by Laura Kenyon
“To it, dear,” Hunter said, plucking a leaf from Dawn’s sleeve and patting it clean with his napkin. “They put their minds to it. But yes, it’s very nice.”
Rapunzel held in a cringe and nodded. She certainly wasn’t innocent when it came to correcting Dawn’s … dustiness. But did he really have to do it in front of them?
“I had no idea the Braddax Hills were so lovely. I may have to come up this way more often,” Dawn said, prompting a snort from her husband.
“It’s not bad enough I sleep alone every night while she goes traipsing after God knows what in the woods.” He shook his head. “Now she’s going to run away while the sun’s up too?”
Dawn remained stoic. “It was not my choice to sleep for ten lifetimes, Hunter. But I’m sure if it happened to you, you wouldn’t be able to nod off either.”
“That makes perfect sense,” Rapunzel said, though she also wondered what her friend did in the woods for all that time. Dawn was the type of person who really enjoyed being alone—at least, Rapunzel had always assumed she was alone.
“I would definitely tear down those trees over there and add a second guesthouse,” Hunter was saying, motioning toward a grove of lilacs Belle loved gazing at while she cooked. He tossed his fingers through his airy blond mane. “Three floors. Five rooms a floor. Cha-ching.”
Why the heck wasn’t he playing horseshoes like all the other husbands?
“Well, you are the real estate expert,” Rapunzel said in an unusually peppy tone. “But for now we’re going for small and manageable. We’re comfortably booked through the fall, and … Oh! See those men over there? The ones in the crested blazers?” She pointed around the side of the cottage, at a group of cross-country skiers planning to reserve a few rooms in the winter. “Real deep pockets, those guys. You wouldn’t believe how much they invested! I don’t know if we’d ever have gotten off the ground without their big fat checkbooks. I think they come from oil money.”
Belle flashed a confused glance her way. Then she looked at Hunter and lifted her chin in comprehension.
“Umm, you know,” Hunter stuttered, devouring both the bait and the rest of his half-full scotch. “I think I could use another drink. The bar’s over that way, right? Anyone need anything? Okay great. Be back in a few!”
No one said a word until he was safely out of earshot. Then Dawn smothered Rapunzel with gratitude.
“Thank you. Thank you,” she gushed. “Just a few more hours before he’s asleep and I can breathe again.”
Rapunzel nodded and fished a strand of Dawn’s bright red hair out of her glass. “Glad I could help.”
At Snow’s suggestion, the group moved their conversation to the gazebo overlooking the West River and Rapunzel let the excitement of the day flow in. It was so great to be part of something that was going to create lasting memories for people—as opposed to seven-figure deals at hedonistic A-list parties.
“It’s so good to have all of us together again,” Snow said once everyone claimed a cushion. “How are you? Cindy? When do you leave for Ellada? Dawn? Pen? How’s the baby doing, Belle? You’re hardly showing at all! And this place looks great. Are you excited?” Five faces zipped back and forth on overload. Sure, Snow had been pretty antisocial lately, but was she trying to make up for all that time in one breath?
Belle rubbed her stomach. “I’m at fifteen weeks and Dr. Frolick says everything’s progressing great. Do you like my little bump?”
“When do we find out if it’s a boy or a girl?” asked Penny, fluffing her polka dot dress and beaming at the mother-to-be.
Belle shook her head. “We’ll be able to tell very soon, actually, but aren’t sure we want to.”
“We?” The one-word question came from three directions at once.
Belle—hardly recognizable as the frail, terrified wife who showed up on Rapunzel’s doorstep months ago—lifted her toned shoulders and nodded matter-of-factly. “Yes. We. I will not sacrifice my child’s happiness so I can play vengeful wife. Plus, she—or he—will be heir apparent unless Donner gets remarried and has another. Which, personally, I’m hoping for.”
Rapunzel stared at the tiny bump under her friend’s blouse. She’d watched it grow steadily over the last three weeks, but the thought that something was living in there still amazed—and nauseated—her.
“You’re handling everything wonderfully,” said Snow, rising from her seat. “You all always do.”
