Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mable woke up the next morning staring at a ceiling instead of the canopy she had gotten used to over the past few months.
She blinked, groggily fighting to make sense of this odd view. Had she been moved to a different room during the night? She frowned at the white expanse above her. This ceiling looked familiar…
Like lightning, realization pumped through her body and she shot up in bed, gazing around in shock at her childhood bedroom, the bedroom she had slept in—until recently—for all her life. Her eyes drifted to her dresser, laden with elastic bands, half-empty lotion containers and half-full perfume bottles. To her closet, the door swung open to reveal a cramped nook filled with old sweaters and jeans, instead of a room full of expensive silks and soft cashmere. To the desk she had used as a high schooler, passed down to her from her eldest sister Jeanne, the only clean surface in the room.
Gingerly, as if the entire room would disappear if she made one wrong step, Mable untangled herself from the nest of blankets to peer out the window, which faced out into the backyard. Outside was the same familiar scene, snow covering the ground as it had for weeks.
Mable sat back on her bed with a thump, trying to wrap her mind around the fact that she was truly, unequivocally back in her old house.
She wondered if the whole experience had been a dream. Had Theo, Labelle, Lune and the others just been some weird cast of characters made up by her subconscious? The past few weeks—finding the castle, discovering the curse, meeting Theo, falling in love with him—all of it just one long, too-real dream she had, fueled by a secret longing.
Tears filled her eyes, and she was not entirely sure why.
Shakily, she lay back on her bed, running her hands along the familiar sheets that had the same, familiar scent of her favorite laundry detergent. In a moment, she decided, she would go downstairs and go into her father's room. She would wake him up for the day, and get on with her life, or lack thereof.
Her hand slid under her pillow, and brushed against something hard.
With a start, Mable grabbed the object and pulled out the mirror Theo had given to her the other night.
It hadn't been a dream, or a hallucination. It had all been real, and somehow she had managed to be transported back home. Absurdly happy, Mable caressed the mirror's etched back. This was proof; proof that she wasn't crazy, proof that her feelings hadn't been the result of a nightmare.
Her hand flew to her throat, and she felt the thin chain that held the rose pendant she had found in the attic. Her second piece of evidence, a talisman to remind her that someday, she just might find her way back to the castle, as she had found her way back here.
Filled with exultant energy, Mable jumped up from her bed.
"Daddy?" she shouted as she flew down the stairs. "Jeanne, Colette? Are you guys here?"
She bolted down the hallway. "Dad, I'm back!" She yanked her father's bedroom door open, and frowned when she saw it was empty, the bed neatly made. "Daddy? Is anybody home?"
She wandered back down the hall towards the kitchen. "Where is everyone?" she said, quieter now. Her sisters should have come up from their respective homes to take care of their father. Mable was certain that Miss Carol would have called them the minute she went missing.
Mable explored every room of the house. Everything looked the same as it did before she left, the only difference being that it seemed cleaner, as if someone had come by to tidy up.
So why was it so quiet?
Mable went back upstairs to change, deciding the best course of action was to go next door and see if Miss Carol knew what was going on. As she dragged on one of her many sweatshirts, she heard a car pull up and a door slam.
The wave of relief made her dizzy. Of course, they must have just been out on errands. Eagerly, she ran a quick brush through her hair. She put the mirror on her bed, studied it for a moment, and then picked it up again. She wasn't willing to let the window back into that other world out of her sight, not yet.
She heard the front door open as she hurried back down stairs, someone's footsteps halting as the newcomer realized that they were not alone in the house.
Mable reached the bottom step and found her older sister Colette standing in the front hall, her hands filled with grocery bags and looking as if she had seen a ghost.
"Mable?"
Over the years, Mable and Colette's relationship had always had its ups and downs. They fought more with each other than with their sister Jeanne, and as they grew up, they still bickered about one thing or another, even when they were both well into adulthood. In fact, Mable was pretty sure they had been in the middle of a long-distance argument before she disappeared.
Those fights didn't matter in the slightest now, and Mable launched herself at her older sister.
Colette stiffened when Mable threw her arms around her, still shocked by her younger sister's unexpected appearance. But she soon dropped the bags to the floor and wrapped her arms tight around Mable.
The house, so quiet before, was suddenly full of noise as Mable and Colette tried to talk over each other.
"Are you all right? We thought for sure—"
"I'm fine, I'm fine. Where's Jeanne, and Dad? Are the girls and Daniel here?"
"No, they're not. Mable, where have you been?" Colette tugged Mable into the kitchen and shoved her into one of the chairs. "Sit there and do not move until you tell me what happened." She demanded.
