Page 103 of Feel It in the Air

Reflexively, I smile. I can’t help it, my grandfather’s voice ringing out as I read the words on the screen. Of course, he means the food in the photo he’s attached in the next text, but my heart twinges.

Not feeling very magical at the moment

Bad day?

Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Alexander might need to share title credit with me

Three little dancing dots appear as my grandfather types, and for a moment I forget about everything, waiting to see what kind of quippy response he’ll have regarding my mention of the book he loved to read to me and my brothers as kids.

Papa Duck

They happen. But remember, ma canette, magic is sometimes of our own making…

Magic is in the air…magic of our own making…

He doesn’t just mean the food.

There’s more to it than that. Hell, maybe it’s never been about the food.

The epiphany hits me so hard that I physically feel it. The weight of the entire world slams into me, making me stumble backward, my knees hitting the couch, buckling until I land squarely on my ass. At least it’s a soft landing.

Said soft landing doesn’t soften the blow, however. The realization that for everything I know—or think that I know—apparently I’ve missed the point. Missed what my grandfather has been telling us all these years.

Because it’s not about the food. At all. It never was.

The magic is something else entirely.

It’s him and my grandmother. The magic he talks about feeling whenever she was around and how that’s how he knew she was his forever. What kept him alive through his time in the army.

It’s my parents, and whatever it was that night in Vegas that inspired them to elope right then and there. To make it all work for the last thirty-plus years.

It’s Gus and me. And that zing I felt in an airport bar while grounded due to a thunderstorm. And then again when I saw him my first day at Hayes. And every day since.

The one that tells me that walking away from him is the biggest mistake I can make.

The one that tells me he’s worth it.

Worth everything.

Even my career.