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Penny’s blond curls bounced down her back as she hustled toward the third line of seats in the little plane. Elise watched as her capable daughter shoved her backpack in the overhead compartment, then turned and sat at the window. Bradley joined her moments later. “I packed some Halloween candy. You want some?”
Penny contemplated this for a moment. Her face reminded Elise of those long-ago days when Penny had been an overly-thoughtful child, sometimes prone to panic attacks because she just couldn’t decide on what to do or say.
“Well, the play is over...” she said finally. “What do you have?”
Elise and Wayne sat in the aisle across from the twins. Wayne clicked his seat belt into place as Penny tore open a bite-sized Butterfinger.
“These were always my favorite,” she told Bradley.
“I know,” he said as he scrunched his nose. “I never understood why.”
Elise’s phone buzzed in her purse. She hunted for it, rifling past receipts, her wallet, and a bottle of water. Finally, she found it near the bottom and dragged it out to find an email from Courtney.
Girl,
You won’t believe this.
We sold the screenplay! Five hundred thousand dollars. Not bad, right?
Call me when you can so we can fine-tune the details, have you sign the contract, and get started on the next steps.
When I took you on, I knew this day would come. It took a bit of a winding road to get here, but now that we’re here, I don’t even remember the bad parts.
Cheers to you, beautiful!
Courtney.
Elise full-on screeched at the email.
She dropped her phone back into her purse and cupped her hands over her lips. Wayne looked at her, aghast, as her heart banged away in her chest.
“What happened? Mom? What’s up?” Penny demanded.
Slowly, Elise removed her hands from her lips. She exhaled and whispered, “I sold it. The screenplay.”
“Oh, my God!” Penny cried.
“Are you serious? Mom!” Brad said.
Wayne’s lips found her cheek as his arms wrapped around her and hugged her tight against him. “You did it,” he boomed. “Every time I saw you typing away in the corner at the coffee shop, I thought to myself—that woman has it. Whatever it is.”
Elise shook with laughter, with fear, with excitement. Before she could find the words to respond, one of the stewardesses arrived to look at them with a disdainful expression and demand that the rest of them put on their seat belts.
“We’re preparing to take off,” she informed them.
“Okay. But the second we’re in the air, we need to make a request,” Penny said. “Two bottles of champagne. Please. We have a toast to make.”
The plane erupted off the airstrip ten minutes later. Wayne clutched Elise’s hand powerfully as the wheels cranked back into the belly of the metal beast.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that,” he told her.
“If we’re going to go between California and Michigan a lot more often, I guess you’ll have to,” Elise told him.
Finally, the stewardess arrived back with four flute glasses and two bottles of champagne. Her face was sour as she popped off the tops masterfully, ensuring that no bubbles were lost. As she poured, Penny said, “My mother sold a screenplay today. She hasn’t sold one of her own in over ten years.”
“Is that right?” the stewardess said coldly.
Elise and Penny locked eyes across the aisle. Penny mouthed, “What’s up with her?” which made Elise burst into laughter, nearly spilling her glass of champagne. The moment the champagne flutes were filled, the stewardess sat the still partially full champagne bottle atop Bradley’s tray table and clacked away in her heels.
“Let’s make a toast,” Penny said. “To Elise Darby, my extraordinary mother, the woman to whom I look up to every single day of my life. I don’t know what kind of person I would be without you, and beyond that, I don’t know what kind of person any of us would have been without Grandma. To you, to your success, and to the memory of Grandma. Here’s to a wild few days on Mackinac Island, also—a tiny rock in the middle of nowhere, with a name that really shouldn’t be pronounced that way.”
“Hey! It’s French,” Wayne interjected with a wild smile.
Penny rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Wayne. Oh, that reminds me.” She cleared her throat and then added, “I suppose some of this toast should be reserved for Wayne, who seems every bit the kind of man my mother deserves—that is, if he’s up to the challenge.”
“I hope I am,” Wayne affirmed.
“That was the longest toast I’ve ever heard in my life,” Brad teased.
“I don’t hear you coming up with anything, Bradley,” Penny said.
“I’m not the thespian here. You took the stage from all of us, and you held it well. I can’t fight that,” he said.
They settled back in their seats for the remainder of the flight: sipping champagne, chatting, laughing. Occasionally, Elise was overwhelmed with the events of the previous two months—especially when she was reminded, with a strange jolt in her stomach, that her mother was really gone.
But look at all I have.
Mom would have wanted us to be happy.
She would have wanted us to be together.
When they arrived back in Traverse City, a dramatic sheet of freezing rain slapped itself through the air. Elise, Penny, Brad, and Wayne watched it from the other side of the glass as stark, chilly air swirled around them, cast in from the doors that opened and closed with each newcomer.
“Shoot,” Penny breathed.
“I have never seen weather like that,” Brad said.
“It’s Halloween!” Penny cried. “It should be illegal for the weather to be this bad on Halloween.”
“It’s haunted weather, isn’t it?” Wayne said as he slipped his arms through his winter coat and zipped it to his chin. “The kind of weather ghosts and ghouls and werewolves thrive on.”
“I can’t believe I made fun of your winter coat when you got to LA,” Brad said with a heavy sigh. “I see the error of my ways. All I have is this light jacket.”
It was decided that they would rent a car and head to a local retailer to buy winter coats for Penny and Brad. Inside the store, the kids had a kind of field day, trying on winter hats and gloves and mittens while whipping scarves around their necks. Elise could see it. They were acting out old fantasies of Christmas movies they had seen since they’d never been allowed that kind of winter wonderland life.
