24. Healing Takes Time #2
There it was, my cowering soul in a sentence. If I loved Aidan and he stayed human for the long haul that meant he could leave me. He would leave me if I continued to act like an immature, emotionally damaged overlord. That I knew for sure.
Was Alexa right when she said people could change?
Could I change?
“You won’t know unless you try,” she said.
Seconds later, the buzzer rang. “It’s Antoni the Astounding,” said the deep voice on the other end without any further context.
I excused myself. Outside my door stood a tall, slender, dark-skinned man with a shaved face and a shaved head wearing a sweatshirt that said JERSEY SHORE MAGICIAN’S SOCIETY .
I didn’t have to ask any questions when he handed over a crate with two birds in it and said, “I gave up on animal acts. They’re too social.
They’re both males, and they bonded too hard with me.
Each has tried, on numerous occasions, to mate with my fist. I’ve got nice hands—people have always told me I could hand model—but still. Can you believe it?”
I couldn’t even believe this random stranger was offering all this information when we’d met seconds before. Magicians should never reveal their tricks, nor should they reveal tidbits about their personal lives, either.
Alexa bolted off the couch at the first coo she heard upon my return.
“Can you grab Topher and shove him in the bedroom?” I asked, already playing a game of keep away with him. Topher moved fast, but Alexa moved faster. She hoisted him into the bedroom as I settled the birds down.
“What are those?” she asked.
“Two turtledoves,” I said without looking.
“That explains the pear tree. Where’s the—” She stopped herself, sniffing. The smell of death lingered no matter how many windows I opened. “Oh, right. This is so weird, but also… sweet?”
“Tell me about it.”
“You haven’t heard from him at all?” she asked.
“Not since we were at your place last night.” I sagged against the back of my couch.
“Any idea where he might be?” she asked.
“Not really. Maybe a few leads. I’m afraid to leave in case he comes back,” I said.
“Fear seems to be a common theme here.” She raised her sharp eyebrows at me. “I’ll help you if you want.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Duh. Put on some clothes and meet me outside.”
The staff at Sunshine Meadows worked to remove the Christmas decorations and replace them with New Year’s ones. Alexa commented on how expedient they were. Yet even with the new décor, a choir of teens roved by, singing carols. Didn’t they have presents to play with or parents to annoy?
Prior, the mall was a bust. As was Patsy’s. La Volpe Affamata was closed for the holidays. We even checked Alexa’s town house in case he’d showed up there after she’d left. This was my final hope.
Great Aunt Isla didn’t open up right away, and when we tried the knob, we found it was locked, which wasn’t like her.
We had not phoned ahead. Maybe we should’ve.
Maybe I wouldn’t have been bowled over by my upset of losing Isla’s Attic once again when she finally did come to the door with her hair wild and her necklace askew.
“Oh, hello there. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Great Aunt Isla asked.
My voice got caught in my throat, so Alexa said for me, “We’re looking for Aidan. Have you seen him?”
“Not unless you’re talking about in the papers.” She fished behind the door, then held up the local newspaper. On an interior page they’d printed a massive photo of me and Aidan beside the write-up. We appeared so happy, stuck there laughing, forever in print. “Is he missing?” she asked.
“Can we come in?” I asked.
“Um, yes. Of course.” She stepped aside.
Delilah, the beautiful bingo caller, stood there with a glass of something sparkling in her hand. It was a little early for that. “Didn’t realize you had company,” I said. I’d never seen Great Aunt Isla entertain friends in her apartment before.
“Don’t mind me. I was just about leaving,” said Delilah. “They’re serving tea and biscuits down in the lobby in five minutes. Excuse me.”
Alexa hung back. “I am actually going to go make some calls out in the lobby. Do you mind if I walk with you?”
“I’d welcome the company,” Delilah said, setting her glass down on the table and picking up her purse.
I had questions, but none fully formed.
We sat in silence at the kitchen table for several minutes after Great Aunt Isla poured us both glasses of water. “So how was—”
“When were you going to tell me that you were closing Isla’s Attic and letting me go?” I asked in a blustery rush of words.
Her gaze grew soft. “I’m not letting you go, doll. I’m setting you free.”
