Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
And she walked into a very familiar place: the kitchen of her and her moms’ Brooklyn apartment. Mom-Kate and Mom-Elise were seated at the table—Mom-Kate with her usual latte, and Mom-Elise with her phone. Both of them jumped up when Calisa stepped out of the bathroom doorway.
“Calisa!” Mom-Kate cried.
“What happened to our bathroom?” Mom-Elise asked.
Calisa laughed and then suddenly, inexplicably, found herself crying. Both of them rushed to her and threw their arms around her, drawing her close. “I’m okay,” Calisa said, muffled, crying, into their hair and shoulders.
“Of course you are,” Mom-Kate said. “You’re home.”
—
After she’d spent over an hour with them, telling them everything about her summer and the inn and Auntie Zee and Jack and Steve and her cakes and the Night Market and the baby dryads and all of it, Calisa invited them back to the bed-and-breakfast.
“Does Auntie Zee want us there?” Mom-Kate asked.
“Of course!” Calisa had no idea if she did or didn’t, but why open the portal if she wasn’t going to talk to Calisa’s moms?
Clearly it was time for a family reunion.
Mom-Kate had reached out to Auntie Zee by sending Calisa, and Auntie Zee was reaching back by making this portal.
Both of them wanted to heal whatever had broken between them. She was sure of it. Mostly sure of it.
She held both her moms’ hands as they squeezed together through the doorway and popped back into Calisa’s guest room, where Auntie Zee was napping in the chair, in her human form and beneath a quilt. Jack and Thomas had left, but the firebird danced over the logs, keeping watch as it always did.
Mom-Elise saw the firebird immediately. “Wow. I know you said…Mom-Kate has told me stories too…but to see with my own eyes…” She knelt beside the fireplace. “Absolutely beautiful.”
Stretching its wings, the firebird pranced over the logs as if showing off.
Auntie Zee opened her eyes. “Ah, good, you’re all here. We have a lot to discuss.” She threw off the quilt and pushed herself shakily onto her feet. Without another word, she began shuffling toward the hallway.
Calisa saw her moms glance at each other, and she wished Auntie Zee had started off a bit more friendly, perhaps with a hello, so great to see you, sorry for holding a grudge for a decade.
Still, it was an okay start to the reunion.
She didn’t seem angry that Calisa had invited her moms. So long as they all—
Mom-Kate crossed her arms and said in her mama bear voice, “Yes, we do have a lot to discuss. I heard you were ready to send Calisa back home as soon as she arrived.”
Calisa cried, “Mom-Kate! That’s not the most important thing that I told you.
And besides, she didn’t. I’m still here.
” In fact, if she thought back over it, Auntie Zee hadn’t mentioned sending her home since the moment she’d relocated Steve to the greenhouse.
That had been the turning point, though she hadn’t known it at the time.
“Come to the sitting room,” Auntie Zee ordered. “This won’t be a short conversation.” She waddled out of the room without even glancing back to see if they followed.
“Mom-Kate, Mom-Elise, please…just come talk to her, okay? For me?” She led them down the hall, through the lobby, and into the sitting room, which was thankfully devoid of guests. “Not a word,” she said to the mirror as she passed it.
Who? Me? the mirror wrote. I’m kindness personified.
“You’re not a person.”
Rude. Also, accurate.
She shooed her moms past it. She didn’t trust the mirror not to write something to upset her moms just for the amusement value. “Would you like some crème br?lée?” Calisa offered. “And tea?”
The firebird had already raced through the chimneys and was dancing on the log in the fireplace of the sitting room. Mom-Elisa halted to stare at the fiery bird again.
“Excellent idea, Calisa,” Auntie Zee said, which was more praise than she’d ever heaped on Calisa and made her, if possible, even more nervous. What exactly did Auntie Zee plan to say to her moms? And what would her moms say back?
She hurried into the kitchen to fetch the dishes of crème br?lée that she’d made. She heard a tapping on the window over the sink and spotted Steve poking at the glass with his wing. “Yes, come in,” she told him. “I need reinforcements.”
Opening the window, she welcomed him in and patted her shoulder. He flew up and perched beside her neck. His scaled side felt like rough leather, and he smelled of dirt and pine.
Leaning out, she called, “Jack?”
