2 Unhitched (25 page)

The stout woman gives me a who-do-you-think-you-are look. She’s about to find out.

“My father-in-law, King Midas, owns this mall.” Well, at least for now, he’s my father-in-law. “And I would you say you’re about to be fired.”

The saleswoman’s eyes widen with shock. A wicked smirk spreads across my face as I saunter out the store. Yes, sometimes, it pays to be evil. The baby gives me a little kick.
Touché!

Next stop: Barons and Nobles to get something to read.

As I step into the bookstore, a bookwormy sales maiden intercepts me.

“Perhaps, I can interest you in this.” She hands me a thick hardcover book.
The Princess Guide to Raising a Royal Baby.
I guess it’s obvious I’m pregnant.

I flip through it. Interesting… it recommends using your husband’s monogrammed hankies for burping cloths to save time and money. Good idea. I’ll be sure to pack all of Gallant’s before he runs off with the homewrecker.

“I’ll take it,” I tell the woman.

By the time I leave Barons and Nobles, I’ve purchased a dozen books on pregnancy and baby care, including one with the top royal baby names. Having not a penny to my name, I charge them all to Gallant. By the time he gets the bill and questions it, I’ll no longer be in his life. A pang of sadness runs through me.

At Sparkles, I find a table for two outdoors. A server, in one of those ridiculous jester getups, takes my order. Having personally experienced what it’s like to have this demeaning job (and wear that god-awful outfit), I treat him with dignity and promise myself to leave him a fat tip, charging it to Gallant’s account.

“Will it just be you?” he asks politely.

“No, there will be two of us,” I say with a smile. The baby kicks.
Yes, you and me, kid.

I order some tea and a platter of cupcakes—enough to feed a large family. I randomly pull out the baby-naming book from the bag full of books. Opening up the book to the middle of the “A” section, I begin to read.

Ariel
…
meaning
“lion of God”… Aurora… meaning “dawn”

With a shudder, I slam the book shut. I just can’t get away from her. She ruined my marriage. But I’m not going to let her ruin my child. I make a mental note for the child custody hearing. No visitation rights with Aurora. Wait! What if Gallant fights me for custody of our child? No, it’s
my
child! I’m not going to let him do that to me! I’ll resort to evil if I have to! I know. I’ll send an anonymous bottle of champagne to Mr. and Mrs. Unfaithful to congratulate them on their nuptials. One sip, and they’ll both be history. And this time I’ll get away with it!

My machinations are cut short by a familiar voice.

“Can I join you? I’m on my break.” It’s Gothel. Without waiting for an answer, she straddles her long, leather-clad legs over the empty chair across from mine. The cupcakes come, and she helps herself to two. Let’s talk about rude!

“You’re pregnant aren’t you?” she says in her deep husky voice.

Damn it! The baby-naming book is on the table, right in her face. I nervously toss it back into the shopping bag.

“Don’t worry, I knew it when I did your hair. I’d say about seven or eight months.”

My eyes widen. How does she know this? Maybe she’s a witch.

She bites into a cupcake and looks straight at me with her fierce violet eyes. We look enough alike to be sisters. Except for the nose ring and her C-cup chest.

“I was pregnant once.”

She launches into her story. It turns out that she used to be married, and her husband, a lord, desperately wanted a child. After many years and visits to Dr. Grimm, Lady Gothel, as she was known then, finally conceived. Except just before she was due, she fell down a flight of stairs and lost the child.

“Grimm had to cut the baby out of me.” She plays with a knife. “A son.”

A chill runs up my spine. Memories of my stillborn child flicker in my head.

“My husband couldn’t forgive me for losing the child. I tried to give him another child. I did everything. Herbs. Candles. Chants. Magic potions. Birthing stones… ”

“Love baths?” I interrupt.

“Babe, you name it, I did it. But no baby. My husband had enough. The bastard took up with another woman, some chick he met at a pub.”

Suddenly, it becomes crystal clear to me. Duh! Of course, that’s why Gallant went back to Aurora. Because I couldn’t give him a child. But now, all has changed. The baby gives me an assertive kick. HA! I’m right!

“What happened?” I ask, eager to hear more after my ah-ha moment.

