Blooms of Consequence (Dusk Gate Chronicles Book 4) (16 page)

“Yes. We’ve just had some important guests arrive, so my mother will be throwing a big dinner.” Linnea said. “There will be birthday cake for Quinn, too.”

Quinn looked at her in surprise – she’d mostly forgotten about her birthday, let alone celebrating it.

“We’ll find something for you, too, Megan. You and Annie come with us.”

“I’ll take care of Owen,” William said, leaning to kiss Quinn’s cheek. “Have fun,” he whispered in her ear. He was smiling as they left, looking nearly as happy as she felt.

“YOU AND THOMAS SHARE a room?” Owen asked, as William led him into the bedroom.

“Sort of,” William said, smiling. “I actually have a room of my own, but I usually sleep in here with Thomas when I’m home. I always miss my family when I’m gone to your world, so I don’t really want to be alone when I get back.”

Owen looked up at him. “Is Quinn going to miss us?”

“She always misses you, buddy. She talks all the time about all of you, and how much she loves you all. I think she misses you especially, though.”

He nodded. “Quinn understands me.”

“Yeah, she does. She’s good that way, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“I know you love her a lot, Owen. And she is always going to love you, even when you can’t see each other all the time.”

“Can I see your room?”

“Sure.” William smiled as he walked Owen back into the hallway. Owen wasn’t comfortable discussing his emotions with anyone, and William was aware of the trust the little boy had placed in him even getting as far as he just had.

“Wow,” Owen said when William opened the door to his room. He headed straight for the long table that William had set up as a sort of mini-laboratory. “Is this real?” he asked, touching the base of one of the microscopes.

“Yes. They’re all real.”

“Where did you get them?”

“My uncle ordered them for me from catalogs in your world.”

“Do you want to be a doctor like him when you grow up, too?”

“Well, here, in my world, I am mostly grown up, and I am already sort of a doctor.”

“Can you fix people if they’re sick?”

“Or hurt, yes, a lot of the time I can help them.”

“Do you like helping them?”

“Very much.”

“When you were my age, did you know that you wanted to be a doctor when you grew up?”

“I did. Actually, you see this microscope here?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nathaniel gave this one to me for my eighth birthday. I looked at everything with it.”

“Can you see blood in it?”

“Blood cells?”

“Yeah.”

“A little bit. But this microscope here is better for that.”

“Could I see my blood?”

“You could if we had some. But I would have to poke your finger to get some, and I don’t think you’d like that much.”

“I don’t care. I want to see it.”

William frowned. “I don’t know, Owen.”

“I don’t know anyone else who has a microscope.”

“Your mom would probably buy you one. I can tell her where to look. Actually, I have some microscopes at my uncle’s house in Bristlecone. You can have one. Just have your mom take you over there.”

“She’s not a doctor. She wouldn’t let me look at my blood. Please?”

Something about it was important to the little boy – William got the feeling that Owen had thought about this before. He didn’t know what it was, but he understood, very well, what it was like to have a curiosity about something that needed to be satisfied. He went to a drawer and found some rubbing alcohol, cotton balls, and a tiny lancet.

Owen didn’t even wince when William pricked his finger. He was very interested in the process as William helped him squeeze a small drop of blood onto a slide, and then snap the slide onto the platform of the microscope. He showed Owen how to adjust the lenses and turn the dials until the blood cells came clearly into focus.

The little boy was fascinated, asking questions and listening intently to the answers as they found the different kinds of cells in the little drop.

“Is that what it’s supposed to look like?” Owen asked.

“Yes. It’s exactly what it’s supposed to look like. It’s perfect.”

“Okay.” Owen sighed, seeming almost…
disappointed?

“Did you think it wouldn’t be?”

Owen shrugged. “I just wondered if it would be different, somehow. But it isn’t.”

Oh.
William swallowed hard.

