are right now. I’m a joke around town because I can’t hold a job for more than six months. I still live at home, and I married a man who turned out to be a woman. Is that what you want for your only daughter?”
Horror filled my mother’s big blue eyes and she looked to my dad. He still appeared skeptical but I could tell my words spooked him because he lowered himself into a nearby chair.
Mom stepped forward and reached out to touch me. Her gaze searched my face and she murmured, “It really is you, isn’t it?”
I nodded. It was harder to hold her gaze than ever. Mom didn’t hide what she felt. Not ever. It was all there on her face, every second of every day. An open book just waiting to be read. I’d grown used to the constant frustration in the lines around her eyes and disappointment that flickered over her mouth when she heard about my latest foible. But now she studied me with an intensity I hadn’t seen since my accident.
Dad being dad, wanted proof. “Tell me one thing that only Joey would know.”
My teeth sank into my lower lip as I sorted through possibilities. “You caught me stealing fifty bucks from your wallet when we were at the hotel in Atlanta. I cried and begged you not to tell mom and you agreed. Said I could clerk in your office on the weekends to make up for it.”
And I could see from the stunned look on my mom’s transparent features that he’d upheld his end of the deal.
“What did you need money for?” Mom asked.
“Your birthday gift. I’d spent all the cash I had on Olympic souvenirs and forgot your birthday until the day of. I ended up getting you this cheesy glass dolphin from the hotel lobby.”
She wrapped her arms around me suddenly and held me close. “Oh Joey,” she sobbed.
Dad rose and then wrapped his arms around me too. We stood there in a little circle of family love and support. Something I hadn’t even realized I’d been missing even more than the feel of chalk on my palms or the rush of executing a perfect routine.
I soaked it up, glad that I had decided to be honest with them and that they believed me. Not just that, but they believed in me.
“Listen,” I said and pulled away. “We don’t have much time. I’ve already changed some things but I won’t know if I prevented the accident until 7:19. Don’t let the other me out of your sights.”
“I’ll go get her. Er…you,” my mother said, leaving the two of us alone.
He brushed some hair out of my eyes. “You’re so beautiful, you know that?”
Heat stole over my face. “You have to say that, you’re my dad.”
But he shook his head. “No. You look like your mother. I see her in your eyes, her bravery. And your grandmother’s stubbornness.”
I had never thought of myself as particularly stubborn before. That was pretty cool though, thinking that there existed some resemblance to the two most magnificent women I’d ever known. The pleasure at the thought vanished when my mother’s cry echoed off the walls. Dad raced for the stairs with me hot on his heels.
Mom stood at the doorway to my room, staring at the curtains that billowed in the gusting wind from the coming storm.
Young Joey had disappeared.
Chapter 14
“They call it the change of life because the woman who goes in isn’t the same as the one who comes out on the other side.”
-Notable quotable from Grammy B.
“Robin,” I hissed into the darkening night. “Are you there?”
It was ten to seven. The fae prince said he would return precisely at seven. My parents were out combing the streets, looking for young Joey. I could do nothing but pace from the front door to the back again and again, frustrated that I didn’t know myself better.
I hadn’t gone to Grammy B’s. That was the first place my mother had called. Nor had I showed up at Darcy’s doorstep or gone to the gym. The packed gym bag was still in the back of mom’s car. Alina hadn’t seen me. I had no other friends that I would turn to. Mom and my dad had taken to driving around town, looking for me.
Much as I hated to admit it, I needed the fae prince’s help. Desperately. And I was afraid I was going to have to do something I didn’t want to in order