“Geez, are we getting gooey already?” Penny asked. “How much have you had to drink?”
Snow smoothed her pitch black hair and waited for the laughter to calm. “I know I’ve been a little reclusive for a while.” No one bothered to either contradict this statement or agree out loud. It was a given. “The thing is … Griffin and I were trying to conceive.” She held her hand up immediately, unwilling to hear the well-intentioned calls of excitement. “But the universe had other plans.”
Rapunzel felt a thousand tiny hairs yank at her arm as all the joy plummeted.
“I’ve had three miscarriages in the last fourteen months,” Snow’s face turned paler than ever as she struggled to remain standing. “This last time, I made it all the way to fifteen weeks. I was pregnant at Letitia’s party. I wanted to tell you so many times. But I … I just couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.”
Dawn stood up and coaxed Snow back into her seat. She obeyed, and then stared at her feet for several slow breaths. When she finally looked up, she wore a brave smile.
“Dr. Frolick said it’s almost impossible—probably lingering side-effects from my mother’s poisoned apple. So we’ve decided to adopt.”
As the only childless women of the group, Penny and Rapunzel jumped at this fantastic news. Everyone else sank.
“It’s okay. I’ve fully embraced it,” Snow assured them. “I figure there are so many kids already here who need love, why keep struggling to make my own? It was meant to be. Nature’s way of telling us to help keep the balance.” Everyone remained quiet as she took another breath. “I’ve put you all down as references with the adoption service, so if someone calls—”
“Don’t worry! We’ll get you that baby!” Penny shouted as Snow succumbed to a fantastic laugh and a flood of joyful tears.
“I was actually thinking three,” she said as the girls surrounded her, hugging her from all sides and listing all the horrible things about pregnancy that she wouldn’t have to deal with: bleeding gums, constipation, nausea.
Rapunzel edged away for some fresh air. She was thanking God and her pharmacist for keeping her body away from such horrors, when a little girl with strawberry blonde pigtails tapped her on the hip.
“Well hello,” Rapunzel said, leaning her hands on her knees. “I like your hair. Mine’s that color too sometimes.”
“Are you Renpuzzle?” the girl asked in a voice so cute it shouldn’t be legal.
“That’s me. Rapunzel. What can I do for you?”
The girl thought for a moment as she swayed back and forth in her floral sundress. “Umm … I’m supposed to give you this.” Quick as a whip, she yanked a sealed envelope from behind her back, lifted it up, and then scuffled back across the lawn.
Rapunzel turned the delivery over in her palms a few times, then glanced toward the gazebo. Her friends were still hugging each other and gabbing and rubbing Belle’s belly. They wouldn’t miss her. With amused curiosity, she wandered toward the trees on the far side of the property and ran a fingernail beneath the opening. Carefully, she pulled out two sheets of paper and unfolded them with a shrug. Then she held her breath.
My Dearest Rapunzel,
It is a rare thing for the universe to offer up second chances, and rarer still for most of us to grab hold before they pass. I’ve failed in that regard twice, but pray you’ll be kinder than life and grant me one last opportunity at true happiness.
For longer than I care to remember, I traveled the world searching for meaning in an unwanted life of privilege. Then, eight years ago, I di
scovered that meaning in a brave young woman imprisoned in a tower. She was beautiful, no doubt, but there was more to her than that. When I found her, despite having no freedom and no companion besides an old woman bitter at the world, she was singing. When I got up the courage to talk to her about life beyond her room, she cast off her timid exterior to reveal a boundless curiosity and spirit. Yet there I was, brooding like a prisoner despite having the world at my fingertips. What a coward I’d been. In one hour with her, I learned more about the meaning of life than in twenty years of lessons with the brightest scholars in the world. So I pledged to rescue her and—though I knew it was more than a bit rash—to take her as my wife if she would have me.
But when I returned, all that awaited me was her angry guardian and a long, long fall. I was sure I would die, and I might as well have. When I awoke, my beloved was gone along with my sight. I spent countless years helpless and alone, wondering what had become of my savior nightingale. Then, when I’d almost resigned to a life of darkness, that same bitter fairy found me and restored my sight. She’d been searching for years, she said, and wanted to do right by her daughter—by love if not by blood.
