When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae Read Free Page A

driver’s side of the Escort flew open, and a jeans-and-tee shirt-clad woman skipped up toward her. “Auntie Em! Auntie Em! I’m home, Auntie Em!”
    “Maisey?”
    The teenager grabbed Libby in a hug. “Wow, I bummed when I knocked and you weren’t home! I fit all my stuff in my car, do you believe it? Did you get my message? Did you talk to Mom? What’s with that jacket? What happened to your hair?”
    “What? What message?”
    “Don’t you answer your cell phone?”
    Uh oh. Truth was, Libby had been leaving her cell phone turned off. On purpose. She had no land line phone right now, being between houses. And it had been nice, skulking along beneath the radar.
    Only now she was getting the sinking feeling that her skulking had backfired.
    “How does Paul reach you, if he can’t get you on your cell?” Maisey hadn’t let up her string of questions.
    “I call him.” No business of hers that sometimes Libby took little breaks from Paul. “What are you doing here?”
    “You’ve got room, right?” Her eyes were on the house, now, sizing it up. Farmhouse, circa 1870, obviously at least three or four bedrooms.
    “Oh no. Nobody said anything to me about you moving in.”
    “I gotta. Mom’s gone to Hawaii. And we did tell you, only you weren’t picking up.”
    Libby groaned. “Hawaii?”
    “Uh huh. With her new boy toy.”
    Libby groaned again.
    “Lemme get my stuff,” Maisey was calling over her shoulder.
    Libby looked up at her new house. It was shrinking. Right there before her eyes.
     
    ♦ ♦ ♦
     
    Libby didn’t know what her niece was doing but it sounded like she was throwing sneakers onto her bedroom floor from somewhere up high. Top of a ladder, maybe.
    Moving in.
    Libby looked up at the ceiling toward the noise, then turned her attention back to her cell phone, punching in the code that would let her retrieve her messages.
    Eight of them.
    Five from her sister. They all pretty much repeated themselves, so she stopped listening to them all the way through after #2. Works of art, really. Breathtaking blend of wheedling, carelessness, and whining, with an occasional shot of blatantly insincere concern for Libby’s state of mind thrown in. It was Libby, after all, who had found herself suddenly divorced, out of a job, and about-to-be homeless. But her sister had always been indifferent about Libby’s marriage. Maybe she assumed Libby could take anything. Which would be partly Libby’s fault. For cultivating an image of firm stability. But does that absolve the rest of her family from indulging in a bit of empathy from time to time?
    Hardly.
    Extracting actual information from the messages, on the other hand, wasn’t so easy. Maisey had related pretty much everything that the messages did. Gina was moving to Hawaii. Was already there, by now. She had a new boyfriend who was planning some sort of business venture. A bit about how sexy the new boyfriend was, something about him being a Tantric sex coach. File that under “too much information.” And then, of course, the admonition that Libby babysit Maisey.
    She didn’t call it babysitting, of course. Maisey was nineteen.
    One last message from Maisey, who prattled on every bit as goofily as her mother, letting Libby know she was going to be here yesterday. Well, Maise, you hit your target within 24 hours, not bad.
    Message #3 was from Paul, left last Thursday. His voice was a rock of calm in the swirling chaos of her sister’s nutsiness. “Hey, babe. Guess you have your phone off. I’ll stop by the house at 5:45.”
    He meant the house in Pittsford. While Libby was still sleeping there, he’d always come by at 5:45, hitting that target within five minutes plus or minus, depending on traffic. And then he’d take Libby out to eat, him driving, either to a restaurant or his place. They never ate at the Pittsford house. Paul was like that, about the Pittsford house. “Wallace’s territory,” he said. And so it was, even though Wallace