He popped his head up from within the garden, where he was working with his dad. “You’re back! Where were you? How was it?”
“Want to meet my moms?”
“Uh…”
“They’re going to love you.” Surely they wouldn’t argue in front of Jack and Steve and the firebird, would they? She really wanted this to go well. It felt like the grand reopening all over again, except this time she had less control over it.
Jack handed his gardening gloves to his father and trotted inside. After he washed his hands in the kitchen sink, he helped her carry a tray of crème br?lée into the sitting room. As she passed the mirror, she whispered, “What did I miss?”
No drama yet. Just a lot of boring awkward staring.
“Good.”
Are they going to fight? I want to watch a fight.
“Calisa?” Jack asked, nervous.
“It’ll be fine,” Calisa told him. “Just show them your smile.”
I’m betting on Auntie Zee. She’d fight dirty.
Ignoring it, she walked into the sitting room. “Mom-Elise, Mom-Kate, this is Jack.”
Setting down the tray of crème br?lée, Jack smiled at them and offered his hand to shake. “Nice to meet you, ma’am. Ma’am.”
“We’ve met before,” Mom-Kate said, shaking his hand and smiling at him. “You and Calisa once climbed a tree—”
“Is that—” Mom-Elise pointed to the little dragon on Calisa’s shoulder.
“This is Steve,” Calisa said. “He’s my dragon.
” She’d told her parents about him, but apparently seeing him in the flesh—and in the scales—was a different experience.
She wondered how much of her story they’d believed or even absorbed.
It had been a lot. She considered whether she could have waited a few days before bringing them to the B&B.
Perhaps they’d need more time to process everything.
Her moms exchanged glances, which made Calisa even more nervous. “Um, sweetie,” Mom-Kate began, “we know that we said someday you could have a pet…”
“…when we live in an apartment that allows them,” Mom-Elise finished. “But I’m not sure any apartment lease allows for…” She waved her hand toward Steve.
“Well, they don’t not allow it,” Mom-Kate said to her.
“But a…I can’t even say the word,” Mom-Elise said.
“He’s what’s known as a draco minor, or micro dragon,” Auntie Zee said briskly. “He won’t grow much larger. But regardless, it’s best if he lives at the B&B, where he can fly free outside whenever he wants, without the risk of being spotted by anyone.”
Calisa put her hand up to scratch Steve’s neck. She didn’t like the idea of leaving him here without her. She’d gotten used to him always being nearby, and she knew he was attached to her.
“As you can see, the draco minor has formed an attachment to your daughter,” Auntie Zee said. “They bond with one person at a time, and it would be cruel for Calisa to abandon him at this point. She should be the one responsible for training him, now that he’s able to produce flame.”
Wait, where was Auntie Zee going with this? Calisa looked from her great-aunt to her moms and then back again. Obviously she didn’t want to abandon Steve….
Mom-Kate rose to her feet and paced through the living room.
“Tea?” Auntie Zee offered.
The enchanted teapot rose into the air and poured.
“You’re trying to overwhelm us with magic,” Mom-Kate said, “with what you can offer Calisa that we can’t.” She glared at the teapot as if it had personally offended her.
“I think it’s pretty impressive,” Mom-Elise said mildly.
“But Calisa can’t stay here permanently, no matter how much magic you throw in our faces,” Mom-Kate said. “This was for the summer because you needed assistance. A temporary arrangement.”
“I want to stay!” Calisa burst out.
“Out of the question,” Mom-Kate said. She held up her hand before Calisa could argue. “You can stay the rest of the summer, and you can come back next summer—that’s the inn’s busy season—but that will have to be enough. She’s about to start her senior year of high school.”
“Auntie Zee needs to train me,” Calisa said. And Steve needs me. And Jack. And I promised Rin I’d spread his name…and…and…and…
“You aren’t dropping out of school,” Mom-Kate said firmly. “You’re finishing high school and then going to college. As you planned. You aren’t sacrificing your future for someone who had no interest in you until you proved useful to her.”
Ouch. Also, of course she wasn’t going to drop out!
But could she transfer to a local Vermont school?
Or online school? Or…she didn’t know. She thought of Crystal and Maddy, and the idea of switching schools, not spending their senior year together, made her heart ache.
As badly as she wanted to stay here, she didn’t want to leave home.