Mable watched as her sister grabbed the grocery bags and started to haphazardly put things away. Unlike Mable and her sister Jeanne, Colette was a carbon copy of their late mother. Honey-blonde hair was tied back away from her face, accentuating electric blue eyes. With her creamy complexion and petite figure, most people thought Colette was a typical, pretty airhead; a misconception her lawyer sister used to her advantage in court.
"I'm sorry I worried you." Mable started, trying to figure out how she was going to tell practical, no-nonsense Colette about a magic castle and a cursed Master. Colette had always had her feet firmly on the ground. While Mable had always begged for fairy tales and magic adventures, Colette had been off in a corner reading the biographies of people like Sandra Day O'Conner and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Colette placed two mugs on the table and gave Mable her best lawyer-stare. "Worried? Is that all you think it was?" Mable squirmed. "We got a frantic call from Miss Carol the morning after you left- something about going for a walk. That's all we heard for two months. Two months."
"I know, I know. I'm sorry, Colette, really. I promise that if I had a choice, I would have called you."
Colette spun from where she had been turning on the teakettle. "What do you mean, if you had a choice?" Mable winced at the deceptively measured tone. Her sister was braced against the counter like a snake poised to strike. "Do I need to call the police?"
"No!" Mable shot out. She took a deep breath, let it out. "No, nothing like that, Colette. I swear."
Colette's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You were pretty quick with that denial."
"And you were pretty quick to jump into lawyer-mode." Mable rapped back. "There's no crime here, Counselor."
"When my baby sister goes missing, I consider it a crime." The teakettle whistled. With a sigh Colette poured them both a cup. "All right. So you say you weren't kidnapped, right?"
"Right."
"Or out doing anything illegal?"
"No."
"Ok. So where the hell were you?"
Mable hesitated. "Why don't I tell you when Jeanne and Dad are get back? I'd rather tell everyone the story once." With Jeanne, there was less of a chance that Mable would be committed.
Now it was Colette's turn to hesitate. "Jeanne's back at home, Mable. She's back with Daniel and the girls."
"She's back in Massachusetts?" It wasn't all that surprising. Her eldest sister had two kids and a husband to care for, so while she was a little disappointed, Mable could understand why she hadn't stuck around.
But that didn't explain Colette's hesitation, or her father's absence. "Where is Dad, then?" Mable asked suspiciously. She could tell from her sister's face she wasn't going to like the answer.
Colette shifted in her seat, but met Mable's gaze. "Compass on the Bay."
Mable stared at her blankly. "Where?"
"Compass on the Bay Memory Care Assisted Living. It's right outside of Boston."
"What?" Mable shot up from her seat, furious. "You put him in a nursing home? I thought we agreed that we would never do that?"
"Yes, we agreed when you were around to take care of him, Mable." Colette folded her arms across her chest, setting her mouth in a familiar stubborn line. "But you were gone for two months."
"I've been taking care of him for three years, and you're telling me that you and Jeanne couldn't hack it for a few months?"
Colette's vivid eyes blazed. "Of course not." Now she was standing too, leaning over the table to snap in Mable's face, "Do you have any idea what it has been like? We had no idea where you were Mable. Or if you were even coming back!"
"Why wouldn't I come back?"
"Jeanne was the last one who talked to you before you disappeared." Colette stalked around the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets at random. "She said you sounded a bit burnt out. We thought, in the best of scenarios, that you had maybe run away because you couldn't deal with it anymore."
Mable was insulted. "You really think I would just abandon Dad like that?"
"Mable, the day after you left Jeanne and I both came back to handle it. One of us tried to keep an eye on Dad while the other one dealt with your disappearance. But after the first week it just got to be too much. We couldn't put all our effort into watching Dad and search for you at the same time. He wandered off twice while you were gone, because both of us were too busy working with the police to try and find you!" Colette found what she was looking for. She pulled out a flask that had been hidden behind the baking supplies—a flask Mable knew hadn't been there the last time she was home.
As Colette poured a bit of the flask into her tea, Mable took a moment to really look at her sister. For the first time, she noticed the dark circles under her eyes, the lines that were now etched alongside her sister's mouth. Her face was pale and clean of any make-up—unusual for Colette, who prided herself on her appearance. The past two months had been hard on her.
She knew how Colette responded to apologies, so she didn't apologize outright. Instead, she sat back down and held out her hand for the flask. With a slow smile, Colette handed it over. As Mable poured the rest of the flask into her own tea, Colette sat back down across from her.
Therein lie the beauty of their arguments, Mable thought, wincing as the alcohol burned her throat. Like a summer thunderstorm, they always blew out just as fast as they blew in.