I shook my head. “But I worked so hard to right the ship!”
“Now you have a nice little nest egg to pursue your art with,” she said.
“What?” I asked. The newspaper sat open on the table beside us. In there, I’d told them I hoped to make the window a yearly tradition. Boy, did I look ridiculous for saying that.
“When’s the last time you picked up your art supplies?” she asked. Before I could answer, she added, “Not for a window display.”
I shrugged. My memory clearly didn’t stretch back that far. “What does that matter? I can’t take your money.”
“What use could I have for it here?” she asked, gesturing around her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. The guilt in my gut finally flowed over.
Nobody else in the family would’ve insisted on sending her here.
Nobody else had seen her at the bottom of those stairs, either.
I’d had to do it. If not for her health, at least for my peace of mind, which was selfish but rooted in the best of intentions.
She reached her hands across the table. “I’m sorry, too.
I’m sorry for not being brave enough to tell you when you brought Aidan around.
Most of me was hoping you’d come to the decision on your own, so I could brush off the burden of pushing you out of the nest. I made a hard but necessary decision, just like you did moving me here.
Doll, do I love it here? No, I most certainly do not, but it’s not your fault society has deemed these dormitories of geriatric drama the best waystation before death.
This is life. I’ve lived mine. Let me help you live yours. ”
“But you always said the store was your immortality. That you wanted it to live on long after you were gone.”
“I was wrong, doll,” she said, holding my gaze. “You’re my immortality.”
My heart stuttered. “Huh?”
“I know I was cagey when you asked me about magic hour, but let me tell you a story,” she said.
“When I was a much younger woman, I met a gal named Georgine. Georgine from Georgia. My first and only love. She was a photographer who swore up and down on the power of magic hour—both in photography and in the universe. ‘Make a wish’ she’d say, snapping my photo.
I’d shake my head and look around before pushing the lens out of my face and kissing her under the pier at low tide.
We wanted the same things—a quiet life, a house, a dog, children.
‘We’ll have those things. Just be patient,’ I said to her.
Society needed to catch up to our love. I knew it would one day.
Patience, however, was not one of Georgine’s many virtues.
By the following year, she’d met a run-of-the-mill man, and decided to move back to Georgia to start a family with him. ”
“Did you ever hear from her again?” I asked.
“I’m getting there. Hold your horses,” she said, sporting the ghost of a smile.
“Many, many years and no other great loves later, after I’d opened the shop and your grandmother passed, the loneliness of my life here in Ocean Glen set in with a vengeance.
Without my sister, I had no one to distract me from it.
No one to keep me from falling into it. Until one day I received a letter. ”
“From Georgine?” I asked.
“Can you let me tell the story at my own speed, please?” She chuffed to herself.
“The envelope was postmarked from Georgia. I didn’t know anyone else from Georgia, so I jumped to my own conclusions.
I took the letter with me to the beach that evening to read.
I expected Georgine’s handwriting—maybe a little shakier but still recognizable from the days of our affair.
Instead, I found a much younger scrawl along with a series of other letters, and photographs of a twenty-six-year-old me on the beach under the pier. ”
Great Aunt Isla crossed to her vintage writing desk, unlocked a drawer, and pulled out a yellowing piece of paper. She passed it to me to read.
Dear Isla Attenborough,
I know you don’t know me, but from these photographs, I feel like I know you.
My mother, Georgine Clarkson, passed away a year ago this past Wednesday from a sudden heart attack.
It was a shock to our entire family. I’ve been helping my father clean out some of her belongings, including her photography studio, which she kept out back in a crumbling shed she loved more than any other place in the world.
She was not a meticulous woman, my mother.
Not someone who kept good records or held on to things she deemed unimportant.
When I found these photos of you alongside some letters, I have to say that at first, I was shocked.
I like to believe my mother was happy with my father, but I realized pretty young that while she loved me and my siblings, our town and our home and our life, she did not love him.
This saddened me for the longest time. How could someone go an entire lifetime married to someone they didn’t love?
Then, I found these, and it all made sense to me, and alongside the profound sadness that arose, there was a glimmer of happiness.
Happiness that someone had looked at my mother the way you looked at her in these photos.