Not yet. She was supposed to have one more year.
She felt as if she were being ripped in two, bones split from flesh.
Auntie Zee agreed, “She has to finish school.” She waved the words away as if it was a nonissue, already resolved. “And I did not have ‘no interest’ in her or you. You left.”
“Because I couldn’t stand the disappointment in your eyes,” Mom-Kate said.
“You left.”
“You didn’t want me back,” Mom-Kate said. “If you did, you would have reached out. Invited us back. Apologized—”
“Apologized?! It wasn’t my fault you wanted what I couldn’t give you.”
Calisa felt any chance at a lovely family reunion with tea and cake shatter into pieces.
The firebird seemed agitated, racing back and forth on its log, and Steve was digging his talons into her shoulder.
She felt the same, like she wanted to dig her fingernails into the upholstery.
She imagined the mirror in the lobby was enjoying this.
Probably making bets with itself. “Mom-Kate. Auntie Zee. Please, could you…take a deep breath? For me? And for Future Calisa? I know that you’ve hurt each other.
Disappointed each other. And that you have a lot to work through.
But can we maybe not use me as a pawn to do that?
I want to stay here, learn about”—she waved her hand to encompass the entire bed-and-breakfast—“all of this and all of what I am, but I also want to be home.”
Auntie Zee folded her wrinkled hands on her lap.
“Uh, Calisa?” Jack said.
She glanced at him. “What?”
He looked very uncomfortable to be speaking up during all of this family mess. She was amazed he hadn’t bolted already. “There’s a solution. Um, I think.”
“A very obvious solution,” Auntie Zee said tartly.
Calisa opened her mouth to ask what and then she shut it. “Oh.”
The portal. In her guest room. Which led to their kitchen in Brooklyn.
“Yes, oh,” Auntie Zee said. “Calisa will return home at the end of the summer, resume school, and then every afternoon—”
“After she’s finished her homework,” Mom-Elise put in.
“After she’s finished her homework but before teatime,” Auntie Zee said, “she comes through the portal to the bed-and-breakfast to train and to take care of her responsibilities here. She has a lot to learn if she’s going to eventually become innkeeper.”
Me, innkeeper! She remembered Rin calling her the next witch of the inn. That…would be amazing. This place could be her future. The perfect Future Calisa problem! If it was possible. If Mom-Kate and Mom-Elise agreed.
“She’s still going to college,” Mom-Kate said.
“And she should,” Auntie Zee said. “There are programs in hotel management, if she’s so inclined.
I recommend she at least take business courses.
We can establish a portal to her dorm room, though you may have to arrange for her to not have a roommate, but these are details that can be worked out, if you’re willing to allow it. ”
Her moms were looking at one another.
Calisa felt as if her brain was whirling as much as it was when she’d first discovered this was a magical inn. She couldn’t pluck one coherent thought out of the tornado.
Jack spoke up. “No one has asked the most important question.”
All of them looked at him.
“Does Calisa want this?” He flushed red. “I mean, she’s got Auntie Zee’s traveler-cat-whatever powers, but a month ago she didn’t know anything about this inn or the realms or any of this. Just because she can do it doesn’t mean she wants to.”
“No one else can,” Auntie Zee said.
Mom-Kate held up her hand. “Jack’s right. It’s her choice. Her future.”
Leaning forward, Mom-Elise said to Calisa, “You can take time to think about it. You don’t have to make a decision quickly. You have the whole rest of the summer. In fact, you have as long as you’d like. Unless Auntie Zee needs you to decide immediately?”
“I won’t be retiring just yet,” Auntie Zee said. “Now that Thomas is back, and I have both him and Jack to assist me, I’ll be fine for a while.”
“You could hire someone else too,” Calisa suggested. “Now that the inn is flourishing again. Rin could help you find someone trustworthy if you ask him….”
Auntie Zee glared at her. “I’ll think about it.”
That was better than a no.
“Regardless, your moms are correct,” Auntie Zee said.
“You should think about what you want before you decide. It is not a small responsibility. It’s a brand-new purpose.
” All of them looked at Calisa with various expressions of concern, interest, and, in the case of Auntie Zee, complete confidence that she knew what Calisa would say.
Calisa rolled her eyes. “Obviously,” she replied.