One Good Wand Read online

  “What did she say?” She leaned over my shoulder, gawking as she drank Irish coffee through a straw. Ever since she heard Marie had a penthouse in NYC, she’d been kind of obsessed with the glamor of my old friend’s imagined life. Never mind that she used to call Marie a bad influence for smoking. “What does she mean by that?”

  I considered lying to her, then decided she had asked and she could accept the consequences. “She’s suggesting I cut off his prized possession because that’s the only part Serabella Angelique could possibly enjoy.”

  Her straw made that broken pool drain sound as she emptied her cup. “You obviously haven’t talked to her about that stuff.”

  “Um…no. Why would I do that? We’ve barely said ten sentences to each other since college.”

  “I just mean if you talked to her, she wouldn’t be suggesting he was a stud in bed.”

  Hearing my mom discuss my ex-husband’s sexual prowess, even in hypothetical reference, really weirded me out. Even my stomach gremlin went into hiding. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “What? Don’t look at me like that, Tereza. You’re a beautiful woman. Any man who doesn’t jump into bed with you the moment you ask is clearly not much of a man.”

  “Ew, Mom.”

  “I’m just saying. That can’t be why Serabella is with him. So all those other people saying how, you know, manly he is, they’re wrong. We know the truth, and that’s what’s important.” She squeezed my hand and gave me an encouraging smile.

  I shrugged. “I’m not so sure what the truth is any more. I mean, there he is with his hand on her ass for the whole world to see. He never did that with me. With me, it was all, ‘oh, public displays of affection are the mark of a weak relationship. Let’s not be weak, Tessa.’ But seeing this, I have to think that it was me. That I just wasn’t good e—”

  “Tereza Gabriella!” She took my face in her hands, practically squishing me into a fish face to ensure I was really paying attention. “You are a miraculous woman, beautiful inside and out. Brilliant, creative. You may not have great taste in men, but that’s my fault, not setting a good enough example for you. Never, ever believe you are not good enough for anyone. Ever. Anyone who thinks so doesn’t really see you, and they’re never going to. Do you understand me?”

  Tears welled and fell. My chin quivered. I kept the sob in check but only through extreme effort, and managed to nod my agreement.

  She hugged my head with enough fierceness that I couldn’t breathe for a second, then kissed the top of it just like Ally had kissed Daisy’s, and let me go. “How do chicken kabobs sound for dinner? Extra pineapple?” She dabbed at her cheeks before she hid her face in the refrigerator, digging through food to make sure she had everything for kabobs.

  It took me three tries to get out, “Sounds great, Mom. Thanks.” I sniffled once. “I’ll be downstairs.”

  “Why don’t you leave the computer here?”

  “There’s a job I need to apply for. I won’t look at the other stuff. Promise.”

  “Something good?”

  I shrugged. “Just a cashier at the hardware store.”

  She sighed. “I really think you’re selling yourself short, sweetie. Shoot for the stars, remember?”

  My laugh came out flat and harsh. “I tried that. Turns out I was just the rocket that gets ditched after the capsule reaches atmosphere. Let me know when dinner’s ready.”

  She kept talking until I was out of earshot, and maybe even longer than that. I didn’t listen. Mostly because I was mad at myself for ruining an otherwise beautiful mother-daughter moment. Why did I always do that? And why did she always push just a little too far down the path of peppy naiveté? Her refusal to accept reality grated on my nerves nearly as badly as my brother’s incessant antics had as a teenager.

  I glanced across the basement at Danny’s door - the door that had been his; it was Bob’s mancave now - and actually missed the idiot for a second. But then I remembered that the kid who refused to ever have a serious conversation was now making six figures at a bigwig gaming company in San Francisco. Miss him? Maybe like a model missed a tapeworm.

  Still, thinking about the jerk made me miss other parts of my childhood. Like riding our bikes across the dirt hills to the lake, and the time we helped that old guy reel in the biggest fish I’d ever seen. Or the elderly couple we helped back to the lodge during a tween ski trip with Dad. But that reminded me of another ski trip in my college days, of the cute boy I stopped to help back onto his skis and how warm his hands had been in the falling snow. Of the adorable way he smiled, and how it made my insides hurt. I could barely breathe by the time we said goodbye. And I could barely breathe again when we ran into each other on the bus back to campus. At the time, it felt like fate. Like the universe was putting us together on purpose.

