I leaned my head against Roman’s chest. “The people here don’t know the truth about anything.”
“Then show them the truth.”
“How?”
“Start by proving to them that you didn’t kill any hamsters.” He arched an eyebrow, waiting for me to form whatever idea he had already had, myself.
And it came, much slower than I would have liked. “Penelope says she loves her hamster. I think if the town is quick to judge, then they need to be quick to jump into action as well. And I have plenty of hamsters to adopt out. They should do their part…and in the process, they’ll see I haven’t killed any. I mean, how else could I have that many hamsters at home!”
“Well, it’s something for us to do tomorrow. Tonight though, we need to put all uncertainties about my father to rest. Do you find it strange that he bought the wardrobe, too?”
“I thought he was showing his support, but instead, he was ensuring the wardrobe didn’t get into a mortal’s hands.”
“Yes, that’s true, but also, I can’t believe what he paid for the wardrobe. Fifteen grand?” Roman pulled back a bit to see into my eyes. “If he has that kind of money to toss away, why is he living with us?”
“Because it’s not about the money.”
“Exactly. I think it’s time to approach him about everything,” Roman said. “About our suspicions of him sabotaging Ettie’s, about him always interrupting us when we’re trying to get a few minutes of alone time, and of how long he’s planning on staying in Watersedge.”
“I was hoping I’d be certain his intentions were ill-intended before I burned any bridges between the two of you.”
Roman laughed. “We haven’t had a bridge between us in over a decade.”
“But one was starting to rebuild.”
He fell silent for a minute or two while we swayed to the music. “Perhaps, but if it isn’t being built on solid ground, its collapse is inevitable. Maybe we should have approached him a month ago when we first suspected he might have been sabotaging the shop.”
“Maybe, but I didn’t believe it. What father would sabotage their own family?” I asked.
“He would,” Roman whispered. “At least, the man I used to know would. This man? I’m not really sure who he is.”
At the end of the evening, our opportunity to approach Joe came. Penelope was busy with a table of coworkers from the school, leaving Joe alone with Roman and me.
I wasn’t one to beat around the bush. When my mind was set, the truth just blurted out. “What really brings you to Watersedge?”
Joe shrugged. “I wanted to make up for lost time with my son.”
I didn’t want to accuse him of lying, especially if his intentions were good, but, it appeared, Roman didn’t have any trouble.
“I haven't seen you for more than a few hours in over a decade. Then, all of a sudden, you show up at the exact same time Ettie opens her shop?”
Joe sat back in his chair and folded his hands on his lap, way calmer than I felt inside. “What are you saying, Roman?”
“I’m wondering what your true motives are to be here. You could have made up with me any year, but why right now?”
Joe’s face suddenly showed his age. “It was just the right time. You got married. I wanted to meet Ettie. Make sure she was good enough for you.”
Emotion erupted from my nice, normally calm husband. “Like you care!”
My stomach twisted for Roman, and I felt sick. I hadn’t realized how much hostility he had harbored towards the years his father had disowned him. Like many things, Roman kept his true feelings in check.
“Roman,” Joe tilted his chin, using a stern voice appropriate for a father. “I came to visit because it was time. There was no other reason than that. I didn’t want to take a disagreement to my grave.”
His grave? Joe wasn’t even fifty yet, young for a witch...or even a mortal. It was too soon to contemplate the meaning of life.
“All you care about—all you ever cared about was your image.”
“That’s not true,” Joe said. “I care about you and Ettie…”
“So, you didn’t come to Watersedge to make sure we were behaving as witches? You didn’t purchase that wardrobe to keep magic out of mortals’ hands? To me, it seems like you came here to police our business, both personal and otherwise.”
“That’s not true,” Joe repeated, looking around to see if anyone was listening, but the music drowned out our voices.
“Then you don’t care that we’re out in the open? Doing magic for whoever needs it?”
Joe tightened his lips, his position on the matter clearly stated without even a word.
“Exactly.” Roman stood and turned towards me with a fierceness I had never seen on his face. “I think we’re done here, Ettie. Ready to go home?” He offered me his hand.
“You bet.” I took his hand…and in a flurry of magic, Roman whisked us outside to our vehicles. Wow. He had never been so powerful, but sometimes magic comes with great emotions.
Chapter Eleven
Roman and I arrived at Ettie’s early the next morning to check our live traps and work on fixing up the apartment. Joseph hadn’t come home last night, which was good because Roman was still tense this morning. One thing about my hubby seemed to be that he didn’t like conflict.
On our way in through the front entrance, Brittany’s changeable letter sign above her church’s entrance caught my eye. It read, “The Church Loves All of God’s Creatures.” Ugh. After the drama with Roman’s father, I had forgotten about social media slinging my name around with the claim that I was being cruel to those too-cute hamsters.
I took a deep breath and ignored it. I would have thought she had learned her lesson when she almost broke her neck, falling off her ladder, but for some reason she was fired up again. Or, perhaps, the month’s lull was just the calm before the storm.
Inside, I went straight for the first trap.
“I caught two hamsters at the same time!” I held up the little wire cage showing off an albino hamster as well as a gray and white one.