“You know, Owen,
everyone
is different than other people in some way. Not in their blood, usually, but somewhere in their hearts and their minds. I wasn’t much the same as my brothers and sisters, either. And I was very different than the kids at school. Sometimes that was kind of hard and lonely.”

“Is it still hard?”

“Not usually. I’m older now, and I understand it better. And I know that the same things that make me different are the ones that make me good at what I want to do. They make me good at learning new things, and using those things to help people. There are plenty of people who love me just like I am, Owen – and there are just as many who love you how you are. You’re perfect, already. Quinn loves you exactly how you are. So do Annie and your mom and your dad… and so do I.”

“Will you still get to be a doctor when you marry my sister and she’s the queen? Can a king be a doctor, too?”

William smiled at the quick change in subject – he’d gone a little too far again with Owen, but he hoped that what he’d managed to say would sink in over time. He really had fallen in love with the amazing little boy. It was going to be hard to say good-bye.

“I don’t know how it will all work out, Owen. I’ll still be a doctor, but I don’t think it will be the same as I always figured it was going to be. That’s okay, though. Sometimes you meet people, and you find out they’re more important than whatever your first plans were, and so you make new ones.”

“And my sister is more important than your old plans?”

“Very much more important. But speaking of your sister … even though it usually takes the girls longer to get ready for dinner than us boys, if we don’t get you into the bath soon, they’re going to be waiting for us. And that’s not good. So how about you pick which room you want to take a bath in, and then I’ll go take a shower in the other one.”

And also thinking of Quinn … once William had gotten Owen in the bath, he remembered that they were going to be celebrating Quinn’s birthday tonight, too. He hadn’t really had a chance to get her anything – but last night he’d remembered something that he’d come across a couple of weeks ago as he’d been going through some of his old books.

Digging it back out of the drawer where he’d hidden it, he found a pretty cloth to wrap it in and tied it with a ribbon, leaving it on a table where he’d remember it. 

*          *          *

As Linnea carefully finished lowering Quinn’s dress over her head, Megan gasped.

“Oh, honey, you’re so beautiful. So grown up.”

A flash of heat hit her cheeks. “It’s just a dress, Mom.” She looked up to examine herself in the long bathroom mirror as Linnea and Megan both started buttoning up the back.

Linnea
had
outdone herself this evening. The floor-length gown she had picked out was a soft cream color, overlaid with dark green flowers down the short sleeves and the long skirt. She’d pulled up some of Quinn’s hair into an intricate bun held in place with a gold barrette, but the rest of it flowed down past her shoulders. The image of herself in the mirror made her suck in a breath.

“Time to start looking like the heir to the throne,” Linnea said, leaving Megan to finish the last few buttons while she fastened the pendant around Quinn’s neck.

Looking in the mirror, seeing the dress, the way her auburn hair was swept up in an intricate design – the way the pendant lay against her neck like it belonged there – Quinn suddenly felt, for the first time, like she actually was the heir to a throne. For a second, anyway. After that, the sensation was so overwhelming that she had to look away and push it from her mind.

She turned to face her mother. “You look amazing, too.” Linnea had managed to come up with a dress for Megan that complimented Quinn’s.

“What about me?” Annie asked, running back into the bathroom and twirling so that her skirt flared out.

“You’re always pretty,” Quinn said, scooping her sister into her arms and hugging her tightly. “But especially right now.”

“Can I have a necklace, too?” Annie asked.

“Uh...”

“Sure!” Linnea said. “Want to come with me to get one?”

“Yeah!” Annie practically leapt from Quinn’s arms to follow Linnea out of the bathroom and toward the door.

Quinn was left standing there facing her mom, heavy emotion filling her chest.

“One thing,” Megan said, and a tone in her voice made Quinn’s stomach clench nervously. “What is
this?”
She pointed to her own chest, but Quinn knew exactly what she was asking, and heat flowed from the top of her head to her toes.

“It’s a tattoo.”

