model. Now, she was like a linebacker. Large and unyielding. That didn't stop her from outfitting almost exclusively in spandex.
"First, you steal my kid, and then you almost stand me up. Why did I agree to be your maid of honor, again?"
Taking the magazine from her, I joined her on the plushy couch in the reception area. "You begged to be my maid of honor."
She sniffed and changed the subject. "Isn't Queen Nancy supposed to be here with us?"
I remembered the missing priest, feeling suddenly exhausted. Resting my head on Vic's shoulder, I told her that Nancy was probably occupied elsewhere.
She patted the top of my head. "You smell good." A pause. "Makes me want a doughnut."
A woman dressed classily in all black came to get us, shaking my hand. We were taken back to a dressing room that smelled faintly of paint—probably from the fresh-looking, blue walls. After asking us if we wanted anything to drink and introducing herself as Keisha, she disappeared to find our dresses.
"What color is this thing again?" she asked.
I shrugged, having not seen the dress my mother-in-law picked out before. "Nancy said something about a "tasteful and somber" pink."
Vic made a face. "Pink shouldn't be tasteful and somber."
"Amen."
When the attendant came back in, I had to shove my fist in my mouth to keep from squealing. While my dress was still white—mixed bag, there—there was nothing somber, tasteful, or pink about Vic's bridesmaid dress.
Pulling it out of the bag, Keisha brandished the dress with a flourish. It was baby poop yellow with patches of horrible, burnt orange, nauseating and bright. Just looking at it gave me a headache, and the thought of Nancy's dismayed cries when I showed her this made me feel like I needed to lie down.
"Er," Vic said, hiding a smile. "Isn't it supposed to be pink?"
Keisha frowned, pulling out the receipt. "Your mother-in-law called a couple weeks ago to change the color."
She handed over the documentation, and Vic and I exchanged a glance. The only way Nancy would have agreed to this was at gun point, and even that wasn't a sure thing. Since my future mama hadn't mentioned any threats on her life, I had to assume someone else had done this.
"Those tricky changelings," I said, feeling a little relieved of all things.
The color was admittedly horrible—though it did have some nice tie-dye like features to it—but I could live with a hideous dress standing next to me at the front. Lord knows, it wasn't much worse than half the stuff Vic wore on a regular basis.
"Well," Keisha said uncertainly. "Let's try it on."
Getting Vic into the dress required more than just Keisha’s expert hands and upper body strength. We both ended up taking a side of the dress and pulling up with all our combined muscle power. Before it was even halfway up, I was sweating and panting, wishing I did more than skate for exercise.
"You...ordered...the smaller...size...didn't you," I grunted at Vic.
She was sucking it in so hard it was a wonder she could answer. "You never need a bigger size, honey."
When we finally got her dressed, she looked like a sausage, but a sausage that no one who didn't fancy food poisoning would eat, thanks to the color. I didn't see how she could sit or breathe in that thing but Vic seemed happy enough.
"I haven't worn this size of dress since Hope was in diapers!"
All my amusement faded when it was my turn to try on my wedding dress. Turning to look at it, I gulped down a big breath of air, almost choking on it. Even behind the plastic dress bag, it looked so...white.
Finding it had been a month long battle of visiting almost every bridal shop in the tri-state area. Nancy had loved them all. I had the opposite problem. In the end, my nerves were so shot that I let my mother-in-law pick her favorite dress, knowing I wouldn't be comfortable in any of them.
Like with cakes, very few designers make tie-dye wedding dresses.
Vic stayed in her dress while Keisha helped me shimmy into mine, because we all needed a moment to recoup before round two. It fit like a glove, the measurements perfect. Unfortunately, that was the only th
ing perfect about the dress.
It had cap sleeves and a bust line that covered everything. While tight in the waist, it immediately flared out to epic proportions, a ‘princess’ dress in every sense of the word. The dress was white and lacy, and it weighed so much I didn't know how I was going to dance in it, let alone walk down the aisle.
"You look beautiful," Keisha said.
She meant it too, and she was right. I did look beautiful. For the first time in my life, I actually resembled some of those girls in the magazines, mostly because you couldn't see my scarecrow body under all that poof. But I didn't look like me. And that was frightening.
With a nod from me, Keisha took the dress off my body and put it carefully back in the bag. Taking the dress off Vic was actually easier than putting it on had been. We had gravity on our side.
Vic’s dress had to stay because of its faulty hem line. Mine, on the other hand, was ready to go home with me. I stuffed it in the back seat of my car as Vic climbed in the front. Officer Kosher had dropped her off, and now she was bumming a ride off me. I suspected she wanted to grill me about Hope.
But when she opened her mouth, it wasn’t about her daughter. “Hey, didn’t you just pass your house?”
“Yep,” I said, popping the “p” and keeping my eyes firmly on the road.
“Are you kidnapping me right now?” She craned her head around, looking out the back window and then returning her head to the front. She knocked over an old soda cup, and the contents sloshed to the dirty floor.
“You’d tell me if you were kidnapping me, right?” she asked.
Vic slipped off her bra, using it to soak up the soda from the floorboard. It was large and heavy duty, the kind of thing that would survive the nuclear apocalypse along with the roaches. The soda was no match for it, and since the cups of the bra already had a myriad of unidentified stains, I figured Vic wouldn’t know the difference come tomorrow.
“Got somewhere I can hang this?” She shoved the bra in my face. It smelled vaguely of Cheetos, and my stomach growled.
Wrenching the wheel to the right, I pulled into the parking lot of an El Taco. We went through the drive through and ordered the diarrhea special, extra gas. Inhaling hers, Vic started in on my chips, which I hadn’t touched. They smelled like her bra.
