“Sure I do.” He sounded calm but I could tell his gentle tone took effort.
“What do they look like then?”
“Well, the ones I know are blonde. They’re very pretty but really crazy. That’s why you can’t hang out with them for very long. If you do, they start to make you crazy too.”
I couldn’t be sure if it was the fairy-tale voice or the silly story that made both girls giggle. Either way, it was a good result.
“Can you call them on the phone?” asked Malibu.
“I guess I could, but you wouldn’t understand them. They speak in a different language.”
“Call them now!” demanded Malibu, abandoning her calm demeanour in a flash.
“Yes, do it!” agreed Fabergé excitedly. “Ask them about this flower.” She twisted the flower bead on her bracelet. “They can tell us what it means.” The little girl turned to her mother. “What sort of flower is this, Mom?”
“It’s a sunflower,” replied Ivy.
“Do it!” chanted Malibu, smashing her fork on the table. “Do it! Do it! Do it!”
In a move that surprised me, Ryan rose to the challenge. He took his phone out of his pocket, dialled a number, and set it on the table.
19. CROWD PLEASER
Ryan
I wasn’t sure how this was going to play out, but I was determined to convince the precocious little monsters that I had fairy connections.
I spoke as soon as Charli picked up, giving her no chance to blow my charade. “Speak French,” I demanded in the language she barely understood. “You’re on speaker.”
“D’accord,” she replied, making me cringe.
Charli’s pronunciation was dreadful. She didn’t sound French at all. She sounded like an Australian trying to speak French while chewing a wad of gum.
“What do sunflowers mean?”
Despite the fact that I’d spoken slowly and dumbed it down for her, she didn’t understand the question.
There was no point persevering with her, so I slowed my speech even further and asked her to put Adam on the phone with one simple word. “Mari.”
The little girls leaned over the phone while Charli’s rambling, unnecessary reply played out. Both looked awed, but they had no clue what was being said. I wasn’t sure I did either. She’d thrown in a few words that were neither French nor English.
Finally Adam took over and I explained the situation as best I could. “I need to know the meaning of sunflowers. Just ask the chief fairy and translate.”
“We’re in the middle of dinner,” he complained.
“So am I – with Bente’s nieces.” Bente looked across at the mention of her name. “If I can’t deliver a fairy story, they’re going to attack and eat me. Mom will never forgive you.”
“Such a romantic language,” breathed Ivy, blissfully unaware that I’d just compared her daughters to wild animals.
“Mom will recover,” stated my brother. “I’ve always been her favourite anyway.”
The introduction of Adam’s voice seemed to confuse Malibu. “Is he a man fairy?” she asked, speaking straight into the phone.
“No,” I replied. “He’s an ugly troll. He helps with fairy business, but he’s the ugliest and dumbest creature you can imagine. He never even leaves his house because he’s so gross.”
Everyone at the table cackled. Adam was unamused. The slew of insults he hit me with were unrepeatable in any language.
The background conversation was muffled, presumably because he had the sense to cover the phone while he asked Charli about sunflowers. After what seemed an eternity, he returned.
“It’s not a short story,” he warned.
“They never are,” I replied. “Just tell me.”
The story Adam told was epic, but he was relaying it truthfully. There was no way he possessed the talent needed to make it up. I thanked him, asked him to thank Tinker Bell, and ended the call.
“Well?” demanded Fabergé.
I leaned back in my chair. “Sunflowers represent adoration,” I announced. Both little girls stared blankly at me and I knew I’d lost them already. “Once upon a time there was a water nymph called Clytie.” Neither Charli nor Bridget ever began a story with ‘once upon a time’. I felt like a fraud, but battled on. “She was Greek.”
Fabergé leaned close to her sister. “That means she was from a land called Greece,” she whispered knowingly. Animal nodded as if she was keeping up, but I knew differently.
“She was in love with a man called Helios, but he didn’t love her at all,” I continued. “He loved someone else.”
