Maureen rolls her eyes. “I’ve told you before, you can’t live above the cobbler’s shop on page three. It’s not seemly for a prince, and it doesn’t make sense to haul a bed out there when you have a perfectly grand one in the castle.”
“I don’t want to move to page three. I want to live in the real world.” I pause. “With you.”
“Me? In the real world?” Queen Maureen chokes on a laugh. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to live there.”
“That’s why you’ll have me.”
Her eyes find mine. “Is this about your Delilah?”
“Not this time,” I confess. “It’s about a boy who’s going to lose his mother. And if we switch with them, well, I believe he won’t have to.”
“That’s tragic,” Maureen says. She sinks down beside me on the marble bench. “But why would you think that some ordinary woman and her son might be able to come inside here? You’ve seen how the other strangers were forced out.”
“This isn’t an ordinary woman,” I explain. “This is Jessamyn Jacobs. She wrote this story.”
Queen Maureen is silent for a moment. She plucks the petalsfrom the rose in her hand, one by one, letting them float to the ground. She stops before she picks the final petal, and places the stem between us. “She gave me life,” Maureen says softly. “It’s the least I can do for her.”
So much has happened today that I’m not sure I will get a chance to speak to Delilah alone tonight. But then, shortly after the last star appears in the sky, there is a seam of light along the spine of the book and I feel myself being drawn toward our usual page.
“Hi,” she says softly.
“Hello.” I can’t stop smiling at her. It’s as if all the awful truth I’ve learned today has only served to remind me of how lucky I am to have found her. “So, you’d best have a spectacular birthday gift for me.”
“You don’tknowit’s going to work,” Delilah says.
“You don’t know it’snot,” I point out. “I’m thinking . . . we go out to supper first, andthenyou give me my present. And to be perfectly honest, Iamexpecting a cake. Preferably chocolate, but I won’t quibble.”
“I can’t let myself hope this is going to happen,” Delilah says, “because the stakes are so high if it doesn’t. Not just for us this time either. For Edgar.”
I look at her, sobering. “I know.”
“I came home from the hospital today and I hugged my mother so tight she probably thought I was insane. I couldn’t tell her about Jessamyn dying—because what if Queen Maureenwinds up here, perfectly healthy? So instead I just said I had a really bad day and I needed my mother. But I can’t stop thinking, thank God it’s notmymom. And that’s awful, right?”
“It’s human nature, I suppose,” I reply.
“Is this our fault?” Delilah whispers. “When Jessamyn fainted the first time, shouldn’t we have tried to get Edgar back here immediately?”
“She swore to me that she wasn’t ill,” I say.
“Sheliedto you because she didn’t want to worry you, the way we didn’t want to worry Edgar.” Delilah shakes her head. “We lostweekshe could have had with her.”
Her eyes are full of storms. “We can’t turn back time,” I say. “The only thing we can do is try to ensure that Edgar and Jessamyn have more of it.”
Delilah bites her lower lip. “I know you look like Edgar . . . but do you really think Maureen can pass for Jessamyn?”
“Close enough. From what I saw of family photographs when I was in her house, Maureen looks much like Jessamyn did when she got married—although, oddly, her hair color seems to have changed from brown to red. For that matter, King Maurice is the spitting image of Edgar’s late father.” I tilt my head, considering. “We should only hope we’re lucky enough to have to disguise Queen Maureen to make her look exactly like Jessamyn.”
“What will happen to Edgar if . . . the book doesn’t let Jessamyn in? I mean, things out here aren’t like they are in there. Food doesn’t magically appear. You have to make money to buy it. You have to be able to pay your own mortgage. Edgar’s only seventeen. He shouldn’t have to grow up that fast.”
“He won’t have to. In fact, he’ll never grow up,” I say.
Delilah raises a brow, still dubious.
“If this has any chance of working,” I tell her, “I must believe one hundred percent—and to do that, I need you to believe too.”
She lowers her lashes so that they cast shadows on her cheeks. For a moment I think perhaps I’ve made her cry. When she looks at me again, I realize that desperation and hope are twins, merely altered versions of each other. “What kind of frosting?” she asks.
“Buttercream,” I say softly.
