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He dazzled me, charmed me, fed me lines.
He did all that, and I ate up the whole thing like a mouse, nibbling cheese before the hungry cat arrives.
“Oh, I know it’s sort of intense to be here surrounded by so much beauty,” she says, as though that’s the reason for my frown. “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it? Sometimes, when I walk around the castle, I can only look at one thing at a time. If I try to look at all of it, I get sort of dizzy. Oops, I almost forgot!” She bends down and pulls a little curtain on the side of the cart to the side. The vase she pulls out is topped with a pink rose, the blossom fully in bloom.
The sight of it makes me immediately think of my grandmother.
Grandma wanted me to be here; I can’t give up now, I think as I look at the pale pink rose.
“There you go! Enjoy yourself.” She bustles away.
I tiptoe up to the cart. She left it right beside the rose-colored armchair facing the French doors.
Slowly, carefully, I lower down into the seat.
My grandmother’s words filter into my mind.
‘You’re so very humble, Gwen. It would be good for you to let yourself feel like a real queen, for once. Get yourself that room, no matter what it takes. Wake up in that canopy bed and order a cup of tea and a nice breakfast, and then sit by those beautiful doors and look out at the view.’
I lift the tea pot’s lid. The scent of bergamot wafts out of the amber liquid within.
‘You won’t want to put yourself last—to hide away, like you do—once you realize what you’re really worth.’
I doctor my tea with a touch of milk and too much sugar in honor of my grandmother’s memory.
The tea’s steam rises up to my mouth, my nose. I breathe in the smell again, then draw in a sip.
It brings me back in time, this tea.
There were so many times when my grandmother treated Clay and me to sugary, milky tea in the Ceremony Room, just downstairs.
‘That’s what I want for you,’ she said from her spot under that colorful quilt in the hospital room. ‘I want you to know that you deserve all the love in the world.’
Slowly, slowly, I lift my eyes and look out through the French doors.
The castle lawns are covered in the faintest layer of white frost. The fine, powder-sugar-like layer is melting away by the second.
Sunlight sparkles off the melting silvery whiteness. The dark green holly and hemlock hedges gleam, newly cleansed by the night’s frost. Treetops bristle upward out on the lawn’s edge, a line of pine-green and warm-toned foliage.
And out past those pines, oaks, and maples, is downtown Windsor. It’s down a slope, in the valley.
From up here, I can see rooftops.
I sip my tea and busy myself with examining the gray, black, green, and brown rectangles. I spy the Post Office’s roof, the Town Hall’s, and the steeple of the church on Pine Street.
And there is Epic Elevate Headquarters, where I spent six years of my life.
Where I met Brock.
Where everything went wrong.
When I close my eyes, it’s because I want to cry. I’ve done that a lot over the past couple days. So much so that my mom wanted to go see a doctor because she thought I had pink eye.
Nope, I’ve just cried until my eyes feel so scratchy, I could hardly blink.
Right now, no tears come. Maybe I shed them all over the last few days. Maybe I have nothing left.
And then—of all things—I think of one of those cheesy inspirational videos Brock was so fond of sending out each Wednesday afternoon.