Fabergé pouted. “Big meanie.”
“He was,” I agreed. “But Clytie didn’t give up. She tried and tried to make him love her.”
“Did it work?” asked Ivy, showing the same inexplicable interest that most people did when hearing Charli’s La La stories.
“No, he ended up leaving town to get away from her,” I told her. “He rode off in his chariot, following the course of the sun.”
I’d reached the make or break part of the fable. Most fairy stories involve some level of tragedy. Clytie’s was no exception. How the Denisons would cope with that remained to be seen. “She missed him so much that she stripped herself naked and sat on a big rock for nine long days,” I said gravely. “She had no food and no water. She stared at the sun the whole time, watching Helios as he travelled through the sky, hoping he’d come back to her.” I took it up a notch by adopting a dire expression and a tone to match. “But he never did.”
“Did she die?” Fabergé’s voice sounded shaky. I hoped she wasn’t about to cry and undo all my good work.
“Yeah, did she die?” Nothing about Animal’s tone sounded shaky. If anything, she sounded excited by the prospect.
“No. Late on the ninth day, she transformed into a beautiful sunflower. She couldn’t speak and she couldn’t cry any more, but she could still turn towards the sun,” I explained. “So when you see big sunflowers in the garden, you’ll notice that they always look at the sun. And now you know why. It’s Clytie, watching Helios as he travels through the sky.”
There was total silence. The Denison women sat and stared at me. It was Ivy who finally spoke first. “That’s the most beautiful story I’ve ever heard.”
Bridget had told me better ones, but I wasn’t about to regale them with more and keep the nonsense going.
Fabergé twisted the bracelet on her wrist. “I’m never taking this off,” she pledged.
“I want one!” demanded Malibu.
“Shut up,” hissed her sister. “I’ll make you one if you shut up.”
“Both of you shut up,” demanded Ivy. “Eat your dinner.”
Fabergé dropped her eyes to her plate. “I don’t like this hotdog,” she complained. “It’s got grass in it.”
“Well what do you expect?” snapped Ivy. “You chose the vegetarian option.”
20. PLAYTHINGS
Bente
At first the plan of moving in together seemed grandiose and crazy. But things somehow worked out. Ryan charmed his way into my family’s good graces and a truce was called. Ivy still thought living with him was a stupid idea, but she let me go unchallenged. She’d even helped me pack.
Ryan arranged a courier to collect my stuff and deliver it to his apartment. Colin, the delivery guy, struck me as kind of odd but Charli assured me he’d been moving things for them for years. Despite this, I stopped short of letting him unpack my boxes for me. “Thanks, Colin.” I wrenched a small box from his grasp. “I can handle it from here.”
He flashed me a smile that matched his creepy face. “No problem, ma’am,” he replied. “When you’re ready to move it all out again, give me a call.”
He made it sound like a given. Clearly this wasn’t his first Décarie rodeo.
Once he’d gone, I glanced around the usually pin-neat living room. The only furniture I’d brought were two chairs and a dresser, but the boxes alone would cause Ryan immeasurable
pain. Thankfully he wasn’t here to see it; he’d already left for work by the time Colin showed up.
By late afternoon I was exhausted. All I wanted was a shower, but I was interrupted by a knock at the door. I scraped my messy hair into an even messier ponytail and answered it.
A trashy but impeccably styled blonde was working her best angle by leaning with one arm raised against the doorjamb. As soon as she realised I wasn’t the intended recipient of her pole dancer impersonation, she straightened up.
I had no clue who she was and I wasn’t about to ask. Blondie, on the other hand, had a burning question. “Who are you?” She looked me up and down, scowling as if I was something she’d just scraped off the sole of her Manolo Blahnik heels.
“I’m nobody,” I said sweetly. “Who are you looking for?”
She craned her neck to look past me. “Ryan. Where is he?”
“He’s busy.”
