Chapter 23

Spring was busy like always and I let myself get caught up in it. Evan and I had moved on to something that more closely resembled dating, but the things that were being left unsaid were like elephants in the room. Evan showed up early one morning late in May, the morning of my birthday, with a wrapped package in his hands. It was an original edition of Undine. I knew, odds were, that Evan hadn't found this one by chance at a flee market. It was a calculated gift. I stood in front of him on the porch in my nightgown clutching it to my chest as he looked at me. I could see that ache in his eyes and emotion in his handsome face. “Thank you. My old one burned,” I managed to say as he looked into my eyes.

“Krista . . .” he said, and then—looking like he might cry, looking like he had that day in the potting shed—he'd said, “Happy birthday.” Then he turned and headed for his car.

*

Sheila always takes me in stride and back then it was a good thing. I remember that birthday, running past her, up the stairs in tears, still clutching the book to my chest and running to Evan's room where he still slept occasionally, closing the door behind me and laying myself down where his smell lingered slightly. Soap, chlorinated swimming pool, clean water, clover. That was his smell.

I remember Sulamith's first birthday too. The Summer Solstice. I was a mess and Sheila, at first, hadn't understood why until I had somehow managed to remind her that it was also the anniversary of Rowan's death. Sheila took Sulamith out with her, telling me, “I'll make sure she has a good day,” then left me to my tears and took Sulamith for ice cream. That's how the next year went too, and, in theory, the one after that. Sulamith's third birthday.

Sulamith and Sheila had a whole day of pleasures planned. Granville Island, a movie, and a fancy dinner out at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Sulamith was ready to go, wearing a pretty dress I'd made for her over the winter, specially for her birthday. She was so exited that I kept checking to see if her feet were touching the floor. I hugged her, “You have a wonderful day Pixy.” I kissed her soft cheek and breathed in her smell. She looked up and it was like a tidal wave crashed over me. Rowan looking at me. His eyes, looking at me, merry, wild, full of life, but I couldn't quite get the rest of his face. I made a sound.

“Are you alright?” Sheila looked at me, her eyebrows knit.

I shrugged, “You'd better go.”

Sheila gave me a 'look', “Are you sure?”

“I don't know but Sulamith's so exited. I don't want her to be disappointed. Go.”

Sheila took Sulamith's hand, “Come on Sweet Pea, let's go get in the car,” she said, and I watched them head down the front steps and climb in. Sheila looked back at me again as she opened the driver's side door. It took a few minutes as she buckled Sulamith into her car seat. I saw Sheila take out her cell phone, but then they finally pulled away.

In theory it was getting easier for me to keep it together day to day by then, and my goal was to be with Sulamith on her fourth birthday, but that day three years after Rowan had died I was as lost as I'd been the day that I'd run from the Fay world. I curled up in a ball on the chesterfield, paralysed by that look in Sulamith's eyes and all of the memories that I had been pushing away came pressing in, but they were faded, and I wanted Rowan. I sat there wishing . . . Wishing that he could come to me . . . Hold me . . . Wipe away my tears, but knowing that he never would, and his face was starting to blur just a little bit in my mind. It was like I was losing him all over again, and it hurt.

I didn't hear Evan come in but heard the click of the door closing behind him. I looked up, for a split second worried that Sheila and Sulamith had returned and not wanting Sulamith to see me falling apart. I wasn't expecting Evan. He should have been at the college teaching. I scrambled to my feet trying desperately to stop crying, to just stop, but I couldn't. I tried to turn, to leave the room, but my legs wouldn't listen and he was standing in front of me as I cried and tried to say god knows what to him.

He looked at me and said, “Tell me what you need,” and I could see in his eyes the desire to do whatever it was that I needed him to do to help me.

“Hold me,” I gasped. “Please just hold me. I can't . . . keep this in . . . but I don't want to be alone.”

In three quick steps he was there with his arms around me for the first time ever. He carried me to the chesterfield and held me tightly as I shook and he kept on holding me until I was still and quiet.

“I know how you feel, you know?” he said eventually, stroking my hair. “I still cry like this for you.”

I looked up into his face, seeing the tears on his cheeks and deep emotion in his eyes, “You do?”

