“Emily?” I reached out for her shoulder, hesitated, then went ahead and gave in to the urge to comfort her and risk scaring her. She was crying too hard. It couldn’t be healthy for the baby.
“Emily, it’s okay, it’s just a movie,” I tried again when her sobbing only grew louder.
“No, you don’t understand,” she said in between hiccups. “I…”
She couldn’t breathe enough to get the words out.
I patted her back awkwardly, feeling completely out of my depth. My friends were all way too proud of their tough jock status to ever break down and cry in front of each other. Even the loss of Nanna hadn’t caused my mother to break out in near-hysterical sobbing like this. What should I do to help Emily? Surely the movie couldn’t have made her this sad. Unless it was the pregnancy hormones?
“Shh,” I whispered, getting up and grabbing a roll of toilet paper from the bathroom. I was back with it in less than a second. I held out a wad of the paper to her, which she took and pressed to her face.
I tried to read her mind, but as always it was like trying to pry a metal bear trap open with nothing but human strength to help me. I sighed. “Emily, I can’t read your mind enough to help you. You’ll have to talk to me.”
Silently I sent up a prayer. Please don’t let this be about my mother again!
Her hands dropped to her lap as she turned incredulous eyes toward me. “What’s wrong? What isn’t wrong right now? My mom’s dead. My dad’s dead. My brother’s being accused of killing our mother. I’m nineteen, single and knocked up with the baby of my dad’s murderer. And I can’t even go home!”
She pressed the toilet paper wad to her face again, her wails muff led within its softness.
Suddenly the trailer door burst open.
“What happened?” Tristan demanded, his eyes wild as he searched the trailer for attackers.
“We’re fine,” I said. “Just…watching a sad movie, is all. You know, it’s girly stuff.”
His eyes rounded in horror. Then he frowned, his gaze caressing my face. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten my own tears from a few minutes ago. I hastily dragged the backs of my hands over my still damp cheeks and forced a smile. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
Frowning, he slowly turned and walked back down the metal steps. With one last backward glance at me, he eased the door shut.
Instantly I felt the renewed loss of his presence, which pricked more tears into life in my eyes. Jeez, what was it about tears that, once you started crying, you couldn’t seem to stop?
I rolled off more toilet paper, this time for my own face. “You’re right. This sucks. All of it.”
Emily sniffed. “I can’t believe I got myself into this.” She waved her hands at her stomach. “I was such an unbelievable idiot.”
The pain in her words reached out through the air and joined with my own. “Oh, Emily. Everyone screws up sometimes.”
A humorless laugh huffed out of her. “Not like this! If not for me, Gowin never would have been able to get close enough to kill my dad. And now I’m going to have Gowin’s baby.” She clenched the wet paper in one fist and pressed it to her mouth as if afraid to say more, her green eyes round with fear as she looked at me, silently pleading with me to say something reassuring.
“It’s going to be okay,” I lied for both of us, praying my lack of a poker face wouldn’t ruin the lie.
“How? How can this possibly be okay? I mean, I don’t even know what I’m doing! I don’t know anything about babies or how to have one or raise it. Especially a half—” She stopped, her eyes widening still further.
“Go on and say it. A half breed like me.” And there was that old familiar heat in the pit of my stomach just waiting for its chance to take over again. As usual, I pushed it back down and did my best to ignore it. I’d already nearly lost control earlier today. I couldn’t afford to let the anger drive me to vamp out again.
“I’m sorry. I keep saying crap I really don’t mean, and I hear myself saying it and know how awful I sound. I know you and your mom must think I’m the most ungrateful, world’s biggest bi—”
“It’s fine. You’re pregnant,” I said, lying like crazy now. It wasn’t okay. But saying so when she was already miserable wouldn’t help the situation, either.
“No, that’s no excuse. I know better. I just can’t seem to make myself stop once I get going. It’s like, if I can focus on the clogged bathroom drain or the dog pee then I won’t be thinking about this.” She held her hands out palms-up in front of her belly. “Or what I’m going to do once it comes out of me.”
