Page 118 of Persephone's Curse
“I know how much you talk to him,” she said. “I just thought… Well, this couldn’t hurt, you know? Maybe give things a little boost.”
“It’s perfect…”
“I just love you,” she whispered.
It wasn’t the first time she had told me she loved me, but each time was a tiny thrill, and each time was unbelievable in its own way, and each time made me pause and close my eyes and wonder how I had gotten so lucky.
“I love you, too,” I said. “Thank you.”
We held hands as we walked through the house and out to the backyard, where my sisters and parents and Aunt Bea were already sitting around the long table, drinking prosecco (Dad, Mom, Aunt Bea, and finally, to her immense pleasure, Bernadette) and eating finger sandwiches Dad had meticulously put together from classic British recipes.
“Maybe!” Mom exclaimed, standing up when she saw us approaching. “My goodness, you look like a little spring flower.”
“Oh, Anastasia,” Maybe said with a wave of her hand, affecting an English accent. “This setup is absolutelydivine.”
“You’re a nut,” Dad said, hugging Maybe. Then, winking at me over her shoulder, he added, “Just like my daughter.”
It was so rare, these days, that we were all together. It was all I had wanted for my birthday. It was all I ever wanted.
We ate about a hundred finger sandwiches each, snuck sips of prosecco, laughed, talked, cried happy tears.
The jasmine had bloomed early that year, and every time the wind blew, I smelled Henry.
And every time the wind blew, I caught Evelyn’s eye, and she smiled at me so sadly and so sweetly and I knew we were both thinking of him.
After dinner, Mom and Aunt Bea lugged out a cake they had made themselves—well, really, it was two cakes, one in the shape of the number one and the other a number eight. They put the two plates on the table backward and Dad gasped and said, “You’re eighty-one?? Man, I feel old.”
Then Bernadette laughed and switched the plates and Clara lit the candles, one on each, and everyone instructed me to make a wish.
The obvious choices danced through my head (I wish Henry was still here, I wish my sisters and I would always be together, I wish Maybe doesn’t wake up one day and realize I am not as cool as I’ve managed to trick her into thinking I am), but in the end I went with a classic:
I wish I always feel as happy as I do right now.
It was only after I had blown out the candles, after Maybe had rested her hand on my leg, after everyone had eaten their fill of cake and my sisters had begun to clear the dirty plates away, that I realized it was true.
Iwashappy.
We were happy.
Despite everything, we really were.
Once early evening hit, the weather turned chillier, and we moved inside to open presents, spreading ourselves out in the living room.
Aunt Bea and Maybe shared the love seat and I heard Aunt Bea, working on her fourth or fifth glass of prosecco, lean close to Maybe and say, “Have I ever told you that Farthing girls are descended from Persephone?”
“Have I ever toldyouthat I once held a séance in this very house?” Maybe countered.
“Gosh, I like you,” Aunt Bea said, and wrapped her arm around my very cute girlfriend.
The first present I unwrapped was from Mom, who affected a wise-ass smirk as I pulled a sweatshirt from Hunter College out of the gift bag. It was the school I was attending in the fall. (I had indeed kept in touch with Professor Natalie Beard.)
“You will burn the other one,” Mom said, referring to the sweatshirt from Bernadette’s old college, which I wasn’t currently wearing and—to be fair to me—usually only wore around the house now.
“Point taken,” I said, hugging the sweatshirt to my chest.
Dad, notoriously bad at gifts but incredibly well-meaning, had gotten me a gift card to the Hunter College co-op. “For your books,” he explained helpfully. “Oh, and this is probably silly, but—” He tossed me a small, unwrapped box: a replica set of the illuminated fifteenth-century playing cards he always went to see at the Cloisters.
“Dad… these are perfect,” I said.