I recognized you immediately, Rapunzel, and was so proud of all you’d done. But for this very same reason, I feared to approach you. How could I know if my return would be a blessing or a curse? So much time had passed. Perhaps I’d spent it all romanticizing about what I meant to an angel, when I was really nothing more than her only choice for escape.
Now here is where I’m most ashamed. Foolishly, I let someone else find you on my behalf, to discover whether your heart still had room for me. I never meant this to cause you pain, and am eternally sorry that it did.
I know a letter wagging on about the past may not change a thing, but I’m foolish enough to hope. If you don’t wish the return of your failed excuse for a hero, I will understand. But if you have kept feelings for me over all these years, I will be waiting at the cliff, overlooking the bend in the river. Just follow the path.
No matter what you decide, you’ll always have my love.
Your “Prince”
When she raised her eyes from the letter, Rapunzel’s chest was heaving. Her fingers stuck like flypaper to the flesh atop her collarbone. Her prince was real—and true? Grethel had tried to kill him? But then—her heart lifted at the thought—she’d wanted to make amends? Years of guilt rose up through Rapunzel’s skin and fell away. Her prince had never abandoned her, and Grethel never did at heart either. But he’d sent someone else to find her? Who? Ethan? And was Grethel still alive? It was too much for her to process at once.
Frozen beneath the shadows of the trees, Rapunzel had absolutely no idea what to do. For years, she’d told herself that the man she’d met was a fraud. She lived by the distrust he bred in her—the belief that love was a lie, the guilt about betraying Grethel, the inability to rely on anyone but herself. She’d used his betrayal to forge a wall around her broken heart—a wall that no one so much as nicked for a decade. To find out now that this was all wrong … well … did it matter?
Yes, ten years ago she did believe what she felt for this man was love. She had wanted to marry him and have babies and do all those things Grethel’s stolen paperbacks said she should want to do. But that was before.
That was before she watched the weakest of her friends kick away the supports and pull herself up at any cost. That was before Ethan made her see that lust was just the tip of the iceberg—that there’s a whole world of painful and wonderful things that go into real love. That was before she realized, as she was realizing right now, that her heart wasn’t actually broken; it was no longer there for her to give.
Even as the sound of her name broke across the lawn from the gazebo, she knew what she had to do. She could not give her ill-fated hero what he wanted, but would not abandon him to wonder either. He deserved better than that. He deserved to know why, after all he’d gone through, her heart was no longer hers to give.
Blocking out Belle’s voice and taking a deep breath, Rapunzel disappeared into the woods. Taking care not to let her heels stick into the dirt, she tiptoed cautiously over the white confetti path of fallen blossoms. This was not going to be easy, and she was not eager to reach the end.
When the trees began to thin and she finally emerged into a clearing, she saw a man gazing out over the cliff. He was tall and broad-chested with ragged salt-and-pepper hair and a purple rose cupped safely in his hand. Rapunzel froze and stared, unsure whether to call out or float up or disappear back into the trees.
“Hi,” someone murmured in a voice that sounded remarkably like hers. What was she supposed to say: “Excuse me, would-be hero?” “Mr. Prince?” “Hey, guy my sort-of mother almost killed?”
The man must have heard something, because his back suddenly stiffened and his shoulders rose for one long breath. Rapunzel inched forward just as he started to turn. Bit by bit, she saw the tip of his nose, the stubble on his chin, and the scar running down his cheek. Ethan. She held her breath, verified a million times in a second that it was true, and then propelled herself into his arms, succumbing to an inner whirlwind of confusion and anger and the kind of unbridled joy that happens to other women—not to her.
“What are you doing here?” Rapunzel ranted as her senses filled with the closest thing she’d ever felt to home. “Where’ve you been? You should have just told me! Why didn’t you tell me?”
Pushing a rogue strand of hair from her cheek, Ethan flashed a mischievous smile and twirled the rose between her fingers. “Told you what, love?”
