Nate’s somewhat alarmed gaze swung to pictures of Lily, pictures he’d never, at a glance, recognise were Lily if he hadn’t looked closely enough to see her remarkable blue eyes, or, in some of the photos, her quirky smile.
Stunned by the pictures of the chubby, plain (but not entirely unattractive, not with those eyes or that smile) girl that was his Lily, Nate listened further without interruption to Fazire telling him about Lily’s obsession for romance novels. About the children being cruel to her at school (this, Nate had no trouble believing, even though everything else Fazire was saying had to be the ravings of a functioning madman), about the boy she had a crush on insulting her and breaking her fourteen year old heart.
Then Fazire told Nate of her wish, her wish for him, her wish for a romantic hero who would love her more than anything on earth and think she was beautiful.
When he was done speaking, Nate was staring at him.
“You’re mad,” Nate whispered, wondering if perhaps he should call a doctor, now.
Fazire looked at Victor and Victor nodded.
Then Fazire snapped his fingers and Nate heard a tinkling of glass. His gaze swung to the broken shards on the floor and he saw them jump around then, in the blink of an eye, disappear along with the blood and vodka stains.
Slowly, Nate stood. “What the hell?” he muttered.
“I’m a genie,” Fazire announced.
Nate’s gaze swung to and narrowed on Fazire.
“You’ve been caring for my daughter,” Nate stated in a voice so controlled, it had a lethal edge.
“I wouldn’t hurt Tash. I created her mother for goodness sake,” Fazire blustered but Nate was having none of it.
He’d had enough of this strange man and he wasn’t going to have some bizarre magician claiming himself to be a genie living with Lily and Tash. He knew from Lily mentioning on several occasions her “wish” that Fazire had convinced her, too, that he was a genie.
Nate glared at him.
“Get out,” he demanded knowing in that moment if Fazire didn’t get out, Nate would bodily eject him from his life and his family’s, “right now.”
Fazire snapped again and the room was filled with a voice, a voice that was achingly familiar. Lily’s voice but young, her voice that of a girl turning into a woman.
“Fazire, I wish one day to find a man like in my books. He has to be just like in one of my books. And he has to love me, love me more than anything in the world. Most important of all, he has to think I’m beautiful.”
Nate froze at the disembodied words that seemed to dance through the air. There were no tape recorder and no speakers, the words just hung in the air, coming from nothing, nowhere but they were all around them.
“He has to be tall, very tall and dark, and broad-shouldered, and narrow-hipped.”
Nate’s fingers curled into fists and he ignored the pain in his injured hand as he heard the words Lily spoke to him just weeks ago, smiling, teasing, telling him he was her “narrow-hipped” romantic hero who could “lean well”.
“And he has to be handsome, unbelievably handsome, impossibly handsome with a strong, square jaw and powerful cheekbones and tanned skin and beautiful eyes with lush, thick lashes. He has to be clever and very wealthy but hard-working. He has to be virile, fierce, ruthless and rugged.”
“Stop it,” Nate demanded on the word “rugged” and Lily’s sweet voice saying the same word she called him weeks ago but saying it years ago, in a wish.
The voice relentlessly went on.
“And he has to be hard and cold and maybe a little bit forbidding, a little bit bad with a broken heart I have to mend or one encased in ice I have to melt or better yet, both!”
Nate closed his eyes at the hope in her voice but wished instead he could stop his ears from hearing.
“We have to go through some trials and tribulations. Something to test our love, make it strong and worthy. And… and… he has to be daring and very masculine. Powerful. People must respect him, maybe even fear him. Graceful too and lithe, like a… like a cat! Or a lion. Or something like that. And he has to be a good lover. The best, so good he could almost make love to me just by using his eyes.”
At that, Nate opened his eyes and laughed, this time without bitterness.
He threw himself back on the settee and listened to a young Lily describing her deepest desire, her most heartfelt wish.
