Tab Bennett and the Inbetween

by Jes Young

  “You’ve already given up on me.” The realization hit me hard.

  He shrugged. “Because I know what will happen if I don’t.”

  I spun on my heel, ready to run back to the house but Robbin caught my hand and pulled me back with a tug; my body slammed against his as his mouth came down on mine. It was an angry kiss – full of sadness and tainted with goodbye. I loved him so much; he was so familiar, so dear. I sighed for all the time we’d wasted.

  He pulled away from me he nodded towards the cottage. “I’ll wait here until you get inside. Lock the door. Both locks.”

  Without another word I turned and ran up the walk. I heard the engine of his truck roar to life just as soon as the second lock clicked shut.

  Chapter Six

  “I want the enchantments broken, and I want them broken now.” Mrs. Cleveland, Pop’s secretary, trailed behind me like a comet’s tail as I marched into Pop’s office. Barging in and shouting were not part of my normal routine and she was clearly aghast at my bad manners. If it had been anyone else, under any other circumstances, she would already have called security.

  “I’m so sorry Mr. Bennett.” She threw me an accusatory glare. “I told Tabitha that you were busy this morning.”

  I’d never seen Pop look so worn. The effects of many sleepless nights were starting to show on him. I noticed that his red and blue tie was just the tiniest bit crooked – roughly equivalent to a regular person forgetting to put on pants – and considering backing down.

  “It’s all right, Agnes,” he said. “I’ll deal with her now. Please call my grandsons and let them know she’s here.”

  “Of course, Mr. Bennett. Just buzz if you need me.” She gave me a warning look and then left, closing the door behind her.

  The office on the second floor of the bank was roomy but not overly fancy with a big wooden desk and a leather chair. There was a globe in a stand by the door and bookcases along one wall. A big window looked out over Main Street, framing Pop with a backdrop of the town he loved. When the sun streamed in behind him the effect was especially impressive; he glowed like a saint in the afternoon light.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Everyone in Bennett Falls heard you, Tabitha.” Pop rubbed his temples and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and pointer finger – his way of letting me know I was giving him a headache.

  “Spells are broken,” he said wearily. “Enchantments are laid and then, like a blanket, they are lifted. In any case we hardly make a habit of shouting about either in front of the staff.”

  I didn’t think it was the time for a lesson in vocabulary or manners. Emily Post herself could have appeared to present me with a copy of the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary and I wouldn’t have cared even one bit. “I’m really not interested in the specifics. Just get it off of me; I don’t care how you do it. Do it now.”

  I had spent the whole night before seething, wanting Alex with every part of my body and Robbin with my whole heart. I was torn between them in a way that seemed unfair to the point of viciousness. And as far as I was concerned, Pop was to blame for all of it. I didn’t have it in me to ask him nicely to fix my life when he was the one who’d messed it up.

  He sighed. “It will take time—if it can be done at all. There is powerful magic binding you together, powerful magic that you don’t understand and I don’t control. The enchantment won’t easily loosen its grasp. Not so you can throw your destiny away on someone so far below you.”

  “Don’t make this into one of your ‘Robbin isn’t good enough for you’ speeches. He’s plenty good enough. You don’t even know him.”

  A flash of something really dark crossed Pop’s face. “You are the one who doesn’t know him, Tabitha. I know things about Robbin Turnbough that would turn your hair from pitch black to snow white like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “Well, I have a great idea, Pop; why don’t you keep whatever you know about him a secret from me for like twenty years and then drop the truth on me someday when I don’t expect it?” He tried to interrupt but I plowed on over him.

  “Yesterday morning I was a regular girl with a fiancé and a job at a bank and this morning I’m an elf princess with two fiancés and no control over her own life. Do you have any idea what happened at my house last night? What could have happened and very nearly did on at least two separate occasions? You don’t want to know what almost happened.”

  Even I wasn’t sure what I meant by that, specifically. Quite a few things had almost happened that would have made my Pop pretty angry. My mind shot back to Alex, his mouth and hands roaming across my body. And then I thought of Robbin holding me so close to him, whispering that he loved me still. It was terrible to want them both that way.

  “I can’t live like this. I won’t. You need to fix this right now. Right now before something is done that can’t be undone.”

  Pop nodded his head, pretending to understand. “The enchantments have been in place for a long time and they won’t be easy to lift. I will do what I can but you will have to have patience, Princess.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I said.

  Pop and the boys had been calling me Princess as long as I could remember. I thought it was because I was the youngest, a special little pet name for their favorite. It didn’t feel special anymore; it felt perfunctory.

  “As you wish.”

  “Don’t patronize me either. And don’t lie to me anymore.”

