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Helli and Jenni shook their heads eerily in unison, from opposite sides of the room.
“No.” Jenni was as stern as Helli in this moment. “We’ll do it. I want to bring him down.”
“Did he really kidnap you?” Winston, master of timing.
Jenni was flippant as ever. She really took everything in her stride. “Kind of. I wasn’t in a dungeon or anything, but I was strongly ‘advised’ to remain in a sectioned off floor of the building until he could figure out what to ‘do’ with me. It was honestly not unlike a hotel stay. And I had my sister for company.”
Beside me, Ria was silently dancing from one foot to the other, overjoyed at the twins being reunited.
Sylvester was back in high spirits. “Alright, gang. Any other loose ends to tie up?” He grinned around at all of us in turn. “No? Okay. Class dismissed.”
Then Ria just had to go and say it. “Oh wait, I’ve got one. I’m pregnant. It’s Forest’s.”
As chaos once more descended around us, she grinned at me with the most mischief I’d ever seen in a person’s eyes. Truly, she was a master of her art form.
RIA
After my family's stay in the safe house, Forest was convinced he needed to make it back into their good books. As if purchasing two neighboring houses in an affluent suburb near the city wasn’t enough.
My Grandmother knew of Forest’s insecurity, and was taking full advantage of it. Every day it seemed she had a new ‘whim’. “You know what I’ve always wanted to get into? Gongs. They can be very spiritually cleansing. They’re quite expensive, that’s why I never managed...” And then an unsubtly longing gaze in his direction.
Forest would just hold his hands up and grin. “You can have whatever you want. If you spare my life.”
“Maybe.” Grandmother would sniff as if unsure as to Forest’s fate, then depart with an air of indecision.
I felt bad for Forest. “You know she’s taking advantage of you, right? Her and my mom weren’t even angry at you in the first place. Mrs Jamroz spent the whole of our stay in the safe house singing your praises. They basically think you’re a saint.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t mind her enjoying herself for a while tormenting me. Especially if it gets her off your back.”
“True. Chivalry isn’t dead after all.”
When I got back to checking my business inbox after an unannounced and unwilling hiatus, I saw it had absolutely exploded with messages. Somehow, my radio silence had led some quite important business leaders who were interested in my services to believe I wasvery, veryin demand, too busy to reply to them. This made them all the more anxious to secure my services.
I had messages of increasing enthusiasm from some of these potential clients, offering me larger and larger sums of money if I would select their business to receive some of my renowned consultancy.
I don’t know if they knew I’d only had one real client so far, and it was my fiancé. I wasn’t going to tell them.
I delegated baby preparations to Forest so I could concentrate on my business and getting back to some of my potential clients. I still wanted to pay my way – that was a part of me that wasn’t going to change, even married with a family of my own.
I was excited to have a child. Family meant everything to me, and I’d pushed all dreams of parenthood out of my mind while I’d had to focus on making money. But I wasn’t too hung up on the details. I would be more of a ‘go with the flow’ mother, I predicted.
As it turned out, Forest and Mrs Jamroz were a force to be reckoned with on the ‘baby preparations’ front. Decorating the new house and the baby’s room, shopping for clothing and supplies, spending hours reading about pregnancy milestones and birthing options: they had it all covered.
All I had to do was attend some classes and be told facts about dilation every now and then. Easy peasy.
Mrs Jamroz was in extra high spirits because her sons’ temporary relocation to the concrete prison known as the ‘safe house’ had inspired in them some new and productive hobbies. The eldest had decided, after being involved in such an exciting adventure, that he wanted to be an author, which meant he would have to read lots and lots of books.
The middle child, who had previously been the problem child, had now declared he wanted to be a ghost hunter when he grew up. This was less helpful, but Mrs Jamroz had cunningly managed to convince him that if he wanted to be a ghost hunter, he would have to get really, really good at science.
And one of them, possibly inspired by me, had declared a new interest in psychology, and had started devouring everything he could about the workings of the human brain.
Magical things were afoot. It was almost enough to make me believe in my Grandmother’s psychic abilities. After all, hadn’t her prophecy kicked off a large portion of the events that had occurred?
It was something to think about, anyway.
For now, it was enough that I believed in the magic of family, and of the mind, and of the human capacity for love, which was greater than I’d ever realized before.
EPILOGUE