Him.
“Is that it?” Nate heard Fazire’s voice ask. “Are you sure you want this to be your wish?” There was hesitation then Fazire went on. “Very well.”
Lily’s voice cut in. “Don’t forget that part about him loving me more than anything on earth.”
Her words and their fervent tone tore through Nate’s gut.
“And!” Nate heard her burst out in desperation. “The part about him thinking I’m beautiful.”
“Lily, you will be beautiful, you already are.” Nate heard Fazire’s disembodied voice assured her, his eyes cut to the strange man and for the first time he looked at him with unguarded respect.
“Just, don’t forget those parts, they’re the most important,” Lily reminded her genie, her voice shaky and, Nate thought, terribly, unforgettably sad.
“I won’t forget any of it.” Nate heard Fazire promise his beloved fourteen year old girl, a girl he’d followed through her trials and tribulations, a girl whose side he never left. “Lily, my lovely, your wish is my command.”
Then the room was filled with the sound of a snap and then it went quiet.
Everyone sat in stunned silence.
Victor, even though still pale, was grinning at Nate.
Nate’s eyes moved to Fazire who, he should not at that point have been surprised but he was, Nate saw was floating and wearing a ridiculous outfit the colours of turquoise and grape, including a fez and curly-toed shoes.
Fazire was looking down his nose at Nate. “Nathaniel, I am very good at my wishes and if you don’t do something and soon, I’ll lose the Wish of the Century award,” he declared.
“It’s nowhere near the end of the century, Fazire,” Victor explained.
“Time flies when you’re immortal,” Fazire shot back. “Competition is heating up, just yesterday –”
Nate didn’t let him finish. He didn’t have time to process the fact that Lily had her own personal genie. He just looked up at the man floating, cross-legged, in mid-air (something, Nate noted, his father didn’t seem at all surprised about).
“Fazire,” Nate cut in and when he had Fazire’s attention, he said simply, “Tash.”
Fazire nodded. “Of course.”
Then Nate grabbed his car keys and with long strides and without a look back, he walked out the door.
* * * * *
Nate opened the front door to Lily’s house, his house, their home.
It was late but not late enough for the hen night festivities to be over but he heard, standing in the entry vestibule, no laughing voices, no tinkling glasses, no music and no merriment.
This did not surprise him.
A week ago he’d set himself the task of forcing Lily to fall out of love with him so when she found out about who he was she would not be destroyed.
At the silence of the house and Lily’s recent behaviour he worried that he had, as usual, succeeded swiftly and soundly in his aim.
He opened the stained glass inner door and stopped dead.
Laura, wearing a dove grey satin dressing gown, her face free of makeup, her hair pulled back, was sitting on the stairs waiting for him.
Mother and son held each other’s eyes for long moments then Laura got to her feet and came forward.
She lifted her hand to Nate’s cheek and said softly, “I knew you’d come.”
At her quiet assurance that she knew innately he would do the right thing, that she believed in him and Nate realised always had, Nate’s arms went around her. Laura rested her cheek against his chest.
Finally she tilted her head back to look at
him. “Lily’s upstairs. We decided to have an early night.”
Nate nodded and they disengaged. Then he took his mother’s elbow and escorted her to the door of the guest room where he kissed her cheek and watched her enter. When she closed the door he turned with purpose to his and Lily’s bedroom.
The door was closed and when he opened it the room was dark, the curtains drawn and he could see Lily’s sleeping form in the bed. He walked to the side and stared down, noticing in the dim light she was curled around his pillow, hugging it close to her.
Quietly, he took off his clothes, dropping them to the floor and pulled back the bedsheets. He slid into bed carefully and pulled away the pillow, righting it behind his head and positioning his body in its place. Unfortunately, before he had completed this task, she woke.
“Nate?” she murmured, her voice husky with sleep.
His arm went around her quickly holding her tight against his body and he reached out and turned on the light.