Evan nodded.

“I feel like I'm losing him Evan. I don't have any pictures of him. His face is blurring in my mind. I’ve spent all this time trying to learn how to live without him and now that I can stand thinking about him, he’s slipping away!”

I was lying across Evan's lap. He had one arm around my waist and the other under my head on the arm of the chesterfield as I looked up into his face. “Then tell me about him. Bring him back with your words,” he said.

I laid there a while longer not wanting, quite yet, to leave whatever it was that I had found there in Evan's arms, but also thinking over what he'd said. “Alright, but not here.”

“Okay,” he said. “I'm just going to call my mum and give her an update.”

I went upstairs and put on an indigo India cotton summer dress that I had bought but never wore. It reminded me of that other world, that other life. I slipped it over my head, brushed out my hair and looked in the mirror seeing the things that I had been trying to ignore for the last three years. I walked over to my dresser and took out the heartsease ring and slipped it onto my right hand looking at the ferns and flowers etched into my skin. People always thought they were tattoos. I kept long sleeves and gloves on at the garden centre. I took out the sapphire and pearl necklace, clasping it around my neck and letting myself see the way it matched my eyes as I had the night Bronwen had given it to me, the night Rowan asked me to be his. I took the long chain out as well. The one that I had once worn around my neck with only one ring on it, but that now held two rings. I didn't know what to do with the rings. They'd felt displaced ever since Rowan had died, but they were a part of the story, so I tucked them in my pocket, then pinned Audrey's watch to my dress, put in the opal earrings, and went downstairs. Evan looked at me for a moment, the dress, the carefully brushed hair, the jewels. I carried myself differently when I wore them. I knew that. “You're beautiful,” he said as I reached the bottom steps. He held out his hand to me for the first time, and I took it feeling the complete rightness of his fingers closing around mine, and looking into his eyes I watched as that simple touch registered. It was magic.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked me once we were sitting in his car.

“Deer Lake,” I told him.

He drove east, into Burnaby and parked near the vintage carousel.

“We should take Sulamith there sometime,” he remarked casually as we got out of the car and looked to where we could see the painted horses whirling.

I took his hand as he came around to me and we began walking slowly down to the lake shore.

“I want to tell you everything,” I told him. “I want you to understand me completely. But this isn't an easy story, and it's going to hurt, and I'm sorry.”

“Krista, nothing is going to hurt as much as the day I lost you. After two years of having you back, I think that I can safely tell you that. I told you that I would do anything for you. I meant it. You can tell me and you don't need to apologize.”

I squeezed his hand and tried to smile. I looked up at the hill diagonally across the lake from us. “It's hard to believe that it's been nearly five years since the day you walked out on me. That was hard for me to take. I didn't know what to do. I was so hurt. I tried not to be, I tried to forget you, but for months my heart sank every morning when there was no letter from you waiting in the post. And I waited for it. I dreamed about what it might say. Maybe you would beg for my forgiveness, beg to have my friendship back, or tell me that you had been an idiot. Sometimes, I even dreamt that you might write and tell me that you loved me. I was angry with myself for not writing to you and letting you have it, telling you what a complete ass you'd been not to stay and talk to me, but I thought that you were disgusted by the way you felt, and I didn't know how to handle that. I was only seventeen, and I was completely inexperienced. Suddenly I felt . . . worthless, and so alone moving through the world without some tie to you. Not even a letter. I used to get beaten up at school, and put in lockers. You were the first friend I ever had, but I was afraid to tell you that, in case you wouldn't like me any more.” I looked up at Evan, wanting him to know that I wasn't telling him to hurt him, but because I needed him to understand, and I could see the guilt and anguish in his eyes but I could also see that he understood, and that it was okay, so I continued, “By the time a year had passed I was seriously depressed. I was having a hard time and everyone but your mother seemed to be rejecting me. You hadn't come home, and even my own parents would have conversations about how strange I was when they thought I wasn't listening. There was so much that I didn't know, but on top of everything, I had this feeling building in me all the time that scared the crap out of me because I felt that whatever was happening to me would set me apart from the rest of the world even further. It felt like this fiery pressure and . . . flowing cool green lightness was pushing at me, inside.” I placed my hand over my sternum. “Sometimes I wanted to follow it, but mostly it scared me. I though I was going crazy. Then I had a bad day at work and your mum could see that I was too shaken to stay, so she sent me home. I went home to try to get a grip and once I was calm I went for a walk in the woods at the base of Queen Elizabeth Park. That's when it happened. I . . . I'm not sure how to carry on telling you with words. It would probably be easier if I just showed you.”