  “Bastard,” I muttered, opening my laptop as I turned to go back to my room. I had every intention of deleting Kyle from all my contacts, and all of Kyle’s contacts from my contacts. There was a solid chance I would even have unfollowed every person who ever made mention of him or Serabella in the future. Except Destiny intervened.

  A giant ball of fur darted between my legs, somehow getting her tail under my feet so that she yelped as I tried to sidestep. I lost my balance, flailed trying to find it again, and landed in a heap on the cold stone tile with which Bob had replaced the familiar soft green carpet. Sharp pain shot through me as my ass stuck the landing, bruising instantly. But the heavy crash of plastic, metal, and electronic components that followed was what really did me in.

  I crawled across the floor and cuddled my laptop to me, whispering, “Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead…”

  It was dead.

  I listened to the terrible ksh-ksh-ksh sound of the hard drive as it attempted - and failed - to boot. Destiny licked up my tears, her breath smelling like Pupperoni and pineapple.

  My mom had found the puppy at a shelter, a purebred English sheepdog who’d already outgrown and outromped her previous owner. The puppy mill that bred her had refused to take her back, and so she became a whiny, howling, needy thing waiting to be loved. All that noise had put off every other potential owner, but my mom had taken one look at the puppy’s black and white face and, “It was destiny!” The dog’s real name was Bluebell, but my mom told that story so often when she introduced her to people that the silly sheepdog wouldn’t answer to anything but Destiny.

  Destiny annoyed the crap out of me.

  My dad believed that “animals are for eating, not for petting!” So we hadn’t ever had pets growing up. Sometimes deer would show up in the yard to pick my mom’s garden clean and I would pretend they were mine; like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, wild animals would be my friends. Except my dad always lined up shots with an imaginary rifle and shouted, “Bang!” That disabused me of my silliness by the time I hit my teens.

  I had no idea what the hell to do with a rambunctious puppy rapidly growing into a small pony, and I had no desire to learn on an animal who hoarded cheese wrappers and whose floaty fur often ended up in my mouth. Having her puppy breath all over my face while I mourned the loss of my constant electronic companion wasn’t exactly the boost I needed, either.

  I shoved her away with a growl. “Go away, you stupid dog!”

  “Problem here?” Bob asked from the doorway to his mancave. He wore a flannel shirt over his v-crew and sweats today. In July. His belly had been stained by salsa at some point in the day. The Coca-Cola stain on his sweats had been there at least three days.

  “Only a dog that won’t get out of my face,” I snapped, shoving at Destiny again.

  “Sounds like more than that,” he said, nodding to the laptop still going ksh-ksh-ksh in my arms. “Want me to take a look?”

  “Uh, no. Thanks, though.” What I really meant was, “Not a chance in hell.” Bob had a special way of fixing things that somehow left them fixed but slightly more broken when he was done.

  “I don’t mind. My lumberjack show ju
st ended.”

  My mom saved me from further pressing by shouting down the stairs, “Bob? Can you start the grill for me?”

  There were two words that Bob loved more than any others. ‘Grill’ was number two. His mouth formed a happy, idiotic grin and there was a cheery hop to his step as he made for the stairs. “Coming, love!” Destiny shot up the stairs, nearly tripping him, too.

  Back in my room, I stared at my poor, dead laptop. Not a whole minute passed before my mom knocked and entered without my invitation. “Bob said your computer broke?”

  “Dead as a doornail,” I said, poking at it as if my touch might somehow revive it like Frankenstein’s monster. “So much for getting a job.”

  “You can use mine.”

  “It’s not just that. My work was on here. All my photos. Everything I was working on.”

  She perked at that. “I didn’t know you were working on something. What is it?”

