He's A Magic Man (The Children of Merlin) Read Free Page A

before she could say, “Everyone else knew what he was. Even Jane.”
    “No one gives Jane enough credit.” Her mother rubbed Drew’s shoulder.
    “I thought he was the One,” she said, finally straightening. “I was sure.”
    “You’re always sure, honey. Remember that French boy?”
    “Yes. But I was eighteen then. I’m twenty-four. Oh, I knew Roger wasn’t perfect. But.…”
    “But you thought you could fix him. There are some things you can’t fix, and one of them is other people. You certainly can’t start a relationship thinking you can fix what you think is wrong with someone.”
    Jane thought people could change. Her mother apparently didn’t. Drew was just confused at this point. She shook her head, helplessly.
    “Don’t worry, honey. You can’t force it. Sometimes you just have to let things happen.”
    Right. “I’m going to need that week at the Ritz-Carlton,” she sighed.
    “And I can hardly wait to hear the results of all your hard work tonight,” her mother said.
    At least she didn’t ask Drew to cheer up.
     
    *****
     
    The entire family gathered for dinner, as usual, including Jane. Drew’s mother was uncharacteristically quiet as the various conversations of her boisterous family swirled around her. Drew was glad for once that dinners were so chaotic. It kept the focus off her. No one would miss her if she didn’t join in. At end of the table Kemble and her father were talking about the logistics of deploying relief supplies to Argentina after the earthquake last week. Jane seemed content to listen in. The Kee/Devin consortium had their heads together as usual. It was their last summer before they went off to UCLA. Ah, the excitement of feeling grown up. Kee was going to major in art and Devin in oceanography, which would put them at different ends of the campus. They probably hadn’t been apart that much since Devin had shown up on the Tremaine doorstep when they were both seven.
    “Come on, you can do better than that,” Tris was saying to his new wife, Maggie. “You’re eating for two, now.”
    “If you had your way I’d weigh five hundred and twelve pounds.” Maggie was about five-foot-nothing to Tris’s six-four. “Gotta stay in shape if I’m going to ride in Denver.”
    Her brother looked like he might explode. “No more rodeoing until after the baby,” he sputtered. “I thought we agreed.”
    Maggie grinned. “I’m talking about Denver a year from now.”
    Her brother flushed. “Oh, well, okay then. But I’m not sure you should still be riding.”
    “Tris, I’m only four months pregnant. Doc says I’m good to go until seven.”
    “What do doctors know?” Tris grumbled. It was great to see big, bad-boy Tris a puddle of worry over his tiny, spitfire wife. These two had overcome a lot of emotional baggage to get to true love, but you’d never know it. Now they lived over the garages, next to Mr. Nakamura and his daughter. Her father wanted to build them a house on the estate. There was plenty of room. But Tris and Maggie had simple tastes. Tris would never understand that his father wanted to do something for him as an apology for never quite understanding him.
    Jane got up to get dessert. Tammy and Lanyon’s conversation about the greatest songs about horses ever had descended into an argument about the exact meaning of the Byrds ’ “ Chestnut Mare . ”
    “It’s obviously a song about drugs,” Tammy said with a smug expression.
    “What would you know about drugs?” Lanyon snorted. “You’re homeschooled.”
    “Not my fault,” Tammy said darkly, glaring at her mother with accusation in her eyes. “But any song about some guy riding a horse off a cliff without getting killed is a drug song. Besides, it’s from the seventies. Aren’t you always saying that every song in the seventies was about drugs, Mr. Know-All-About-Music Man?”
    “It’s more in the tradition of a tall tale, like Paul Bunyan,” Lanyon explained as if to a child. No