Table of Contents
Title Page
Book Details
Dedication
Musical Hearts
About the Author
Musical Hearts
NANCY BREWKA-CLARK
When Harriet kidnapped a baby girl and raised her to be a princess, she neglected the possibility that sweet little Melissa would turn into a teenage hellion. Unexpected comic relief comes in the form of Barbara, Harriet's ex, who arrives to help with Melissa's coming out ball—and reignites old sparks.
Meanwhile, displeased that only men are allowed to attend the coming out ball, young, stubborn Daphne disguises herself as a man so she can meet the beautiful princess—who comes to learn that what she wants, and thinks she wants, aren't always the same thing.
Musical Hearts
By Nancy Brewka-Clark
Published by Less Than Three Press LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.
Edited by Amanda Jean
Cover designed by Natasha Snow
This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.
First Edition April 2017
Copyright © 2017 by Nancy Brewka-Clark
Printed in the United States of America
Digital ISBN 9781620049907
For my beloved TLC
Musical Hearts
"Oh, she's adorable." Harriet Harwich bent over the pink baby carrier. "And look at those fingers, so long and delicate. She's got the hands of an artist."
The proud new mother beamed. "Would you like to hold her?"
When the baby was in her arms, Harriet felt a strange sensation in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger, but she'd just eaten an English muffin with a cup of tea. "She's so beautiful. What's her name?"
"Gerbera."
"Really?" Harriet's nose twitched. "Why on earth did you choose that?"
"My husband liked it. He said it's a flower that everybody loves. Funny, I can't understand why if you can call a kid Lily or Rose or Violet, it's fine, but if it's, like, Gerbera or Hellebore or Scabiosa, everybody goes bananas."
"It is very original, indeed." She bounced the baby gently. "So, tell me, ah, Gerbera, are you going to be another Georgia O'Keeffe when you grow up?"
The baby's mother frowned. "Who's she?"
"A magnificent artist." Harriet decided not to give a lecture. No point in drawing out this conversation now that she'd made up her mind. "She painted flowers, in fact."
"That's so lame. You can get great pictures of flowers off the Internet. I want Gerbera to be a hair dresser."
Harriet's nose twitched again harder, but all she said was, "How nice."
When the young woman went to take the baby back, Harriet pulled away a little. A question formed in the young woman's big blue eyes. "I was just thinking," Harriet said quickly, "how much I'd like to do a story on her, you know, a photo shoot and article on how you plan to raise her. I work for an online magazine for new moms. We just love to feature beautiful babies."
"That would be awesome." She let Harriet continue to hold the baby while she fumbled in her bag. "Here's my card."
Much to Harriet's joy, the woman's name, address, telephone number, and email address were all printed on the rose-pink card. "Oh, you host parties to sell negligees. What fun."
The young woman, whose name was Megan Mossup, laughed and held out her arms for her baby girl. "I'd invite you to one, but usually ladies your age prefer flannel pajamas."
Harriet's heart gave a thud, sending red-hot blood up into her sallow cheeks. The nerve of her, implying that she was old. Why, she was the youngest witch in the coven by several hundred years. And not only that, but Harriet's sisterhood preferred not just to sleep skyclad but also to hold their nocturnal festivities in the nude as well. Flannel, indeed.
But aloud she merely said, "Lovely meeting you. I'll be in touch." Reaching out a knobby finger, she stroked the baby's cheek. "See you later, sweetheart."
Once Harriet was back at home, a magnificently turreted castle located on an isolated mountain in the western part of the state, she began to plot out what she thought of as adoption proceedings. For the next three weeks, she drove by the Mossup house every four hours, sleeping in between only to dream of her precious pink princess.
