Page 50 of Truly Madly Magically

I nod, though I can’t imagine why he wants to talk about the Joywood’s creepy Guardian now. “You had to go follow him around the locks and dams all over the rivers, right? Guardian it up. Except you didn’t mind it.”

I remember being irritated about that and picking a fight once or twice or maybe ten thousand times, that he could get along with someone who had such open contempt for me.

“No, I didn’t. Back then, I didn’t mind Festus at all. He made me feel important.” Zander shakes his head. “Mom and Dad were always so relaxed about everything. Too relaxed. It didn’t matter what I did. Good grades or bad, sports or lounging around, working or choosing not to work—everything was fine. They loved me no matter what. As long as I wasn’t cruel or disrespectful, it didn’t matter.”

I roll my eyes. “The horror.”

There’s almost a smile on his face then. “It wasn’t a horror. Obviously. But Festus acted like what I did—or didn’t do—was important. Or could be. I liked that.”

I can’t begin to imagine where this is going, but there’s a cold knot of dread in my gut. “Zander...”

“Until he started in on you. He thought I could do better. He thought I deserved better. He wondered why I wasn’t with someone befitting my important station.”

I try to pull my hand away from him. “If this is why you broke up with me—”

“Simmer down, I’m not that easy. I love...d you.” The way he stumbles over the word love, with a tacked-on past tense, has my heart lodging in my throat.

But he keeps telling his story. One I have refused to let him tell all these years.

Because he made his choice. Why should he get to tell stories about it?

I don’t really want to hear it now either. My heart is beating much too fast, like whatever he’s about to say is going to wound me, somehow. Or like it already has.

Still, I told him I would try. So I try—meaning, I literally bite my own tongue.

“I didn’t like it when he talked about you,” Zander says, in a very low, deliberate sort of way that makes my heart get acrobatic for...other reasons. “So he changed tactics. The thing is, I didn’t see what he was doing at the time. He just...started talking a lot about staying in St. Cyprian.”

“While you and I were making plans to get out of here.” So many plans that it makes my throat clog to think of them now.

“A Rivers who doesn’t stick around isn’t upholding his legacy. His important legacy as a Guardian. My parents would never tell me, of course, because they’re too soft—Festus’s words, not mine, but I could see it. How they’d never ask anything of me, because they never did.”

That’s important enough to get past the tightness in my throat and all those lost plans we made. “Because they love you, Zander.”

I don’t stumble over the tense. He holds my gaze a little too long, like he needed to hear me say it. Like he needed to make sure it was true.

“I see that now. I even knew it then. I didn’t take Festus’s word for it. I brought it up to my parents. I asked—straight-out—what did they want me to do. Stay? Because I could. I would. If they wanted me to.”

“They’d never tell you what to do.”

It’s hard for me to realize that Zack and Zelda loved Zander so much that they couldn’t see what he’d needed. That even two of the best people I knew weren’t perfect, not even back then when I considered them my other parents. My intact second family.

I don’t know how to feel about the notion that even they could get something wrong. Because if they can be wrong...what hope do I have?

Zander is still talking. Still telling me things I don’t necessarily want to hear—but the difference is, now I know I need to hear them anyway. “They told me it was up to me to do what I thought was right, but I could see how much it would mean to my dad if I did stay. Then they asked where this was coming from, when they knew you and I had plans to leave. I started to explain what Festus had been telling me, but before I could even get into his thoughts on my legacy, Mom just...crumpled. It was the first time she ever collapsed.”

He takes a minute. I can tell he sees it all in his head, as vivid as if it just happened. Because it was traumatic. Because it changed everything for his family. Because he knows how it ends now.

“Mom was sick for a few days, and I didn’t think about much but that. The next week, I had my regular apprenticeship meeting, and I felt dirty. Slimy.” He shakes his head. “Everything Festus said felt wrong, when a week before I’d been positive he was right about everything. I couldn’t talk to my parents about it, because Mom was still sick. I figured I’d talk to you. That we’d figure it out, because we were good at that. Once.”

I want to laugh, but it’s true. We were. Once.

“I was about to leave to pick you up. Mom was sitting up, reading, feeling better. Back then she used to get better in between attacks.”

That hangs there between us. I can see there’s a part of Zander that can’t fully accept there’s no poison in me, no matter what Jacob says.

“Dad was at the ferry, so it was just Mom and me. I told her I was going to see you, and she smiled. I was walking out the door, thinking about how I’d tell you everything, and then she started choking. She couldn’t breathe. I tried to get in there and do something with all this magic I’m supposed to have, but nothing worked.”

I squeeze his hand. Harder and harder until he looks at me again and slowly blinks himself back to now.

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