Chapter 2

2

D elina allows herself about five minutes of wallowing and drinking her espresso milkshake, staring blankly out at the austere desert around her, before her phone dings.

MAISON 3 (9:21 AM): You okay? Something wrong with the coffee shop?

Delina stares at it, at the little thumbnail of his face, and really doesn't want to explain to him all the emotions and completely derail his day.

DELINA (9:22 AM): Yeah, sorry. OMW back now.

MAISON 3 (9:23 AM): Didja make an extra stop? :)

She shivers, then shakes her head. Of course he would ask that, she was gone for a full hour longer than she should have, but she hesitates before answering.

DELINA (9:24 AM): Ran into work buddy, chatted for a while.

And even telling that lie sends her stomach into a pit of guilt.

"Oh fuck this," she mumbles, then folds up the now alarming wad of cash and shoves it into her purse, putting the car into reverse and pealing out of the parking lot.

She's not supposed to be the one who reacts to things like this. She's supposed to have her shit together.

Mashing the buttons on her car until it calls her dad, she drives towards her condo, a knot in her throat, while the phone rings through.

"Hello?" her dad's voice says, distorted through the speaker.

"Hi, yes, can I come over today?" Delina asks, and her voice is smaller than she would like. "Do lunch or something? It's my day off."

"Sure," he says, easily. "Always."

"Cool, cool," Delina rambles. "I'll be there in a few hours."

Her father would know what's up. Would tell her she's being irrational. Would tell her everything's okay and that her mother was merely weird.

The thought propels her until she's back at the condo, balancing the coffees with her purse, and her hands shake while unlocking the door. Her thumb is still numb, of course, making it much more difficult than it should be.

She's too old for fairy tales and madness.

"There you are," Maison says, and he's standing in the kitchen, washing paint from his hands. His eyes crinkle up into a fond look when she walks through the door. "I was getting worried."

"Sorry, sorry," she says, the knot in her chest growing. "I didn't mean to."

He swoops over to her, plucking the coffees from her hands and setting them aside before pulling her into a kiss, tilting her head back and making her eyes swim, then breaking it just as fast as it started. "All good," he says, his voice deep. "I painted another note card for your dad, got inspired. I think he'll like it."

"I'm going over to him for lunch," Delina blurts out, and Maison nods, idle. Like he already knew.

"Anything interesting happen?" Maison asks, turning and grabbing his coffee. "You met with…" And he trails off, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Juliette," Delina fibs, making up a coworker then and there. "You haven't met her."

He shrugs, then gives her one of the smiles. One of the smiles that shows his dimple and makes her knees shake and makes her stomach drop with the lies she's telling him. "Love you."

"Love you too," she replies, automatically, though her heart is beating fast, way faster than it should, as he turns back towards his home office, pulling out his phone as he walks away. "Want me to take the drawing to my dad's?" she calls after him out of habit, wandering into their bedroom, staring uselessly at it.

Maison's blue button up from yesterday hangs haphazardly over their hamper, and his slippers are neatly tucked into their place on his side of the bed. Her books are strewn all over her side table, and his phone charger is fraying at the cord end, like his always do after a few months of use.

His sketchbook lays propped open, from where he obviously started to sketch something the night before, and the random collection of too fancy pens that are always around clutter up the top of his dresser.

She's known him since undergrad. She's lived with him for five years. She knows what laundry detergent he prefers and his favorite brand of string cheese. She's slept next to him and heard his soft snoring and cuddled against him on the rare snowy night in northern Arizona, and dozed next to him on top of the sheets when the air conditioning broke two summers ago. He likes pretzels and dislikes peanut butter and wanted to work in animation before he got pulled into corporate graphic design.

And now she's lying to him based on an obviously insane letter from her biological mother that she's never met.

"Sure," he says, voice slightly muffled by the door between them. "Tell me if he likes it."

Impulsive, she shoves an extra pair of underwear in her purse, then coils up her own, non-frayed phone charger, her heart pounding, then she drifts back into his home office.

She shouldn't be this affected.

The light streams through the window blinds, and he has two computer screens with photoshop open and three messy watercolors drying on the desk next to his keyboard as he pokes on his phone, a frown across his face.

Heart still pounding, she kisses the top of his head, and he leans against her for a brief, familiar second, before pulling away.

"And nothing weird happened while you were out?" he asks, brow furrowing at his phone. "No weird phone calls or anything?"

That's not a question he would have asked.

That's not a question anyone would ask, and she blanches, before he glances up at her, eyebrows drawn together, confusion in his lovely grey eyes.

"Oh, just the…post office?" Delina says, trailing off, tapping her nails against his desk, next to the paintings. "Wrong number."

