“Wait,” Rafe said as they started to get out of the car. “Don’t tell my mom about Red Crow. Let me tell her.”
“What if she asks?” Emilie said.
“Lie,” Rafe said.
“I’m not lying to your mother,” Jeremy said.
“You lied to your mother all the time,” Rafe countered.
“Yes, but that’s my mother. Very different.”
“She’ll know anyway,” Emilie said. “Moms always do.”
“Now I know why my parents stopped after one,” Rafe said.
Emilie’s mouth fell open. “Hurtful,” she said.
“It’ll be all right,” Jeremy said. “Bobbi will be too happy to see me to even care why we’re here.”
“She doesn’t like you that much,” Rafe said but had a feeling he might be right. “Just let me handle it.”
“Fine.” Emilie flung open the car door. “But I’m telling you, she’ll know.”
As the three of them got out, the front door of the house opened. Rafe braced himself.
“If that’s my son, he better look like my son.” His mother yelled loudly enough everyone in the whole holler probably heard her.
“I look like your son,” he called back, walking toward the porch. His mother wore an apron over her jeans, and the sleeves of her floral-print shirt were rolled up. They must have caught her baking something for church.
“We cleaned him up for you, Mom,” Jeremy said from behind him.
Rafe was still mad at Jeremy, probably always would be, but he couldn’t help but smile at his mother’s reaction to Jeremy’s voice. She gasped softly, put a hand over her heart, and ran down the porch steps. Jeremy met her at the bottom. She threw her arms around him, holding him tight.
Emilie crept up next to Rafe and smiled nervously.
“She always did like him better,” Rafe said loud enough for his mother to hear.
“You hush,” his mother said. “This is my redheaded stepchild, and I’m going to hug him tight if I want to.” She patted Jeremy on the back and said softly, “I’m so sorry about your sweet mama. Mary Cox was a great lady.”
“Yeah, she was,” Jeremy said.
She grabbed him by the face. “Don’t you ever stay away so long again, so help me God.” She kissed his forehead like she was blessing him. Then she pointed at Rafe. “You neither, Junior.”
Emilie covered her mouth to hide a laugh. But his mother still heard it.
“Now, who’s this pretty girl?” she said.
“Emilie.” Emilie raised her hand in a nervous wave. “Hi. I’m with Jeremy. Not with him with him.”
“Jeremy’s helping Emilie find her sister,” Rafe said. “They need a place to crash tonight.”
“You poor thing,” his mother said to Emilie. “I’m Bobbi. You all come in and we’ll get dinner on.”
Just that easy, Rafe thought as they filed into the house. But as they went inside, Emilie turned around and mouthed to him, “She knows.”
Storyteller CornerMoms
When you read fairy tales, you’ll learn fast there are only two types of mothers you’ll meet in those stories. One—good and dead. Two—bad and alive. Fathers usually fare better. They live longer. However, without their wives around, they tend to make very poor decisions. Snow White had a good and dead mother. Then her father remarried her wicked stepmother. Cinderella’s father also exercised very poor taste when looking for wife number two. The father in “Rumpelstiltskin” took parental bragging to a whole new level when he swore to all who would listen that his daughter could spin straw into gold. One imagines if his wife had been alive, she would have quickly shut those rumors down by explaining to all and sundry that she’d married a narcissist.
There is a third type of mother in fairy tales, neither good and dead nor bad and alive, and though a rare figure, she does have a part to play in some stories, including this one.
That would be the fairy godmother, of course. Sometimes she doesn’t even have to do magic to bestow a gift upon a worthy young prince or princess.
Sometimes the godmother is just a good mother.
And Emilie was right. Bobbi knew.
Chapter Ten
Rafe stood in the kitchen doorway, watching the chaos, three people at one kitchen counter. His mother bustled around happily, giving orders. Emilie was making the salad dressing. Jeremy chopped onions while wearing Rafe’s mother’s old apron that read, Kiss the Cook! with big red lips on the front.
Turn back the clock fifteen years, put Rafe in Emilie’s place, and it could have been any Friday night when Jeremy slept over their freshman year in high school. The kitchen even looked the same as it had since it was built in the aesthetically challenged seventies. Yellow counters and yellow table. Brown checkered wallpaper. An oval rag rug lay atop the brown linoleum, which his mother mopped daily.
He should’ve been helping, but Emilie had taken over his job, and there was nothing for him to do. It felt good to stand back and watch his mom having fun. She loved guests, loved meeting new people, and loved cooking for anyone who was hungry. She loved Rafe’s friends, always had, and she loved Jeremy most of all.
While the three of them threw dinner together, Rafe had the chance to slip away and find the maps. He was ninety percent sure everything had been stored in his old basement bedroom, another time capsule. He’d moved into this bedroom at eight years old, and when he left at eighteen, the tractor wallpaper was still on the walls. An old desk bought at a garage sale was still in the corner. The same twin bed he’d slept in his entire childhood still sat under the window.
