Star Promise (40 page)

For a moment I considered telling him everything, but the story of Olivia wasn’t mine to tell. “No,” I replied. “Everything is fine.”

We had a tendency to close ranks when times got tough, and we’d never faced anything more brutal than the wringer the three of us had been put through over the past month.

The tough front Adam put up was purely for Bridget and I. He was hurting. As expected, his father hadn’t taken the news of his resignation well. He’d resorted to his usual repertoire of cutting remarks and insults. It wasn’t the first time, but unless they could work it out it was going to be the last. Adam’s usual routine of giving Jean-Luc a few days to calm down didn’t apply any more. He was done, and devastated because of it.

Bridget’s bump on the head was cured by a few lazy days at home and chicken nuggets for dinner two nights on the run. In a sure-fire sign that she was feeling better, the tale of her death-defying leap from the playground equipment had grown to epic proportions. When I heard her telling Alex about it on the phone, the timeline of events now included bullying squirrels and Treasure’s inability to catch her at the bottom. “Her arms don’t bend wide enough,” she explained.

I let her have her moment, mainly because that was the only moment she had going on. Since Ryan’s thoughtless no-magic lecture, we hadn’t even been able to get her to sit down and read a book with us. Fairy-tales were off limits. Not even the picture book version of Ariel held her interest. “It’s not real, Mum,” she insisted, over and over. “And I don’t love it.”

I wasn’t going to push the issue, but the issue was pushing me. I felt like something precious had been stolen from me, and I vowed that when I finally got around to confronting the thief, he’d be sure to know it.

We hadn’t seen Ryan all week, and Bridget clearly missed him. When I mentioned heading to his apartment for a dress fitting, she jumped at the chance to see him. She took off to her room, returning in a little summer dress offset with the heavy tweed coat her grandmother had gifted her back in July.

“I thought you hated that coat,” I said, looking her up and down.

“Not this coat,” she replied sweetly. “I just love this coat.”

Bridget’s enthusiasm for visiting her uncle seemed to wane once we got to his place. When the door opened, she became incredibly quiet and withdrawn, and I quickly realised it was because she was nervous. Ryan seemed anxious too, but it would’ve taken a cold soul not to notice how genuinely happy he was to have her back.

Thanks to Ivy’s eagerness to get out of the apartment, the dress fitting was over and done with fairly quickly. Perhaps she knew a showdown was imminent. Bente picked up on the tension too, but found a way around it by removing Bridget from the room. “We’ll go for a walk,” she suggested, taking her by the hand.

I wanted to go with them. Being left alone with the object of my wrath was borderline awkward. I sat at the counter while Ryan made coffee I didn’t want.

I wasn’t sure what to say to him at first, but he made it easy for me by ridiculously asking if I was mad at him.

“You know I am.”

“I wasn’t trying to cause trouble, Charli,” he explained. “Honestly.”

I believed him a hundred percent, but it didn’t lessen the damage he’d caused. I was tired of being undermined by Décaries. Jean-Luc and Fiona did it by way of outrageously expensive presents and money, and now Ryan had thrown his hat into the ring by vetoing magic.

“You stole something from me,” I told him. “And for the life of me, I don’t know how to get it back.”

As expected, Ryan had no clue what I was talking about. Explaining it to him wasn’t difficult. It was a conversation I’d rehearsed in my head for days, and getting rid of it was bliss.

I broke it down for him as simply as I could. The confidence I possessed when it came to parenting my daughter wasn’t always high.

“You’re a good mom, Charli,” he assured me.

“Some days I am,” I agreed. “And some days I have no clue what I’m doing. You want to know why I think that is?”

He looked at me but didn’t answer, which was probably one of his wiser decisions of late.

“I had no mother, Ryan. How am I supposed to know what the hell I’m doing?”

I’d done a lot of soul searching over the last few days, and that was finally the conclusion I’d come to. After weeks of trying to find something to align myself to Olivia, I realised that looks and mannerisms were unimportant. I looked like my father, and that was that. No part of me wanted to resemble a vicious half-starved ballerina anyway.