"Now what?" she asked.
Colette stirred her tea with a finger. "We'll stick around here for today, but I think tomorrow we should get up early and head down to Jeanne's place. Then you can go visit Dad and see how he's doing."
"Ok." Mable agreed. With a start, she realized that the mirror was still on the table. With a sigh, she caressed the gilded handle.
And felt a pining for a place that had become a home without her even realizing it.
The next day Mable stood in front of Compass on the Bay, noting the sunny, yellow walls and the homey feel of the assisted living center. Ignoring the knot of tension in her stomach, she walked through the doors.
Inside, a nurse led her down the hall to her father's "apartment", chattering on about all the activities and events that went on at the center.
"We have cooking classes for the residents, complete with a brain-healthy diet, and this Friday we have a Frank Sinatra impersonator coming in to sing for whoever wishes to attend. We provide dozens of structured activities that give our residents the freedom of self-expression and spiritual growth. We believe it is important for our patients to be well-cared for but still feel like they are retaining their independence." She trilled as they walked down the long, well-lit hall.
"That sounds nice." Mable said absently. The corridor was painted a bright white, with colorful paintings on the walls. It reminded her uncomfortably of the castle, and the people she had left there.
She had to stop this. Her father's health was the most important thing right now. She forced herself to focus.
The nurse stopped at one of the doors and gave a cheerful knock. "Mr. Lawrence?" she called out. "Your daughter is here to see you."
The door opened and her father came out, gifting her with a brilliant smile. "Mable-cake! This is a surprise. Come in, come in." He pulled her into the room and engulfed her in a hug.
Mable eyes burned as she hugged the father she had been so worried about for the past few months. She buried her face in his shoulder like she used to do when she was little, and spent a moment pretending that her father was perfectly fine and wasn't in a nursing home.
But after she reveled in her father's comforting, familiar embrace, she eyed his new home over his shoulder. The room was built much like a studio apartment, with the bedroom and living room all in one well-lit area. The room was painted a soft eggshell, sunlight streaming in the two windows on the other side of the room, accenting the plush, sand-colored carpet. A small refrigerator and microwave were set in the corner of the room, next to a door that, she had been told, led to the bathroom with walk-in shower.
Her father pulled her over to a small table near the refrigerator. "Come sit and talk to me." He told her. She hadn't heard him sound this upbeat and talkative in over two years. "Miss…" he frowned at the nurse, trying to place her name. Mable waited anxiously for the tantrum that would come when he couldn't remember.
"Sophie, Mr. Lawrence." The nurse said, as cheerful as she had been with Mable. "I'll go and let you two have a visit. You call me if you need anything, ok, handsome?" She gave Mable's father a wink.
To Mable's surprise, her father just grinned. "Sure thing, pretty lady." The nurse gave Mable a friendly wave before closing the door. "I like her." Her father said as he opened the refrigerator door. "I told her it's silly for a pretty young thing like her to call an old goat like me handsome, but she always does. It's good for my self-esteem. You want something to drink, honey?"
"Why don't you let me do that, Daddy?" she said, watching him pull out a pitcher of lemonade with some trepidation.
"No, no, I got it." He said airily. While he pulled out two plastic cups from one of the oak cabinets next to the microwave, Mable took a longer look around.
Her sisters had clearly tried to make the place as home-like as possible. Her father's own bed was in the room, complete with the quilt he and Mable's mother had received for their wedding. All over the room there were framed pictures of their family. In one she could see a portrait of Jeanne and her husband, their arms wrapped around her two nieces. In another was a shot of her sister Colette at her college graduation, beaming as she held up her diploma for the photographer to see.
As her father poured the lemonade, Mable got up to look at the final picture, one of her and her father. It was her favorite, a shot of her father and her dancing at Jeanne's wedding. It had been one of the few times anyone had ever gotten her to dance, up until a few days ago.
Mable quickly turned her head away, inhaling sharply.
"Here we go." Her father said, placing a cup of lemonade down at her place. He glanced over her way and frowned in concern. "What's wrong, baby?"
"It's nothing, Dad." She sniffed. She hadn't noticed the tears in her eyes. "I'm fine."
"You are not." Her father replied indignantly. "What's the matter, Mable?" He tugged her over to the table. "Talk to me about it."
"Oh, it's just…Dad, do you like it here?" she asked hesitantly. "I mean, is it really better here than it was at home?"
"Well I don't know about that." Her father sighed. "It's been getting hard to keep up with the house and all, so downsizing seems the be the right thing to do. But I do miss the house. It was the first place your mother and I bought after we got married. It was the place where you and your sisters grew up. But those memories won't just disappear."