She smirked as if she still had the upper hand. “I’ll come back later then.”
“He’ll be busy then too.”
I wasn’t sure that she was capable of reading between the lines. She didn’t strike me as the literary type.
“Are you his girlfriend?” she asked, proving otherwise.
“Yes.”
“Ryan doesn’t do girlfriends.” She spoke as if she truly felt sorry for me.
I felt sorry for me too. Something told me that fending off playthings at the door was an ordeal I’d probably have to endure for a while.
“You’ve been misinformed. He does do girlfriends, he just doesn’t do you,” I replied, shutting the door in her face. “Thanks for coming.” I raised my voice to compensate for the thick wood between us. “I won’t tell him you stopped by.” I turned around and leaned against the door as if there was a chance she might bust her way back in. I then took a long moment to think things through.
I wasn’t upset with Ryan and I wasn’t hurt. We both had a past. The difference was, mine could’ve been written on a postage stamp and his was an epic twelve-book saga. Dealing with it was going to be a big learning curve. The lesson for that day: never answer the door wearing a coffee-stained T-shirt and sweat pants.
***
When Ryan arrived home I looked much more presentable, which was good because he looked his usual perfect self, despite the fact he was wearing a suit on such a warm day.
“Hey.” He quickly kissed me and shrugged off his jacket. “How did the move go?”
“Good, I think.”
Ryan walked to the centre of the living room, loosening his tie while he surveyed for damage. I knew the six boxes still on the floor would be traumatic for him. He did well not to mention them, but I explained anyway. “I have a lot of books, Ry. I’m not sure where to put them.”
“We’ll work it out.”
“I can put them in the spare room.” He didn’t reply. “Or I can send them back to Ivy’s.”
With a shake of his head, he turned around and pulled me into his arms. “No, don’t do that. We’ll get some bookshelves or something.”
I arched my back to look at him. “Are you okay?”
His hands moved from my hips to my face, holding me in place while he kissed me. “I am so good right now, Bente. You have no idea.”
It probably wasn’t the best time to mention his visitor from earlier but I found myself doing it anyway. “Are there likely to be more callers like that?”
Ryan completely dropped his hold on me and stepped away. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea she was coming.”
“Who was she?”
He chewed his bottom lip. “What did she look like?” he asked finally.
I fell onto the couch in a heap. “You have no idea who she was, do you? There are probably ten possibilities.”
“Are you mad?”
I really wasn’t, but proving it was going to be next to impossible. Tact went out the window as ire set in. “How did she get upstairs?” I grumbled. “I never buzzed her in.”
Ryan stopped chewing his lip and ran his hands through his hair. “She must have the code to the front door.”
“Well, does that narrow the field?” I asked hopefully. “If she has the code, you must know who she is, right?”
“A lot of people have it, Bente.”
My chest suddenly felt achy and heavy. “I don’t have it.”
Ryan sat beside me, covering my hands with his as I wrung them on my lap. “I’ll give you the code to the front door.” He spoke quietly. “I’ll give you everything.”
I nodded the tiniest bit. Ryan leaned across and pressed his lips to mine, kissing me out of my troubled mood. The instant he touched me, I realised I probably had more of him at that moment than Blondie had ever had.
21. BUYER’S REMORSE
Ryan
A week ago I was single. A few weeks before that, I might’ve appreciated a woman turning up unannounced. But things had changed and now there was nothing appealing about it. If anything, it was embarrassing. Bente didn’t deserve the torment of dealing with it so I made amends by reprogramming the code on the front door. I wasn’t sure if it was a move to lock my old life out or to keep my new life in.
The first person to be upset by the change was just three feet tall. I stood in the kitchen listening to the intercom near the door buzz over and over. Bente was on the living room floor, going through boxes. She looked at me with a frown, probably wondering why I wasn’t rushing to answer it.
“It’s Bridget,” I told her.
“How do you know?”
I walked over to the intercom. “Yes?”