I looked again, up at the hill across the lake. I felt Evan's smooth hand in mine. An academic's hand, not a swordsman's, but no less comforting for it. “This is going to be weird,” I told him, then reached inside and, pulling magic, I opened a door and pulled us through. “There it is,” I said, pointing to the beautiful castle on the hill. “That's where it all started. That's where he took me after he found me in the woods.”

I could see Fenna and Dunstan on the beach further down the lake shore. Fenna turned and looked at me. Our eyes met. I wanted to run to her but I couldn't. I raised my hand, reaching out to her, then opened the door again and stepped back pulling Evan with me and disappearing from Fenna's sight.

“What the hell was that?! How did you do that?” Evan gaped at me as the world he knew rematerialized around us.

“Magic. You see, the first time I did that, I didn't know that I'd done it. I was so unhappy and I wanted to escape and I couldn't hold the magic in anymore, so without even knowing it, I took myself away, to another world.”

I lead him to the trees and found a grassy place to sit. “One minute I was wandering the paths at the edge of the park and the next I was standing in dense old growth forest with a knight in dirty bloodstained armour charging towards me on a big black war horse. It was Rowan. That was the first time he saved my life.”

And so I'd started the story. Sometimes I used words, sometimes I took Evan's hands and showed him the images in my mind and sometimes I would let the magic flow and conjure images that we could watch like we would a movie screen, and sometimes I could see Rowan's face as clearly as the day I'd met him. I showed Evan everything. Falling in love with Rowan, the Fay, the angels, the unicorn, my brothers and sister, and while I told my story the trees around us lost their leaves in a torrent of red and gold then budded anew. I came to the part of the story when Leif came to me on the Summer Solstice covered in the blood and gore of war and, as I held my newborn babe in my arms, told me that Rowan was dead, and gave Rowan's message to me, “Tell Rhiannon . . .”

I told Evan of my six months in that world without Rowan. Trying to stay true to my station, trying to stay strong, then Raphael's bed and arms, and my decision. How I'd written my letter begging them to let the monarchy die, to let it stop with me, to let me be the last queen and let it end, and then my night flight. The night I let Rhiannon die.

It was the summer solstice and I could feel the energy all around us as we sat on the grass in the sun. Life, magic, my own, Evan's, the trees surrounding us. I let the trees burst into flower. Some of them weren't even flowering trees. A little boy was watching us from a distance. I raised my hand and smiled. He turned and ran back to his parents. I looked into Evan's face. There were tears of grief, joy, and amazement. We sat face to face and a lock of Evan's hair that was always falling forward, and that I was always fighting an urge to fix, fell into his face and I reached up and pushed it back. He looked into my eyes and I felt myself falling for his beautiful green eyes. “I never imagined that so much had happened to you,” he said softly. “I don't think that I would have been as strong as you.”

“I'm not strong Evan. It nearly killed me.”

He nodded, swallowed, looked down. Suddenly a strong breeze swept by and the petals on the trees started to fall around us swirling in a summer scented hurricane of pink and white until the trees were just green again and we were sitting under a blanket of petals.

“I don't know what else to say,” Evan said to me.

“Neither do I,” I told him as another strong breeze picked up all of the petals and blew them out over the lake where they fluttered for a moment, like a million tiny butterflies, then disappeared under the water. I stood and Evan followed me as I headed for the boardwalk that lead around the lake. We walked silently. Evan took my hand again and I marvelled at the feeling. That was where my hand belonged. The sun shone down and the leaves rushed and rustled in the hot summer breeze.

“Tell me your story,” I asked him.

“It's not nearly as interesting and it doesn't have any special effects,” he told me.

“I want to hear it,” I persisted.