“Well, that makes up for this trap.” Roman held an empty one.
I helped my critters into the carrying case I brought, then went to check the two dozen or so other traps. By the end of our circuit on the first floor, we had eight more hamsters. I pulled out an old, antique chair, enchanted to always push itself in after use, and sat staring at the little whiskers beyond the carrying case door and listening to the scratching that remained in the wall. “At this rate, we’ll never catch them all. Ettie’s won’t be able to open, and we’ll never get approval to open the apartment upstairs…that is if Joe ever comes back home for us to…kick him out.” That thought was absurd, but there was an emptiness inside me with Joe gone. Even with everything, he was family, after all.
“Are you ready to call the exterminator back?” Roman asked.
My stomach twisted, staring into the little hamsters’ eyes. What was I going to do? There was no way to get these all out of here with live traps. As we caught them, one by one, they were also multiplying. It turned out a hamster could have a litter of up to twenty pups every three weeks. But I couldn’t make the decision that would end their lives. “Whatever you think is best.” I looked up into Roman’s dark eyes. “Can you just take care of the problem for me?”
He crossed the room and rubbed my back. “Of course.” He tightened his lips, and for a second, I saw that this was as hard for him as it was for me. Had my husband grown attached to these little guys, too?
And having him be the one to pull the trigger wasn’t fair. I sighed. “No, Roman. I actually want to keep trying the live trap. It’s already all over social media about cruelty to animals. We don’t need to add gasoline to the already blazing fire.” In reality, the negative publicity gave me the option of exterminating the hamsters. If everyone already believed I was killing them, what difference did it make if I really did?
I looked down into the crate.
<
br /> What difference did it make?
It made a world of difference to these sweetie pies. As I stood with the carrying case in my hand, a familiar high-pitched melody filled the shop.
I looked at Roman and rolled my eyes. “Joe must be here.”
“Why?” Roman asked, marching towards the steps leading to the apartment upstairs.
I followed my husband to find Joe sitting in the middle of the floor on a pile of blankets, playing his piccolo right in front of the wardrobe he won last night.
“Did you sleep here?” I asked.
Joe nodded.
“You can’t stay here now. This place is infested with hamsters.”
“Music soothes the savage beast.” Joe lifted his piccolo up to his lips and gave it a little twirling melody. The hamsters inside the carrying case I held scampered to one side. Joe lowered his instrument. “Rodents don’t bother me. Did you know one of Roman’s and my ancestors was the man the legend of the Pied Piper came from?” He held up the piccolo. “A little enchantment and the music can make anyone follow.”
My eyes lit up. “I thought magic couldn’t change free will.”
Joe laughed. “I’m not changing their will. They’re drawn by the beautiful melody and are curious.”
Beautiful melody? If it could get all the hamsters out from my walls, I might agree for once. “Why didn’t you say something before?”
“I didn’t want to intrude on yours and Roman’s life.”
Roman snickered, and his little display of disbelief had his father looking away.
“That’s not exactly true,” Joe clarified. “I didn’t want to move out.”
The way his lips tightened clearly said he didn’t want to say anything more. I didn’t want an argument, and while we had his cooperation, I wasn’t going to ruin it. “Well, I welcome your intrusion.” I fanned a hand around the room. “Show me what you can do.” I opened the carrying case door, keeping my hand in front so the eight hamsters I had already caught didn’t go anywhere.
Joe began playing an unfamiliar melody, filled with alternating highs and lows, and soon out from beneath the wardrobe came a golden hamster. As it crossed the living room, another hamster followed, then out marched a few dozen more. Joe kept playing until they approached the carrying case where I removed my hand and Roman helped me scoop them inside. I quickly closed the door.
“Joe, you’re amazing!” I exclaimed.
Roman tilted his chin and narrowed his eyes at his father. “You are good with these hamsters. And if you can call them into the cage…I imagine you could call them no matter where you are.”
“Sure, I imagine I could. I’ve never tried.”
I looked at my husband, getting what he was saying. “So, I’m just going to say it and stop all this speculation. Did you cause all the hamsters to come here in the first place?”
“Me?” Joe lowered his piccolo and shook his head. “No, of course not.”
Now I was the one narrowing my eyes at my father-in-law. Did I believe him? I wasn’t sure.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“Because, you made a point last night. I want to stay in Watersedge and spend time with the both of you. It turns out that I’ve jumped into a relationship with the two of you rather quickly, without earning your respect first. I appreciate your hospitality, but perhaps we should take things slower. I’d be honored if you’d let me stay here in this apartment.”
There was still something he wasn’t saying. I looked at my husband and he saw it, too.
Roman straightened and approached his father like I hadn’t seen before. Eye contact. A straight spine where Roman actually looked the same height as him, and a square jaw. “Dad, you know I’m willing to get to know you better, but I feel you’ve been keeping something from me…from us. Come clean. Why are you really here?”
Joe tightened his lips and cast his eyes to the ground. He took a deep breath, and I could see the confession coming. Had he been here to sabotage me? To sabotage our happy life? To teach us a lesson about mortals and magic?