She lifted up with her hand on his chest and blinked at him as his other arm closed around her, bringing her body over him so she was lying mostly on top of him.
“What is it?” she asked, still blinking but her face was clearing. “Is it Tash?”
“Tash is fine,” Nate assured her quietly.
Lily stared at him then her eyes dropped to the clock at the bedside table then they came back to him and he saw, in that short time, she’d put her shields up. She looked wary and she tried to push away.
His arms got tighter.
“What’s going on?” Lily asked.
“Do you know,” Nate began conversationally, having mentally rehearsed his words in the car, doing this in order to shove away the thoughts and memories that had been pelting his brain viciously for the past week, “until Laura and Victor adopted me, I didn’t know my birthdate?”
Lily’s body stilled and she stopped trying to pull away.
“I’m sorry?” she queried, her face melting from annoyed and watchful to confused.
Confused, Nate thought, was good. Nate could work with confused.
So he went on. “I didn’t know my birthdate until Laura and Victor adopted me and told me. It’s the fourteenth of September.”
Her head jerked at this news but she recovered swiftly and bit her lip then released it.
“How could you…” Her eyes shifted away and he could tell she was trying to decide how to respond. Curiosity, he was pleased and hopeful to see, won. Confused was good, curious was much, much better. She continued. “Not know your birthday?”
“My mother never told me,” Nate answered matter-of-factly.
Lily’s eyes grew wide with shock, wary and guarded gone. She was staring at him with undisguised disbelief.
“Why on earth wouldn’t your mother tell you?” Lily was holding her body still, tense and he sensed she was unsure how to react to his unprecedented sharing.
He wasn’t surprised. He’d been behaving erratically, pushing her away and pulling her close, holding her at arm’s length and then demanding her attention, yelling at her when she bought him presents, keeping himself from her and then, finally, brutally showing her who he was.
Or who he thought he was.
And he hadn’t just been doing this for the last two months; he’d been doing it since they met.
“I never asked,” Nate replied, quelling his thoughts to focus on the very important matter at hand. “She probably didn’t remember considering most of the time she was drunk and when she wasn’t drunk, she was high or, more often than not, both.”
He watched as she closed and opened her eyes slowly as if this was beyond her comprehension.
“High?” Lily whispered.
“She was a drug-addict, Lily,” Nate responded softly then before she could react or put her shields back in place, he continued. “Her name was Deirdre.”
At more news of his life, his history, coming forth, Lily’s eyes grew soft and before she could control it, she said with a horrified reverence, as if he’d just shown her the fountain of youth and it was flowing with blood, “Deirdre.”
Nate saw his opening and without delay he relentlessly pressed through. “Until I went to school, I didn’t know you washed your clothes.” He heard Lily’s swift intake of breath and was heartened by the fact she wasn’t hiding her reactions. He talked over her gasp. “The teachers reported me to Social Services and they came to visit my mother. She put on a show for them and from then on she made me take our clothes to the Laundromat so they wouldn’t come back. Until I moved in with Victor and Laura though, I never knew you were supposed to clean your sheets.”
He felt as her still body grew rock solid in horror.
Then she whispered, her voice shaky, “Your mother made you wash your clothes?”
He kept pressing through, sensing he was gaining an edge, knowing Lily had a kind heart and, after all, she’d wished for him, he took advantage but ignored her question. “I stole food. I had to or I wouldn’t eat. I had milk and cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I didn’t know any better,” he told her then smiled, “and lots of candy. Candy was easy to steal, it fit in your pockets.”
Lily did not smile and clearly found nothing Nate was saying amusing. She swallowed, not pushing away, not holding herself from him, he felt her melting into his body but she did not speak. She simply stared at him, her eyes unguarded, lips slightly parted, face soft.
That’s when Nate decided it was time to let her know all of it.
