Bath wasthe easiest part of the whole day, which felt like a small miracle. Juni was tired enough that the warm water made her droopy, and Maren got through the hair-washing with no protests at all. Juni even let Maren comb the tangles out without complaining about how she should be allowed to wear her hair messy, “like fairy hair,” a direct quote from just a few days ago.
Wearing her pajamas—the same pair that she’d been wearing at the hotel, unfortunately—Juni padded into the kitchen where Maren had laid out the doll repair operation.
The Blue Fairy lay on the table on a clean dishtowel, her painted face up, her sad, flat body deflated where the beans and stuffing had been ripped out. Mr. Kibble lay beside her, half-stitched from the hotel night. The bag of pinto beans Arden had brought was open beside the sewing kit. A small glass measuring bowl sat ready to scoop beans into.
“Oh,” Juni said softly, like she’d walked into church.
“Want to help?”
Juni nodded.
Maren lifted her into her lap and they got to work.
Juni’s job, as Maren explained it, was the very important task of putting beans into the bowl and then watching very carefully while Maren slid them, one by one, into the little hole in the fairy’s side. Juni took the job seriously. Her small palms cupped beans like she was carrying water. A few escaped and rolled across the table and she chased them down with grave focus. Then she picked through them, putting some back into the bag, using some mysterious method of deciding which ones were good enough for the fairy.
“Why just beans?” she asked.
It took Maren a moment to realize what she meant. Right, she’d used a soup mix.
“Because the original lentils and barley are at home, sweetie. I only thought to ask Aunt Arden for beans.”
“Will the fairy mind?”
Maren considered this honestly. “I don’t think so. I think she’ll like having new stuffing. It’ll feel different in her tummy.”
Juni nodded. “I think the fairy will be okay with that.”
“Me too.”
They worked quietly for a while. The beans made small dry sounds going in. Maren stitched, pulled, stitched, pulled, the way her mom had taught her and Mira when they were not much older than Juni. Two little girls in matching pajamas, learning to thread a needle on a cold Iowa night.
“Auntie Mer?”
“Mmhm?”
“Is this our home now?”
Maren’s hand stilled on the needle.
She made herself breathe, made herself answer just the question and not the thousand things behind the question.
“Just for a little while, sweetie. This is a place where we get to stay while some really nice people help us figure things out. Like a hotel, kind of. But better.”
“Because Aunt Arden is here.”
“Yeah. Because Aunt Arden is here.”
Juni pulled another carefully considered bean out of the bowl.
“And Colin and Mac.”
“Yeah.”
“I like Colin.”
Maren kept her eyes on the seam. “I noticed.”
“He’s the first one we met.”
