Fairest (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale #2)(38)

She berated Mina for not finding a guy as handsome as her husband, Mr. Wong. “You get nice guy like my Riu see and you won’t ever be left alone in woods again. Dat Jared boy, he be bad news.”

Mina started to choke on her dumpling in shock. Mrs. Wong never lost a beat as she began to hit her very hard on the back until the piece of food became dislodged from Mina’s windpipe. Mina and her mom had never told anyone about Jared abandoning her because he was Fae and they didn’t want any more trouble on their hands than they already had. So it was never mentioned in the papers or on the news,--nothing. Maybe it was because Mrs. Wong lived in the same building and no one could have secrets with her around. Or maybe she had seen Mina and Jared on the roof last week. Mina wanted to ask more questions, but the door opened again as Sara came in with groceries.

Sara was extremely excited about the meal. “Oh, Mei, what a wonderful surprise! Thank you so much.” Sara walked over and gave the four foot ten inch Chinese woman a hug.

Mrs. Wong spoke quickly in Chinese and then translated. “I heard about Meehna. She needs good food to help geet well, quick now.”

When Sara was preoccupied with putting her own groceries away, Mrs. Wong hobbled over quietly to Mina. She reached into her apron and pulled out a small white envelope with a Chinese character written in gold ink, inscribed across the front. “Here, drink this tonight. It will make you strong like me.” She patted her chest encouragingly. “It secret family recipe, heal bettah than doctor medicine. Good good.” She brought one finger slowly up to her lips and winked at Mina.

Confused, Mina opened her mouth to speak, but Mrs. Wong whisked across the room taking her bags with her. In a flutter of broken English and Chinese, she pointedly ignored all of Mina’s efforts to gain her attention again.

Sara tried to help set the table with food, but Mrs. Wong wouldn’t have it. She kept swatting Sara’s hands away and made numerous annoyed comments in Chinese under her breath. When she was happy that the table was set to her extremely high standards and everything in order, she said her quick goodbyes and left the apartment, giving Mina a wide berth.

Stunned, Mina fingered the small packet under the table and kept running her fingers over the gold character. She wanted to ask Mei Wong about it, or even her mother, but that wasn’t what the Chinese woman probably had in mind, when she purposely gave it to her without her mother’s knowledge. For all she knew it could be poison, but then again, the Wong’s have never shown anything but good will toward the Grime family.

When Mina was sure that Mrs. Wong wasn’t going to change her mind and walk in on them again, she decided it was time to tell her mother about her incident at school.

“Mom, it’s starting again.” Mina tried to sound very nonchalant as she stirred her hot bowl of soup.

“What is, dear?” Sara asked. She opened up a container of Lo Mein noodles and scooped out a portion to an eagerly awaiting Charlie.

Mina stabbed up a piece of orange chicken with her fork and blew on it. “Oh, you know, stuff, with a capital ‘S’.” She took a bite of her rice.

Sara’s hand froze mid-air. Her inner turmoil was evident on her face and her shaking hands, but both of the Grime women were experts at hiding their emotions from Charlie. Sara swallowed nervously, but continued to portion the rest of the food.

“Ah, I see.”

“Yeah, my um, biology class was interesting. And let’s just say that not everyone agreed with the stuff in the specimen jars. Let’s just say they were very…animated.” Mina let the words hang in the air.

She watched Charlie sit in his chair wearing his normal plethora of super hero costume pieces, which included a Hulk shirt, with a Batman utility belt, and cape. His small feet wearing his favorite rain boots kicked back and forth happily. He made overly loud slurping noises while sucking up the noodles, and when he was finished, he grinned at Mina.

In no way was Charlie dumb, but there were certain things Sara never wanted to discuss with Charlie in the room, for fear of worrying him. Mina had convinced her mother that they couldn’t run anymore, that she needed to take her place as a Grimm and do her part to break the curse on her family by completing the quests. Reluctantly, Sara agreed, but she had conditions. One of those conditions was never to alarm Charlie if possible.

Sara patted Charlie’s head affectionately. “Anything I should be overly concerned with?” Her brown eyes began to fill with tears, but she hid them well by getting up to get a gallon of milk out of the fridge. Mina could see her mother furiously wipe at them with her apron before approaching the table. When she sat down, Sara was solemn with only a hint of red rimmed eyes.

“Nope. It was just a small problem. Nothing bigger has presented itself.” Mina tried to hide her words. One time she had entered a pet store and all of the animals began to behave erratically: trying to get out of cages, birds speaking terrible warnings to her. Other times, she would be followed by geese as if she was the original storybook goose girl.

“I was hoping for more time between…and then since we never found the Grimoire...” Sara trailed off. She sat at the table silently for the next few minutes watching her children eat before picking up her uneaten bowl of egg drop soup and putting it in the sink.

Mina knew better than to say anything else, so she waited and watched as her mother furiously cleaned up her own dishes, put the leftovers away, and then retired to her room, complaining of a headache.