by Madelyn Alt
A light had gone off for Margo at Mel’s reminder. “Oh, I remember Marcus. I do indeed,” Margo said, gazing at Marcus and me with renewed interest.
I could see the brain waves blitzing madly behind her eyes. I braced myself, waiting for what I knew would be coming next.
Chapter 13
“So. You’re the wizard in town. Mel told us about what you did.”
Marcus laughed. The sound was gentle and relaxed, but his energy was on guard, his shields on intercept-and-deflect mode. “Someone has been reading the Harry Potter books, I take it?”
“Harry P—” Margo sucked in her breath. “I would never! ”
“Too bad,” he told her. “Fun, fascinating, and fabulous—that can be pretty hard to find in literature these days; I highly recommend them. But just so that you know, I don’t call myself a wizard.”
“No? Well, what do you call yourself, then?” she demanded, rather imperiously, I thought. “A warlock?”
With a smile smooth enough to charm a cobra-and maybe that was his point?-he raised a conciliatory dark brow in her direction. “How about . . . dangerous to know?”
“Oh . . . oh, my . . .”
His tactic worked. In an instant, Margo went from confrontational to profoundly, blissfully mum. I could have kissed him.
“I think I read in an article last Halloween that they’re just called male witches now, Margo,” Jane offered up helpfully, unaware of her friend’s discomfort.
Marcus nodded pleasantly. “That’s right. Since we’re discussing semantics, the word ‘warlock’ in the olden days referred to an oath breaker. And since I value my integrity and honor, that label isn’t one I choose to own.”
“Oh,” Jane said, a little confused. “Well, that makes perfect sense, then.”
“Here, Maggie-sweet. Let’s get you up out of that chair and try these crutches on for size, eh?” Marcus said. “Who’d like a turn with the baby?”
Mel reached out and pulled the two bassinets toward the edge of the bed. “Would you mind setting her in her crib?” she asked him. “I’m getting a little tired, I think.”
Marcus leaned over and wrapped his hands around the tiny, blanketed form nestled snugly in my arms, lifting her against him like an old pro. “Aw, come here, little one,” he crooned in a way that made my heart beat a little faster. His eyes, oh so blue, lifted to mine, and all of a sudden I was finding it difficult to swallow, or even breathe. Then he straightened, the baby cradled against him, and as I watched he jostled and rocked her gently.
I don’t know what it is about the sight of a tiny baby in a man’s big hands, but it was an image guaranteed to jar loose the mechanisms of even the most tightly wound biological clock. I could feel mine stuttering doggedly to life, and I had to take a deep breath and try to lock it down in the farthest dark closet in the corners of my mind.
Now. Was. So. Not. The. Time.
“Which one do I have?” he asked Melanie.
Mel the Madonna smiled beatifically up at him. “That would be Isabella. And this,” she said, gazing down at her daughter in a way that made me forgive her instantly for being a gossipy wench, “is Sophie.”
“Isabella, pretty Isabella,” he crooned over her. Checking the name card on the bassinet to be sure he got her in the right one, he set her gently down and stroked her pink cheek. “You are going to be a heartbreaker someday.”
Oy. So, so not the time.
Turning back to me, he said, “We can do this two ways, Angel.”
Marcus’s favorite movie was an oldie but a goodie called Romancing the Stone, and he liked to quote it whenever possible. He also liked to tell me that I resembled a young Kathleen Turner, and that was the first thing that had attracted his attention. I’d take that as a compliment any day—Kathleen Turner back in the day was H-O-T hot, and if Marcus wanted to see me through those particular rose-colored glasses, I was more than happy to let him.
“Quick like the tongue of a snake?” I quoted back, playing the game.
“Or slower’n the molasses in January.”
“Hm. I pick slow,” I told him. “At least it’s cold in January. This cast is starting to get itchy already.”
He laughed and extended a helping hand to get me to my feet. Balancing on one foot while he fiddled with the height of the hand rests on the crutches wasn’t as easy as it looked. By the time he was finished with one, I was ready to sit back down again.