  “Oh, you know. I’m always working on something,” I said with a shrug, diverting from the question quickly. “But it’s all gone now, thanks to your blind dog and Bob’s weird aversion to carpet.” I didn’t mean to sound like a selfish kid; really, I didn’t. It was just that I suddenly realized that everything I had left of me, everything I might have been able to point at and say, “See? I haven’t completely wasted the last ten years of my life!” It was all gone now. Just like everything else I had ever been proud of.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie. How about we go see a movie tonight, just the two of us? Movies always make you feel better.”

  “I don’t want to see anybody. I just…can’t.”

  She hugged me with one arm. “Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Now you can’t see what people are saying.”

  I buried my face in my arms. “I think that might be worse.”

  “We’ll have kabobs and then see that new movie with the actor you like so much. You’ll feel a lot better.”

  I didn’t want to say it, but I kind of had to. “Mom, actors aren’t exactly my favorite things right now.”

  She gasped softly. “Oh, sweetie! I didn’t even think…”

  “It’s okay. I just…I just want to stay in and read. Maybe go to bed early.” Say, five minutes from now. To hide, not to sleep.

  Her agile fingers combed through my hair. “I understand. But Tessa? I really think you should try to see this as an opportunity.”

  I half-glared at her from my arms. “How is my computer breaking and taking five years of work with it supposed to be an opportunity?”

  “Not just that. All of it. Everything, from the divorce to Kyle’s success to coming back home. It’s an opportunity to start over, guilt-free.”

  She didn’t understand. How could she? My divorce wasn’t like hers. My life hadn’t been like hers. Guilt-free? Some days, it was hard for me to find anything but guilt in me. Saying any of that wouldn’t help my situation, though, so I said the next best thing. “I’ll try. Right now, I just want to sleep.”

  “That’s a good idea. You never do enough of that.” She kissed my head again. “Things will get better. You’ll see.”

  “Honestly, Mom? I think only a fairy godmother would be able to make things better. You didn’t sign me up for one of those when I was a baby, did you?”

  “I would have if I could have. I’ll bring you dinner when it’s ready. Rest now.”

  No matter how much I rested, it never seemed to help. I still woke up to the same catastrophe of a life. My ex was still a Hollywood sensation. My bank account was still empty. My closet was still full of the worn-out jeans and holey shirts that weren’t threadbare enough to have to replace yet. I tried calling Ally once, to see if she wanted to get together. We ended up in an hour-long conversation about Serabella Angelique, her movies, and how she managed to get her hair so fluffy and shiny all the time.

  It was no use. The only way to escape was to sleep. And even then, my dreams were full of Kyle. Kyle, laughing in my face. Kyle, rejecting me. Kyle, telling me I wasn’t feminine enough or sweet enough or sexy enough. The dreams that weren’t about him involved public nudity or shouting matches with my dad.

  And then one morning, I woke up without remembering what I was dreaming. It involved dress shopping…maybe. Or maybe a handsome guy with a sexy smile. No, it had been a long song-and-dance number that I couldn’t remember the words to. Within five minutes of waking, I could have convinced myself I’d slept with Colin Firth while dress shopping for a musical revue. It didn’t really matter. What I dreamt was less important than what I hadn’t. Without the stress of the worst parts of my life piling up while I slept, I actually awoke feeling better. Not like I could climb mountains or sweep a man off his feet or anything, but like maybe I might actually brush my hair and go for a walk.

  “Good morning, sweetheart!” Mom chirped at me when I plodded my way into the kitchen. She had her hands buried in a lump of dough and flour smudged her face. The whole house smelled of cinnamon, among other things. My stomach growled as if it hadn’t been fed in years.

  “Wow, Mom. What’s all this?”

  She patted the cinnamon bread into a perfect ball on the baking sheet and slid it into the oven. “It’s our annual Summer Cinnamon Celebration today. You didn’t forget, did you?”

  Of course I had. For one, it was a social gathering, and social gatherings were anathema to me at the moment. For two… “I don’t think you can call it an annual celebration if it’s the first one.”

  She swatted my hand as I attempted to lick icing from a plate of cinnamon rolls. “I can do whatever I like. It’s my party.” She beamed at me. “Go get dressed and you can help us taste test.”

