Werewolf Boyfriend: Max 2 (complete)

Helene is tall, thin, with the most perfect bob cut I have ever seen, and dressed like she just stepped out of the Devil Wears Prada. She arrives early in the morning, just as I’m waking up to do my exercises. Her heels make an intimidating click-clack on the floor as she goes around the kitchen, checking all the cupboards and drawers while Max has his breakfast. “Papa! All these carbohydrates,” she laments. “You need fresh food. You need that delivery kit I keep telling you about.”

“When would I use it, Helene?” he asks with a smile.

Helene pouts as she continues to circle around the kitchen. She doesn’t appear to be judgemental, just worried. “You have to think about your heart!”

“I’m wary of salt. I take long walks. And I go to the gym once a week. Helene, you’re fretting.”

“You’re my dad, so I get to.” From the looks of things, Helene and I are around the same age, early thirties. She’s probably just concerned for her dad and wants to keep him around as long as possible. “Elisa, was it?” she asks me.

I nod, partaking in green tea rather than coffee. “I’ve been excited to meet you. But I should warn you, I get nosebleeds.”

Her perfectly-done eyebrows pinch. “Goodness, I’m glad you warned me. That would have been a fright. Mama got them in the beginning.”

“Clementine told me.”

Helene’s wife is a fashion photographer, and Helene herself is a stylist. They met in college, but fell in love on assignment, and have three children between them, two they’d had in vitro and another they just adopted. They’ve been traveling a lot, but now they’re trying to balance things out so they can live in Hearthway Hollow, with only one parent traveling at a time. It makes Max happy to have his grandkids nearby.

The basement entrance is hidden behind the pantry, which had been added on after the house’s construction. The stairs going down are made of stone, and the way Helene’s heels echo through the dark space is enough to give me the chills. “I haven’t been down here since after Mama died.” Helene’s voice is heavy and sad. She looks over the room, filled with crates and walls lined with covered paintings. Her brow hides the grief she’s feeling in this moment. “We used to come down here and play quietly while Mama worked.” She takes small, slow steps over to a covered desk, and looks into a corner. “We built a crib for Tiny when she was born and put it right under that window. But you’re not being hired to listen to family sob stories.” She rips a cloth off a crate, and inside are paper-wrapped canvases. “You’re here for this.”

“My goodness, how much does that contain?” I carefully remove the canvases from the crate, laying them along the wall.

“There’s an inventory notebook they used to keep somewhere down here. It has the dates, names, price they paid, everything. This was back before computers, mind you.” She takes off her heels and walks barefoot between the crates. “Mama had been collecting artwork as a girl, and she had a knack for bidding with her allowance.”

“Allowance?” I laugh.

“Rich kids,” Helene winks. She opens a massive metal cabinet and lets out a sound between pain and anger. “You know, you handle this. Clean, organize, inventory, repair. I’ll even help Papa pay for it all.” She closes the cabinet again.

I smile at her while she uses her knuckle to dab the tears from her eyes. “I don’t mind. If it helps at all, Helene, I’m happy to do it. I’m very excited to see the collection.” 

“I am, too. I thought I’d be happy go lucky to come down here again, but even ten years down the line that broken heart can feel brand-new.” She pouts and sighs, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Aside from someone at the museum who came to take care of all this, no one has been down here since the funeral. Tiny used to hide here, though.”

“You say Tiny. Do you mean…?”

“Clementine.” Helene places her hands on her hips as she looks over the basement. “This was Mama’s room.”

After Helene leaves, I get changed and prepared to deal with the basement. I don gloves and a mask to ward off dirt and dust, as well as my own tendency to nosebleed. I also put on a bandana and long sleeves, so when I’m getting ready to go down, I look like a jewel thief.

“Max?” I look around for him, and find him outside on the porch still after telling Helene goodbye. “I don’t mean to bother, but I’m about to go into the basement to start working.”

“Is there something you need?” he asks.

I nod. “Helene mentioned an inventory book you kept. I was hoping you would know where it is.” 

“The notebook,” he murmurs. He scratches his temple. “I don’t recall. I don’t think it’s up here, but I wouldn’t know where to say it was down there.”

“That’s alright. I’ll see what I can find on my own. Before I start, are there any rules I should follow?” I expect to hear that I’m not to touch the desk, not to disturb any of the equipment, things like that. Maybe to keep an eye out for certain paintings.