His eyes clear with something resembling relief, and she gets a hint of the dimple again before he gestures to one of the note cards on the desk, the one with the vague impression of green rolling hills and trees just beginning to turn. "Here, for his wall with all the landscapes."

"Yeah," Delina says, past the lump in her throat. "He'll love it."

The red rock drive to Sedona does nothing to calm her nerves, so by the time she pulls up to her father's completely beige suburban home, she's practically vibrating out of her skin and her hands hurt from clutching the steering wheel.

The will, the letter, and the textbook are still in her passenger seat, growing in awareness until it's all her mind can think about.

Her dad kneels in the garden, leather gloves on his hands, as he pulls up some weeds that somehow sneak up through the reddish gravel surrounding his cacti. He gives her a quick smile, before laboriously climbing to his feet.

"What's got you all tied up, Delly?" he asks, patting her on the shoulder. Her father gives everyone the impression of useless joviality, of maximum harmless-dad, and the suburban garden get up does nothing to combat it. "Your face is all twisted."

She looks at him, catching his eyes and keeping them, drawing herself up as much as she can muster. "Dad, I want to talk about my mother."

He doesn't react for a moment, then raises his eyebrows. "Okay…?"

"I got a letter from her, and it…says some things."

This time, her father blinks twice, then slumps, like she's never before seen him do. Like someone lets the air out of him, taking away all the fun and the joy and leaving a haggard, worn-out man instead.

It lasts for only a second, before he straightens again. "I'm gonna go get some lemonade, go in the backyard, there's no cameras pointed there," he says, voice quieter than normal. "Pretend to be normal."

Her father takes twice as long to come out to the backyard as usual, and his dog has thoroughly slobbered all over Delina's gym shoes by the time he comes out with two glistening glasses of lemonade and, for some reason, an old-fashioned pager.

"Dad, what's going on, why are there cameras?" Delina blurts out, and he just hands her the cup instead, placing the pager on the glass outdoor table between them. "Why would you think that, what are you going on about?"

"Did the letter, ah, tell you what she did for a living?" her dad asks instead, sitting heavily on the camp chair he keeps there year-round.

"She said magic's real and that I have it like some really bad kids' book," Delina says, clutching the cool glass. "And that you knew and Maison knew and everyone knew."

"Maison knows?" her dad asks, sharp.

"I don't know, I didn't ask him, the letter said he did, Dad…" Delina gapes at him, "Are you insane?"

"Probably," he says with just a trace of his usual jocularity. "But yes, your mom was somehow a magician, I wasn't allowed to tell you or the child support would stop, half your elementary school teachers were plants, and Mrs. Reed from down the street growing up was definitely one of them." His dog loses interest in Delina's shoes and plops down in front of him instead. "Didn't know about Maison. I liked him."

Delina carefully sets the glass on the table and, as primly as she could, turns to him and brings as much imperiousness as she possibly can to her next words, "Dad, what the fuck?"

"Fair enough," he sighs, then nudges the pager towards Delina. "Was there a symbol on the letter?"

Delina stares down at the outdated piece of electronics, at the faded black plastic. "Yes."

"Did it feel like static electricity?"

She hadn't told him about that, hadn't shown him the letter.

"Yes."

"Touch the pager," her dad instructs her, and she looks at him, sharp.

Her father had raised her as a single dad, all through her horrid teen years and through her extremes. Through her tantrums and her tears and everything in between.

And he had never done anything that could bring her harm.

"Why?" she asks, and despite all her control, her voice breaks.

"Before she left, she told me to keep this in case you broke free, for some proof," her dad says, and she hardly recognizes the look on his face. "Said that you would need proof, if you were anything like her."

"Proof would be nice," Delina replies, staring down at the pager, like just glaring at it could reveal its secrets. "Are you sure I'm not insane?"

"All the therapy you got as a teen suggested you're fine," he says. "Some depression, but fine."

"Thanks, Dad," she snipes back, then, like it'd bite her, she pokes the pager with her thumb.

At first, there's nothing, and she glances up at her dad, before the plastic snaps in two, shattering apart.

She jumps back in the camp chair, clutching her hand to her chest. Her dad's dog scrambles up, sprinting to the other side of the backyard with a whine.

The pager smolders, black smoke curling up from it, and a spare wire sparks uselessly.

Her father sits back, with a sigh, and he looks old, far older than she's ever seen him.

"Did she leave you someplace to go? She always said she would."

"A cabin in Washington," Delina says, horror creeping in. Her dad is supposed to be the sensible one, the one that tells her to research mortgage rates and check her tires before long drives.

"Cash to get there?" he asks, and then nods back at her. "Leave your phone in my car, I know that's tracked."