  “Us?” I was dubious about eating anything Bob might cook up. After all, that coat rack in the hall couldn’t hold more than a single coat without falling over. I had no desire to find out what the culinary equivalent might be. “I was going to go for a walk…”

  The way my mom smiled at me, she clearly thought she was being sneaky when she said, “Oh, that sounds lovely. Getting out of the house is always nice.” It didn’t take much to translate that from momspeak to, “Thank goodness—you’ve been wasting away in your room like an unwashed teenager.”

  “I’ll just change real quick and maybe grab a cinnamon roll?”

  It took me literally eight minutes to throw on my one set of matching active wear and my beat-up sneakers, put my hair in a slightly less messy ponytail, and splash some water on my face to make me look less like I was taking a guest spot on The Walking Dead. It would have taken four except Destiny had hidden one of my sneakers in her cheese corner.

  I hopped up the stairs to find the kitchen filled with smoke and the smoke alarm blaring like the obnoxious life-saver it was intended to be. My mom’s calm-if-irritating cheerfulness had been replaced with a wide-eyed look of panic and surprise. Bob was nowhere to be seen.

  “Mom, what—”

  The door thudded on the frame behind Bob as he entered, extending a paper plate to me with a lone hamburger patty in the middle. His hairy, scrawny legs stuck out from the bottom of his button-up shirt, only half the buttons of which were actually buttoned up. “Hey, kiddo. Try a cinnamon patty, huh? What is going on in here, Dorothea?”

  “Oh, you know,” Mom answered, breathless. “Just a little bread mishap.” She dislodged the smoke alarm and tried chucking it out the door, but her hand was shaking so she hit the doorframe and dropped the alarm on the floor.

  Bob ignored her and waved the plate at me again. “Try it, Tessa! It’s taken me three weeks to get the cinnamon rub just right.”

  When Mom bent over to grab the smoke detector, her shirt shifted, revealing a pair of cinnamon-colored handprints across her butt. I redirected my attention to the cinnamon rolls on the counter immediately, but one second was all it took to burn the image on my brain. “I bet it did,” I muttered, scooping a roll onto a paper towel and heading for the front door a second later. “See you in a bit.” I waved the roll in farewell.

>   “Tessa!” Mom called after me. “Grab some more cinnamon at the store, please? My purse is by the door.”

  I wanted to be a grown-up and pay for it myself, but my bank account was still empty. Feeling more and more like an awkward, mortified teenager, I grabbed a twenty from my mom’s purse and literally ran out of the house.

  Chapter 3

  The walk to town would have been just what I needed, had I not interrupted Bob making out with my mom. As it was, the image of those hand prints on her white jeans kept resurfacing in my mind. When it became animated, the fingers bending to squeeze with a life of their own, I let out a loud growl of frustration that echoed among the tall pines lining the road. Birds took to wing, deer crashed away, and one really annoyed squirrel came out on its branch to chatter at me angrily. Snow White? Not here!

  Despite having a strict no-exercise-before-lunch policy, after the third car drove by with a pitying wave for me, I picked up the pace. Jogging. Before lunch! How had my life come to this?

  I slowed down when the buildings of Main Street loomed ahead. The cashiers and owners and random townsfolk would expect me to stand and gab for a minute or two, and I couldn’t do that all out of breath and red-faced. The heat of midsummer was already blooming, shoving away the coolness of woodland and night-sprinkler dew. Two groups of kids raced by on bicycles, unhindered by time or responsibility. I envied them. This whole growing up thing really sucked.

  Figuring I should get the shopping out of the way as fast as possible, I headed to the little grocery store off of Evergreen Lane. It wasn’t practically empty like I expected. Almost every aisle contained at least two people, most of them toting kids. I grabbed a giant tub of cinnamon and headed for check-out with my eyes on the clean linoleum so I could pretend I didn’t know any of the shoppers. For the most part, I didn’t. But here and there, I knew there lurked an old school acquaintance or a friend of my parents. Our town wasn’t big enough for me to escape them completely.

  I didn’t figure on the cluster of gossips hanging out near the registers. Three women and two men, most of them my age, all with their heads bent over the same magazine. “Look!” one of the women exclaimed. “There it is!”