Chapter Thirteen #2
“She’ll get it,” I cut in. I’d already heard her whole I used to be a litigator diatribe twice this morning, I didn’t need to hear it a third time. “You will,” I said to her, not unkindly. “I’m sure it’s different, talking as yourself to a jury instead of in character as the Queen.”
She nodded thoughtfully as she took a long drink of water. “The outfit too,” she said. “I think that may be part of it. Lawyering is more pantsuits and less corsets and crowns.”
It’s not a corset, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue.
Simon really was a bad influence on me. I knew what she meant.
Emily had said once that there was something about the costumes we wore as cast at the Faire.
That it was more than a character, that it was becoming someone completely different than you were in real life.
Lulu had done renaissance faire stuff before, but none of it was character work. She was out of her element.
But she was up for the challenge. “Okay.” She slapped a hand on her knee in finality and got to her feet. “Let’s try again.”
“You got it.” But instead of going inside we moved to the other side of the deck, taking seats at the table beneath the giant umbrella. It did nothing for the heat, but at least it kept the sun from burning us alive.
“Let’s just run the words,” I suggested as I got my phone out again. “No acting, no character. Just recite.”
Lulu nodded. “Good people. It does my heart a world of good to greet you on this day…” Her voice was deadpan, spitting out memorized words, while I followed along on my phone, nodding, not stopping her this time even though she tripped up twice.
“Okay, that was better,” I said. “It’s ‘I bid you to leave your cares behind’ instead of just ‘leave your cares behind.’ And when you savor the sweet things in life, it should be ‘be it music, food, drink, or the words of the Bard himself.’ ”
She blinked. “Didn’t I say that?”
“Almost,” I said. “You forgot music.”
“You forgot music?” Dex’s voice from across the deck was scandalized.
“Oh, shut up,” she called back with a grin. “I’m very stressed out here.” She rolled her head around her neck and shook out her arms, loosening up like a boxer about to go into the ring. “Okay, again. Good people…”
She had it down on this next try, and while she took a break for more water I let my attention wander to the musical side of the deck.
Alex picked out a melody and Dex repeated it, each time improving a little on the notes.
They traded chords back and forth, humming to each other, communicating via music instead of words.
Every so often Alex reached for a spiral-bound notebook at his elbow, taking a pencil from behind his ear and scribbling something down.
I wondered what song or sonnet or whatever he’d decided on.
Neither of them sang any lyrics while they were working; any vocalizing was in the form of nonsense syllables.
The thought came to me with a jolt: they didn’t need to be here.
Up until now, Backyard Ren Faire had been a matter of convenience and needing space.
We had a big backyard, and Mitch was one of the people in charge of the chess match.
So it had been the perfect spot to rehearse the changes to the chess match choreography.
But today was just Lulu and me going over lines, and Dex and Alex messing around on their guitars.
Neither of those things required our backyard.
Lulu could have come over, and Dex and Alex could have been…
well, anywhere. But it felt natural for us all to be here together.
The music and words of Shakespeare, stuff that the Queen talked about in her speech, felt right here.
All of this felt right, being back in my life.
Like a void in my soul that I didn’t even know was there had been filled again.
This time, the reminder that it was all temporary, that I was temporary, was a sweet sting to the heart.
“Hey, guys.” A voice cut through my ruminating, and we all turned. The French doors to the kitchen stood open, and Mitch had joined us on the back deck.
Dex let out a cheer, and across the table from me Lulu clapped. Because Mitch was back in costume. No shirt, of course, and in his kilt, boots on his feet.
Wait, what?
“What are you doing?” I rose from my chair.
“You can’t…” Then I looked closer. He wore his regular boot, the leather one that went most of the way up his calf, buttons the size of silver dollars running up the side, on his uninjured foot.
The boot on the other foot was bulkier, and now that I looked more closely I could see that they didn’t match.
They were both black, both stopped a couple inches below the knee, but he was still wearing his walking boot with something over it.
“What the hell is that?” I asked. And wow, genetics were wild, because I sounded alarmingly like my mother. Mitch must bring it out of the both of us.
“I got it online. Isn’t it great?” He did a slow twirl, showing off, even though his audience consisted of his cousin, his ersatz stepdaughter, and a couple of straight men.
