Family Magic by Patti Larsen Read Free Book Online

the
rest of the milk, eyes twinkling over the rim as she finished it in
a couple of gulps. She licked off her mustache and winked at
me.
    “The sweat of my brow,” she said.
    I went to the closet where we kept the trash
with the empty milk carton. “Uh-huh. Erica helped this time?”
    Her eyes widened as I opened the door. She
half reached for me before the sparkle returned.
    “What?” I asked, turning to dump the
carton.
    As soon as I did, I started to laugh.
    The large silver can overflowed with horribly
disfigured and charred cookies, empty bags of sugar, flour and
cartons of eggs and milk. From the appearance of the trash, she
made cookies all day and went through hell and back to get it
right.
    Now I really loved my mother. I turned
back to her and grabbed her in the biggest hug, wondering why I had
ever been mad at her. My mom, my amazing mom, tortured herself in
the kitchen for me so I could feel like a normal kid.
    “Thanks, Mom,” I whispered into her hair.
    I felt her tense before she hugged me back,
whole body softening, her power wrapping around me like a warm
blanket. “It was worth it for this,” she said.
    For the first time since I could remember, I
felt a complete connection to my mother, her unconditional love and
acceptance without judgment or expectation.
    It was amazing, but wasn’t meant to last. In
fact, it ended shortly after the doorbell rang.
    Mom’s face fell. That was when I knew without
a doubt, despite the fact she tried, my mother couldn’t do anything
without an ulterior motive. I closed off and from the guarded look
in her eyes, she knew it.
    “Can you get the door, please, dear?” She
tried to keep the cheer in her voice. “I’ll get a plate of cookies
for our guests.”
    I was wrong. The cookies, the effort she
made, none of it was really for me at all. She kicked her own butt
in the kitchen to impress whoever stood behind door number one.
That warm and fuzzy feeling went the way of her discarded attempts,
along with my happiness.
    I didn’t bother asking any questions. Whoever
waited at the door was going to make me unhappy one way or another
or she wouldn’t have been trying so hard.
    I left the kitchen with my distrust rising
past my fury even though I had no idea what was going on. Which
meant when I answered the door I was already antagonistic and
definitely not in the mood for anything to do with Mom’s betrayal
or her grand plans for me and my future.
    I pulled the door open a little harder than
necessary and scowled at the three people standing on the front
step. An immediate wave of unease hit me, scrubbing away my anger
and leaving me cold. What appeared to be middle-aged mother, father
and teenaged son screamed magic at me. For a moment, I flinched
from the usual flood of nausea. The power came and went so fast I
wondered if maybe I imagined it.
    I must have been silent, staring for an
unusual amount of time, because the woman’s smile began to fade as
she held out her hand to me.
    “You must be Sydlynn.” She forced her smile
back to its original width, stretching her tacky lipstick so much
it showed where it bled into the lines around her mouth.
    “So I’ve been told,” I muttered.
    The woman glanced at the older man beside her
and tittered a laugh so fake it made my cheeks ache. She was short,
shorter than me, with badly dyed brownish- blonde hair and faded
blue eyes made up with too much eyeliner. Her dress tightly hugged
her plump figure, excess flesh bunching over her bra. The man
beside her stood only slightly taller, dressed in a tweed suit
complete with leather arm patches. He even had a pipe in his breast
pocket. Imagine.
    “Clever,” he said to the woman beside him. “I
like that.” He beamed at me in a male chauvinist kind of way that
made me want to slam the door in their faces and tell Mom it had
simply been a mysterious walk-by ringing.
    “Thanks,” I said instead. “Can I help you
with something?”
    The woman’s expression tightened