“He doesn’t have time to help me,” Mellie said. “He’s dealing with his daughters.”
“His daughters?”
Mellie nodded. “He has full custody now, and he just brought them to the Greater World.”
“Well, that’s no surprise,” Selda said, folding her hands across her ample belly.
“That he brought them here?” Mellie asked.
“That he got full custody. Ella was never suited to parenthood.”
Mellie raised her eyebrows. “You seem to know a lot about this family.”
“I remember the marriage,” Selda said. “It was clear it would never work.”
Mellie leaned forward. “How do you know that?”
“Anyone with a brain could’ve figured that out,” Selda said. “They got married for all the wrong reasons. He married her because his father decreed that he had to marry right away, and she married him because he was a prince.”
“Other relationships have had less to build on,” Mellie said.
“I suppose,” Selda said. “But Ella was a rebellion for Charming. His father wanted some kind of politically advantageous marriage, and Charming wanted something romantic. So he picked the prettiest, most downtrodden girl he could find and elevated her to a princess. How much more romantic can you get?”
Mellie shrugged a shoulder. Put that way, it did sound romantic.
“But marriage isn’t about pretty or rebellion or rising up. It’s about love and companionship and children and better and worse, and neither Charming nor Ella were ready for that.”
“How do you know this?” Mellie asked again.
“I keep my ear to the ground,” Selda said.
Mellie leaned back and sighed. She liked Charming, but that wasn’t any reason to involve him in her life or her problems.
“He’s too busy to help me,” she said.
“Why don’t you let him make that choice?” Selda asked. “He’s already helped you a lot. Give him another chance.”
“But his daughters…”
“He can’t parent all the time, Mel,” Selda said. “You know that.”
She did know that.
“You’re just afraid he’s going to say no,” Selda said.
Mellie looked at her oldest and dearest friend. Selda had a point—which was annoying. Sometimes it wasn’t nice to have someone know you that well.
Selda’s grin widened when she realized she’d hit her mark.
“But,” she said, “have you ever thought about how you’d feel if he said yes?”
Mellie’s heart skipped. “He won’t.”
“What if he does?”
Mellie flushed. “He’ll learn how difficult I am.”
“He lived with Ella. I have a hunch he won’t find you difficult at all.”
“Why are you pushing this?” Mellie said.
“Because,” Selda said, “I’ve never seen you so interested in a man before.”
“I’m not interested,” Mellie lied.
“And,” Selda added, “you said it yourself. This book idea is a good one. Much better than all that stupid protesting. This thing might actually work.”
“Which thing?” Mellie asked. “The writing, the book, or the friendship with Charming?”
“Which one do you want to work?” Selda asked.
Mellie didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. They both knew that she wanted all three.
Chapter 16
Charming was shaking as he drove his Mercedes. Honesty and charm didn’t go well together. He wasn’t used to saying what he thought. Blurting what he thought.
No wonder people got embarrassed so easily. When you blurted, you said things you could regret.
My wife abandoned my daughters.
It was true—more or less (he wasn’t sure why he had thought of Ella as his wife at that moment, although she was the only wife he’d ever had)—but it wasn’t diplomatic. Or charming. Or really, any of Mellie’s business.
But who else could he tell?
No one here in the Greater World would understand exactly what he was saying. Not only did people marry for life in the Kingdoms (although that had been changing for a while now [even if some people (like his father) disapproved]), they never, ever, ever gave up life at the palace. Especially when they had wanted it as much as Ella had.
But times were changing. Divorce had become more prevalent, the respect for the monarchy was declining, and celebrity was on the rise. The fairy tales had made for a lot of changes, in the Kingdoms as well as outside them.
Some people felt that if they didn’t have a fairy tale written about them, they didn’t really and truly exist.
He drove to the new house. He couldn’t call it home yet, even though he liked the place. It was a faux Tudor, built to earthquake standards, with a lovely, curving brick walkway that went to an arched front door. The mullioned windows gave the place an authentic feel, and the outside looked like something that belonged in one of the forests in the Kingdoms.
He had thought the girls would feel at home here, but they hardly noticed the place. Although they did notice the garden in the back, filled with flowers they had never seen before. The winters in the Kingdoms were cold, so the plants there were hardy. Even in the summer, only the hardiest survived.
Here, anything that could handle the summer heat thrived. Desert plants and tropical plants—big leaves, bright colors. Things he didn’t know the names of. Whoever had owned the house before him had clearly loved plants and the outdoors and had made this one spectacular.
So spectacular he hadn’t been able to answer most of the girls’ questions about the plants. He didn’t know what they were or how long they bloomed. He didn’t even know if they were annual or perennial.
And he was a bookish guy. He should know anything.
Just like he should know whether Mellie, famous for being Snow White’s (murderous) stepmother, had actually raised children on her own.
He wasn’t even sure how to research that, although he knew he should. Fairy tales—hell, life—was full of mistakes people made when they trusted the wrong person.
Although she felt very trustworthy.
And very beautiful.