The bigger worry was what she
hadn’t
given me. Adam was right. There was nothing Olivia could teach me about being a good mother to my child. For me, doing right by my kid was always going to be trial and error.

“My connection to Bridget isn’t going to the park or speaking French or reading books,” I explained. “It’s the stories that my dad gave me. That’s how I connect with her, and that’s how he connected with me.” Winging it with tales of La La Land wasn’t a new concept. By all accounts, Alex’s mother had been no prize either.

Although he’d graciously heard me out, Ryan wasn’t quite ready to forfeit. “She knocked herself out trying to fly, Charli,” he pointed out. “You can’t possibly think that’s okay.”

My palms were starting to sweat. I pressed them flat on the counter, appreciating the cool granite. “Perhaps if you hadn’t stolen her wings she might’ve done it.”

“Wings?” he asked incredulously. “You think I stole her wings?”

“We all lose them eventually, Ryan,” I said quietly. “The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”

My hothead brother-in-law’s calm façade finally cracked. He demanded that I stop preaching nonsense – something he’d done a million times before.

“It’s from
Peter Pan
, idiot.”

“That doesn’t make it any more credible.”

Pure frustration escaped me in the form of an angry groan. “You just don’t get it. I’m not crazy. I know the difference between a fairy-tale and real life, but what if there’s the tiniest ring of truth to it?”

He deliberated for a long time, making me hopeful that he trying to understand the stand I was taking. “Impossible,” he finally concluded, shutting me down the same way his father always did.

“Deny it all you want to, Ryan, but one day something extraordinary is going to happen and you’re not going to be able to explain it away,” I insisted. “You won’t think it’s impossible then. You’re going to think it’s magic. I just hope I’m around to see it.”

I left Ryan’s apartment on a promise that day. After a lot of bickering and the occasional round of raised voices, he surprised me with an extraordinary offer.

“I’ll make it up to her, Charli,” he vowed. “I don’t know how, but I will.”

I believed him, and the reason why was simple. Sometimes the only person with the power to make things right is the person who hurt you in the first place. The best we can hope for is that they’re decent enough to try.

Charli was infinitely more productive than I was that week. She actually made it to work each morning, but then, she had a job to go to. I was content to take time out and hang out with my kid.

After days of radio silence, Ryan called me two days before the wedding and asked that we bring Bridget to the club.

“It’s important,” he said seriously. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”

I didn’t make life difficult by protesting. Ryan had enough on his plate with out-of-control wedding plans. I was also keen to check out the ceiling, which had been stripped back and painted the week before, so a trip to the club was actually appealing.

We were the last to arrive. Ryan and Bente were standing in the main room, checking out something on the stage. My focus was entirely on the ceiling. The shabby, peeling paint was gone. It was now bright white, perfectly showcasing the flowery pattern pressed into the tin.

“Ceiling looks good,” I commented.

“Yeah,” agreed Ryan, sounding as if he didn’t care either way.

Bridget was far more enthusiastic, but it probably had nothing to do with the ceiling. Breaking the hold I had on her, she scooted across the floor, throwing herself at Ryan.

He caught her, proving that despite everything he really was a good uncle. “I have something to show you,” he told her.

Bridget squashed his cheeks between her hands. “Really? A surprise?”

Ryan turned around to speak to Charli. “You were right,” he said vaguely.

“I’m always right,” she muttered, unfazed by his comment.

“I’m sorry I stole from you. I’m going to give everything back to you today.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but Charlotte clearly did. She hooked her arm through mine and held tight, either anticipating something really good or expecting something dreadful. I couldn’t decide which.

Ryan lowered Bridget to her feet. She took off running around the stage as if making up for the stage debut that had never happened.

“I love it up here,” she announced. “Really love it.”

Ryan slipped behind the velvet curtain and Bente edged toward us, looking as nervous as Charli. I was seconds away from demanding an explanation when Ryan reappeared carrying a pair of sparkly wings that told me all I needed to know. He was about to give my daughter a much-needed hit of magic.

