Free Diamonds and Toads: A Modern Fairy Tale by K.E. Saxon Page A

long-nailed finger. “Now, here is your choice. You can have
Delilah or her fortune, but not both. You will have until midnight
tomorrow—the night of your gala—to make your choice. I must warn
you, however, that once the choice is made, there is no turning
back from it.”
    “So the money really is charmed? It’s going
to disappear if I use it, like Delilah said?”
    “Not necessarily, it depends on the choice
you make.”
    All he could do was gape at her and shake his
head. “This is not happening.”
    She threw her head back and laughed. “Yes,
dear, yes it is.” She leaned toward him and whispered. “And since
you amuse me, I’ll give you a little hint: If you make the right
choice, I’ll see you again in twenty or so years.” She patted him
on the knee and with a couple of snaps of her fingers, disappeared
in another puff of purple mist.
    Chas sat on the couch for a full ten minutes,
too numb to move. When he thought his legs could hold him, he got
up and walked back to his bedroom. The time on the clock registered
the same time as it had before. Surely he’d been dreaming. And to
prove it, he was going back to bed right now and let the alarm
clock wake him in two more hours.
    It was in that twilight between wake and
sleep that he heard the fairy whisper: “Make the right choice and
you’ll reap more than you ever dreamed possible. Make the wrong
one, and you’ll live with the regret of it unto your dying
day.”
    * * *
    “Keeping the vultures at bay?” Chas’s father
said a few hours later as he walked into Chas’s office and headed
straight for the sofa, reclining on it as if he were about to have
a free association session with Sigmund Freud.
    “I actually wanted to talk to you about that
very thing. There’s a chance I may lose the company, Dad.”
    He sat up and leaned toward Chas with his
arms on his knees. “What? You? I don’t believe it. That’s why I
asked you to come back last year. If anyone can save it, you can.
What about the loan from Delilah?”
    Chas would have loved to spill his guts about
the fairy, the choice, the charmed money, but he knew he’d get the
same reaction from his father that Chas himself had given Delilah
the night before. He wanted to save the company—he did. But the
thought of losing Delilah caused such an ache inside him, he
couldn’t breathe. “It may not come through.”
    His father dropped his head. “It’s all my
fault. I made investments that I should have known were too
risky—and would have, if my mind had been on business and not on
your mother’s health.” Looking directly at Chas again, he said, “I
can’t lose this company, son. Not after losing your mother, too.
It’d be too much. Do whatever you have to do, but get it on its
feet again.”
    Well, that was that. Chas flipped his pen
from end to end on his desk several times. “Dad, can I ask you
something?”
    “Shoot.”
    “If you had been given a choice between this
company and Mom, which would you have chosen?”
    “No brainer. Your mother, of course.”
    “Why?”
    His father chuckled, clearly thinking Chas
was razzing him.
    “I’m serious.”
    His father’s face sobered. “She was the love
of my life. She made every part of it richer, more fulfilling. Even
though I love this company with every fiber of my being, it can’t
keep me warm at night. It doesn’t worry when I’m late coming home,
it doesn’t nurse me when I’m sick or tired to the bone, or both.
Your mother did all those things and more.” He pointed a finger at
him. “I think your little Delilah’s going to be the same for you.
You finally backed a winner in her, son.”
    Chas smiled, but didn’t meet his father’s
eyes. “Yeah, I did. I’m lucky.”
    “So you do love her then? It wasn’t just the
money that got you interested? I did wonder.”
    He met his father’s gaze. “Yes, I love
her.”
    “I can’t say I’m not relieved.”
    “Mmm.” A sharp poignancy of love found and
lost clutched