Page 9 of The Messengers of Magic
Chapter Seven
A delaide woke to the soft glow of early morning light filtering through the gauzy white curtains lining the windows. For a moment, she stared blankly at the ceiling. Then it came to her, where she was and why she was here.
She sat up, her hair sticking to the sides of her face, still faintly smelling of the burnt remnants of her old life.
Her thoughts drifted to Jeff. To the note he’d left, his words moving sharp and uninvited in her mind.
You and I are just not cut from the same cloth.
I need someone ready to take on the world with me, someone with dreams bigger than shelving books.
What a pompous ass , she thought, wishing he’d not been the first thing to occupy her mind.
She got out of bed and pulled her hair back in a low ponytail.
She hated him. But even more than that, she hated that he wasn’t entirely wrong.
Somewhere along the way, she had lost her passion and her dreams. Her drive. Her direction.
They’d been struggling for a while, but they’d built a comfortable life.
And stability has a way of making you stay.
So she had, hoping they might find their way back to each other.
The passionate love they’d once shared had faded within a year of their wedding.
She’d told herself that was normal, that real love, once the honeymoon phase ended, would settle into something quieter.
But, if she was truly honest, it wasn’t just love she’d been clinging to, it was the security Jeff provided.
The spring trips to Paris. The jewelry on her birthday.
The expensive wine. The beautiful home. Without him, she couldn’t afford any of it.
Not even rent. It wasn’t love that had kept her wedding band on.
It was fear. Fear of what life would look like without the security he gave her.
Fear of stepping into a world she no longer knew how to navigate on her own.
She should have left years ago, when she first sensed their love waning, before she’d given up on the person she once wanted to be.
If she’d left then, in her early twenties, she might have found her way back to herself, and she’d have still been young enough to navigate single life.
But starting over at nearly thirty, when all her friends were married with children, that was something else entirely.
Trying her best to pull herself out of the well of self-pity she’d fallen into, Adelaide concentrated on getting ready for breakfast. In the small bathroom, she turned on the shower, letting the room fill with steam before she slipped off her clothes and stepped in.
Hot water streamed over her skin, and slowly, the tension of the past few days began to ease.
Her shoulders slackened, her breath deepened.
She imagined all the pain and anger washing away, sliding down the drain with the smoky residue that clung to her body.
But it wasn’t that easy. Hurt like this didn’t vanish with hot water and soap.
Still, she resolved to try. Just live in the moment for the rest of the day. Baby steps , she told herself, as she turned the water off and reached for a towel.
She balled up the clothes she’d worn the day before and threw them in the rubbish bin near the sink. They still carried the smell of smoke and unhappy endings, best left in the trash, along with all the other memories of that day.
She unzipped her bag and peered inside at the haphazard collection she’d thrown together in her rush to leave.
Her toothbrush lay on top of her clothing, wedged next to her books and the framed photo of her parents.
She picked the toothbrush up, stared at it, then dropped it into the bin too.
The thought of it, having once sat beside Jeff’s, of him using his after those late nights with her , made her sick.
After dressing, she ran her fingers through her hair and headed down to the kitchen for breakfast.
Following the smell of eggs and bacon, Adelaide passed through the sitting room and entryway, arriving in a large kitchen with an attached sunroom. As soon as she opened the door, her stomach groaned.
Ellen stood at the stove, placing several strips of bacon on a plate already piled high with eggs, toast, and roasted tomatoes.
“Good morning,” Adelaide greeted, taking a seat at a table set for breakfast. It was beautifully laid out, a porcelain teapot in a rich forest green adorned with tiny forget-me-nots, alongside a glass pitcher of orange juice and a coffee decanter. Ellen had left nothing out.
“Hello, dear, did you sleep well?” Ellen asked, carrying the plate over to her.
“Yes, very well, thank you. I hope you plan on helping me eat all of this,” Adelaide said, looking at enough food to feed an army.
“I’ll take my breakfast once you are done,” Ellen replied, wiping a spot of grease off the counter.
Adelaide hesitated. “I would love for you to join me, if you’d like, that is.”
Ellen smiled as she made her way over, pulled out a chair across from Adelaide, and settled in with a quiet sigh. “So, what brings you to Helensburgh?” Ellen inquired as she buttered a slice of toast.
“I’m not entirely sure. I suppose I’m here to visit someone.”
“Oh, do you have relatives here?”
“Yes, my great-aunt, Carolyn McGregor.”
Ellen’s head tilted, surprised. “Carolyn? Goodness. She and I go way back. She was in my book club for years.”
Adelaide paused, fork halfway to her mouth, thoughts turning to where Great-Aunt Carolyn lived. It had been so long, she couldn’t remember exactly how to get to her house, only that it was a little way outside the village.
“She still lives nearby, doesn’t she?”
Ellen looked up from her tea. “Of course. If you take a right out of here, follow the main road out of the village, you’ll see Hemlock Lane on your left. Her house is at the end of it.”
“I haven’t seen her in a long time, fifteen years or more. Is she well?”
“Quite. She’ll probably outlive us all, that one, with all her teas and tinctures.” Ellen laughed, taking a bite of her toast.
Adelaide smiled at Ellen as she finished her last bite of eggs and got up.
“What time is check out?” she asked as she put her plate in the old wash basin sink.
“Eleven, but stay as long as you need,” Ellen said in a light tone.
As Adelaide passed through the sitting room, she paused in front of the fireplace, drawn to look at the collection of moths above it again.
Stepping closer, she noticed small brass nameplates beneath each specimen.
She scanned the names, searching for the emperor, which was impossible to miss.
It was the largest in the case, looking as if it might fit snugly in her palm.
Its wings resembled an autumn sunset: deep oranges, burgundies, and browns, but what caught her attention were the markings, two spots on each wing, shaped like a pair of eyes staring back at her.
It made her uneasy, the way they seemed to follow her as she walked past.
Escaping into her room, away from the prying eyes of the moth, she shut the door behind her and decided that she would avoid looking at them on the way out.
She collapsed onto the bed and glanced at the small digital alarm clock on the nightstand: quarter past nine. She lay there, watching the minutes tick by, biting her thumbnail as her mind wandered.
Was it really fair to show up at Carolyn’s unannounced after all these years?
They hadn’t spoken in so long. What if she didn’t remember her, or worse, didn’t want to?
Maybe she should just pack her bags and head back to Glastonbury.
But what was there to return to? Every bit of her life there was laced with memories of Jeff.
Even her favorite bookshop was across the street from his office.
She couldn’t so much as browse without risking a glimpse of him through the window.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the old plaster ceiling, with its long crack that spanned the length of the room, separating it into two halves. It reminded her of her life now, split in two, before the affair and the after.
What would happen if she went back? She could picture it too clearly: the house, half-empty, the looming silence, the endless forms and meetings, the slow, suffocating process of untangling their lives. She wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
The thought of a new life felt impossible. But as she looked up at the broken ceiling, she realized she didn’t need to rebuild everything at once. She just needed to get through one day at a time right now.
And today, she would show up on Great-Aunt Carolyn’s doorstep and hope she remembered her.
Her subconscious had brought her here for a reason, maybe because Carolyn was the only family left on her father’s side. Or maybe, deep down, she was reaching for the joy she’d known in this place, hoping that some small part of her father still lingered in Starfell.
He’d told her this place was built on stardust and magic. Maybe, if she was lucky, there was still a little bit of that magic left here that might help her move forward.