“When I was eleven, I went to work for one of Deirdre’s lovers. She had a lot of them and I learned early, because she didn’t hide it, what having a lover meant in the physical sense.” Nate watched Lily again bite her lip at this news but didn’t hesitate and carried on. “I stole from her lovers too. Sometimes they’d catch me, which wasn’t good, so I learned to avoid them, to be invisible or fast enough to escape them. If I didn’t, they’d beat me. Sometimes, they’d beat Deirdre and I’d try to stop them so they’d turn their attention to me. Deirdre never tried to stop them.”
“Didn’t try to stop –” Lily repeated but Nate talked over her.
“Scott, one of Deirdre’s lovers, put me to work making deliveries and doing pickups. I don’t know what I moved but I didn’t care. He gave me money and we never had any money. In the end Scott went away and I took a job direct with his boss. His boss wasn’t a good man, he was a dangerous man but he paid me more money than I’d ever seen before. I was good at it –”
“Stop,” Lily whispered and her voice and eyes were tortured.
“You have to know,” Nate returned quietly. He hated to see the look in her eyes but he believed with everything he was that he was correct, she had to know.
“I don’t have to know,” she repeated, contradicting his belief, her voice growing stronger.
“I was a criminal,” Nate told her bluntly. “Since I could remember, I stole, I –”
Suddenly and forcefully she pulled free of him but not to escape. She sat up and glared at him.
“You were not a criminal!” she snapped.
Nate followed her up. “I was, Lily. I worked for a gangster. Whatever was in those packages –”
“You were eleven years old, for crying out loud!” she yelled and he knew she was agitated. He knew this because she was being loud even though Laura was in the house and Maxine was also spending the night. She was also shifting in the bed with intent and before she could jump up and start pacing, he captured her in his arm. He pushed her to her back and rolled over her with his body.
Then he went on. He needed to say it all, get it out so she could make her decision.
“It doesn’t change what I did, who I was and that person is the father of your child and tomorrow, if you don’t back out, he’ll be your husband.”
Lily glared at him. “Are you a gangster now?”
Nate shook his head but responded, “Lily, there’s more you need to know.”
“Have you had a birthday party?” s
he asked, suddenly switching the subject what Nate thought was nonsensically and he stared at her, thrown for a moment, before replying.
“Lily, we’re talking about me being –”
“Have you ever had a birthday party?” she interrupted him, squirming underneath him to get away.
“What does it matter?” he asked, pressing into her to keep her where she was.
“It matters!” she shouted and stopped wriggling in order to scowl at him.
“Why?”
“I…” she snapped, “I don’t know why, it just does. Have you ever had one?”
“I never wanted one,” he replied.
“Well, you’re getting one this year,” she declared on a huff. “I cannot believe you’ve never had a birthday party. What’s your favourite kind of cake?” she fired off her question, eyes narrowed.
“Lily, I need to tell you the rest.”
“Nate, I don’t care about the rest. What kind of cake is your favourite?”
Nate stopped talking and stared at his bride-to-be.
He was telling her things of grave importance, things she needed to know before she legally bound herself to him. He was telling her things he’d never told anyone, not even Laura though he knew that Victor knew and guessed he’d told Laura, it was likely that Victor told Laura everything.
But Nate was telling Lily things he’d hidden from everyone, all his hideous secrets, and Lily was talking about cake.
“I don’t have a favourite cake,” Nate responded.
“Everyone has a favourite cake, Nate,” Lily informed him.
“Cake is cake,” Nate shot back, impatient to get back to the subject.
“Cake is not cake. There’s angel food cake and Victoria sponge. There’s coffee cake. There’s streusel cake. There’s cheesecake. Don’t even get me started on chocolate cake. There has to be hundreds of different kinds of chocolate cake.” She hesitated and Nate, thinking she was finished with her bizarre litany of cakes, opened his mouth to speak but then she went on. “German chocolate, devil’s food, chocolate sheet cake, chocolate mocha cake –”