“Oh no you don’t,” he said, catching my backward glance at the wheelchair. “Let’s get you some practice on your new set of stilts.”
I didn’t relish practicing within full view of either Margo or Jane, so as soon as I got the swing of things, I headed for the hall with Marcus in pursuit.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa there, Turbo,” he said. “Not so fast.”
I slowed down, then stopped altogether in the corridor. “Sorry about that. I just couldn’t do this in front of them.”
“They are a bit ... intense, aren’t they?”
“That’s a nice way of putting it. I can’t believe I just spent the last hour or so with them. That’s a full sixty minutes of my life that I can never have back.”
Marcus got back to business. “Let’s see you do this,” he said, indicating the crutches.
“Didn’t I just . . . do ... this?”
“Humor me.”
Putting on my this-is-silly-but-whatever-you-say face, I swing-hopped my way down the corridor, pirouetted on one foot and two stilts (elegant, let me tell you), then swing-hopped my way back and flashed him a saucy look. “How’s that?”
A slow, lopsided smile curved his mouth. “Did anyone ever tell you that you look really pretty when you’re trying to be cheeky?”
I wrinkled my nose at him, but I liked it, I liked it.
“See?”
“What do you think?” I asked, sticking out my cast, which went from my pink-painted toenails to just below the knee.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so cute. Except maybe your sister’s babies. Whose idea was the yellow?”
I grinned. “Mine. Why be dull?”
“Oh, Maggie-sweet, you are anything but dull,” he drawled in a low growl, his eyes flashing at me. And then he slipped in close a moment and, putting his arms around me, kissed my temple. “Did it hurt?”
I sighed, melting into him. “A little,” I admitted. “But nowhere near as bad as I would have expected a broken ankle to feel. It is starting to throb a little now, though.”
“We should get you off your feet.”
“Aw, so soon? I just got back on them.”
“No sense rushing things. The novelty will wear off the crutches pretty fast when they start rubbing your skin raw.”
A broken ankle, an ugly cast, chafing, and possibly having to move in with my mother for the duration? This was getting better and better.
That reminded me. “I am so screwed. My mom wants me to stay with them because she doesn’t think I can handle the stairs down to my apartment on stilts. I mean, crutches.”
“I hate to say it, but she has a good point. Those stairs are on the steep side. Have you ever used crutches before? Apart from just now?”
“Sure,” I said confidently, as if it was no big thing.
He looked at me askance. “When?”
And then I blushed. “Well, at church once. Someone had left theirs behind, and we kids took turns racing up and down the hall with them while we were supposed to be having catechism class but the teacher was running late.”
“How old were you?”
I blushed even harder. “Eleven.”
“Ah-ha.”
Hm. He had a point. “So you think I should do what my mom suggests and move in with my grandfather.”
“I didn’t say that.” He kissed my temple again. “I could take care of you.”
I blinked. I think time stopped for a moment. The words were so quiet, the gesture so unassuming, I thought for a moment I’d imagined it. Then: “But . . . we
ll . . . your house has quite a few stairs going up the front steps, too, Marcus . . .” It was the first thing that popped into my head.
He reached down and in an instant lifted me into his arms as he might a small child. Emitting a squeak of surprise, I dropped the crutches with a clatter and threw my arms around his neck.
“Any questions?” he asked.
No, I didn’t think any were necessary, really.
“But you have other things to do,” I said, trying to come up with a way that he could ease out of the offer gracefully if he needed to.
He shifted me in his arms with a bounce that made me gasp and hold on tighter. “It could be fun.”
Yeah, I could see that, too.
Oh, where was the voice of my conscience when I needed it most?
My mother would have a cow, I tried to reason.
He lived even farther away from Enchantments than my mom and dad did.
I would never hear the end of it with Mel.
Or Tara and Evie.
Um . . .
“So, what do you think?” he prompted.
I was saved from having to answer right away when the door to our left opened and I realized we had been standing outside of Frannie Watkins’s hospital room.
