Chapter 39
PANDORA’S DIARY
Magical Moments: Multitudes
After a night snuggled among cushions and blankets, cradled in Leo’s arms, I could still hear his rough, earnest voice telling me that I was right about magic: “Things change, the world changes—and it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful, Pan. It’s so beautiful.”
The morning sun shone through gaps in the gazebo curtain walls. There’s not much better than waking early with a lover. The languid sleepiness, murmured affections, low laughter, and teasing giggles—until the murmurs turn more insistent, the laughter huskier.
There was a gasp and a sigh as Leo entered me from behind.
Okay, yeah. Slow, dirty sex in the morning is the one thing better than waking with a lover.
Or maybe I just couldn’t get enough of Leo, who placed his hand over my mouth to muffle my screams so the glampers wouldn’t hear me.
Dames, the way he controlled me in bed was going to be my undoing.
I’d never realized how much I like to be played with until now.
I guess, I’d never trusted anyone this much, not even Gabe.
Our bubble of privacy burst thirty minutes later, when I heard Dad’s triumphal whoop from his garden.
I rolled across Leo to peer through the curtains.
He rolled with me and we lay side by side on our stomachs, watching the ocean waves undulate in the glistening sun.
A flock of birds followed a fishing trawler and the first ferry of the day could be seen approaching from the mainland.
I nuzzled Leo’s face, turning us both toward Dad’s garden. Then I squinted and said, “What the heck?”
“Gnomes are weird,” Leo said.
“Dad is weird,” I said.
Because he was standing in his potato patch, smiling hugely as Jera and a dozen other gnomes dragged a medieval-looking wheeled machine around the periphery of his garden.
More gnomes clambered around the back of the catapult-looking cart, unravelling swathes of fabric that billowed and spread and then sort of froze in place.
“Are they building a garden fence?” Leo asked.
“I don’t think that’s fencing. It looks more like mesh.” I made sure I wasn’t exposed, then yelled, “Dad! What are you doing?”
“Mosquito netting!” he called back, his face alight with happiness. “Jera and these good fellows are wrapping the whole garden in mosquito netting.”
I snorted and told Leo, “His anti-bug wards fell when the manuscript first opened. He’s been complaining ever since.”
“Gnomes are amazing,” Leo said, rolling onto his back.
“And pixies are even better.”
“Pixies are your favorite?”
“Of course pixies are my favorite! What did you expect?” I caught a gleam of mischief in his eyes. “Don’t say brownies! I am nothing like a brownie!”
He suppressed a grin. “No, no. Of course not.”
“Hey! I am not a bumbling doofus who makes silly noises and—”
My stomach rumbled.
Leo laughed at the silly noise, and insisted that I needed fortifying. He wasn’t wrong, so we dressed to return to the Inn for breakfast. As I grabbed our flower crowns, planning to hang them to dry in my bedroom, Leo reached out to open the gazebo curtain.
“Wait,” I said.
He paused.
“I’m not ready for this to end.” I wrapped my arms around his middle, feeling the muscle under the softness of his stomach. I kissed his shoulders, laid my head against him, and closed my eyes. “I always want to feel this way. Happy and content and whole.”
I felt him smile as he turned in my arms to look at me. He smoothed my curls and cradled my face before kissing me tenderly. “I always want to be the person who makes you feel that way. Because that’s who you are for me.”
We kissed some more, which started a slow simmer of passion that would’ve led to sex except for my dad saying “Knock, knock” from just outside.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, as Leo pulled the curtain open.
“When did this get built?” Dad asked.
“Last night,” I said with a fluttery hand. “The gnomes and pixies made it.”
Dad examined the new construction. “I love it. All those cut flowers though, we’ll need to plant some vines. Wisteria maybe for the roof and morning glory for the posts.”
“That sounds nice,” I said.
We left Dad making plans with a few gnomes and crossed the blueberry field to the Inn’s kitchen. To my surprise, we found my mother inside, baking popovers. And even more surprising, they actually smelled good. Sheila or one of her brownies must’ve left the batter for Mom to bake.
“Morning, Pandora, do you—” She stopped when Leo followed me into the kitchen. “Leo! Huh. Good morning!”
“Hey, Grace,” he said.
She gazed at him, and I could see her struggle with the urge to say something horrifying. To my shock, she just smiled. “You two sit, I’ll pour coffee.”
“So Dad’s happy,” I said, as I squeezed beside Leo in the breakfast nook.
“Well, he mind-melds with Jera and the other gnomes,” Mom told me. “Though he was crying over his runes earlier this morning. The signs and portents are kicking his ass.”
“What does that mean?” Leo asked.
“His runes are predicting doom, disaster, worldwide catastrophe.” She bustled to the coffeemaker. “Plus, he’s worried about Philip.”