By the time they had finished, they were able to put their new winter garb to good use as the full sheet of frozen rain had given way to the snow. They stepped out into the parking lot with their faces lifted toward the gray sky, completely mesmerized as the snow billowed across their cheeks and melted across their skin.
“This is absolutely marvelous,” Penny breathed beside Elise. She closed her eyes so that her blue eye shadow caught the gray light beautifully.
She looked like a movie star.
“All right, guys. If we don’t get back in the car now, we’ll never make it up to Mack,” Elise said finally, again falling back into her role as “mother” and “the one in charge.”
The kids grumbled and jumped into the back seat, leaving Elise and Wayne side by side in the snow. His cheeks were bright pink, and his grin was infectious.
“What are you thinking?” Elise asked, suddenly breathless.
“Nothing. Just how happy I am that you came back, I guess,” he said.
“Wasn’t that all a part of the plan?”
Wayne shrugged. “I had my doubts I could really drag you from your California home.”
Elise bridged the gap between them and lifted her chin. “You could never drag me anywhere. Do you know that? I came here because I’m falling hard for you, and I don’t want to do any of this without you.”
Wayne’s blush crimsoned. As he opened his lips to respond, Penny rolled down her window. “We’re freezing in here! My phone says it’s twenty-two degrees! What kind of witchcraft is that?”
Elise and Wayne burst into full belly laughter as they scampered back to the car. Once inside, Wayne turned up the heat all the way, and Elise yanked off her gloves and rubbed her palms together. When she turned on the radio station, it was a song her mother had loved—Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”
“Oh my gosh. Grandma always sang this song as loudly as she could,” Penny cried from the back seat.
“It’s a classic,” Wayne said.
With that, the four of them began to sing the lyrics they remembered—messing up from time to time, laughing as they faked their way to the ending. They headed north, where it all had begun for all of them.
With each mile they passed on the highway, Elise grew increasingly anxious. She texted Tracey about a half-hour away from the ferry to give their arrival time.
TRACEY: Great! I’m taking Dad out for a birthday drink, which will allow everything to be set up over here at his place. Just swing over when you get here.
TRACEY: Oh! Why has Alex been overly nice the past week? What did you do to him? A spell, maybe?
Elise laughed inwardly as she responded.
ELISE: It is Halloween, isn’t it? I’m allowed a few spells and tricks.
TRACEY: Whatever it is, keep it up. I love this version of my brother. He’s much funnier than I remembered.
ELISE: I love it when people can surprise you like that.
TRACEY: Me too.
When Elise, Wayne, Penny, and Brad stepped off the ferry on Mackinac Island, she hung back and watched her children crunch through the snow on Main Street slowly, as though they walked through shadows of their own dreams. Main Street had been decorated for Halloween. Spiderwebs hung from banister to banister, and little ghouls and goblins and ghosts hung outside of fudge shops and restaurants. Two horses drew a buggy toward them, and Penny whipped around, wide-eyed, and said, “It feels like the 1800s around here!”
Elise chuckled as she trotted up ahead of her children to lead them to the Bloomingfeld, which she had cleared with Alex to have for both of her children during the birthday weekend. As they entered the foyer, stomping their feet of snow, Rhonda fluttered toward them with warm greetings. On her head, she wore a witch’s hat, and her smile was electric save for one smudge of chocolate on her lower lip.
“Happy Halloween!” she called. “Oh, you must be Bradley and Penny Swartz.”
“Fletcher, actually,” Penny corrected. “Although I’ve heard that around here, that Swartz name is pretty powerful.”
“Oh, silly me. Of course.” Rhonda dropped her chin to her chest and said, “I’ve been told to keep your arrival a big secret. That’s been one of the biggest struggles of my life, mind you. Around here, gossip is the way we keep ourselves alive.”
Rhonda showed Penny and Bradley to their rooms, both down the hall from Elise’s, with stunning bay window views of the frigid lake outside. After they dropped off their suitcases, everyone changed into their birthday best. Penny in a black velvet dress with a thick black headband holding her hair in place; Brad in a suit jacket with a white T-shirt beneath it.
“Mom, I’ve never seen that green dress before,” Penny said, giving her mother a once-over.
“Oh, this old thing?” Elise said.
From down below in the foyer, Wayne called, “That’s the dress she wore when I fell head over heels for her.”
“My sister sold it to me,” Elise said. “Before I even knew she was my sister. She helped me pick it out, even, on a day that I felt particularly lonely here on Mackinac.”
**
AS IT WAS TERRIBLY cold, Wayne rented a carriage to take them up to the Pontiac Trail Head. Elise and her children piled in the back beneath blankets, huddling close to one another as Wayne sat up front and guided the horses. The carriage clopped along as they chatted.
“Wayne lives just a few blocks that way,” Elise said, pointing. “And that beautiful hotel there? That’s something of a big deal around here. Your grandfather used to sneak into that very hotel to see your grandmother at night after they had finished filming for the day.”
Penny’s eyes widened at the thought. “It’s so difficult to imagine Grandma as a mid-twentysomething, wrapped up in some kind of romantic affair.”
“I can assure you. She was always up to something,” Elise said. “I read enough of her other diaries to know that she had many other lovers. She kept them all a secret, until Peter, of course. That said, I really don’t think she loved anyone quite the way she loved your grandfather.”
“Gee. I wonder why,” Bradley said with a crooked grin.
“What do you mean?”
Brad and Penny shrugged in unison, in that strange, twin-like way they had.
“He’s your father—the father of her favorite person in the world. Of course, she loved him the most. He gave her the world,” Penny said.