“Okay . . . Well, I guess I'd better start with my mother then. In case you didn't already know,” he said dryly, “she was pretty wild when she was young. Lots of escapades. Lots of lovers. Lots of fun. Then one day she met my father. She said that it was the best three weeks of her life. He was a sailor on leave and she knew from the start that he'd be gone at the end of it, but what she didn't know, until about three weeks after he'd gone, was that he'd left her a little something to remember him by. She settled down quickly. Her parents helped her open the nursery. She's always been good with plants and it did well from the start. She bought the house and she's been, on the whole, a pretty good mother.”

“Your father was a sailor?” I questioned.

“Mm hm, why?”

“It just explains a lot.”

“Explains what?”

“I'll tell you later, keep going.”

He shrugged. “So you know, my early life was pretty good but in my teens I started searching for something that I couldn't quite put my finger on, but I found it in three places; in the water, I hate being away from it for too long, and in stories. In books. I couldn't get enough of them. It was enough of an obsession that I followed it into adult life and majored in literature once I'd reached university. And I found it in you, I found what I was looking for in you. I was just about to start my master's degree when I met you.” Evan stopped and looked at me for a moment. “I didn't know what to make of you. You were this strange self-contained little woman child. The way I felt for you didn't really sink in at first. You were . . . well . . . How to put this . . .” he said awkwardly.

“I know, I know,” I said gently, interrupting him again. “I looked like a twelve year old.”

Evan smiled, “I missed you that winter after we met though. I thought about you every day. I still have all of the letters that you sent me. It wasn't until I found that copy of Undine at the flee market that I realized just how much I was looking forward to seeing you again. When I came home that summer it slowly sank in that I was in love with you.” He took a deep breath and his expression changed. I could see the regret in his eyes. “I felt very conflicted,” he said. “The difference between seventeen and twenty-three isn't really so vast, but you did look quite young. I was always conscious of it when we were out together. Afraid that someone would get the wrong idea. It was almost a relief when people assumed that I was your older brother, because then it would be perfectly natural for you to be in my company, even though you looked ten years younger than me. I had to continually remind myself that I wasn't attracted to thirteen year old girls, only to you, but at the same time I felt continually more uncomfortable with the fact that I was, very attracted to you. I decided that I should wait until you were eighteen to tell you how I felt, which was hard, but I thought that maybe at eighteen you would look a little older, and that maybe the six year age gap wouldn't feel so big to me. You don't know how angry I was with myself when I couldn't keep my hands off of you.” Evan's voice shook a little and he paused breathing with forced evenness for a moment. “But I didn't wait, and you were standing there on that step ladder with little bits of peat moss in your hair looking right into my eyes and batting your lashes at me. I still remember the light, the way the reflection of the sun in the doorway made your skin so bright. The way your mouth was open just a little, your lips . . . I couldn't help it, I just wanted to kiss you. It was an automatic response and kissing you felt like nothing else . . . the feel of you . . . I don't know. It was magic, but you weren't kissing me back, so I pulled away and you looked so young, and so confused and I knew that I should have waited, or that I should have asked. I was going to explain myself to you then and there, but I found myself thinking, Shit Evan, you just fucked that up royally.” He sighed.

