CHAPTER NINE HOME SWEET HOME?
“Are you coming back?”
It’s Jack.
After packing her possessions, Filomena said goodbye to everyone in the castle, including Jack. But he has followed her to the castle doors, even on his crutches.
She’s still hurt that he took Little Jeanne’s side at breakfast. It made her feel a bit of a fool. Maybe they weren’t as tight as she assumed. She looks up at him and pushes her curls out of her face. “I don’t know.”
He nods. He understands.
“I hope so,” she says.
In answer, Jack removes the Seeing Eye he wears around his neck, which is hard to do while balancing on crutches. Gruffly he hands it to Filomena. “Take it. When you need to use it, it will show you what you need to see.”
Filomena looks down at the tiny object in her hands. It’s one of Jack’s most prized possessions. She wants to object, to tell him she’s not worthy. But she doesn’t. She puts it around her neck.
“Suits you,” he says.
“Jack,” she whispers, and takes his hand in hers. She has no words. She doesn’t know what to say to him. His gift says more than she can.
He squeezes her hand, then releases her. “Go.”
She squares her shoulders and walks out the door to a carriage that is waiting to take her to the nearest portal.
But when she turns around, Jack is still at the door, watching.
He raises a hand.
She does the same.
Then she climbs into the carriage, where Beatrice and Byron are already seated. She has a lump in her throat as she fingers the Seeing Eye around her neck.
Beatrice and Byron try to distract her with tales from their honeymoon, but all Filomena can feel is dread. She dreads the fact that she’s leaving Never After while it’s in crisis and Jack is hurt, and she dreads what she’ll find when she crosses over into the mortal world. The portal spits her out onto the Hollywood Hills. One kingdom to another.
Filomena takes a breath and recalibrates. It always feels a bit hazy to switch between worlds. Looking out over Los Angeles, she thinks of all the starlets, film directors, and flashy celebrities roaming around the city right now. Not so different from Never After, perhaps. Both places where the imaginary becomes real, where legends and myths spread like wildfire, where there are good guys and bad guys.
“Mum? Mum! I’m home!” Filomena yells after bursting into her house. The cab ride felt like it took a thousand years. She’s had butterflies of anxiety fluttering around her stomach ever since Beatrice and Byron told her what was going on. (Maybe more like chippermunks than butterflies. They feel heavier, more chaotic.)
No one is in the kitchen. There are no takeout boxes on the counters. She hears no jazz music (her mother’s favorite) waltzing through the house. There’s no mess at all, and mess is a telltale sign that her mom’s near. It’s all too orderly. The house would look like this only if Filomena’s neat-and-tidy dad were in charge. Filomena rushes upstairs.
“Hello?” she cries.
She knocks on her parents’ bedroom door.
“Come in,” a weary voice says.
Filomena enters to see her mom lying in bed. Her dad is holding her mom’s hand and sitting beside her. When he turns around, his face splits with a wide-open grin.
“You got my message! Thank goodness!”
He gets up and gives Filomena a huge hug, wrapping her tightly in his arms. She feels relief for the first time in days. Protected. Safe. She pulls back.
“Mum, are you okay?”
Filomena’s mom smiles weakly, motioning for Filomena to give her a hug. “Hi, sweetie. I’ve been better.” She laughs lightly.
“Mum, I can’t believe this. What’s going on? Beatrice and Byron told me that Dad sent a message saying you’re sick?”
Bettina Jefferson looks at Carter Cho and smiles. “I told you not to bother her, Carter,” she says.
“I knew she would want to know.”
“How on earth did you get a message to her?” Bettina asks. She looks at Filomena. “I’m still understanding how all this Never After stuff works.”
“I’m pretty good at solving mysteries, you know,” Carter says.
Filomena laughs. Her dad is a mystery writer after all.
“I went to the portal we sent you off from, at the Hollywood sign. It turns out that if you don’t want to actually go through the portal, you’ll hear from an operator. I asked to get in touch with you, and the operator said the last place you were spotted was Wonderland’s castle. So I sent a message.”
“That’s why Beatrice and Byron got it. That makes sense.”
“‘Wonderland’s castle’?” Bettina asks. “As in Alice in Wonderland?”
Filomena wants to tell them all about her adventures, but she has only one thing on her mind right now. “What happened? Why are you sick?”
Her mother leans back on the pillows. She looks so pale to Filomena. So out of energy. Bettina is usually so vivacious, joking about her deadlines, dancing around the kitchen, poring over takeout menus. Now it looks like she hasn’t eaten in days. She looks so frail, it’s scary.
“It happened very suddenly, sweetie. One day I was feeling like my normal self, and the next day I just collapsed. We went to the doctor, but they aren’t sure what’s wrong yet.”
Filomena feels her dad pet her arm. “They think it might be cancer,” he says.
“Cancer?” Filomena buries her face into her mom’s side. “No, no, no. This can’t be happening, Mum.” She starts to cry.
“My lovely girl, it’s okay. Don’t cry. We’ll get through this. We can get through it together. I’m so lucky to have my support system here with me.” Bettina smiles at them.
“I’ll do anything to make you better, Mum. I’ll make you soup. I’ll learn how to make soup. I’ll find a cure. I’ll become a doctor. I’ll do anything!”
Filomena’s mom pats her head.
Suddenly Never After feels a thousand miles away. Nothing seems remotely as pressing as her mom’s health. Maybe none of it will be important in the end—not getting Princess Jeanne’s crown back, not helping Zera, nor defeating the ogres. This is Filomena’s home, and these are her parents.
Her puppy, Adelina Jefferson-Cho, jumps up on the bed with them, and Filomena snuggles into her soft fur. Filomena has fought ogres, she’s brandished swords, she’s run for her life, she’s rescued a prince from a curse. She’s capable of meeting challenges that seem totally impossible, facing obstacles most people would never believe.
She can save her mom.