So not really his target audience. “It’s a gaiter.
It’s supposed to be for shoes, you know, to make your shoes look like boots. But it fits over the walking boot.”
“It does.” I looked at it now with a critical eye. It really did look like a boot at first glance, but was that good enough? Simon was a stickler for authenticity, and while I wasn’t an expert, I was pretty sure that they didn’t have zip-up gaiters with Velcro in the seventeenth century.
“Looks great from over here,” Dex said with a shrug.
Mitch clapped his hands together with excitement. “I’m back, baby!” he crowed.
“Does that mean I’m out of a job?” Alex asked.
“Okay, I’m not that back,” Mitch said. “You’re still in for the chess match. But I figure this way I can at least be there. Walk around for a little bit, you know? Swing the sword around.”
Dex snorted. “Is that a euphemism?”
Mitch shot finger-guns at Dex before pulling out one of the chairs at our table, dropping into it. “Last weekend just about killed me. I haven’t missed a Faire weekend in…” He trailed off. “I’ve never missed a Faire weekend.”
“I know.” I nodded solemnly, but I pressed my lips together hard.
It had been a constant refrain around the house, to the point that Mom threatened to hide his kilt, in case he tried to put it on and limp his way to Faire behind her back.
But he’d behaved; if there was one thing Mitch was serious about, it was taking care of his body. He wasn’t going to rush healing.
But this gaiter-over-the-walking-boot thing was a loophole I hadn’t seen coming. I squinted at him. “And Mom’s okay with this?”
“She will be.” He dropped into his faux Scottish brogue. “Ah can be verrreh persuasive.”
I closed my eyes. “Gross. And what about Simon?”
“What are you, a cop?” He reached out, shoving my shoulder lightly, and I rocked to the side, pretending he’d knocked me over. “As far as Simon goes…” A wicked glint came into his blue eyes, as mischievous as a child. “What is it they say? Better to ask forgiveness than permission?”
“Hey.” I held up my hands. “I’m not in charge. I didn’t see a thing.” I wasn’t a cop, but I wasn’t a narc, either.
“That’s my girl,” he said lightly. It was something he said a lot, both to me and Mom, and it shouldn’t light me up inside the way that it did.
Chalk it up to never having a dad, but now that Mitch was around, even though it had happened when I was out the door and off to college, it was nice having a male presence in my life. In both of our lives.
“Speaking of April…” Lulu levered herself to her feet. “She said it was okay if Dex and I took over the guest room on Friday, and stayed for the weekend. This Queen is gonna need a decent night’s sleep.”
“Yes!” Dex pumped his fist. “I knew there’d be some perks to being with the Queen.” He followed her lead, setting his guitar aside and getting to his feet. He looked down at Alex and extended an arm. “Good playing, Alex. I really think you’ve got something there.”
Alex accepted the fist bump with a smile. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
I glanced at my phone. “I need to get going too. Emily’s expecting me at the bookstore.”
“What the hell?” Mitch put his hands on his hips. “Usually people like me in this outfit, and now everyone’s leaving?”
“I think you look great,” Alex said, but Mitch waved him off.
“You don’t count.”
You count. The thought popped into my head unbidden. You count to me. But it sure as hell wasn’t something I was going to say in front of everyone. Or maybe ever.
As Lulu and Dex headed for the front door, she and I made plans for one last quick rehearsal the next day. She promised to have the speech down, and I mostly believed her.
Alex lingered by the front door while I got my stuff, and we walked out to the driveway.
“You wanna get together later, maybe?”
It was a casual ask, so I made my shrug casual to match. “My number hasn’t changed, if you still have it.”
A confused frown furrowed his brow as he got out his phone. A few taps and the frown cleared, giving way to a surprised laugh. “Damn. Here it is.” He waved his phone in illustration. “Call you later?”
I nodded as I clicked the button to unlock my car.
“I get off at six.” If Mitch were around that would have gotten a great that’s what she said, so it was for the best that he was inside.
Instead I answered Alex’s wave with one of my own as I pulled out of the driveway and navigated down the street.
—
Mitch’s “very persuasive” plan to convince Mom to let him do Faire this weekend was simple: date night. Luckily, Mom had simple tastes, and it was easy to talk her into a nice dinner out and a movie when she got home from work.