Page 68 of Truly Madly Magically

Maybe because that’s when everything changed here and the house couldn’t keep up.

Zack shuffles out from the hall and the bedroom down that way, looking rumpled. As if we woke him up, but he offers a brave sort of smile.

“Everything okay?” he asks, scratching a hand through his beard. “It’s a bit late.”

“It’s nine, Dad.”

“Oh.” Zack squints over at the clock on the kitchen oven. “Well.” He looks at me, and though his gaze is puzzled, and sharpens at Zander’s arm around me, he doesn’t comment. “Did you two need something?”

“We need to tell you something.” Zander pulls me closer. So fierce and determined and sounding so sure, but I can feel the faint tremor of something else under it. Not nerves, exactly. Maybe the knowledge that this isn’t going to be easy.

No one ever says joy and happiness are easy, do they? What they say is it’s worth it.

“Tell me,” Zack says, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees the way he braces himself for something terrible.

Zander stands a little taller. He holds me a little tighter. “We’re going to have a baby. A girl. In March.”

He lays it all out. Quick. Simple.

Exactly how I should have done it, in retrospect—especially when I realize my dad didn’t even ask. Stephanie did. The girls did. When are you due? When can we have a baby shower? Those are the excited things they jockeyed to ask me while we were leaving.

But this is about Zander’s family now. As we stand there in a kitchen that seems cold and empty with Zelda’s absence, Zack’s eyes fill. Just fill right up.

This is worse, I think in a panic. Ten million times worse than my father’s nonreaction. This big, gruff man on the brink of tears.

I want to turn and run, but Zander is holding me in place.

I realize he’s holding on to me not only because he’s still giving me comfort, but also because he needs something to hold on to himself while we wait to see if Zack really will sob the way it looks like he might.

I had no idea that it would feel this good to be needed. To be someone else’s anchor when I’ve always been so bound and determined to be my own.

“A girl. In March,” Zack echoes. Like those might be his dying words because we’ve stabbed him through the heart.

Zander clears his throat. “Just like Mom.”

His father nods, a bit like I might expect a soldier who just crawled out of a trench to nod. Out of place. Bleeding out. Then he exhales, like it’s his very last breath.

I hold mine.

Zack clearly isn’t leaving us just yet, because as I watch, his mouth curves. Upward. Until it turns into the sort of smile I can’t remember seeing on him in ages. Ten years, at least.

“Isn’t that something,” he says, and when Zack says it, he sounds awed.

Like it’s a good something.

“A baby girl,” he says, out loud, with wonder. I don’t know what to call this fizzy, dancing reaction inside of me. Or the way Zander holds me, still. “Won’t that be something?” The tears are still there in his eyes, but he’s laughing now. “Now, who would have guessed that? Besides your mother.”

He doesn’t sober at the mention of Zelda, though his laugh softens. “She always hoped...” He shakes his head, and claps his hands together. “Enough of that. This is good news! We need to celebrate. A toast?” He starts moving deeper into the kitchen, then stops to spin back to us. “No alcohol, of course. Not for expectant mothers.” Then he lifts his hand in the air in a kind of excited fluster that warms me top to bottom.

I magic us all mugs of tea, even though it means Zander drops his arm from around me. And I miss it. “It’s called Celebration Tea.”

“Creative,” Zander says, and only grins when I lift a brow at him.

Zack laughs, and it might be the most tickled I’ve ever seen him. “Celebration is right.” He lifts the mug. “To the mother and father of my grandchild.” He points a finger at us before clinking his mug to ours. “This girl better call me Grandpa. None of that cutesy bullshit people do nowadays. No Grampy, G-dog, Big Z—Grandpa.”

“No, sir.” Zander says, grinning at his dad over the rim of his mug. “Grandpa it is.”

This is exactly how it should be. This is right. So much so I can’t even feel sad about Bill in this moment, because we have Zack. We have my mom and our coven. We have Stephanie and my sisters. We even have Zelda too.

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