By a Charm and a Curse(66)
“I was using different adjectives in front of Sidney,” I interject. He’s drunk enough to go on without me, sober enough to start talking louder in case I decide to be a smart-ass again.
“How does good old Sidney know that Katarina is the key to breaking the curse?”
He is the last person I want to be playing this game with. I start to stand up, and that hurries him along. His voice has lost the singsongy quality, and many of the unnecessary S’s that slide in between words disappear.
“I tried to break it, too, that’s how I know.” He stares off at the moving clouds, at the glimpses of white moon that filter through them. “After your mother grew tired of watching me fail night after night after night and left, I didn’t care. I went through the motions but didn’t really try. Leslie pitied me. She convinced me to come here, to see what Katarina might know.”
“And when she told me what had to happen, that—” He pauses here and holds his beer bottle up to the moonlight like it’s a cherished thing, like a lover. “That it had to be my one true love willing to make the sacrifice…” He laughs, a mean, coarse noise so unlike anything I’ve ever heard from him that it’s startling. “I’ve never, ever loved anyone like I loved Audrey—hope this isn’t creeping you out, hearing me talk about your mom like this, because I’m doing it anyway—and I knew, I knew that she would come back.”
He gestures grandly toward the empty field. “And lo, she came back, widowed and with you in tow. Shit, but that hurt. You were a cute kid, don’t get me wrong, but that was not how I saw things happening. But. Her coming back only confirmed to my stupid, hopeful self that I was right, that the curse could be broken and that Audrey and I would be the ones to do it.
“So I waited. I was respectful, downright gentlemanly. It took about a year and a half for her to talk to me again. She was guarded, but that was to be expected. And I just kept waiting. Because she was supposed to be my soul mate; it was meant to be. So every day I looked for a sign that she was willing. And that sign never came.
“For a while, I thought it was because of you. That she didn’t want to risk almost dying while she had a child who still had trouble tying his own shoes. But you got older and she still didn’t want to do it. Finally, I approached her, I don’t know, five months ago. You’re grown, you could take her place as carpenter for this damned carnival if she wanted you to, and she still turned me down. She still said no.”
My insides go cold as I begin to see the shape of his argument like a distant island off a dark shore.
He turns toward me then, so close I can almost taste the beer he’s been drinking. “That’s when I figured it out. Audrey might have been my soul mate, but I was never hers. So I ask you, Benjamin, how the hell is anyone supposed to break this curse when Audrey and I couldn’t?” Unshed tears line the lower lids of his eyes, trembling. “I waited for years. For her. Only for her. And she refused to even think for one tiny second I could be right about breaking the curse.”
I clear my throat, trying to rid myself of the doubt that’s built up there. “Emma and I are different—”
“You think I didn’t think that about Audrey and me?” He stands with more grace than I would have thought he’d be capable of at the moment. He is a stark, still shape against the clouds that tumble over one another.
“So I found the first girl with low self-esteem who wouldn’t be missed and I transferred the curse. And it worked. That is what sealed the deal for me, that is what convinced me that breaking the curse is impossible—when I put myself to the task, when I tried to pass the curse along, it happened. I have loved your mother for so long it’s all I know how to do. So I ask you—” His voice breaks here, and for a moment I’m not sure if he has it in him to keep going, but he does. “If she and I can’t break this damned curse, who the hell can?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Benjamin
The next night, I stand among the townies in line to have the great Katarina Marx read my fortune. They jostle in a good-natured way, like being at a carnival has made them revert to their kindergarten selves. The air is humid enough to make their closeness uncomfortable but not enough to make me want to give up.
I could pull rank and jump the line, citing that I need to fix something in the tent or that I’m there on carnival business, but I don’t. I want to steel myself, to make sure that this is really what I want to do.
Sidney rattled the hell out of me. But it’s not the same with Emma and me. A little voice nags at me—but they knew each other longer. They had time to get to know each other. They had a relationship before the curse. A hundred doubts are having a rave in the empty warehouse of my brain.
The line moves faster than I expected. Most patrons leave the tent much happier than when they went in. A few do not. I don’t even know what I want to ask Katarina, but something is pushing me insistently, telling me I have to see her. Suddenly I’m standing before the painted entrance to the tent, with nothing separating me from her except some brightly colored canvas. Then, after a couple who look like they’re on the brink of an argument rush out, all tense angles and tight mouths, I go in.
The twins have been relegated to a small side table immediately to the left of the entrance to give their grandmother the place of pride in the center of the tent. A cat, black and sleek and with a small white triangle on its chest, has draped itself on the shelf holding all those precious bottles of wine. Incense burns, but not so much that it’s obnoxious or overpowering. And then there is Katarina herself.