“What’s up with him?” I asked.
“He’s building the Great Wall of Phil in the woods somewhere. Trying to fence in the poison ivy.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and tapped a few times. “Though your dad keeps saying it’s not poison ivy, it’s some other kind of vine.”
“Deja’s been making ointment for it,” I said. “I’m surprised none of us has come down with a rash.”
Mom propped her phone against a jar of cooking utensils. “Half-and-half for both of you?”
“Yes, please,” Leo said.
“Hi, Grace,” Leo’s dad said from Mom’s phone.
“Leonard!” she said. “Am I on speakerphone?”
“Sounds like,” he told her. “Your voice is kind of hollow and—”
“No, that’s you. You’re on speakerphone. But am I?”
“Well, if I am, then you are, Grace. We’re on the same call.”
“We’re both on the phone, that doesn’t mean…”
As they went back and forth, doing an old person version of “Who’s on First?” with speakerphones, Leo murmured “These are our elders,” and I squeezed his leg under the table.
“I’m here too,” Leora’s voice said, home from visiting her sister. “We’re both here, Grace. Where’s Frank?”
“Fooling around in the garden.” Mom poured herself a coffee. “So! You’ll never guess who just wandered into my kitchen looking like they’ve sealed the deal.”
“Mom!” I snapped, while Leo murmured, “Oh, Dames.”
“Who?” Leora asked. “Is Sheila really having an affair?”
“Ha! No!” Mom laughed. “Pandora and Leo.”
“You’re joking,” Leonard said.
“I am absolutely not. They’re sitting right here, basking in the afterglow.”
“Well, congratulations,” Leonard said on speaker. “It’s about time. We’ve been waiting for this day for ten years.”
“I hate you all,” I groaned.
“Can we change the subject to literally anything else?” Leo asked.
“Of course,” Leora said. “What about grandchildren?”
Then they cackled and hooted until Sheila arrived with a basket of wild thistle and chased Mom out of the kitchen.
I bagged a few popovers with Sheila’s honey butter and we wandered through Dad’s garden. Jera helped us pick gorgeously ripe, sun-warmed cherry tomatoes and sugar snap peas. Then we followed the winding cobbled paths through the berry patches, stuffing our faces with the sweet tastes of summer.
We brought our loot to the boathouse and spent the rest of the morning sailing: just me, Leo, the waves, and the wind. Oh, and Violet, Daffodil, and Bob, who’d tactfully reappeared as we picked strawberries.
Leo stretched out with his head in my lap as we drifted lazily off the far side of the island.
I toyed with his hair and took in the view.
The island’s beauty never grew old, no matter how many times I’d seen it.
Except the woods looked different this year.
I squinted to look closer and Violet and Daffodil both shaded their eyes and made a big production of following my gaze.
“Huh,” I said. “The magic’s even changed the land a little.”
“Hm?” Leo said, gazing up from my lap.
“The woods. They look… wilder.”
Leo propped himself up on his elbow and peered at the new growth.
Bob, who’d been napping in his shirt pocket, poked his blond head out and sulked at the disturbance.
The trees in the woods were dense with shiny new leaves, and the canopy so thick that almost no sunlight trickled to the forest floor.
It had once been a sort of sparse patch of pine trees.
“When did it become a jungle?” Leo asked.
“We don’t know what everyone’s capable of yet, do we?” I turned to the pixies, who were sitting on the bow, shaking their wings dry from the damp salt air. “Do you have magical abilities you haven’t shown us yet?”
They giggled, launched from the boat, and skated across waves toward land. Leo and I shared a smile as the boat rocked and creaked, and we watched the pixies chase shorebirds on the beach as waves splashed against the hull.
I broke the silence with a sudden: “Oh!”
“Mm?”
“That’s the cinnamon-raisin bagel.”
When Leo laughed, crow’s feet appeared at the edges of his eyes. I loved discovering things about him I hadn’t noticed before. Like how he looked at me with such affection that my breath caught.
“Come here, Pan, let me feel your forehead. I think you have sunstroke.”
I kissed him instead, then explained about the brownies’ bagel display at the Inn. “This part of the island was a cinnamon-raisin bagel. The worst kind of bagel and they surrounded it with olives carved into skulls.”
“What kind of person doesn’t like cinnamon-raisin?” he asked.
I recoiled in horror. “Leo! It can’t end like this. After all these years, we’re finally together, only for me to discover you’re actually a Raisin Beast from Planet R.”
“You like when I act like a beast.”
I felt myself blush. “Just don’t bring raisins to bed with us.”
“Not when grapes are so much sexier.”
“Fine,” I smiled. “I declare you faerie-kin again.”