“I was never disgusted by my feelings for you. Confused, yes, certainly, but the only thing that I was ever disgusted by, was myself for my complete lack of restraint and for destroying our friendship. And when you overheard me arguing with my mother in the office, that was just my insecurities coming through, but stepping out the door and seeing your face? Oh god Krista. All I could think, was to get as far away from you as fast as I could before I hurt you even more, and I didn't believe that I deserved your forgiveness. In hindsight I knew that I couldn't handle the idea that you might reject me, so I ran like a coward. If I had thought things through, if I had listened to my mother—who absolutely took your side by the way—I would have stayed and told you how I felt and tried to take the hurt away, but I was stuck in a bad place, and I screwed up.” He was silent for a few moments. “I did all kinds of stupid things to try to forget you that year, and the fact that I don't have any illegitimate children or horrible diseases or serious addiction problems to show for it is nothing short of miraculous. When I was drunk enough I wrote you letters, beautiful love letters, and I dreamt about mailing them but never had the nerve. I got kicked off the swim team. I still can't believe that I kept my grades up during that period. When spring came I was too ashamed of my behaviour to face you, but that was a horrible excruciating summer. When it ended and the semester started I realized that I needed to see you, at least, just to tell you that I was sorry, so I booked a plane ticket for the Thanksgiving long weekend and called my mother to tell her that I was coming home but . . .” Evan turned and looked at me again, still holding my hand. “When my mother answered the phone that night she was distraught and she didn't want to say it. I had to drag the words out of her. I can still remember the way she said 'Molotov cocktails', 'house fire', and 'dead'. I came home for a few days and asked her then, how you'd been before the fire. She said that you'd been dwindling. She said that it was like your pilot light was flickering. I flew back to Montreal, tried to ignore how I was feeling and plunged into my studies. I didn't really cry for you at first. I focused on my thesis and met Elise. That was a disaster. We both got married for the wrong reasons. I didn't want to be alone because when I was alone I had to face the things that I was hiding from, and I thought that she could keep me from missing you. She thought I could fix her life. Like a husband and a ring were the accessories that she needed for everything to look perfect on the outside. I finished my PhD and the day I handed in my thesis I started to cry. I couldn't stop. Elise couldn't handle it. She was angry and when I told her why I couldn't leave the house, why I was falling apart, she looked at me and said. 'You mean all of 'this' is over some twinkie you kissed once?'”

Evan shook his head bitterly, “I walked out on her and she sent me divorce papers. Then I came home. And you were here.” He sat down on a bench and rubbed his hands over his face. I sat next to him and looked out over the lake. “I thought that I was finally clear,” he told me. “I'd cried my tears, I'd made my mistakes and I was making peace with the past. Time to move on . . . and then there you were. More beautiful than ever, not looking one bit like a thirteen year old, with a baby on your hip and all of this sadness in your eyes. My mother said that getting you back might be harder than losing you was. For the first few months I drank a lot more than I should have, and swam lap after lap just so that I could feel numb. I'm not going to say that the last two years have been easy. They haven't, in fact they've been bloody hard. But they've been good too, and the cliche stands. Nobody ever said that life was going to be easy.”

Evan was silent again and I sat there beside him looking around at how ordinary everything seemed on the surface, but knowing that just below the surface, nothing was ordinary. I slipped my hand back into Evan's and listened as he started to speak again, “Krista, I know that you've been through worse than any pain I've caused you, but I'm still sorry. I'm so sorry for what I did to you that summer. I'm not going to make the same mistake I made five years ago. I won't throw myself at you, but . . .” He blinked back tears and I could hear the ache in his voice as he told me, “I'm still in love with you. The day I came home you quoted The Last Unicorn to me. 'Drown out my dreams, keep me from remembering whatever wants me to remember it,' and I couldn't help but hope, that if I did everything right, that if I proved to you that you could count on me, that maybe I had reason to hope that you would love me too, because Amalthea loved Lir in the end. Please. If there's even a small chance that you might love me, tell me. If there's a chance that I could make you love me would you let me try? Because I know that I'm never going to stop loving you.”

His face was wet. I didn't know what to say to him. I wasn't sure I could answer him so I blurted out the first words that came to my lips which were, “Take me home Evan,” and I started walking quickly back to the car. Evan followed. I knew that I should say something to him. He wasn't holding my hand anymore and it felt empty. I could see him battling his emotions, trying to keep them from me. I knew that I should reach out to him but it was like that day in the potting shed. I felt young and confused and unsure of what to do. We drove back to the house in silence and my throat felt so tight and my eyes burned with tears. When Evan pulled up in front of the house I just sat there. He got out of the car and came around to my side. He opened my door and took my hand, drawing me out of the car. “I need you to throw me a line Krista. I'm drowning. I don't know what to do.”

I stood there thinking about how I'd felt that August when he'd shut me out of his life. Had I been in denial all those years? Had I hidden, even from myself, that I had loved him? Had I been so naive? And if I let myself love him now, really, fully, love him, could I bear it if I lost him?

