Chapter 8 #2
“Eat the lasagna while it’s hot. Don’t worry about the dish, I’ll clean it. There’s also a Tupperware of brownies in the bottom of the second bag because chocolate.” She turned and called toward the kitchen, “Juni, sweetheart, save room for a brownie, okay?”
“Okay!”
Both women grinned at her enthusiasm.
“I’m saving one for Colin, too.”
Colin’s eyes widened and his lips quivered with amusement for a second before he locked it down.
Leave it to Juni to charm Mr. Tall, Dark, and Quiet.
He quickly turned back to the window, did a visual sweep, then gave Arden a small nod. She gave him one back.
“All right.” Arden looked back at Maren. “Out of your hair. Call me if you need anything. Even if you don’t know what it is yet.”
Maren smiled. “I will.”
“Bye, Junebug,” Arden called.
Juni came running out of the kitchen. “Bye, Aunt Arden.” Arden dropped to her knees and Juni threw herself into her arms. Arden closed her eyes, and the look of happiness on her face nearly undid Maren.
Juni ate two helpings of lasagna.
Two. The kid who’d been picking at hamburgers and gas station snacks was on her second piece of lasagna with garlic bread and a fistful of salad croutons she had picked out and arranged on the side of her plate.
“Aunt Arden’s a good cook,” Juni announced through a mouthful.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Junebug.”
Juni swallowed elaborately. “Aunt Arden’s a good cook.”
“She really is.”
Across the small kitchen table, Mac was on his second piece too.
Colin had taken his plate to the front room.
Maren had clocked the move when he made it, feeling the tiniest bit of disappointment.
But that was silly—he was their bodyguard, not her date, and that’s what he was doing—guarding them.
He could still see and hear them from where he was, he just wasn’t sitting at the table, she told herself.
No reason to be disappointed that it wasn’t Mac instead.
Stop it.
“Mac?” Juni asked.
“Yes, ma’am?” Maren watched Mac’s whole face crinkle, ready for whatever question was coming.
“Did you ever have a pet when you were little?”
“I sure did. I had a dog named Toque. He was big and goofy.”
“You named him Took? What did he take?”
Mac laughed. “Not took, Toque.” He lifted his hands, pressed his palms against either side of his head, his fingers forming a peak.
“It’s a winter hat. I think you guys call them stocking caps.
But to answer your question, when he was a puppy he took a toque, one my mom had knitted, and ran around the house with it. It was about as big as he was.”
Oh, so he’s not from Minnesota or Wisconsin. He’s Canadian.
Juni considered Mac’s story. “Pretzel wouldn’t steal anything.”
“I bet he wouldn’t,” Mac agreed.
“Pretzel is going to grow up and be a very good dog.”
“That’s a fine thing to grow up to be,” Mac said. “Especially if he’s going into the military.”
Juni took a bite, nodding the way she did when she’d settled something to her satisfaction.
Maren glanced toward the living room. Colin was sitting on the couch, watching them. It was probably her imagination, but his expression told her that maybe he wished he was at the table, too. Her heart sped up.
Bath. Then the doll. Then bed. One thing at a time.
Bath was the easiest part of the whole day, which felt like a small miracle.
Juni was tired enough that the warm water made her droopy, and Maren got through the hair-washing with no protests at all.
Juni even let Maren comb the tangles out without complaining about how she should be allowed to wear her hair messy, “like fairy hair,” a direct quote from just a few days ago.
Wearing her pajamas—the same pair that she’d been wearing at the hotel, unfortunately—Juni padded into the kitchen where Maren had laid out the doll repair operation.
The Blue Fairy lay on the table on a clean dishtowel, her painted face up, her sad, flat body deflated where the beans and stuffing had been ripped out.
Mr. Kibble lay beside her, half-stitched from the hotel night.
The bag of pinto beans Arden had brought was open beside the sewing kit.
A small glass measuring bowl sat ready to scoop beans into.
“Oh,” Juni said softly, like she’d walked into church.
“Want to help?”
Juni nodded.
Maren lifted her into her lap and they got to work.
Juni’s job, as Maren explained it, was the very important task of putting beans into the bowl and then watching very carefully while Maren slid them, one by one, into the little hole in the fairy’s side.
Juni took the job seriously. Her small palms cupped beans like she was carrying water.
A few escaped and rolled across the table and she chased them down with grave focus.
Then she picked through them, putting some back into the bag, using some mysterious method of deciding which ones were good enough for the fairy.
“Why just beans?” she asked.
It took Maren a moment to realize what she meant. Right, she’d used a soup mix.
“Because the original lentils and barley are at home, sweetie. I only thought to ask Aunt Arden for beans.”
“Will the fairy mind?”
Maren considered this honestly. “I don’t think so. I think she’ll like having new stuffing. It’ll feel different in her tummy.”
Juni nodded. “I think the fairy will be okay with that.”
“Me too.”
They worked quietly for a while. The beans made small dry sounds going in. Maren stitched, pulled, stitched, pulled, the way her mom had taught her and Mira when they were not much older than Juni. Two little girls in matching pajamas, learning to thread a needle on a cold Iowa night.
“Auntie Mer?”
“Mmhm?”
“Is this our home now?”
Maren’s hand stilled on the needle.
She made herself breathe, made herself answer just the question and not the thousand things behind the question.
“Just for a little while, sweetie. This is a place where we get to stay while some really nice people help us figure things out. Like a hotel, kind of. But better.”
“Because Aunt Arden is here.”
“Yeah. Because Aunt Arden is here.”
Juni pulled another carefully considered bean out of the bowl.
“And Colin and Mac.”
“Yeah.”
“I like Colin.”
Maren kept her eyes on the seam. “I noticed.”
“He’s the first one we met.”
“He is.”
“He’s not my daddy though.”
“No, sweetie. He’s not.”
In the front room, very faintly, Maren heard a sharp intake of breath.
Juni nodded gravely, satisfied with her own clarity on this point.
Maren tied off the thread and sat the Blue Fairy up on the dishtowel like she’d just woken up from a long sleep.
“There,” Maren said. “Good as new.”
“Better.” Juni picked her up and gave her a careful hug. “She says she likes the new beans. They’re magic.”
Maren grinned. At the same time, her stomach clenched.
It’s going to take magic beans to get us back home.
Bedtime was easy, too.
Maren tucked Juni in with the Blue Fairy on one side of her pillow and a newly re-stuffed Mr. Kibble on the other side. Snoopy went at the foot of the bed where Juni said he liked to “guard.”
Maren pulled out the Blue Fairy Book.
Juni’s face lit up. “I forgot you brought it.”
“I’m not surprised. Which story do you want?”
“The one Mom liked best.”
Maren closed her eyes for a second.
“Cinderella, then.”
She told the story of a beautiful girl who had lost everything, but still captured the heart of a prince. By the time Cinderella lost her slipper, Juni was already asleep and breathing slow, even breaths.
Maren kept reading the story anyway, very softly, to herself as much as Juni, until the prince found Cinderella and everything that had been wrong was made right.
Then she sat there for a minute, thinking about their home.
She kissed Juni’s forehead, smoothed her hair, and stood up carefully.
She left the door open a crack. She paused in the hallway.
Through the doorway to the front room, she could see Colin in the chair by the front window.
His back was to her, but his head was angled slightly— the way he did when he was listening for something. .
She had no idea how long he’d been listening.
Maren went down the hall to her own room without saying anything and closed the door. She stood in the dark with her hand on the doorknob, heart pounding.
Stop it.
She let go of the doorknob and got ready for bed.