“I wanted my man back.” Gothel’s violet eyes grow hooded, and there’s sadness in her voice, something I’ve never heard before.

“I thought that if I could present my husband with a baby, he’d come back to me.”

“What did you do?” Maybe she can help me win back Gallant.

Gothel digs into another cupcake. I grab one before she eats them all.

She continues her story. She lost all friends who were married and starting families. Lonely and barren, she befriended a poor childless young couple that moved into the guesthouse on her property. Gothel was happy to have the extra income and the companionship. Plus to keep their rent down, the husband, an aspiring dragonslayer, maintained the garden and even gave Gothel dragon slaying lessons.

“The lessons got my mind off my husband and got me into great shape.”

She still has an amazing body, especially those arms. As she pours herself a cup of tea, she flexes her tattooed biceps. I glance down at my untoned arm; jealousy gnaws away at me.

“Did your husband come back to you again because you looked so good?”

“As a matter of fact he did. We fucked our brains out. And then he went off to war. I knew that if I didn’t present him with an heir by the time he came back, it would be over again.”

I’m all ears. “Did you get pregnant again?”

“Nah. But the dragonslayer’s wife got pregnant.”

“How did you feel about that?” I ask, sounding rather Shrink-like.

“Fucked. It happened like that.” Gothel snaps her purple-lacquered fingertips. “She didn’t even have to spend a fortune on ‘magic’ fertility treatments. I couldn’t bear to look at her.”

“Why didn’t you just get rid of them?”

Gothel snorts. “I wanted to but they had a lease.”

Smart move on their part.

“One day, Mrs. Dragonslayer had a hankering for rampion, a rare green that grew in my garden.”

Rampion, also known as rapunzel. At Faraway, we grew the beautiful flowering plant in The Enchanted Garden and used it in the salads we fixed.

Gothel goes on. “Mr. and Mrs. Dragonslayer couldn’t afford to buy it at the market. They begged me for some—even a few leaves—but I told them to take a hike and grow their own garden.”

Oooh! She’s moving into her evil phase.

“The wife craved it like someone craving a drug, so one night, her husband snuck into my garden and stole a rampion plant. Bad move. I caught the fucker.”

I wonder where the hell this story is going. The baby gives me a hard kick. I think it’s getting bored. Plus, I don’t think it’s good for it to be exposed to all these bad words.

Gothel picks up where she left off. “And then I had a brainstorm. The answer to my problem.”

She pauses. Her violet eyes narrow.

“I told the dragonslayer to say goodbye to his wife and career. That I was going to turn him in and get him life in a prison. In a dark, dreary dungeon where he could never see his wife again.”

She’s getting eviler.

“But I made him a deal. I told him if he gave me his firstborn, I would look the other way.”

Now, I think I know where this story is going. Gothel digs into another cupcake and continues.

“He didn’t want to accept my offer, but his wife made him do it.”

She must have really loved him. Would I have done the same for Gallant? Maybe, a year ago. But not now. A pang of sadness stabs me.

Gothel continues. “And so, I got their baby. A beautiful little girl. I even helped deliver her. She was breech. So, I had to cut her out with a knife. Just like this.”

Grabbing a sharp knife, Gothel slashes a cupcake and cuts out the cream. Now, she’s scaring me. I’m relieved when she puts the knife down and plays with her nose ring.

“Now that I had a baby, I was sure my husband would stay with me when he came back from war. But I was fearful that Mr. and Mrs. Dragonslayer would come after the child. So I hid her in a stairless one-window tower in a remote part of the forest and named her—”

“Rapunzel,” I say, knowingly. “The girl with the legendary mile-long hair.”

“Yes, Rupunzel.” A melancholic smile crosses Gothel’s face. “People still think I mistreated her, but I didn’t. I loved her like a daughter.”

Come on. She kept the poor girl locked up in a tower with no escape. She even one-upped me. At least, I let Snow White to go outdoors and dream about escaping by a wishing well.

“Rapunzel even called me Mother Gothel.” Gothel’s violet eyes grow watery. “I gave her everything.”

I’m still not buying her good mother act.

