“And how does it make you feel when Rachel doesn’t do as you ask?”
Was this joker kidding? “Well, Daniel, it makes me angry, and before you give me that smirk, I’ll add that you have no idea how maddening it is to see your own flesh and blood just twisting in the wind. Of all our girls, Rachel is the most creative, and may even be the brightest, but there she goes, spinning her wheels in a dead-end graduate field with a dead-end guy. Aimless!” he said, throwing up his hands. “Totally aimless!”
“You don’t understand her, Aaron, and you never have,” Bonnie said wearily, and Aaron wondered why she got to talk during his time. “Rachel is a pretty girl, but she’s not a beauty like her sisters.”
“What do looks have to do with it?” Aaron demanded. “You ask me, Rachel is more attractive than her sisters. She’s got that all-American rosy-cheek look and that long dark curly hair she ties up on her head,” he said, gesturing at his head in a tie-up way. “Her problem is she doesn’t want to go where life is leading her.”
“Not where life is leading her,” Bonnie said. “Where you’re leading her.”
Oddly enough, that remark stopped Aaron cold, and he stared at Bonnie for a long moment.
“How does that make you feel, Aaron?” Daniel asked quietly.
“It makes me feel like Bonnie doesn’t understand me. I’m not leading her, but that useless degree and that useless boyfriend are. That’s real nice, ain’t it? After ten years of higher education, what have we got to show for it?”
“Go with that,” Daniel urged him. “Go with your feelings. How are you feeling?”
“Ashamed,” he said flatly, ignoring Bonnie’s gasp. “Ashamed that we didn’t do better by her. Sorry that I don’t have the time to go back and fix it all. Yet I have to do something because that girl is still relying on me—I asked her, ‘What are you going to do when I die?’ and all she could do was cry. It’s like talking to a wall.”
“I’d like to suggest a couple of things here, Aaron,” Daniel said, templing his fingers. “First of all, it is possible that Rachel is quite happy in what she is doing. She may not aspire to the same things you aspire to for her.”
“Obviously,” he snorted, folding his arms over his chest.
“Your message is a good one, however. You want her to learn to provide for herself, to be an adult, am I right?”
“That is exactly what I am trying to do, but oh no, I’m the monster,” he said, mimicking quotation marks at Bonnie.
“Perhaps, then, since your usual way of communicating with Rachel doesn’t appear to be working, you might try a different approach,” Daniel said smoothly. “If you feel like you are talking to a brick wall, then change the way you are talking.”
“How can I be any plainer?”
“What do you think would happen if you were kind to Rachel?” Daniel asked.
Aaron blinked. “Come again?”
“Think about being kind to Rachel. Try seeing the situation from her shoes.”
Aaron frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Daniel exchanged a look with Bonnie. “If I’m Rachel, I’m thirty years old, give or take. I’ve been in school for a long time. Maybe so long I don’t even remember what the real world looks like anymore. And maybe I like my professor boyfriend because he doesn’t push me; he just lets me be who I am. And maybe, when someone suggests I step outside my comfortable zone into the real world, it makes me nervous, and I do things to maintain a sense of comfort, like overeat.”
Aaron was already shaking his head at the mumbo jumbo. “Why in God’s name would she be afraid to step out into the real world?”
“Because,” Bonnie said softly, “every time she has, she stood in the shadow of two very accomplished and beautiful older sisters, and she is criticized for the way she looks, and for the things that interest her, and essentially, for who she is. In Providence, she’s not criticized, she’s accepted for who she is. She’s safe.”
Aaron felt a little dip in his belly.
“So I’m going to suggest some communication exercises you can do over the weekend,” Daniel began, and reached for a pair of booklets.
Aaron closed his eyes, thought that he just might vomit.
Chapter Two
Providence, Rhode Island
Two weeks later
The whole thing started with a bottle of wine and a heated debate over which spell to use.
Dagne Delaney, Rachel’s best friend, was over for dinner when Rachel said she thought Dagne’s spell sounded like some kid’s jump rope rhyme, and suggested, seeing as how Dagne was brand-new to the witchcraft thing, that perhaps she needed a little more study before they did something really stupid.