Max thinks for a moment, dark eyes glancing out over the rocky road. “I would like to have it cleaned out. That way, I can have a place for my grandchildren to play and not worry about messing up anything.”

That’s a surprise. “Are you sure?”

Max’s smile falls on me, but it can’t remove the sadness from his eyes. “The basement is a good place for them to come and go, especially when they get older. It can be a workspace for them, an escape. It’s best that what’s stored down there finally comes up. I plan to donate quite a lot of what is down there, and I have buyers lined up already. It needs to be done now.”

“Okay.” It’s all I can think to say.

I head back downstairs and begin the search for the notebook. I open that huge industrial cabinet that Helene kept, and inside is a mountain of paperwork, art supplies, sealed manila envelopes, and a box filled with play tea sets. I sort through it, hoping to find the notebook. I put anything important back - art supplies in a box, and toys in another box. I glance at the desk, thinking perhaps the notebook could be in there, but I start going through paintings instead.

The first crate is filled with unframed canvases. As I’m going through it, I find small notes attached to the back of a few. I set them aside from the rest, and once I begin to feel fatigued, I sit down to check the notes.

“June 15th, 1988. We bought this piece and then I found out I was pregnant. Set aside for Helene. Carlotta.”

“Oh,” I exclaim quietly. I check the second painting with a note.

“September 5th, 1990. Bought this piece because of the names of the nuns who painted it. St. Helene. St. Mary. Set aside for our Mary.”

I begin to realize that Carlotta is still here, and no one has realized it. The paintings all need cleaning, and a few need some repair work done. But I don’t know how to proceed now that I know Carlotta has things marked and set aside for her children. This changes all my plans for how to catalog this collection.

I have to stop soon, to get ready to go to my job at the dance studio. I want to tell Max about the notes, but I’m not sure how he will take it. He’s at work anyway, so I think I should stop by before I head in.

Just as I’m getting out of the shower, I hear a noise in the kitchen. I leave my room and see Max standing at the pantry door, looking towards the basement with a scowl on his face and a shopping bag in his hand.

“I’m up here,” I say.

“Get a lot done?” He sets the bag on the table.

“I got nowhere, I’m afraid. There’s so much to be done, and I filled half a notebook with notes for myself.” I approach and look up at him. “Did you know that she put notes on some of the paintings?”

“Yes,” he says under his breath. “She started doing that when she got diagnosed. She wanted to make sure the girls had something special, things with meaning. Not just the ones they liked.” He takes a deep breath. “That’s partially why it’s such a mess down there.”

He opens the shopping bag. “I got you a few things.” He places a three pack of tissues on the table, a dehumidifier, and a room spray. 

“Thank you.” I look over the dehumidifier. “This will be nice for down there.”

“I figured it would be best to have a good supply of tissues for you, as well,” he says softly. “Wouldn’t want you slipping on those stairs trying to get to the bathroom up here for it.”

“You might not want to start buying me these,” I start to laugh. “I go through a box a week. I can get really expensive!”

“It’s worth it,” he says gently. “I don’t mind it at all.” His smile causes a flutter in my heart that I’m not used to. I have to look away, gathering up the supplies he got for me. I don’t know what I’ll do if that flutter happens again.

I quickly decide to change the topic.  “I also found these.” I heft the box filled with old toys and tea sets onto the dining table. “I thought you might like having these cleaned. Then you can give them to your daughters, or leave them here for your grandkids.”

His smile is positively radiant. He grins as he looks through the box, taking out a rubber doll, a small giraffe and a plastic tea pot. “I remember all of these.” There’s laughter in his voice as he sorts through the rest of the things. “This yellow one was Helene’s. But Mary hated yellow, so we had to get her this pink one.” He hugs the tea pot to his chest. “I must have attended about a thousand tea parties in my life.”

I grin. “So you were popular?” 

“I was invited to all the big parties. They used to love to bake, Mary especially. They would have bake-offs, her, and Helene, and Luisa. Tiny would become the judge when she was old enough, but that was my role for so long.” He looks at the tiny teacup in his hand with such love and warmth. “They knew I hated walnuts,” he sighs. “But their mother loved them, as did they. So they would make banana bread all the time, and they would make me my own little loaf without walnuts.” He sits down, lovingly admiring the rest of the tea set, arranging it like he has a million times before. 

“Can I tell you a secret, Elisa?” he asks.