Nobody noticed Harriet's vigil because each time she transformed herself into a different person, sometimes male, sometimes female, but always young. Mrs. Mossup's crack about her age hadn't wounded her vanity as much as it had alerted her that she'd remember an elderly woman. Not only did she disguise herself, but each time she also magically converted a vegetable or fruit from her enormous garden into a suitable vehicle. So far, she'd cruised by in a tomato-red Prius, a carrot-colored Volkswagen, and, her particular favorite, a Mercedes with the color and shine of a ripe eggplant. Twice, she had actually gotten the broom out of her kitchen closet and sailed overhead at two in the morning. Nothing had moved but the sickle moon overhead and a particularly ambitious black feral cat below. The neighborhood in which the Mossups dwelt was extraordinarily peaceful.
Finally, she had the day of the week and the time of day pin-pointed. Because she had the hearing of a bat and the eyes of a hawk, she watched and listened from her green Kia, formerly a cucumber, as the little family got ready for another Monday. First, Mr. Mossup, a stout young bricklayer whose first name was Phil, left the house in his overalls and duckbill cap, climbing up into his nineteen-year-old van with the resigned weariness of a man three times his age. Then pretty little Mrs. Mossup, known as Meg to her friends, of whom she had many, took the freshly washed infant in her freshly washed diaper and little pink T-shirt and put her in her pink carrier, draping it with a web of mosquito netting.
Outside the kitchen screen door, there was an old wicker rocking chair, and into this Meg tenderly placed her baby. She was confident that if little Gerbera so much as peeped she'd hear her since everyone knew a mother's heart was superior to any human ear. Harriet knew that once back inside, Meg would do the dishes, make the bed, and then sit down at the kitchen table with another cup of coffee and her cell phone so that she could text all her friends, an occupation that would take up the rest of her morning.
At promptly 10:03, Harriet cracked open the window to a hair's breadth, shrank down behind the wheel, and crawled up the door to the tiny opening. Anyone watching on the sidewalk would only see a brown ant making its arduous way down the Kia's shiny green surface. Once she was on the front walk, Harriet turned herself into a red squirrel and dashed around the corner of the house into the back yard. When she saw the little pink carrier in its regular place, her spirits soared. Up, up into the air Harriet went, spreading her eagle's wings in elation, until she was directly above the carrier. Down, down, she swooped, ripping the netting away with her hooked yellow beak to grasp the sleeping infant's tiny T-shirt with her talons. Then up, up, she went again, over the rooftop, high above the electrical wires, to land on the lawn in the blameless form of a robin with a pink worm in its beak.
And through all of this, the infant slept during each transformation, her mother texted, and somewhere only a few miles away her father slapped a trowel of wet cement onto a layer of bricks and thought of how nice it would be to hold his baby daughter in his lap tonight and sing her to sleep.
Ant and crumb climbed into the driver's seat, morphing instantly to two teen-aged boys. As soon as she closed the tinted windows, Harriet became her crafty self. Turning, she let out a little cackle of sheer delight at the sight of the beautiful b
aby sleeping in her pink car seat. This woke the baby. The deep blue eyes vanished into fat creases as the pansy face turned red. For a heart-stopping moment, Harriet thought little Melissa—there was no need ever to hear that odious name Gerbera again—was going to shriek. Instead, the infant chortled with glee, clapping her tiny hands. "You are the child of my heart," Harriet sang, pulling away from the curb while the baby continued to laugh.
By noon, the street where the Mossups lived was blocked off in both directions by patrol cars. More patrol cars blinked blue lights into the rapidly falling rain. Lightning ripped the sky as the distraught young mother screamed with grief and the stunned young father wiped the rain streaming from his forehead. "Just find her," he pleaded. "We don't have much, but they can have it all—the house, the van, and every cent I've got in the credit union."
By nightfall, the street was filled with TV vans as a helicopter circled overhead. A neighbor had seen a green Kia, but the license plate had turned out to be untraceable. To the law enforcement officials investigating the kidnapping, the false plate indicated that the crime had been planned well in advance of this terrible day. Every time they were asked if they could think of any potential suspects, the young couple burst into tears. "Of course not. No one with a heart would do this to us," Phil Mossup sobbed. "My wife—my poor little wife. Look at her. Who could stand to see how sad she is and not return our baby?"