I couldn't speak so I took his hand and pulled him towards the house. I fumbled for my keys but he had his in hand so he unlocked the door. It was early afternoon. Sheila and Sulamith wouldn't be home for hours yet. I took his hand again and pulled him up the stairs to my room and closed the door behind us. I looked up at him. He was bewildered. I pulled my dress up over my head, tossing it on a chair. I stepped up on my toes, reached up behind his head so that I could pull him down and kiss him, and for several long intense minutes we just kissed before Evan pulled back and looked at me, stunned and incredulous, “Krista, are you sure?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No,” I spoke through quivering lips, “but if I don't do this now I'm going to lose my courage, and I can't go on like this. Are you sure?” I whispered back to him.

“Yes,” he paused, “but you've got to understand that this can't be a one time thing. I can't do that. You take me to your bed, and you're stuck with me until I die.” He was looking into my eyes and he was absolutely serious. I don't think I'd ever seen him so intense.

That lock of auburn hair was hanging in his face again, so I reached up and pushed it back. “Even if things are horribly awkward and I cry?” I said, still nearly a whisper.

“You're stuck with me,” he repeated. “We'll just keep trying until we get it right.”

“Do you promise?” I whispered again and tried to keep from shaking.

“I promise.”

“I . . . I strongly suspect that I love you,” I whispered as his arms went around me lifting me off the floor and he started kissing me again in earnest and . . . It wasn't awkward.

*

We lay there in each other's arms that afternoon whispering amazed and inconsequential things to one another.

“Your skin is almost as pale as mine.”

“I love the way you smell. Like wisteria . . . and honeysuckle.”

“Your eyes are beautiful. They're so green.”

“Your mouth is perfect.”

“This is right.”

“It is, isn't it.”

*

As the day drew on we reluctantly drew our clothes back on, all too aware that Sheila and Sulamith would be home at some point, and we wandered down to the kitchen. We fixed dinner for two and sat close to one another eating with candles lit. I didn't hide my fayness from Evan and he was delighted when the candles seemed to light themselves. I didn't stop the flickers of coloured light from dancing around me. Evan seemed to bring them out.

Sheila and Sulamith came home at around seven-thirty and they were both tuckered out. It was good timing. I'd had a long conversation with Sulamith a week earlier about how she was getting big enough for her own bed in her own room. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, it was the end of her babyhood and it made me a little weepy and sentimental to see her growing so fast, but she was ready and excited. Over the week Sheila and I had made up Evan's old room for her, taking her out to choose new curtains and a bed spread. We moved his old things out, stashing everything but his books in the attic (I'd moved his books to my room). We re-painted the toy box and moved her toys into her new room. I hung the little carved swallows that Rowan had made for her over her bed and arranged her treasures on her windowsills. Feeling just a little like life was moving too fast for me that night, I tucked her into her very own big girl bed for the very first time. “Did you have a good birthday Sweet Pea?” I asked her.

I got a very serious, very sleepy nod. “Will you come next year Mummy?”

“I will baby.”

“Do you promise?”

I smiled, “I promise. I love you Sulamith.”

“I love you Mummy. Gnigh,” she yawned, then mumbled, “Liked the brown bunny better . . .” She pulled the brown plush rabbit that she had chosen at the kid's market close and turned as her eyes fell closed. I kissed her forehead and watched her for a moment before I headed down to the back porch where Evan was sitting with Sheila.

“That was quick,” Sheila said looking up at me as I walked out onto the porch.

“I think she was too tired to stay awake for more than a minute. She dropped off mid sentence like a little rock,” I said, sitting down on the wicker love seat next to Evan and leaning into him. Without thinking his arm came around me and pulled me in that little bit closer.

The look we got from Sheila was absolutely hilarious. Evan was, obviously, comfortable in his mother's house. He'd grown up there. It was home. Him wandering around barefoot with his shirt tails untucked was nothing new, but Sheila hadn't been upstairs yet where Evan's blazer, socks, and belt were still draped over the chair in my room. She gaped for several seconds before exclaiming loudly, “Oh, my god! Is that physical contact I detect? Why didn't you say!?” She looked at Evan.

“What was I supposed to say? You've been home for all of ten minutes. Now you know,” Evan shrugged as a smile tugged the corners of his mouth.