“I—I…The doctors say I’m developing Witches’ Wandering.”
The skepticism in Roman’s face melted. “‘Witches’ Wandering’? I don’t believe it. I haven’t seen any symptoms of you losing your memories or your magical abilities.”
“Early stages,” Joe said. “Someday, I won’t remember who I am, much less who the two of you are. I didn’t lie when I said I came in time to see you have little ones. I want them to know who their grandpa is…before…well, we don’t have to dwell on it, but if you need confirmation, you can call my doctor in Mystic Ridge, she noticed the changes in my brain. Also, Penelope can confirm I’m not great at remembering things from time to time.”
“Nobody is.” I tried to console him, fully believing his confession.
Roman still looked skeptical, but I gave him an eye. We could confirm what Joe said, if we needed to, at a later time. “What about purchasing the wardrobe last night? That was a lot of money to shell out.”
Joe shrugged. “I was doing a good deed. I didn’t want you to have no bids at all. I might have slipped Mayor Raab a few bucks to let me know if anyone else went after the wardrobe.”
“You bribed the mayor?”
“Hey, anyone can be bought for the right price.” He slapped the side of the wooden wardrobe. “Besides, I want to give this one to my grandson.”
“Grandson?” Roman asked.
“Or granddaughter, I’m not picky.”
“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.”
“And that’s why I’m going to stay here. I want to be around for as long as my disease lets me, and I know I can’t do that living in your place the entire time…but someday, I won’t be able to live on my own, either.”
Roman still looked in shock.
I pushed aside all the hostility and welcomed Joe with open arms, giving him the first hug we shared. “Well, we’re glad to have you.”
Roman still stood there dumbfounded and confused, but I wasn’t going to have Joe excluded. We were all one big family. Besides, Roman might not appreciate it, but his father was the first of our families to visit us…and the least expected. I took Roman’s hand and pulled him in, and, surprisingly, he gave his father and me, a nice, manly hug.
Well, it was better than nothing.
“Okay. We have work to do. First, we need to get all the hamsters out of this place, then we need to fix the shop’s reputation.”
“How do you propose we do that?” Roman asked.
I smiled. “With an idea both you and Joe gave me. A way to show them we didn’t harm any of these critters and we care about their well-being.”
Chapter Twelve
Joe and Roman spent all day luring the hamsters out from the walls and shuffling them into cages as fast as I could bring them. After a few hours, we had dozens of cages filled with the cute little critters. I had called the health inspector, but he couldn’t come until tomorrow to give Ettie’s a clean bill of health, so in the meantime, I set up shop outside on the sidewalk.
Well, I kind of set up shop. More like a major hamster adopt-a-thon. I had my cages of critters on full display for anyone who’d look along with little enchanted dishes guaranteed to always keep their water fresh.
The problem was people still avoided me and Ettie’s Enchanted Effects like we had some rare contagious disease. Couldn’t they see all the hamsters were safe and sound?
But Roman said this town was easily influenced by the media, whether it was printed in the newspaper or plastered all over the internet. All I needed was a post and a few good friends to share it.
Hamster Adopt-a-Thon at Ettie’s Enchanted Effects.
Free Enchanted Water Dish with Each Adoption.
Do your part to give these rescued animals a home.
You’ll be glad you did.
And then a photo of their cute little whiskers. Who could refuse?
As I looked up to the changeable
letter billboard hanging above the next-door church’s entrance, I realized that the post needed one more thing added: The Church of the Saved, who loves all of God’s creatures, is invited to help.
It might have been low, but I was tired of the passive-aggressiveness.
I texted all my friends I had made in Watersedge to share the post. Bev from Roman’s work, Officers Gates and Duncan, as well as Penelope and a few others I had met over the past month. It was a start, but hopefully, each of them had a much larger network than I had…plus, I had tagged the Church of the Saved and their ten thousand followers hopefully saw the post as well.
If this didn’t work, I’d write another editorial for the newspaper. It seemed like I had an “in” with the editor. Heck, there was no sense in holding back. I tagged the paper’s editor on my social media post, too.
It worked like a charm.
Within the hour, Roman, Joe, and I couldn’t keep up with the demand, boxing up hamsters and sending them home with the citizens of Watersedge.
“Is Ettie’s open?” A teenage girl said after a few hours of hamster adopting chaos. She already held two female hamsters in a small box.
“No, not yet. I’m still shut down until the health inspector clears us.”
“Too bad,” she said, blushing a bit. “I’m having this problem at school. The school dance is coming up, and I’d like to go with a special friend. I keep waiting for him to ask me, but he seems too shy. I was hoping you had something to help him overcome his shyness.”
Behind her, I caught a bit of movement. Brittney came out of the church wearing a bright yellow sunflower dress that was impossible to miss. I ignored her, focusing on the girl in front of me. “Oh, honey, you don’t need something from me to solve that problem. Everything you need, you already have. There’s no reason you can’t ask him yourself. We are in the twenty-first century and all. You’re already friends, so why not be brave? If you can’t ask, then your friendship isn’t as strong as you think.”
Wayward Magic (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 2) Page 43