And if he hadn’t controlled himself, he would have been all over her in that coffee shop. He never acted like that, not once in his whole life.
What was wrong with him? Was he that lonely?
Or was he that attracted to her?
He parked on the driveway, knowing he only had a few hours before he had to pick the girls up. Then he went inside the house.
It was quiet. It didn’t smell like home yet. It smelled of cleaning chemicals, as if no one had lived here in a long time. He wasn’t sure what he could do to make this house feel like a home.
He set the folder down on a nearby occasional table, glad he remembered to bring Mellie’s writing home. He didn’t want her to see the red marks he had made all over the interior pages. No sense in hurting her feelings worse than he already had.
Somehow he had thought that writing books would be easy. Or at least, writing would be easy for anyone with magic in their background. He had no trouble writing. He’d even sold some things—a few essays, and a handful of short stories.
But he didn’t blame that on talent. He figured his charm had extended to the page.
Besides, he thought, it didn’t take much to sell. After all, those Grimm brothers had taken stories from people’s real lives and made a series of “tales” that got retold for generations. He’d read the original tales and they weren’t very well written.
But they were compelling.
Maybe compelling was hard.
He went down the hallway to the back of the house to his favorite room. The house had a library, which he was also using as a study.
The library overlooked the garden. If he had to be honest, he would have said that this was the room that convinced him to buy the house. Floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves, an extra-high ceiling, and a librar
ian’s moving ladder so he could put things on the top of ten-foot-high shelves.
The garden wall was covered with windows. They came outfitted with blackout curtains to keep the light out or sheers which theoretically kept out the worst of the light. And whoever had built the house had tinted the glass so that the UV didn’t pour in either.
He didn’t really care, although he probably should have. He just loved the light and the view—so fresh and bright and not Kingdomy. He was surrounded by books, but overlooking the garden. The world couldn’t get more perfect than that.
Except…
He needed his daughters to be happy.
He sank into the chair behind his desk. He had a laptop folded behind the desk and a very elaborate desktop computer pushed to one side. He didn’t use either at the moment.
Instead, he picked up his Kingdom phone.
He set the Kingdom phone in the center of his desk, tapped the phone’s surface, and murmured the name of Ella’s stepmother, Lavinia.
The phone didn’t ring. Instead it just connected. An image of Lavinia appeared on the phone’s screen.
Lavinia looked nothing like the stepmother in Disney’s Cinderella. She was slight and blond. He had heard rumors that she was of mixed race—her mother had been a fairy of the Tinker/Tanker Belle variety, and her father had been a smaller than average human being. But Charming couldn’t (or wouldn’t) imagine that.
Still, Lavinia had an ethereal beauty. Instead of being the wizened creature of the fairy tales, she was one of the greatest beauties in the Kingdom—certainly more beautiful than Ella had ever been.
“Charming,” Lavinia said, her voice rich and musical, even through the phone’s magic. “I trust all is well.”
“We’re adjusting.” He didn’t want to lie to her, but he also didn’t want to tell her how difficult things had become.
“There’s a story in those two words,” Lavinia said.
“No,” he said with a sigh, “just everyday life.”
“Then to what do I owe this call?” Lavinia asked.
“Did I tell you that I met Snow White’s stepmother, Mellie, a month or so ago?” he asked.
“Mellie,” Lavinia said. “Now that woman has gotten a raw deal.”
He smiled ever so softly. This was why he called Lavinia. The one thing that some of the films about her had depicted correctly was her love of gossip.
“Didn’t all of you stepmothers get a raw deal?” he asked, knowing that was a better response than a direct question about Mellie herself.
“In the fairy tales, yes we did,” Lavinia said. “Not in life, necessarily.”
He forgot: she had always been kind about her fortunes. She had loved Ella’s father, and figured that the year or so she spent with him was the best year of her life.
“But Mellie, she was the target of some particularly malicious lies,” Lavinia said.
“The poisoning,” he said.
“Yes, that,” Lavinia said. “To be fair, she brought some of it on herself.”
That took him aback. He had thought she was completely innocent. “How so?” he asked.
“She was so insecure,” Lavinia said. “You know what insecure people are like. They always care about what other people think.”
Of course, Lavinia hadn’t cared enough about what other people thought. If she had actually put herself in other people’s shoes, she might have avoided some of the mistakes she made with Ella.
“And,” Lavinia was saying, “when you’re that kind of insecure, people take advantage of you.”
“I’m confused,” Charming said. “What does that have to do with the poisoning?”
“She was trying so hard to be everything to everyone, she wasn’t succeeding at anything,” Lavinia said. “She made herself beautiful for her husband, and tried to be the perfect mother to Snow, who was nearly a grown woman at the time, and she was trying to be the perfect royal in her little section of the Kingdoms, when she hadn’t had a clue how to do it. She insulted so many people, and they wanted to see her lose her position.”
He remained silent. Lavinia had been accused of some of the same things, but she hadn’t married royalty, and she had a small circle of friends who protected her. It sounded like Mellie did not.
