Page 45 of Changing Tides

She twists her nose. “Wait here.”

She jumps down and takes off toward the house. When she comes back, she has her hands full, so I run over to open the gate.

“I don’t have brown or green boy wings, but I have these,” she says as she enters.

She holds up a pair of iridescent purple wings. I take them from her hands.

“Oh, wow, these are pretty sweet. Think they’ll fit me?” I ask.

“Mommy wears them.”

“I’m a little bigger than Mommy, but we’ll try.”

I fish my arms into them and pull them onto my back. The tight elastic straps bite into the flesh under my arms.

I turn my back to Leia and glance at her over my shoulder. Glee is beaming from her face.

“How do they look?” I ask.

She jumps up and down. “Beautiful.”

“Just what every fairy man wants to hear,” I note.

“They glow in the dark,” she advises.

“Really? That’s kinda cool. Guess we’ll have to hang out until dark so I can test them out.”

She settles back at the table.

“So, what’s your opinion of Sandcastle Cove so far?” I ask.

Her brows furrow.

“What do you think of the island?” I clarify.

“There’s a lot of outside here,” she says.

“Outside?”

“Yeah, with grass and trees and sand.”

“I guess you didn’t see much of that in New York, huh?”

“Only on Tuesday,” she replies.

“Why Tuesday?”

“Rita took me to the park on Tuesday.”

“And who’s Rita?”

“My nanny, silly,” she says as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Right, your nanny. I should have known that.”

We finish our tea party just as Gramps’s truck pulls into his driveway.

“Looks like it’s time for me to go, kid,” I say as I stand.

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