“Oh, hello,” Harry Watkins said with some surprise as he found us practically on his wife’s doorstep. He looked down and saw my crutches sprawled there at Marcus’s feet. “You didn’t fall, did you? Here, let me help you with that.”
I blushed again as Marcus set me down carefully and with his hands at my waist allowed me to find my balance on one foot as Harry retrieved my fallen crutches for me. I was doing a lot of blushing of late, it would seem. I peeked over at Marcus and felt my cheeks warm. Something told me it was going to become a habit if I moved in with Marcus for a few weeks.
My heart beat a little faster at the prospect.
“We’re just getting ready to take Little Harry home.” A beaming smile brightened Harry Watkins’s round face. He puffed out his chest with pride. I looked up into his pale blue eyes and knew that I would like him instantly. He was a big man, as big as his father, with the same bulwark chest and massive arms. Country stock, salt of the earth. Uncomplicated and straightforward. People like the Watkinses, like Grandpa G and my dad and my mother were once a staple of Stony Mill. Once we were a town of simple people, simple pleasures. Only recently had it struck me how much things had changed.
Frannie Watkins came to the door of her room, fully garbed in a maternity dress that now hung on her medium-sized but no longer pregnant frame, her sleek dark hair clipped back in a low pony. The poor thing, she did look tired. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, stark against her pale ivory skin. She held her son in her arms, cradled there in a light blanket, an outdoor sun hat covering his head down to his eyebrows. “Are we almost ready? I have the bag packed, and . . . Oh, hello there, Maggie. I see you’re up and about.” She smiled wanly.
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her. “You’re looking a little tired.”
“Oh, you know.” She waved a hand to dismiss concern. “A lot happens in the first twenty-four hours after giving birth. All I need is a good lie down in my own bed. I need to get home.”
“I brought the van around!” Harold Watkins Sr. had just come sailing around the corner, and hard on his heels, tootling along in her mom jeans, white tennis shoes, and slouch socks, was Joyce. “We’ll load ’em on up and get the three of you home. We’ll just follow along in my truck.”
Joyce sent a friendly smile my way. “Goodness, you had an accident since the other day. Poor thing.” She patted her son on the arm. “I’ll just go and get a nurse, dear.”
“Aw, thanks, Mom.”
She was back in a jiffy, nurse and wheelchair in tow, and by that time the men had already loaded themselves up with bags, books, gift bags, flowers, congratulatory balloon arrangements, diaper bag, and more. It boggled my mind, the amount of “stuff” that having a baby generated.
“We can take it from here,” Joyce told the nurse. “No sense in you having to go all the way down with us.”
“Well ...” the nurse hedged, “it is Hospital policy.”
“We won’t tell if you won’t. I’m sure you have plenty of other things you would rather be doing instead.
Setting the baby paraphernalia back down, Harry Jr. spread the seat out and readied the footpads. Braced as I was on my crutches, I looked longingly at the chair; I could use a good rest right about now. But instead I held onto Marcus’s arm and hop-skipped out of the way with one crutch as Frannie allowed herself to be catered to one last time before going home. She had to juggle a little bit with her purse as she settled her son into a safe position. At the last minute, with her attention elsewhere, the big bag toppled over the arm of the chair, spilling to the floor.
“Oh!” Immediately Frannie handed the baby over to her mother-in-law and was reaching down for her things.
“I’ll get it, Fran,” Harold Sr. said.
“No . . . No. I’ve got it.”
Harry knelt down, too, as she started scooping and scraping items together.
“So that’s where this went! I thought I was going to have to buy another one.” Harry held in his hands the magazine that Fran had retrieved from Mel’s room. Frannie opened her mouth and then snapped it closed again as he began to flip through it. “I don’t think I got to read even a single article while Frannie was in labor, and there were a few in here I had my eye on.”
Was I the only one who saw the tension on her face as she watched, riveted, as the pages fluttered by beneath his fingers? It eased when he folded the magazine in half lengthwise with a sigh and tucked it away in one of the bags.