“Snow wasn’t very popular either,” Lavinia said. “In fact, that girl was a terror. She ran away from home—you know that, right? She ran away after her father died, saying she wasn’t going to live with that thing he had married. She expected Mellie to come after her, but Mellie didn’t. She figured Snow was a grown woman who could make her own choices. And that was her greatest mistake.”
“Snow wasn’t grown?”
“Oh, in years perhaps,” Lavinia said. “But not emotionally. She was very pampered, very catered to, and quite selfish. She learned how to be a better person.”
“With the Dwarfs,” he said.
“Before that,” Lavinia said. “She got lost in the woods and almost starved. The Dwarfs saved her life, but at a cost. She had to pay them back, and since she wouldn’t go to Mellie for money, Snow had to work off her debt.”
“All that ‘Whistle While You Work’ crap?” he asked. “That’s true?”
“Except that it wasn’t Snow’s idea,” Lavinia said, “and she didn’t participate happily. But she learned how to scrub floors and cook meals. She grew up.”
Fairy tales never dealt in nuance. Charming leaned back in his chair.
“Okay,” he said, not needing the rest of that story. “So what about the poison?”
“Well, that’s where it gets interesting,” Lavinia said.
He waited. Lavinia always loved to make dramatic pauses.
“You have to remember that we got the story from Snow after she recovered,” Lavinia said.
He hadn’t known that. “So she could have said anything she wanted.”
“Well, there really was no proof of anything,” Lavinia said, “except that she bought a poisoned comb from a peddler woman. Snow lost all of her hair and was furious, but she couldn’t do anything. The poison certainly wouldn’t have killed her.”
“Everyone thought that peddler woman was Mellie?” Charming asked.
“Using magic to disguise herself as an old crone,” Lavinia said. “But what no one remembers is that there was a rash of comb-attacks around that period.”
“There was?” Charming hadn’t heard anything about it.
“If you were vain enough to buy one of these elaborate combs, you lost hair. It was one of two things,” Lavinia said. “It was either someone after all the women with lovely hair or it was an inept peddler trying to make a good product and screwing it all up. I vote for the latter, by the way.”
“Wow,” Charming said. He had had no idea. “So the peddler woman didn’t come back and give Snow an apple.”
“Have you met Snow White?” Lavinia asked, and then continued, not waiting for his answer. “Does she seem stupid enough to buy poison from the same old peddler woman twice?”
He’d often wondered about that part of the story. “Not really,” he said, mostly because Lavinia expected a response from him.
“Precisely,” Lavinia said. “Personally, I think what happened was a bit darker.”
“Darker how?” he asked.
She sighed. “This isn’t the stuff of children’s stories anymore.”
He waited through another dramatic pause.
“You’ve heard the rumors about Snow’s ex-husband, right?” Lavinia asked.
“One of the other Charmings,” Charming said.
“Who changed his name when he became king, but that’s another story,” Lavinia said. “Unlike you, he was always misnamed.”
“Thank you, I think,” Charming said.
She laughed. “Seriously, Charming. Your name suits you.”
“But didn’t suit him,” Charming said.
“Well maybe as a young man,” Lavinia said. “But he got progressively creepier as he got older. There was a reas
on he wanted that coffin, you know.”
“Snow White’s coffin,” Charming said, just to be clear.
“With Snow in it,” Lavinia said, in that tone she used when the gossip got particularly good.
“Okay,” Charming said. “Obviously, I haven’t heard the rumors. Why would he want a glass coffin with a beautiful but supposedly dead woman inside of it?”
Lavinia sighed. “Oh, Charming, you are so naïve.”
“All right, I’m naïve,” he said. “Spell it out for me.”
“He’s not fond of living women,” Lavinia said.
Charming waited for the dramatic pause to end. But she didn’t say anything else. So he thought about it, then shuddered. She couldn’t mean…?
“Necrophilia?” he said.
“In the worst possible way,” Lavinia said. “Rumor has it when he was furious when his aides dropped the coffin and the poison apple dislodged from her throat.”
“I thought she hadn’t had any poison,” Charming said.
“That’s the other version of the story,” Lavinia said. “The substantially ickier version. He pried open the coffin, found out she wasn’t really dead, and she blackmailed him into marriage. They made up the story together.”
“That would mean she had to plan the whole thing,” Charming said.
“Yes,” Lavinia said. “And you can’t tell me that you haven’t met some crazy girls who would do anything to marry you.”
He closed his eyes. “Oh, I didn’t need that image.”
“You asked,” Lavinia said.
He wasn’t sure he had asked for that much information. “So you think Mellie never tried to harm Snow.”
“Honestly, I think Mellie did everything she could to help Snow. I’ve always wondered why Mellie doesn’t have magic anymore,” Lavinia said.
Charming frowned. “What do you think she did?”
“I don’t know,” Lavinia said. “But her magic disappeared right around the time Snow married her handsome prince. You can’t seriously think if Mellie had magic, she would have let the rumors about her continue to thrive.”
He hadn’t thought of that. “But you don’t know what happened to her magic.”
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