  Pop just nodded.

  “I need to know more. I don’t know enough to know what I don’t know, but there’s a lot I don’t know. I know that for sure.”

  Pop smiled tentatively. “You don’t know how much you don’t know.”

  “I’m furious at you, Pop. Really.” But all the anger had gone from me and I deflated. Suddenly the only thing I felt was tired.

  “This is difficult for you, I know. It’s been difficult for all of us.”

  I swallowed back some tears and nodded. “It’s like a fairy tale, isn’t it? Except for the parts that are a complete nightmare.”

  “Perhaps I should have told you sooner,” he said through a sigh. “I can only hope that someday you will understand why I have made the choices I have made.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “It’s just…right now it’s a little hard to find out that everything I thought about myself and my family isn’t true. My whole life is a lie. Even Robbin. I’ve been in love with him for almost half my life and all that time he was just following orders.”

  “Turnbough never followed orders,” Pop said.

  “I don’t know who I am now. I don’t know who any of you are.” I didn’t realize I felt so lost until I said it out loud. Strangers surrounded me. I was a stranger myself.

  “You must believe me when I say that everything I’ve done, every decision I’ve made since we left the Inbetween all those years ago, I have made with your best interest at heart.”

  I believed him. As angry as I was with him, I couldn’t believe that Pop would do anything to hurt me—not on purpose. Whatever else he was, Bennett, this man I knew as Pop, was the only parent I’d ever known. He had raised me and loved me and cared for me, whatever the motivation. I owed him something for that; he was entitled to my love and respect—even if he was a huge liar. And he had given up a lot for me, to protect me. That counted for something too. I blinked and looked up at the ceiling and the tears stayed put in my eyes.

  “There’s one more thing. It’s about Robbin…”

  “May I say something before you launch into a long list of his virtues?” Pop waited for my permission and then continued when I gave a cautious nod. “I realize that Turnbough is your first love, and I am not so old that I’ve completely forgotten what a powerful and dangerous thing that can be. I know that circumstances well beyond your control have lead to this attachment between you two, and although I did my best to discourage it, I take full responsibility for allowing it g
et to this point. I could have sent Turnbough away from Witchwood Manor at any time and many times I almost did. I let him stay because I foolishly believed him to be the lesser of the many evils that might befall you here in the World.” I could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “There’s no use lamenting the past. I ask only that you remember that Alexander Hilldale is a good man with just as much potential to be kind and loyal and loving as Turnbough. He is your home now. He is what your mother and your people want for you—what I want for you. Please give him a chance.”

  He made it sound so easy. Just forget the past. Just give up Robbin. Just love Alex.

  “Lift the enchantment. I can’t do anything until I know it’s actually me doing it.”

  ********

  There was nothing reverential, or even brotherly, about the look on Matthew’s face as he leaned against a marble pillar in the bank’s lobby. He checked his watch and rolled his eyes as I approached. Francis must have forced him to come for me. It was pretty clear he hadn’t volunteered.

  “What part of ‘They want you dead’ do you not get?” He turned on his heel and started walking. “Let’s go. Someone will come back for your car later.”

  I scanned the parked cars outside the bank hoping to spot his familiar gray Audi among the sedans and minivans but it was nowhere to be seen. He looked back to make sure I was following and then turned left onto Clover Street. I had to hurry to keep up.

  “Doesn’t protecting me require us to be on the same block?” He turned and shot me an unfriendly look.

  “I’m going to tell Francis you were dawdling.”

  “What are you, twelve?” I asked.

  He slowed down. Walking beside him while he pretended I wasn’t there, I realized I missed him almost as much as I missed Rivers. Worse in a way, since he was right in front of me everyday, reminding me of what I had lost.

  “Buckle up,” he snapped when I slipped into his car.

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve been in a car before.”

  We drove home in that heavy kind of silence that comes when there are lots of things that need to be said, but no one willing to say them. He kept turning the radio louder and louder, trying to drown me out even though I wasn’t talking. At a certain point it became clear to me that it had to happen, this confrontation between Matt and me, unless I was willing to risk permanent damage to my eardrums.

  I reached over and turned the radio off. “What’s your problem?” My voice was loud and harsh; the build up to speaking that took place in my head had me all fired up before the fight even got started.

  “I don’t have a problem.” His response was emotionless, which made me even angrier. At least have the common courtesy to sneer.

  “Then why are you acting like such a tremendous douche bag?”

  “Don’t start this,” he said, shaking his head.

  “You started this and now I’m sick of it. Either get the hell over it or tell me what I did to make you hate me.”

  I saw some expression I couldn’t place pass across his face. Then he smiled at me, a harsh look that had no connection with his usual warm grin. “Do you demand to know, as my Princess?”