“You locked us out, Ry,” came the irritated little reply.
I turned to Bente. “Told you.”
A few minutes after buzzing her in, Bridget appeared at my door with her dad. After hugging my legs and chastising me again for locking her out, she headed for her toybox.
“Where’s your mama?”
Bridget didn’t slow her walk. “At the picture shop.”
I checked my watch. It was just after four, which made seeing Adam very odd. He never usually escaped his office during daylight hours.
“Day off?” I asked.
“Afternoon off.” He made his way into the kitchen. “We had a babysitter malfunction. How are you, Bente?” he asked, noticing her on the floor. “Coping okay?”
She laughed. “Holding my own, thank you.”
I silently reprimanded my brother with a harsh scowl, which he ignored. “Buyer’s remorse usually take a week or two to kick in,” he taunted.
Bridget sat on the floor next to Bente, showing no sign of the shyness that had crippled her at dinner the week before. “You can’t play with my girls, okay?” she said, laying down the law.
Bente threw both hands up. “I won’t touch them. I swear.”
While she was occupied with Bridget, I stole a quick minute with Adam. “I need your help with something,” I murmured with a discreet upward nod.
Following my lead, we headed down the hallway to the bedroom.
Adam noticed the dresser as soon as he rounded the doorway. In fairness, the thing was so ugly and out of place he had no choice but to notice it. The clunky wooden piece was covered with a hundred layers of paint, and to its detriment, the most recent layer was teal green.
“Can you do anything with it?” I asked hopefully. If anyone could get it to an acceptable level, it was Adam. No one knew where his talent for carpentry came from. My mother insisted it was her side of the family. My father considered it a useless, pointless hobby and didn’t give a damn either way.
Adam pulled open one of the drawers. “It’s a really nice piece,” he murmured.
“Just tell me you can fix it.”
He closed the drawer and pulled open another. “I’ll give it a crack.”
I frowned at him, rubbing my chin. “How is it that you can speak perfect Australian and yet after all these years, your wife can’t grasp basic French?”
The corner of his mouth lifted, formi
ng a sly smile. “My wife grasps French all the time. Just not in public.” He turned his attention back the dresser. “When does Bente want this done?” he asked, pushing the drawer shut. “I don’t have much time so it might take a while.”
“She doesn’t know anything about it,” I replied. “I’m the one who wants it fixed.”
Adam pulled in a long breath but didn’t seem to let it go. “She might not think it’s broken, Ryan.”
I took a look around my bedroom. I’d paid a designer a small fortune to make it look the way it did. I loved the sleek low line black furniture. It was urban and chic and exactly what I wanted. The dresser was like my bed’s ugly stepsister. Of course it was broken.
“How could she not?” I pointed at the monstrosity. “Look at it.”
“I’m not touching it until she gives the go-ahead.” Adam chipped a few flecks of paint off with ease. “You can’t make decisions like that on your own, Ryan. Not any more.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not on your own any more, stupid. For some reason, Bente’s agreed to take you on permanently. That means you now share a closet and an ugly dresser. Congratulations.” He slapped me on the back. “You’re a grownup.”
***
Apparently Bridget had taken advantage of the minute alone to really lay down the law to Bente. Not only was her box of severed dolls off limits, trips to the park with her uncle were too. I’m glad Bente waited until they left before telling me. I suspected it was something I should’ve been reprimanding the little princess for, but as usual, I had no idea how. “She also told me that the juice boxes in the fridge are all hers,” Bente concluded.
“I never knew she was such a green-eyed little monster.” I flopped beside her on the couch. “Why do you have to stay away from the park?”
Bente laid her legs across my lap. “She said I’m too old.” She grinned. “I considered snapping all the legs off her dolls as retaliation, but then I remembered she’s already done it.”
***
My very first girlfriend was not a procrastinator. A week of unemployment was all she could stand, so Bente was heading out to find work.