A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables #2)(29)

I inhale. “I know I’ve been a shitty friend. And a lackwit, and all those other things Charm called me.”

“Well, actually.” Prim gives a small, embarrassed cough. “I sent that text.”

I don’t say anything, relishing the rare feeling of having the moral high ground. Prim squirms for a minute before adding, in a rush, “I was upset because Charm was hurt—again—and she was just going to keep giving you chances to hurt her, and I didn’t want to watch.”

Okay, maybe I’m not on the high ground after all. “I know. It’s just … I guess I wasn’t ready to talk about appointments and treatment plans and all that stuff. I didn’t want to be worried over, you know? I wanted to make my own choices, choose my own consequences, live my own—”

“Zinnia,” Prim interrupts, softly and gravely. Her gaze is very sober. “We want to adopt.”

“Um, that’s good? Does this place allow pets?”

She blinks at me, and an expression of great pity crosses her face. “No. It doesn’t.” Her eyes move to the box of furniture I’m sitting on. I look down and notice for the first time that there is a picture of a blissful-looking baby on the front. The small print explains that the contents of the box can be used as a bassinet, crib, and toddler bed as your “little one” grows.

I feel suddenly very, very young and very, very stupid. “Oh,” I say weakly.

“That start-up offered Charm a full-time position last year, and she took it. So the timing feels right, and it turns out I want children very much, once I realized they could be obtained outside of heteronormative and patriarchal conceptions of marriage.” I remember Charm telling me last year that Prim signed up to audit some classes at UW; apparently she liked them.

“Wow, I’m so…” Happy? Terrified? Abruptly conscious of the passage of time and fearful of my changing position in what was, until recently, a trio of friends? My voice shrinks. “I didn’t know.”

“Well, you wouldn’t.” Prim doesn’t sound especially sympathetic. “You left when Charm tried to tell you. She wanted to ask about using this bedroom, once the paperwork was filed.”

“Oh,” I say again, even more weakly. I dampen my lips. “So … how’s it going? I heard it can take a while.”

Prim’s cool composure slips. She looks away and swallows twice. “We never filed the paperwork, actually. Charm hasn’t signed it.”

A chill settles in the pit of my stomach, a premonition of guilt. “Why not?”

Prim’s posture is imperfect now, her shoulders bent. “She says it’s because she’s not ready to give up beer, but I think she’s scared.”

“Of what?”

Prim rarely snaps—you can take the princess out of the royal court, but you can’t take the royal court out of the princess, or something—but now she snaps, “Of doing it without her best friend, maybe.”

The guilt arrives, cold and heavy as a swallowed stone. “Look, I’m really, really—”

She interrupts. “Or maybe she’s just scared of messing it up, the way her parents did. Adoption … wasn’t easy for her.” This is a massive understatement; I once overheard her mom lamenting Charm’s (unremarkable, classically teenaged) behavior to my mom. You’d just think she’d be more grateful, wouldn’t you? Mom had looked at her like she was a new kind of fungus on one of her rose bushes. I’d never told Charm, but it’s not like she didn’t know the score.

“Yeah, I can see that.”

Prim picks at invisible lint on the futon. “I’m scared, too, to tell the truth. My childhood was not particularly easy either, but…” She shrugs, as if the next thing she says isn’t that important. “I wish I could talk to my mother.”

I move over to the futon, sitting so close our shoulders touch. “Hey, at least there’s no wicked fairies in this world.” It’s an effortful joke.

Prim laughs, equally effortfully. “Well, not yet. But I saw those glass slippers, and the dead birds. This world is not so safe as I had hoped.”

The guilt doubles, or maybe quadruples. It’s a wonder I have any room left for ordinary human organs. I fumble for something comforting to say and emerge with “No world is very safe, in my experience.”

It seems, inexplicably, to help. Prim straightens again and nods at no one in particular. “No. Which means all that matters really is who you have standing at your side. Charm and I have each other, and if that has to be enough, it will.” She pauses, perhaps having run out of grand proclamations. “But where I come from, fairy godmothers are traditional. Twelve seems excessive, but if I had a daughter I should hope for at least one.”

She meets my eyes as she says the word one, her expression simultaneously arch and a little anxious. Like she’s just asked me to carry something large but fragile, infinitely precious, and isn’t sure I’m up to the task. Like she wants to trust me, but isn’t sure she should.

I have the absurd urge to kneel. Fresh tears prickle in the corners of my eyes. “That would be—I would be—” I swallow. “Like, I know I haven’t been that reliable lately, and I can’t promise that my GRM will stay in remission or whatever—but it would be my honor.”