  “Sure, whatever—as the Princess.”

  He started to say something three different times and every time he got out a word or two and then stopped. He was debating with himself, shaking his head and huffing and sighing the rest of the way home.

  “Just get out of the car,” he said as he squealed to a halt in front of the cottage.

  Francis was pacing back and forth on the porch, looking at his watch and gesturing for me to hurry up. Maybe I should have, but I couldn’t bring myself to grab the handle. Having started the conversation, I couldn’t bear to walk away in the middle with everything still unsaid and seething and bubbling at the surface. We were in it; and like the old saying goes, the best way out is always through.

  “I’m not getting out until you tell me why you’re being such a jerk.”

  His hands gripped the wheel so hard his knuckles were white from the pressure. Maybe he was considering backing down and apologizing or maybe he was considering opening the door himself and pushing me out onto the black top.

  “Just say it, Matthew. Just say it and let’s be done with this already.” I took a deep breath and made myself say the last thing I wanted to say. “I miss her too.”

  Without turning off the car, without looking at me even he said, “She would be alive right now if it weren’t for you. They all died instead of you, protecting you. We’ve done everything we can to keep you alive but you’re determined to die and, it seems, to take as many of us with you as possible. You wanted to know why I’m angry with you. Well that’s why. Now please get out of my car.”

  I couldn’t respond. I had nothing even half as cruel to say to him.

  He leaned across the front seat and opened my door. “Francis is waiting.”

  I could hardly breathe as I climbed out of the car; his words had knocked all the air out of my lungs. I stood in the driveway gasping while Matt pulled away, until Francis came down off the porch to get me.

  “What’s his problem?” Francis asked as I watched Matt’s car disappear through the gates of Witchwood Manor. I pushed passed him without a backward glance and ran into the cottage, locking the door behind me.

  I cried. I mean, what else could I do? I cried for my sisters, who weren’t my sisters, lost to an enemy I didn’t even know. I cried for the mother I never thought to miss. I cried because Robbin and I would never have the life we’d planned – and because he knew it would never be even while we were planning it. I cried and cried and cried. Then finally, there was nothing left inside me and the tears stopped.

  Francis who had apparently been on the porch the entire time knocked and quietly called my name. “Let me in,” he said. “Pop doesn’t want you to be alone.”

  “Please go away.”

  “Come on,” he whined. “Don’t make me sleep out here. It’s freezing.”

  I don’t know, I think I was entitled to a small nervous breakdown in light of everything that had happened in the previous thirty-six hours. Was it going to make Francis’ life harder that I wanted to have it without anyone hovering around, suggesting I cheer up, or telling me that I wasn’t to blame? Sure it was. I knew that and I didn’t care.

  “I’m sorry, Francis. I can’t.”

  ******

  An hour later the phone rang and I answered it out of habit, without even thinking.

  “Look out your back door,” a familiar voice said.

  “Alex? Is that you?”

  I peeked out the kitchen window. There he was, leaning against the porch railing looking relaxed and perfect in a pair of jeans and a close-fitting green sweater that turned his eyes the same color as the Caribbean. His smile was radiant, stunning. The enchantment buzzed up all around me, telling me to let him in – demanding it. I reached for the doorknob and then forced myself to put my hand down.

  He waved. “Can’t I come in?”

  “Did Pop send you?”

  He shook his head. “You know under normal circumstances he could just Appear in there whether you wanted him or not.” I hadn’t thought of that. “You’re very lucky there’s an enchantment on the cottage that makes any magic within its walls impossible. They’re all up at the Manor searching for the key.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just to help you,” he said as he walked up to the window and pressed his hand against the pane. I forced myself to let the curtain drop before I jumped through the glass to get to him. When I didn’t answer he said, “I am worried about you.”

  I was kind of worried about myself to be honest. “Can I tell you something?”

  “You can tell me anything.”

  “I’ve never felt like an orphan until now. I grew up with my sisters and cousins, taken care of by Pop, loved by Robbin. I didn’t have parents but I had family, people who loved me, and I always thought that was just as good. But I don�
�t have that – not really. What I have is a really dedicated staff. It’s just…a lot to take in. Let me wallow for a day or two. Okay? I’ll be fine after that, I promise.”

  “You deserve at least that much. That’s why I stole Bennett’s key for you.” I pulled the curtain aside again and he held the key up to the window and then slipped it into the front pocket of his jeans. “If you open the door for me I’ll give it to you.”

  I knew what would happen if he came inside, we both did. I could see the promise of it in the curve of his smile. He would make me feel better – lots better – at least for a little while. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”