“How did you get up there if there were no stairs?”

“Simple. I would yell up to her: ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.’ She’d drop down her braids from the window, and I would climb up.”

That explains how she got those wicked arm muscles. Whoof! All that climbing!

“I always brought her one of her favorite things.” Tears roll down her high cheekbones. “Sweets, music boxes, art supplies, books, and gowns fit for a princess. Anything she wanted except—”

“Except what?”

Gothel sobs the words. “Except access to the world. Freedom.”

I’m near tears now myself and regret that I misjudged her. She
did
love Rapunzel like a daughter. Unlike me who treated Snow White like a servant and dressed her in rags, depriving her of every material thing possible. My baby kicks me hard again.
Don’t worry, kid, I won’t do that to you; I promise.

I rub my tummy and look into Gothel’s eyes. “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t let her leave the tower.”

“I was afraid of losing her. That she’d leave me. And then when my husband returned, he’d leave me again because I didn’t have a child.”

So all this time she thought her husband would come back to her. “What happened?” I ask, anxious to hear the end of the story.

“I discovered that I wasn’t the only one climbing up Rapunzel’s braids. She had another visitor—some local prince—with whom she was plotting to run away. I told Rapunzel to say bye-bye to her braids and her beloved.” She picks up the sharp knife again, grabs my hair, and slices off two small clumps. I tremble. “With two snips, the braids were gone and so was her hair-climbing prince.”

“What happened to him?” I ask, my eyes wide.

“The prick tumbled into a thorny rose bush and was blinded.”

So, the prick got pricked, no pun intended. “Did he live?”

Gothel’s eyes grow fierce again. “Yes! And he got me arrested. By that damn Huntsman!”

My father! Though I don’t appreciate the insult, it’s yet another ironic connection.

“I got life in a windowless dungeon.”

“Was the guard a stupid green ogre?”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“I spent some time there too.” It’s odd how much we have in common. “What happened to the prince and Rapunzel?”

“What do you think? The prick got his eyesight back, and they got married.”

Yet another happily ever after story. But not for Gothel.

“How did you end up at Faraway?”

“Rapunzel forgave me. She got why I kept her prisoner all those years. So, she sprung me from the hellhole dungeon and sent me there for rehab.”

An image of Snow White pleading for leniency at my sentencing flashes into my head. How ironic that the ones we hurt the most are often those who are there for us the most… And the ones we love the most, those who hurt us the most.

Shocking me out of my thoughts, Gothel takes her knife and stabs it into the table. She sobs. “I should have never kept her locked up.” Her tear-stained violet eyes meet mine. “I deserved to die, not to live.”

The very words I used when I found out that the Huntsman spared my life after I had tried to escape Faraway. I’m moved by Gothel’s story. Near tears myself. And amazed how similar our lives have been. But there’s something she’s left out.

“Did your husband ever come back?”
I need to know.

Fury falls fast and fiercely over Gothel’s face. “Yes, the fucker came back. But not for me.”

“Why did you tell me this story?” I ask, holding back tears. “Are you trying to tell me that I shouldn’t have my baby? That it’s futile. That Gallant will never leave Aurora?”

Gothel knits her arched brows. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Wait. She doesn’t know about Gallant’s affair? I just assumed she did. That by now, everybody did.

“My husband is having an affair with Princess Aurora.” Tears escape my eyes. “It’s just a matter of time before he leaves me.”

“That sucks.” She gazes at me, her violet eyes filled with compassion instead of their usual fierceness. And then she does something unexpected. She clasps my hands in hers and gives them a gentle squeeze. I’m full of remorse—sorry that I thought she was trying to hurt me or mess with my head.

She surveys my bump. “You’re tiny. Does Gallant even know that you’re pregnant?”

I shake my head. Tears stream down my cheeks. I’m so emotional. So out of control.

“You should tell him.”

The tears keep coming. What’s the use? He’s in love with Aurora. He’s going to announce the end of our marriage at his retrospective tomorrow night. A deep shudder runs through me.

Gothel flicks off my tears with her sinewy fingers. “Trust me, he’ll never leave you if you’re giving him a child.”

How can she be so sure? Her husband never came back to her.