“Depends. If it’s about a murder, no. If it’s cute, then fine.”

He smiles at me, and that fluttering I was trying to avoid returns. “My eldest is in her thirties now, and I’ve only ever told my wife this...” He gazes back at the tea set. “But I absolutely hate banana bread.”

I snort to hold back my laughter, but it’s much too hard.

“I hate bananas, I always have!” He’s wheezing as he tries to get through his story. “But when you have four little girls looking at you like puppies, you have no choice! I ate every damn loaf they made for me, and I hated it!” He sits back after a moment, going quiet. “I’ve never said a word to them about it. I sometimes still get banana bread as presents from them. But I don’t have the heart to ruin their memories of baking with their mother.” He looks back at me, and his dark eyes look amber. “Please, don’t tell them. But I needed to share that with someone.”

The flutter is a pounding pulse. “I promise I won’t say anything. I’m sure your girls have secrets like that, too.”

“I’m certain of that,” he nods. “We’ll keep these here. Thank you for bringing them up. Most of their toys are gone. By the time they reached Tiny, they were pretty much falling apart. It’s nice having these for the memories.”

“I think my mom kept everything my brother and I ever had. There are big plastic bins stacked to the ceiling in the attic back home.” I smile thoughtfully. “There must be a fortune in old toys up there.”

“Did you have tea sets?”

I shake my head. “I wasn’t into them. My dad was a carpenter and always had scrap wood lying around, so he would make my brother and I swords and shields. We had lots of dragon and dinosaur toys.”

Max leans forward with a concerned look. “He made you swords with your hemophilia?” 

“My brother Lexi would never hit me. Only the shield, and my mom made me wear biking pads.” I roll my eyes. “We used to save up to buy Halloween skeletons and decorations to play with. We once built a cardboard castle from boxes we stole from everywhere. We worked on that thing all day, and then it stormed in the middle of the night - the castle melted to nothing!”

Max’s grin is bright and brilliant, showing off his perfect teeth. “How your little hearts must have broken.”

“Oh my gosh, Lexi cried and cried. It was awful. That’s when we started saving for our treehouse.” I smile dreamily at that. “We never got to actually build it, though,” I sigh.

“Why not?” Max asks.

I shake my head slowly. “We just started to grow up. But for some reason, we kept putting money into that piggy bank like we were going to go through with it.” 

Max tilts his head to the side. “Then what did you do with the piggy bank?”

“Lexi broke it open as soon as I got my leukemia diagnosis. Our dream tree house became the first payment on my medical bills.” I smile sadly. “There was an accident. It helped to pay that off.”

“There’s a reason for everything,” Max says softly. “You may not get what you want, but it seems that money was there for what you needed.”

“Yeah,” I try to smile. “Lexi and I still talk about that tree house. He said we could build one to live in, call it Neverland.”

“Neverland,” Max whispers. “Is that what you would want?”

When I was in the hospital, Lexi and I would talk about it like a far-off dream. I knew he did it to cope, to plan for a future. It helped me too, to see a horizon instead of a finish line. “Yeah, I’d like that one day. Just something fun.” I glance at the clock and sigh. “I need to get to the dance studio.”

“I hope I didn’t hold you up, but I enjoyed this.” Max puts the tea set back into the box. “Thank you, Elisa.”

I begin working in the basement, and decide to work on one crate at a time. I clean, prep, and fix whatever needs it. Each crate has about ten paintings, which I figure will take me at least two weeks at a time, maybe three. Any paintings with notes I set aside to clean only when I have all of them. Each week, I find a brand new box of tissues waiting on me. I come down to work on Mondays, and there’s a new box on the small stand I have all my supplies sitting on, without fail. I get excited to see it, strange as that is. 

One day as I’m working, I start to feel very hot. It’s been warm since morning, but now the heat is becoming overbearing. I stand up from my stool and immediately my nose begins to bleed. I take off my mask and hold a tissue under it. My head is spinning and I feel woozy. I head towards the stairs to go up, but I misjudge and miss the steps. I fall and hit my head pretty hard on the concrete floor.

I’m bleeding very, very badly. I mean, I always do, but this is bad. I can’t catch my breath, my vision is going dark, and my heart is beating so slowly. I want to close my eyes but I know I need to keep them open. A cold breeze rolls over me, a small moment of relief. I feel like I’m floating, moving further and further up. I see white, and I smell glue.