But they would, with her father. She knew from the way he was looking at her, his brows slightly knit, as if he was searching hard for the real reason he was here.
"Do you want to come back?" she asked him. He blinked at her absently. "I mean, I can still help out around the house and everything. You don't have to stay here, Daddy. Not if you don't want to."
He shook his head. "You have school, baby. You have to get an education. Besides, I do like being closer to my grandkids. Jeannie said…she said... something." He scowled, and Mable's heart sank as she watched her father try desperately to recall just what it was Jeanne had said.
"Never mind, Dad." She told him gently. "I'll ask her later."
"All right." He sipped his lemonade, his mind already jumping to another topic. "What are your grades like this semester, Mable-cake?"
"Pretty good," she answered smoothly. "A's and B's, mostly." Or at least those had been her grades a few years ago before she dropped out. "Daddy, can I ask you a question?"
"Of course."
"If you had to choose between Mom and your family…would you still choose her?" It had been a question that had bothered her during her stay at the castle. How could she just leave her family, her father and sisters, just for a man she had only known for a few months?
"I'm not sure what you mean." Her father peered at her. "Do you mean choosing your mother over you girls?"
"No, nothing like that." Mable sipped her lemonade, trying to think of a good example. "More like…if you had met Mom and she had lived somewhere far away, where there was a chance you wouldn't get to see you parents again, would you still have married her?"
"Hmmm, that is a tough one." Her father sat back in his chair, gazing off into space for so long that Mable thought he had forgotten about her.
"Yes." He said, making her jump. "Yes, I still would have married her. I loved your mother a lot, and sometimes that kind of love means making sacrifices. It would have been hard, that's for damn sure, but the love between me and your mother would have been well worth it."
"But how do you even know if you have that kind of love?" Mable ran her fingers through her hair in exasperation. "How do you know if you have the kind of love that is worth making sacrifices for?"
"You don't." he father said simply. "Remember how I taught you girls how to swim?"
Mable made a face. "You pushed us into the pond." They had had life vests on, but it had still been quite a scary moment.
Her father chuckled. "Love is a little like that. Sometimes you just got to jump in, even if you don't know if it is exactly right. It's terrifying at first, but if it is the right person, it's like being pushed unexpectedly into the pond and finding out you knew how to swim all along." Her father took her hands in his own. "And I know for a fact that if you find out that you are sinking, you have two sisters and a dad who will come rowing out to rescue you whenever you need us."
Mable smiled and squeezed her Dad's hands. "Thanks, Daddy."
Her father smiled back absently, and Mable could see his mind had already drifted. While she waited for him to come back to her, her eyes landed on the refrigerator door. One of her nieces—she suspected Rose, the youngest—had drawn a sweet, colorful picture of what she supposed was her house and family. Underneath her name she had labelled the picture "To Grandpa".
There was a quiet knock on the door, and the nurse, Sophie, stuck her head inside. "Everything all right in here?"
Mable smiled sadly at her father, who was staring out the window blankly. "Yeah, I think so."
A while later she leaned against her car, rescued from the impound it had been in since she disappeared two months ago. The parking lot was close enough to the bay that even from a few blocks away she could smell the salty air of the ocean, and took a few moments to breath it in, hoping the cold, sea air would alleviate the shakiness she felt.
Her father was clearly better off here than with her. There were well-paid nurses, experts, to take care of him, keep him busy and watch to make sure he didn't wander off. Jeanne and her family only lived thirty minutes away, and he clearly enjoyed being so close to his granddaughters. He was close to some of the best hospitals in the state if he got sick. It would be selfish to force him to leave and bring him back to Berkshire.
Mable had been her father's only caretaker for so long, being let go from her responsibilities left her feeling unsteady. She had never considered that while she had been working so hard to find her way back, the world she had left behind would change so drastically in her absence. That she would feel as if she no longer belonged here.
She climbed into her car, and dug in the backpack she had brought with her, pulling out the mirror Theo had given her. She brought it with her everywhere, certain that if she left it behind then it would disappear. She held it up in front of her face, examining the hazel eyes, the round face, the red-gold hair. She touched a finger to the rose necklace still hanging around her throat.
She didn't look any different, so why did everything else change?
Suddenly needing Theo, just wanting to hear his voice, she told the mirror, "I wish to see Theo."
The mirror fogged like it had back in the castle, but nothing appeared in the glass, other than her own hazy reflection.
Mable stared at the mirror, her disappointment so intense that it was like a heavy blanket had been thrown over here, suffocating her.
She stared at the mirror and asked it the question she had been thinking all along.
"What am I supposed to do now?"