“Seriously, Quinn?”

She was never going to be able to explain that one in a way her mother was going to be happy about. Taking a second before she answered, she remembered her conversation with Linnea the other day – her mom wasn’t going to treat her as an adult by this unless she acted like one, calm and decisive.

“It’s a long story, Mom. I’ll try and explain it later, but I really don’t want us to get upset with each other tonight. For now, can you just trust me that I’m making the best decisions I know how to, and that all I want from you is for us to just love each other and have as many
good
memories together as we can, instead of fighting?”

Megan was silent for several seconds, but finally she took a deep breath and nodded.

“Thank you,” Quinn said, feeling her hands relax out of their tight fists.

“I’m trying.”

“I know. And I appreciate it more than I could ever tell you, Mom.”

Megan blinked furiously for a few seconds, and then she cleared her throat. She walked toward one of the night tables, and picked up a little wrapped package that Quinn hadn’t noticed before. “I wanted to give you your gift,” she said. “I had it on me when I came, because I’d just picked it up from the shop that afternoon – whenever that was. I did ask Charlotte for help with wrapping it – I guess they don’t have wrapping paper here?”

Quinn shook her head. “They do wrapped presents for some things now – I think they might have learned that from William or Nathaniel…but no, no wrapping paper.”

The little gift was wrapped in soft, blue cloth tied with a ribbon. Quinn untied it, opened it, and looked up at her mom with tears in her eyes.

“I told you, Quinn… I think there was a part of me that knew this was going to happen, or that was trying to convince you not to do it.”

It was a photo album – the pictures were all digital, or had been converted – but they were printed on the pages like a scrapbook. The first pictures were of Quinn as a baby, being held by Samuel or Megan, sometimes both of them. There was even one she’d never seen before – of Nathaniel staring at her in delight as she took a wobbly step.

Her mouth fell open, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. “Mom…”

The following pictures were in order, each of Quinn’s school pictures, her in her flower girl dress at Megan and Jeff’s wedding, her holding a tiny baby Owen, “helping” him learn to walk, kissing a newborn Annie… all the way up to the family photo that had been taken of all of them last summer.

“It’s beautiful. I don’t know how something can be so wonderful and so impossibly sad at the same time.”

“Me neither, sweetheart.”

They were still hugging when they were both startled by Thomas’ voice. “Is everyone dressed in here?”

“Yes, we’re ready,” Quinn said.

Her heart gave a little flutter at the sight of Thomas and William standing by the doorway, dressed in their formalwear – crisply ironed black pants and white button-down shirts, covered with purple velvet capes fastened at the neck with the seal of Eirentheos. Between them stood Owen, his outfit matching theirs – they’d even found him a cape somewhere – freshly cleaned and combed. He smiled shyly up at Quinn and Megan, even as he fidgeted uncomfortably over the attention.

“Well, then,” Megan said, clearing her throat. Quinn giggled a little at her mom’s reaction.

William’s eyes lit up as he stepped toward her. “Wow.”

“I could say the same about you,” she said, taking hold of his outstretched hand.

Thomas playfully wagged his eyebrows at Megan. “I thought you might like an escort downstairs.”

“You’re quite the gentleman, aren’t you?”

“I do my best.”

“Don’t you have a girlfriend?” Megan asked. “I thought I saw you...”

“I do. I’m going to come back up here to get her in a little while. She had to finish helping get the younger children dressed and downstairs before she could get herself ready. In the meantime, she says she doesn’t mind my escorting a lovely lady downstairs, so long as I keep my hands to myself. So, will you accept an elbow?”

“It’s a tempting offer,” Megan said, “but I believe there’s a gentleman waiting for me already.” She held her hand out toward Owen, who smiled as he took it.

Thomas sighed dramatically. “Watch out, Owen. That one will break your heart. Oh, well, at least Annie won’t let me down, will you Princess?” he said, as Annie and Linnea reappeared.