I hear horrible, annoying beeping, something that is all too familiar to me. Had I been dreaming my remission? Was my fantasy life flashing before my eyes? My head is killing me and I feel really loopy, like I’d been sitting in a spinny chair for hours. I look around the hospital room and groan in disappointment when I see the IV beside me.

The door opens, and a nurse and doctor walk in. “Sadie, go fetch Mr. Hannekum from the waiting room. Tell him she’s awake.” The nurse starts off, and the doctor’s eyes light up as she sees me stirring. “I didn’t expect to see you alert so soon.”

“Didn’t expect to be here at all,” I huff.

“Mr. Hannekum brought you in. He said it looked like you fell and hit your head on the stairs.” She looks over my chart quickly “Do you recall anything?”

“I was getting really hot, and it was making me dizzy,” I sigh. “Then I got a bloody nose and it made the dizziness so much worse.”

“Hemophilia, correct?” She comes closer to my bedside and checks my forehead. “You have stitches, four of them. Gave me quite the workout.”

“Stitches?” I ask. “I’ve not had stitches ever. Well, except...”

“The biopsy?” The doctor gives me a soft smile. “We’re running blood tests just to be safe.”

“Blood tests?” I try to laugh. “For what?” Then it hits me. I’m silent for a long time, and then I begin to cry. “It can’t come back!”

“This is just a precaution,” the doctor assures me. “There’s nothing to be afraid of yet.”

The door opens and Max comes in to see me weeping. His brow furrows as he steps into the room. “I was told she was awake. Is everything alright, Dr. Locklear?”

“She’ll be alright. I was just telling her I was performing a blood test just in case.” 

Max comes to my side, sitting down as I weep from fear that I have to go through another eight years of grieving my impending death. He reaches out and takes my hand. “You scared me. I smelled that blood and I thought the worst.” He strokes my hand then looks at me. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

I squeeze his hand tight as I cry, unsure if I will ever feel something that solid again. “I’m so scared, Max,” I whimper pitifully. “I don’t want to be sick again.”

Max wraps up my hand in both of his. I’m shaking horribly, but his grip makes me feel safe. “I could smell it too,” he says quietly. “The same way I smelled it on Carly when she was sick.” He holds my hand with both of his. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t want you to know. Finding out your wife died from it, I just didn’t.” I sniffle.

Max hands me a tissue, and I dry my eyes. “Thank you,” I say between sniffles. “Wait… how could you smell it?”

Max shakes his head. “From now on, I want you to work upstairs. Bring a painting up and work in the living room. I don’t care what mess it makes. It’s safer than you being in that basement.” His smile is reassuring. “I’m just glad you’re okay, Elisa.”

I wonder if he’s talking about the future to cope.

The blood results come back fine. No leukemia in sight. Dr. Locklear also talks to me about a new medication for my hemophilia, as well as setting me up with a new doctor in Hearthway Hollow. Max prepares the living room for me while I recuperate. He moves out furniture, gets a heavy-duty rubber rug, and sets up a workstation for me, with a new air conditioner. He even moves paintings up from the basement for me. 

“You didn’t need to do all this.” Once I feel good enough to walk around, Max stays close to me. He takes me on walks around the property, showing me a worn path in the woods where he and his daughters used to hike. It passes by a remarkable clear stream where a bench has been built.

We sit on it and I look through the trees, picturing what creatures must be lurking within and looking back at us.

“There’s a wolf reserve near here, right? Do you see wolves often?” I ask him.

A smile spreads across his face. I can’t tell if it’s coy or tickled. “More than you would assume, Elisa.” He stretches out his long legs. “Hearthway Hollow is a very special place. You’ll see all sorts of things here. The woods are full of life. There’s something magic here.”

“Do you believe in magic?” 

He looks at me, his dark eyes tinted amber again. “Of course. After the life I have lived, how can I not believe in it? I’ve seen miracles. I’ve seen things I can’t explain. Do you believe in magic? Or is Neverland just a name to you?”

I look at the stream burbling past us. “I’m learning to believe again. But for eight years, I couldn’t.” I look into his eyes again, and I feel that flutter become a pulse. “Maybe you can show me what Hearthway Hollow has.”

I give him a smile, and he returns it. Max reaches out and he locks my pinkie with his. “That, my dear, is a promise I am willing to make.”