Page 23 of Truly Madly Magically

He doesn’t actually laugh, but there’s the suggestion of it, thick like the humidity between us. “You offering to be my safety partner, El?”

I am not. Obviously I am not. But it’s Monday, so Tea & No Sympathy is closed, like Emerson pointed out earlier. And he says it like a challenge—but this time, one I can handle because it doesn’t get tangled on my tongue. “Sure. Why not? You want us to be buddies now, right?”

He laughs, and it’s not the bitter one I’ve grown so accustomed to. It’s like an old Zander laugh. Fun. Light.

He immediately sobers, like he noticed the difference too.

“This is better, you know,” I tell him. It hurts to say it, but it hurts worse to keep it to myself.

His expression is wary. “What is?”

“You with your fighting spirit back.” He was honest with me about important things, and this is important too. “You’ve been drowning, and that’s okay. I figure it’s part of it all. I haven’t lost my mother, and I know my dad is still alive so it’s not the same—”

“No. It isn’t.”

“It’s grief.” I don’t back down at the harsh tone in his voice. “It’s losing the life you once had and thought you would have for a long time. The foundation you depended on. I think you have to let yourself drown a little before you swim back to the surface, because grief never really goes away. But she’s here in spirit. I saw her myself. Her spirit will get stronger as time goes by, and she’ll visit more. She’ll meet our baby. I’m not saying it’s the same. I know it’s not fair, but she’s here for us, Zander, even if we can’t see her.”

He looks away, but if he can be the bigger person, so can I. “There’s this article about how grief is a five-year cycle.”

He scowls at me, but it’s not with that quiet, concentrated anger that messes with me internally. Just general irritation. It’s almost comforting. “Are you going to pretend you read an article?”

“Did I say that?” I know I didn’t.

“We both know you watched a video somewhere.”

Which makes me laugh because he’s right. Maybe, just maybe, we can do this. This be parents thing without ripping each other to shreds.

Maybe, just maybe, we can do this impossible thing for this kid, our kid, because we know how important that is.

Maybe Zander and I can finally grow up and make it work—maybe not in the way we imagined when we were teenagers, but in a mature, adult fashion that will give the child we made exactly what she or he needs.

For a moment, looking at Zander, and all the familiars around us, and the mighty river in the distance, I believe we can. I believe we actually can.

You know, if we live past ascension.

7

WALKING WITH ZANDER down to the ferry is a little too much like stepping back in time. You’d think a Summoner would be all about it, but hard pass. There’s nothing worse than going back to a happy place in time that you know you’ll never get to live again.

I could be optimism personified—I could be Emerson Wilde herself—and I’d know there’s no going back to the simplicity of being fifteen, stupid, and stupid in love with an equally stupid boy.

Emphasis on the stupid.

Walking side by side on Main Street is like walking on broken glass barefoot for me. Because no matter how I try to block them out, old scenes play out all around me.

Walking down to the bookstore with my mother, not more than ten years old. Mom bumping into Zelda, who has little Zander with her. He’s the boy who teases me on the playground, so I stick my tongue out at him from behind my mother’s back. He grins at me, and I can feel the same things I felt then. Confused. Embarrassed.

Desperate to do something to make him look at me like that again.

A few more blocks down, teenage Ellowyn and Zander making out in the alley between Confluence Books and the former Joyful Books & More that Maeve Mather tried to use as a way of putting Lillian Wilde out of business.

It didn’t work, but I don’t feel the usual satisfaction at that old victory, because I see teenage me and Zander, not caring that we might get caught as long as this kiss never ends.

It all cuts deep. Because what I can feel the most in those memories is the wild hope for all those things I know now are never going to happen.

I’m so busy trying to avoid the gauntlet of our past while not letting Zander see what I’m doing that it takes me longer than it should to recognize the new danger that’s coming right for us. That being Maeve Mather herself.

Maeve who is, among other things, the Joywood’s Summoner. Maeve is also the closest thing to a best friend the Joywood’s leader and Warrior, Carol Simon, has ever had. As far as anyone knows. Maeve is also a shocking attention whore who inserts herself into every festival the town puts on if there’s a spotlight to hog, one of the most unapologetically and forthrightly mean people in town, and the kind of grown-ass woman who likes to giggle and pout and make like a little girl, which I found nauseating even when I was one myself.

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