The rest of the flotsam Frannie plunged back into her bag without thought or concern for the mess or organization. With everything under control, she zipped the top closed and stuffed it securely under her arm, then sat back with a sigh of relief and waited, her hands on the arm rests of the wheelchair.
“Here, I’ll just hold the baby, hm?” Maybe I wasn’t the only one who noticed Frannie’s edginess, I decided as Joyce angled a concerned glance toward her daughter-in-law. But her gaze softened as she looked down into the face of her new grandson. “Look at this little hat,” she cooed. “Isn’t that the most adorable thing.”
The words “adorable,” “precious,” and “cute” come up an awful lot in the company of new moms and grandmas. And even aunties; I had to admit, I’d dropped a few of them myself in the last twenty-four hours.
Joyce leaned down to him, peeling back his hat to kiss his brow. But she came back up with a gasp. “Oh my word!”
Harold’s head came up at the alarm in her tone. “What is it, Joyce?”
“Mom?”
She pulled the hat the rest of the way off, staring, then looked up, eyes stricken. “Harry! Wh—what happened to his curls?”
All of our gazes were drawn like a magnet to the baby’s head, where dark hair had been clipped none-too-neatly close to the skull, the remnants making choppy crisscross patterns over the baby’s scalp.
Confusion flickered through Harry Jr.’s pale eyes as he turned to his wife. “Frannie?”
Frannie frowned, annoyance flashing in her eyes. “He had a bad case of cradle cap. The nurses suggested it would be best. Easiest. We used blunted cuticle scissors. It was perfectly safe.”
“But . . . his curls,” Joyce said mournfully. She looked ready to cry. Harold came up and tried to comfort her as best he could with his hands full, but there was no consoling her. “His beautiful curls.”
“They’ll grow back, Mom,” Harry Jr. tried to reassure her.
She nodded, sniffling.
No one consoled Frannie for having to carry out the task in the first place.
Hospital policy dictated that the baby be held in his mother’s arms in the wheelchair going out. Reluctantly Joyce relinquished the baby over to Frannie. She accepted him woodenly. It was almost as though the burst of energy she�
��d expended to reclaim her things had completely done her in. She appeared . . . spent. Though Harry Jr. looked as though he might like to have carried his infant son himself, manly duty won out. He loaded himself back up with bags and baby belongings. Joyce took the helm of the wheelchair.
“Well, folks,” Harold Sr. said to us, “looks like we’re ready to head on out. You two take care. Especially you, young lady,” he said to me with a friendly, paternal twinkle. “That looks like it might hurt.”
The four of them shuffled off slowly, and then veered off down the main corridor. I turned back to Marcus.
“Ready for some more practicing?” he asked me.
“Well, if it’s a choice between that or returning to face the firing squad in Mel’s room, then I guess I can.” I tossed a saucy look up at him. “Although, I must confess. I’d rather practice kissing, with you.”
He laughed. “I don’t think you need any practice at that.” But then he backed up along the hall and crooked his finger for me to come hither. “Come on, then, Hopalong. I’ll wait right here for you.”
Incentive. A very important part of the art of negotiation.
“Although I have to admit,” I continued, “I am kind of hungry, too. I just realized, I haven’t eaten much today.”
“Want to go?”
I nodded. “And how. Just let me say ‘see you later’ to Mel for now.”
Margo and Jane were still there, so I made my farewells short, sweet, and to the point of being insipid. Did I mention they were brief?
As I turned to leave the Terrible Trio behind, I saw that Marcus had paused at the end of the second, vacant bed to bend at the waist. A flash of pale blue caught my eye as he straightened with something in his hand.
“Uh-oh.”
“What is it?” I asked, clumping along toward him.
I glanced down over his arm. It was the bassinet card for the Watkins baby. “That must have been what I saw fall to the floor,” I exclaimed as realization struck. “When Frannie was in looking for a magazine. At the time I thought it was probably just one of those annoying inserts and didn’t think too much about it, but . . . I guess maybe I should have. Do you think you can catch them?”
