Copper Veins by Jennifer Allis Provost Page B

the war have taken a toll.”
    I sat beside him, awash in understanding. “Did you lose a lot of memories?”
    He laughed soundlessly. “More than I’d realized before I came here.” He raised his head, looking once more at the makeshift
brugh
. “I hardly remember meeting Maeve. I hardly remember marrying her.”
    â€œBut you still love her,” I blurted out. “Don’t you?”
    â€œOf course,” he said, much to my relief. “My heart remains as true as ever. My head just can’t quite figure out how we got there.” He looked at the wooden table and the platters of food and pitchers of wine scattered across the chipped surface. “When Maeve brought me here, I just stared at the tables and the mound, wondering why she went through all this trouble just to eat outdoors. When I said as much, she looked like she wanted to kill me.”
    â€œShe probably did. She was really upset.” Dad’s eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips—okay, so maybe those last comments weren’t all that helpful. “You know, you could use this as an opportunity.”
    â€œAn opportunity for what, exactly?”
    â€œYou get to fall in love with Mom, all over again,” I said. “Won’t that be exciting?”
    Dad was silent for a moment, still staring at the makeshift
brugh
as if he couldn’t imagine ever being in one, much less meeting his future wife there. “Sara, that is a wonderful idea,” he said at last.
    I grinned and hoped that Mom would think Dad’s re-courtship was a wonderful idea, too. Dad got to his feet, and then he helped me up. So, my walk had been waylaid by yet another Corbeau family crisis—what of it? At least this crisis was going to have a happy ending.
    As we walked back to the manor, a few nagging thoughts swirled around my mind. “Why didn’t you lose all your memories?” I asked. Dad raised an eyebrow, so I continued, “I mean, you remember plenty about the Mundane realm, and about the wars. You only seem to have forgotten about us.”
    â€œSometimes magic demands a terrible price,” Dad replied.
    I shuddered—the more I learned about magic, the less I trusted it.

11
    Dad and I re-entered the manor. After a bit of searching, we found Sadie in the kitchen watching Max, of all people, kneading dough. My day was getting curiouser and curiouser.
    â€œUm, what are you doing?” I asked. I glanced at Sadie, but she only shrugged.
    â€œGonna bake some bread,” Max replied, then he gave the mass of dough a few punches. “Nothing like home-baked bread.”
    As if Max had ever had home-baked anything. If it wasn’t for the store-bought food we’d eaten as children, we would have either starved to death or been poisoned by Mom’s cooking. “Don’t we have silverkin for that?” I asked. The little guys were capable of cooking up everything from grilled cheeseto twelve-course banquets.
    â€œYeah, but I wanted to try my hand at it.” He wrestled the dough into a bowl, draped a towel over it, and placed it on the counter in the corner by the hearth. Yeah, we had one of those giant medieval fireplaces where we could roast an entire cow, for what reason I couldn’t fathom. I mean, up until a few months ago only Micah had lived here. “What’s up?” Max said as he wiped his hands on the hem of his shirt.
    â€œWhy did you just leave it on the counter?” I asked. “Shouldn’t the dough be in the fridge so it doesn’t go bad?”
    â€œSara, dough needs to rise,” he replied. After I’d blinked at him a few times, wordlessly communicating that all I knew about dough was that it eventually became bread, or better yet, pizza crust, Max continued, “So, what’s up? You have that face.”
    I scowled but ignored that little comment, mostly because Max had flour in his hair and eyebrows and I was not going