Rapunzel took a calming breath and lowered her eyes. “That the prince who tried to rescue me hired you to find me. Did you think I’d be angry?” She impulsively smacked him in the arm. “God, the things I imagined. But where—”
Rapunzel looked around and backed off a bit. Perhaps she shouldn’t rub it in the poor guy’s face. “Where is he?” she whispered.
Ethan leaned closer. “Who?” he whispered back.
Rapunzel simply stared at him and telepathically scolded him for turning such a serious matter into a joke. Ethan stared right back until Rapunzel’s eyes slowly widened, her jaw sloped down, and her neck craned up in astounded disbelief.
“Never said I was a prince, love,” Ethan said as she began to lose control of her emotions. “I said like a prince. That’s all you’d ever heard about, locked up in that tower with those silly storybooks. And I wasn’t about to explain the entire royal hierarchy to you at the time.”
Something hard caught in her throat. “How did I not recognize you?”
Ethan fiddled with the rose and shrugged. Rapunzel placed her palm on his cheek and ran her thumb over one of many scars he’d attributed to getting in a fight. “Thirty feet’s a long way down,” he said. “Worth it for you, but I needed quite a bit of patching up.” He grasped her hand in his. “Everything in that letter is true. When you didn’t recognize me right away, I let you believe I was someone else. It was a cowardly and foolish thing to do. And then at Letitia’s party … when I heard what you told Belle about having only one choice in the tower … I feared—”
“Oh shut up and kiss me,” she commanded before he could finish speaking or fully prepare for her leaping into the air and assaulting him with kisses and hugs and the nascent whisper of three little words she’d waited a lifetime to say.
* * *
“What the hell happened to you?” Penny hollered the moment Rapunzel floated out of the woods, her hair fuzzy with dirt and leaves, with Ethan beaming at her side. Tossing her hands up on her waist, Penny panned the couple up and down with torturously restrained excitement. “How the … No … Well … No, you call tell me later. Belle’s having a conniption.”
Within seconds, Penny was dragging Rapunzel, who was dragging Ethan, back to the gazebo. “Belle wants to make a symbolic thing out of signing her divorce papers. She wants moral support or something. I’m sure it has to do with baby hormones, but either way, she’s been shout
ing for you forever.”
The trio halted abruptly at the foot of the gazebo as four bewildered women stared down at them. Gently, Ethan extracted his hand from Rapunzel’s, kissed her on the cheek, and informed her that he’d be waiting by the horseshoes.
“Good luck,” he mouthed on his way.
Belle beamed at the sight of Ethan. Then she shook herself straight. Details would have to wait. “Okay,” she said, motioning for everyone to form a circle. Rapunzel slid beside the mother-to-be and tried to stifle a laugh. On the table between them sat a bright pink clipboard securing a group of papers with “Petition for Divorce” spelled out in huge, serious letters. Around the clipboard sat candles, rose petals, and a bucket filled with photographs of Belle and Donner.
“Where’s the voodoo doll?” Rapunzel said when Belle took her hand and indicated that everyone else should do the same.
“Shush,” Penny scolded and closed her eyes.
Not wanting to miss out, Beast scuttled up from the lawn and poked his head between Belle’s legs. She took a dramatic breath and let it out slowly. “Not long ago, I was sitting on Rapunzel’s terrace while you tried to convince me that my life wasn’t over.” Even Rapunzel couldn’t keep her lips from leaning a little skyward at this memory. “The road’s been pretty bumpy, that’s for sure. But today, thanks to my wonderful friends, I’m taking this step on—”
“Stop!” a voice hollered in the distance, but Belle paid it no mind.
“I’m taking this step on my own.”
“Stop! Belle! Wait!”
Belle clamped her jaw shut at this second interruption and picked up her head. One by one, everyone’s eyes rose up and stared out over the lawn. Ruby Welles was lumbering towards them with a tattered book the size of a child’s throne.
“What the hell,” Cindy muttered and broke the circle. Beast followed and surveyed the situation. His lips curled to issue a long, low growl.
“I need to talk to you!” Ruby called between stumbles.
With everyone else frozen, Cindy straightened up and marched out to greet her fairy godmother. “Hello, Ruby,” she said, forcing a wary smile. “What’ve you got there?”
