my fairy.
My mother would say it was one thing not to believe in fairies when you’re in the city, and the lights and bustle take you away from believing, but when you’re near the ocean, you can feel and hear them. You need to have the innocent heart of a child to believe. I wasn’t sure what was holding Meaghan back.
“Yes, Fiona’s here,” I said, “and she’s giving me guff.”
“Good. Someone needs to keep you in line.”
Fiona tittered.
Swell. Two against one.
“What is she giving you guff about?”
“She’s worried about me. She has a feeling.”
“I might not be able to see her, but I agree with her. I’ve been getting some weird vibes lately. Let’s chat over a brownie.” Meaghan reached into her snow-white crocheted backpack and pulled out a plate wrapped in foil. Given her surname, Brownie, she had felt compelled to learn how to make good brownies. Over the years, I’d tasted several dozen varieties: coffee brownies, chocolate brownies, mint brownies. Today she had brought peanut butter brownies—my favorite.
“Eat. Savor. Then talk to me.” She unwrapped the goodies, set the plate on the oval glass table in front of the settee, and, after taking a brownie for herself, sat in the royal-blue Queen Anne chair facing me.
The light cutting through the window cast a glow on her face. Not the heavenly kind that might calm me. Something quite sinister.
Worry slithered down my spine. I scrambled to my feet and fetched a cup of tea. I always kept a pot of Earl Grey at the ready on a warming tray. I took a sip, but it didn’t calm me. I told Meaghan about Fiona’s prediction. “What if she’s right? Could something dire be about to happen?”
“If so, you face it head on.” Meaghan knew how to rebound after a challenge. “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. I think Nelson Mandela said that.”
“I’ll cross-stitch that on a pillow,” I quipped.
“You should.”
“If I knew how to cross-stitch.”
I put aside my worry and concentrated on the song list. We settled on a few favorites including “Clair de Lune,” “The Fairy Lullaby,” and “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” Meaghan wanted to try out a few Celtic tunes, as well, and of course “Greensleeves” was a given. How could I say no? She would play for forty-five minutes, and then the book club discussion would begin.
“Okay.” Meaghan jumped to her feet. “Mission accomplished. I’m out of here. Feeling better?”
“At peace.”
“Good.” She blew me a kiss. “Share the brownies with your customers and then go home and get a decent sleep.” She turned in a circle. “And tell Fiona, if she’s real, not to do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Aha. The truth will out. My pal was a nonbeliever. One had to believe in fairies to see them.
Later, as I was closing up shop, Fiona announced that she was going to a seminar. When I questioned her, asking whether attending a seminar might violate the guidelines of her probation, she said that although she was barred from socializing with other fairies, she was allowed to learn from a fairy mentor in an off-the-record setting.
“So you can see other fairies,” I said.
“Yes.”
She added that fairies with different abilities often attended tutorials to learn how their counterparts operated. While all fairies could work with light, like Fiona, and most could manipulate chlorokinesis—making plants grow—some possessed the talent for telepathy, and a few had the ability to illusion cast, meaning they could make things seem more beautiful.
When I asked Fiona what she would be studying, she held a finger to her lips. “It’s a secret.”
“Nothing that will make the queen fairy mad, I hope.”
“It involves books. She’s in favor of books. All fairies are.”
Just before six p.m., I nabbed Pixie and headed home. Joss would close up. I didn’t need to drive to work. Carmel was a small community. A twenty-minute stroll was all it took to get to the one-bedroom cottage named Dream-by-the-Sea that I rented on Carmelo Street. Many of the homes in Carmel had been given names; it was a quaint tradition. A student of Ansel Adams’s had built mine. He had loved the way sunlight graced the property.
I’d lucked out landing the place. Mrs. Hopewell owned five houses in Carmel, her own plus four others. A talented artist, she had taught my mother how to paint. During that time, she had grown quite fond of my mother and me. When Mrs. Hopewell was laid up with pneumonia a few