“What, exactly, do I know?” Sheila grinned her wicked curiosity and I blushed for the first time in nearly four years then turned and pressed my cheek against Evan's shoulder fighting an urge to giggle. Evan, for his part, blushed too and snickered into my hair as he kissed my head.

“So you told him?” She looked at me pointedly. “Everything?” she stressed the word. “I don't have to make weird excuses to him when you blow up the light bulbs anymore?” she added.

I laughed softly, and maybe a little sadly, “Yes . . . I told him everything . . . I didn't leave anything out this time.”

Sheila nodded and sat lost in her own thoughts for a moment when I told her, “Thank you Sheila. For everything. For putting up with me. For all your help. For calling Evan. You always seem to know what I need. It's like . . .” I hesitated, “It's like magic.”

“Sprite,” she said. “You don't ever need to thank me. I'd do it all again, and, credit where due, while I did call Evan this morning, I didn't have to ask him to come. He was already on his way.” Sheila stood, “And that little girl of yours has worn me right out. I'm going to bed and I hope that I drop off like a rock too because we've got that order of David Austen Roses coming in tomorrow at six A.M. and we need to be in to meet the truck.” She closed the porch door behind her and I heard the creak of the banister as she headed upstairs.

I turned and looked at Evan questioningly. He was looking back at me, a complicated smile—certainly worthy of Raphael—playing around his mouth and eyes. “I know that Sulamith's birthday is hard for you. I made sure that I would have the day free weeks ago, and emailed my students the lecture notes yesterday. You've seemed, delicate, and . . . in a flux ever since Audrey died. I just wanted to make sure that I was here . . . If you needed me.”

“I do need you Evan,” I said to him and rested my head against him, enjoying the contact, enjoying the fact that it was Evan that I was sitting with on that quiet summer evening.

Eventually he told me with a sigh, “I've got to go. I have a few papers to mark and I need to revise my lecture for Thursday.”

I was silent for a moment; he'd told me only a few short hours ago that he was never going to stop loving me, that I was stuck with him. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

I turned and looked into his face and his mouth quirked and he nodded, “Definitely.” Then he kissed me and said to me, “If someone had told me this morning, that my day would end like this, I wouldn't have believed them. I can't quite get over the idea that there is magic in this world after all. I searched and searched. I thought that it only existed in stories, but here I am sitting on the porch with the last Fairy queen, and she just happens to be the girl that I love.” Evan looked down for a moment and sighed, then he gave me a conflicted and reluctant, but satisfied, smile, “I should be going.”

He got up off of the wicker love seat. I heard him go upstairs to retrieve his things from my room and, I'm sure, to take a peek at Sulamith. I followed him and met him at the door just as he was coming back down. He bent and removed a wrapped package from a bag that he'd brought in that morning, and that I'd been too preoccupied to notice. “Give this to Sulamith when she wakes up. Tell her it's from me.” He placed the present on the hall table.

“I love you,” I whispered standing on tiptoe and reaching around his neck.

He gave me a dazzling bone melting smile and kissed me, “I'd live the last five years all over, just to hear you say you love me again.”

“You don't have to. I love you Evan.”

He smiled, kissed me again and told me, “I love you.” Then he was off.

I climbed the stairs and stood in the hall for a moment looking at my bed. It was really very rumpled. Just then Sheila emerged from the bathroom with a towel on her head and stood next to me wondering what I was staring at so intently. She looked at the bed then at me, eyebrows raised. I turned bright pink.

*

When I crawled into bed I lay there alone for the first time since Sulamith's birth, and I thought of Rowan. I remembered his smile, the way he would wait for me to wake in the morning, watching my face. I remembered dancing with him, laughing as he swung me around, and the way he would put his hands on either side of my face and look into my eyes. I remembered, perfectly, his face and his wild dark eyes, and all of this I remembered without feeling that I would drown in my tears. There were tears, there always would be, but at least now they were sweet as well as bitter, and I had Evan to thank for it. For helping me hold on to Rowan, for finding the lost pieces of my heart, and mending some of the cracks.

Evan is, in his way, every bit as much my hero as Rowan.