When money is no object, the smallest of gestures is still grand. The wealth of my family had never impressed me, but I wasn’t arrogant enough to claim that our lives weren’t positively affected because of it. It afforded us the freedom of a gypsy lifestyle. Nowhere was off limits if the urge to wander beckoned.

Ryan’s use of his wealth was a little more traditional. He lived an extravagant life, so the plans he came up with were always grand. Giving Bridget her wings back involved an elaborate set-up of cables and trickery designed to make her believe she was flying.

There weren’t words to describe how it felt to see my little girl on stage, waving her arms and kicking her legs as she swung through the air. She was no Madam Butterfly, but there still seemed to be structure to her clumsy flailing.

I tore my eyes from her to glance at Adam. “Is she dancing?” I queried.

He leaned down and whispered in my ear. “That’s the routine she was supposed to do at the recital.”

He would know. Adam had suffered through a million hours of practice, and many of them had taken place on the sidewalk as they trekked back to his office after ballet lessons.

Bridget had worked tirelessly for weeks to learn the routine and had been excited by the prospect of showing it off on stage, only to have it ripped away by Olivia. Bridget might not have been Prima Ballerina material, but she was our Prima, and when I looked back up at the stage, she suddenly didn’t seem so clumsy any more.

Ryan had inadvertently given her much more than he’d taken. As well as returning her wings, he’d also managed to fill the massive void left in her heart by my mother’s wicked deeds.

All of Bridget’s boxes were checked. She was on the stage and dancing in front of an audience in a beautiful sparkly costume.

Historically, your wedding day is supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life. Adam and I weren’t exactly on board with the hoopla surrounding Ryan and Bente’s wedding, but we were trying to be.

I’d endured my fair share of coffee dates with the queen, discussing nothing more riveting than guest lists and fruitcake, and always tried to appear interested. Wedding conversations with Bente were much more subdued, and as the day drew closer I got the impression that she was having some serious doubts about what she’d signed on for. Ryan wasn’t faring much better. Adam had told me weeks ago that he was over it, and had no more input than the promise of turning up on the day.

The whole production was a powder keg threatening to blow at any minute, and in the worst timing imaginable, that minute came two hours before they were due at the church.

Bente was teary and bereft, unable to deal with the stress. Not only was she trying to come to grips with her parents’ thoughtless decision to stay on vacation rather than attend her wedding, her sister and nieces had been struck down by a bad bout of food poisoning.

“None of my family will be there,” she sobbed.

I didn’t think that was the worst of her problems. I was having trouble getting past her appearance. Her dress had Ivy stamped all over it. It also had about six million beads and diamantes. It was a visual example of how Bente’s simple, elegant ideas had been trampled on and ramped up to showgirl level – just like the rest of the arrangements.

I wasn’t the only one who recognised she was out of her depth. After a long few hours of soul searching, the bride realised it too, and in the ultimate attempt at regaining control of the way her wedding played out, she called the whole thing off.

Breaking the news to my brother that his wedding had been called off was one of the more difficult things I’d had to do in my life. Convincing him that he hadn’t been jilted was harder. Charli made it very clear when she called and told me the news. Bente had cancelled the wedding, not Ryan.

He sat on the couch looking every bit the dejected groom. “I can’t deal with this, Adam,” he moaned.

I grabbed his arm and forced him to stand. “You have to,” I demanded. “Some things don’t go according to plan, Ryan. Just change course and get back on track.”

“How?”

I was the master of making the best of a bad situation. I had no idea how we were going to sort it out, but was confident we’d come up with something. “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Let’s just get over there and figure something out.”

I tried hard not to look shocked by Bente’s appearance when we arrived at our apartment. Her face was stained with streaks of black makeup, and she’d been crying so hard that her cheeks were as puffy as her dress. Ordinarily Bente was a pretty girl, but at that moment Treasure looked more attractive.