Listening to the interview with the distraught Mossups on the car radio, turned very low not to disturb the sleeping infant, Harriet shook her head in mock sorrow. "They'll have another baby, and another after that. They won't even remember you, my little cherub, once they've had other children. Sadly, intelligence is not their forte." Feeling more and more superior with every passing mile, Harriet entertained herself with imagining how wonderful her life would be now that she'd fulfilled her own heart's desire.
"Imagine thinking I have no heart," she scoffed to the baby, who'd awakened but remained angelically silent. "That's a terrible thing to say. Shame on them. Of course I have a heart, and a pretty one it is indeed. It's made of pure gold, child, and what can be better than that? And I certainly don't neglect it. I take excellent care of it, in fact. I take it out of its velvet box every year, wind it up, and put it back in the top drawer of the cherry highboy in my bedroom where it ticks the minutes away merrily and chimes the hours with no fuss, no muss."
She refused to think about where that heart had once been and how it had been returned to her to signal the end of a love she'd thought was endless. "Your biological parents may have hearts of flesh and blood, but we'll soon turn yours into something far more precious. And precise. And harder—definitely harder. Oh, yes, you'll never need to concern yourself about the mechanics of the heart, sweet one. For you, love and joy will come like clockwork."
One hundred miles down the highway, the baby finally let out a tiny squawk, thrusting her fat little hands into her mouth. "It won't be long now, my darling," Harriet cooed. "We're almost home. You'll adore it. There will be so many things to do. So many interesting things."
The baby squawked again, this time with more energy. Waving her fists, she blew a great bubble. Then her face turned red. "Oh my." Harriet hastily turned on the air conditioning, not wanting to roll down a window. "You need a nappy change, don't you, precious?"
The baby sucked in the cooling air for what seemed like an eternity. Then, she let it all out in a great wail.
"Now, now, no need for that." Harriet willed a disembodied pair of hands that had materialized in the back seat to clean the baby up properly. When that indelicate matter had been taken care of, Harriet expected happy silence. Instead, the baby cried harder, kicking her legs with the energy of a tadpole escaping the snapping beak of a hungry stork.
"Dear me," Harriet sighed. "It's time for some music." Instantly, the car filled with the classic Brahms lullaby. Already planning the formal luncheon she'd host for the coven to meet her precious daughter, Harriet decided that a string quartet would play the melody over and over while her sister witches waltzed around the bassinet admiring her Melissa. "There, there," Harriet whispered tenderly as the cries abated, "you will never cry again, my precious child. There will be no need."
That evening, high up the mountain and far, far away from the Mossups' frantic little town, Harriet Harwich cradled the infant as she watched the news on TV. After endless shots of both parents still hoarsely pleading through streams of tears, Harriet turned off the broadcast with a snort. "I can't imagine why anyone should ever try to make me feel guilty." She kissed the soft spot on the baby's downy scalp. "All it does is make me loathe the pathetic creatures that dare to claim you as theirs. I can give you everything, my precious princess. Everything a princess needs to be a princess." She knew she was being a bit redundant, but the circumstances seemed to require a staunch pledge to her cuddly darling. "By the time you're sixteen, you'll be the most accomplished, talented, brilliant, beautiful artist in the universe."
*~*~*
"I'm bored." Melissa scowled at her mother, wondering why the old hag cried so much lately when she knew it got on her nerves. "I hate it here. I hate—"
"Don't say it," Harriet pleaded. "What do you want, precious? Just tell me and—"
"I'll tell you what I want." Melissa's chin shot out a mile. Brushing her incredibly thick mane of pale blond hair out of her enormous blue eyes, she snarled, "A party." Her sneer grew even deeper. "A sweet sixteen party because I'm sixteen and I'm so freaking sweet I could melt in the rain, just like sugar. Right?"
