When the band takes a break, I leave to find Odelia, but one of the band members stops me. “You flip a skateboard like it’s a paperclip,” she says. “You’d be great in a music video and—”
“Thanks!” I interrupt. “Later!” I jog backwards away from her. I’ve got more important things to do than chat with the band.
I can’t get to Odelia, who is across the park. There are too many people in my way. I jump up and down, waving my arms back and forth. “Odelia! We have to talk. NOW!”
Odelia hears me and understands. I know, because she shouts, “Serena!”
***
The Never-Ending Beginning
“Odelia! What the heck?!” I scream, again, running over to her. “The person who dumped me on the Baransky doorstep is—”
“None other than my godmother—”
“Serena!” we both say.
“I saw the letter that she signed,” I say. “She explained everything. She said she couldn’t take care of me? Why? Is it a trick? Is Serena my mother?”
“Ha!” Odelia scoffs. “Serena couldn’t mother a baby chick. Haven’t you figured it out, Bernice?”
“No! All I know is that this connects us. Somehow.”
“That’s an understatement,” Odelia says. “Let me tell you what I have found out. Serena has confessed everything. Remember when I told you my mother died in childbirth?”
I nod. “Get to the point, princess!”
Odelia shakes a finger. “A poised young lady does not order another young lady around.”
“I’m sorry.” I put on my very best, very stuffy and proper Odelia expression. “Please forgive my unmannerly outburst. I respectfully demand that you explain the situation to me, a clueless young lady.” I add a quick curtsy because, well, a curtsy was necessary.
“You are too much,” Odelia says, smirking. “I like it better when you’re you. Not me. The old me, anyway.”
“Then tell me what’s going on!”
Odelia has trouble finding the words. She’s fidgeting with her skateboard wheels, spinning them in one direction, then the next. “When my mother died in childbirth, my father was so overwrought, he ignored the baby. I was very young but obviously sad and confused over my mother’s death, so they told me there was no baby. And then, quite suddenly, my father died of a heart attack. Serena felt this was all too much for me to handle. She reluctantly and secretly took over the baby’s care. She kept it hidden away—hidden from me, until she found wonderful people to raise my sibling—a sibling I never knew existed.”
I can’t budge. I’m about to finish a puzzle and put in the final piece, but a brain fart is sneaking up on me, and I’m numb. So what if I’m thinking of brain farts again. This is brain fart material here.
“Remember I told you my mother liked napping in the woods? And I used to pretend she was Sleeping Beauty? It’s not only because my father caught her sleeping. It’s because our last name is Aurora, and that’s the same as Sleeping Beauty’s first name. My full name is Odelia Rose Aurora.”
“Aurora!” I spit out. “The letter! It says my mother’s name was B. Rose Aurora.”
My knees fold. The puzzle is complete. I get it now. The letter makes sense. “I am . . . I’m your mother’s daughter? I’m the baby that didn’t die.”
Odelia takes my hand. “Yes.”
I’m pretty sure the blood bound for my heart has taken a side trip to my feet. I’m cold. I’m warm. I’m speechless. Thankfully, Odelia is not speechless. She has a lot more to say.
“There’s more,” Odelia says.
“More?”
“You may not realize this, but I’ve had a troubled childhood.”
I think I rolled my eyes. I didn’t mean to.
“We moved here from our secluded estate in Europe because Serena wanted us to meet. She realized she made a mistake by not telling me I had family here. All these years I felt so alone, with no relatives around and no real contact with the modern world. Remember the story I told you about how my mother loved seeing me in beautiful dresses, and I was stubborn and never did what she wanted? I was her little princess, and when she died, I missed her so much that I kept a connection to her by acting like a fairy-tale princess and wearing those ridiculous gowns. Serena hoped that if I met you and became a part of your life, I’d be able to put the past in the past, and heal.”
It all makes sense now. I tell Odelia, “You have changed a lot since we first met.”
Odelia smiles. “I have changed because of you.”
“Me?” I ask.
“Because of you, I see things differently.”
“I see things differently, too,” I say, pulling Odelia in for a hug.
I unwrap myself and sit down on my board. Not that I’d ever admit it, but I’ve always kind of understood Odelia’s obsession with being a princess. When I was little, I felt a connection to princesses. I remember thinking that I, Bernice Baransky, would one day grow into a beautiful and charming princess. Part of me has never really given up on that.
I almost forget that Odelia is here. I take in her beautiful blonde hair, the blue eyes, that cocked left eyebrow so like my own, and it hits me. I. Have. A. Sister!
***
And They Lived Happily Ever After
It’s the end of October, and my town is decorated in red, yellow, and orange. Mom is busy making dried flower Easter baskets to sell six months from now at the Spring Festival. Dad has been on his final fishing trip for the season and has brought home his final dead delight—a forty-three-pound striper. He got his picture in the Porchtown Herald. I have to eat breakfast every morning with both fish and fisherman