"Yes, yes." Harriet shook her aching head. Melissa had been isolated from reality ever since being brought into the castle as an infant. Her art instructors had been the spirits of the two greatest female Renaissance portrait painters of them all, Sofonisba Anguissola and Plautilla Nelli, both of them summoned from the eternal ether to urge Melissa on to greatness. Her playmates had been the spirits of female royalty who'd died young, although of course Melissa knew nothing about that. Melissa had mingled with the best of the best, but the problem was they were all dead—immortal, but dead. "I mean no. I mean, yes, you are sweeter than sugar and no, you cannot have a party."
Silence fell. In horror, Harriet watched Melissa's creamy skin turn pink, red, purple, and some indescribable color that Satan probably used for his bedroom walls. When the fiery glow reached blinding proportions, Melissa howled, "I HATE YOU, YOU OLD WITCH!"
Something snapped inside Harriet. "You love me," she hissed. "You've been telling me how much you hate me for the past three years, and I've had it." She struggled to control her temper, but it was like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. "You were such a sweet child. And I'm sure you could be even sweeter now if you applied yourself. But you don't. You just swagger around being hateful. I am sick of it. SICK OF IT."
"Too bad, Mummy." Melissa sneered. "Because I am sick of you being sick. In fact, I hate being sick because you're sick. Yes, you are SICK! And that's why I HATE YOU!"
"You do not hate me. You love me." Harriet stepped right up to Melissa. "Say it. SAY IT!"
"Never." Melissa sobbed, turning on her heels. "And you can't make me."
"Oh, yes I can," Harriet called after her, chasing her down the endlessly echoing hall. "Do you hear me? You say you love me right this second or I'll lock you up and throw away the key."
Melissa was at the top of the staircase when Harriet swooped down on her. Grabbing her by her waist-length curtain of hair, she pulled hard, as hard as she could, snarling between her yellowed teeth, "I mean it. Say you love me. Say it. Say it."
"I'd rather die," Melissa spat.
"Don't tempt me," Harriet hissed. Dragging Melissa by her hair, she flung open the door to her prettily decorated room in the highest turret of the castle. "Work on your painting," she snarled when Melissa came at her in a frenzy, fingers bent like claws. Freezing her on the spot, Harriet examined her coldly. "Create something brilliant and beautiful." She snapped her fingers, bringing Melissa back to
life. "Then we'll see."
"See what?" Melissa screamed, but Harriet only slammed the door and turned the key in the lock. "Okay, I'll tell you what you'll see, you old witch." Melissa pounded the thick mahogany with her fists to punctuate every word. "You'll see me in a puddle of broken bones and oozing blood down there on the patio because I am going to FLING myself out the window. So there!"
"Try it," Harriet cackled.
Melissa ran to the casement, flung it open, and screamed blue murder as a thicket of hairy legs blocked her way.
"I know you don't care for spiders," Harriet panted, torn between malignant satisfaction and the most abject sorrow that she had to punish her precious child this way, "so I blew these two up to the size of buffalos and posted them outside your window. Mind you, I could have commanded them to wrap you up in webbing like a moth. And I will, if you don't come to your senses."
Harriet bent down to spy through the key hole as Melissa threw herself down on her bed. Hearing her sob into the silken coverlet, Harriet felt a twinge of remorse. But that vanished when Melissa leaped to her feet, shot her upraised middle finger at the door, and taunted, "I know you're out there, you old hag. I can hear you huffing and puffing."
"Yes, I'm here." Harriet continued to watch as Melissa ran to the window, gave a great shudder, and staggered back to the bed. "And my spider friends won't be going anywhere either, not as long as you continue to misbehave."
"How long do you plan to keep me in here?" Melissa sobbed, punching the piled pillows.
"For as long as it takes to make you say you love me," Harriet whispered.
Melissa leapt off the bed to run to the door. "I heard that. And do you know what? That'll be never. NEVER. NEVER!"
"You don't mean that," Harriet rasped as Melissa fell to her knees.
One blue eye glared back at her through the keyhole. "I do mean it. I do. I do. Now, go away."
Pierced to the heart, Harriet stood, feeling every bone ache with sorrow. A thousand rebukes went through her mind, but she said nothing. Instead, she shuffled off down the sconce-lit corridor to her own master suite to contemplate her next move.
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