She whispered the last words, and her fear filled the trailer around us, turning the air too thick for me to breathe or get any oxygen out of.
Oh, crap. Not good. Her fear was filling the air with adrenaline-laced pheromones that were doing their best to trigger my predatory instincts. And somehow I was pretty sure that Tristan would not be able to forgive me if I bit his sister.
I hopped up to my feet and tried to casually open the window over the dinette.
“I’m due any day now, you know,” she murmured, staring at me.
Carefully I took a small breath then nearly sighed with relief. The fresh air would soon clear the trailer of any bloodlust inducing scents.
“Have you decided…whether to keep your baby?” I asked, hesitating now over the words, unsure whether I should even say them. It wasn’t my place to be nosy about her decisions or her life. But maybe Tristan was right about everyone’s need to vent their emotions and Emily would feel better if she talked about hers with someone.
She nodded, wincing. “I can’t give it up for adoption. I know it’s an option, but it doesn’t feel right to me. I mean, it’s not this kid’s fault that I was stupid and fell for all of Gowin’s lies. Besides, it’s half Clann and half vamp. If I don’t raise it, who will? The Clann would probably just kill it. And the vamps…” She didn’t finish that thought, darting a glance at me and then away again.
“You know, my mom could probably give you a lot of advice,” I said slowly. “After all, she has been there and done that.”
She cringed and stared down at her hands clasped now over the top of her tummy. “You’re right. I should have thought of that.” She looked up at me with big eyes full of hope. “Do you think, if I apologized…”
“She’ll forgive you,” I said, and this time I didn’t need to lie. For all her faults, my mom also had a really big heart. If Emily sincerely apologized, Mom would forgive her immediately.
She sighed. “I shouldn’t have said all that stuff to her today. It’s just, every time I see you two together I keep thinking about how Tristan said she practically abandoned you the past couple of years when you needed her most—” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. See? I don’t know where it comes from and it just spews out of me—”
I sighed. “It comes from what you see as the truth.” I stared down at my own handful of wadded-up paper in my lap. “You’re half-right. She did sort of leave me with my grandma when all my Clann and vamp abilities started showing up and I needed her most. But she was doing what she thought was best. And she wouldn’t have been able to help me anyways. She can’t do magic.” At Emily’s raised eyebrows, I explained. “She never wanted to be in the Clann and chose to let her skills fade away instead of strengthening them. So when I started turning…”
“She was afraid of you?”
“Not so much that she was afraid I would hurt her, but that her being around would make it harder on me. She knew that at least Nanna had the strength to control me if I ever lost it and vamped out at home.”
“And what was your grandma supposed to do then? Set you on fire? Stake you?”
A short laugh escaped me. “No, of course not. Nanna knew how to use the old ways of magic to dampen the bloodlust around our house.”
“Really? How? Because we could totally use a spell like that for your parents.” At my sharp look, sh
e said, “Oh, come on. Any idiot can see that they’re still in love and fighting it. I’m assuming because of the bloodlust and the energy draining effects if they kiss?”
I shrugged. “Mostly. But I don’t think they got along all that well even when they were married and had Nanna’s bloodlust dampening spells to help them.”
Emily stared at her stomach. “Even if your mom can help me with some things, I highly doubt she’ll know what I should say when this kid asks me what happened to its dad someday.”
I winced. “You’re right, that discussion is going to be hard. But maybe if you just stay honest with your child…” I thought about the day my parents had told me what I really was. Dealing with that discovery had been rough. But it had been made even worse by the fact that my family had lied to me and kept secrets from me for fourteen years before finally telling me the truth. “Just don’t wait too long to tell your kid the truth. Trust me, it only makes things worse for them.”
“What if this kid learns how bad its dad was and decides to follow in Gowin’s footsteps someday?”
I frowned. “Then that’ll be its decision, not yours. As long as you do your best to show it a better path, that’s all you can do. It’s up to each of us to decide who and what we want to become.”
Like Tristan.
Emily sighed and dropped her head back on the sofa. “Being pregnant really, really stinks.”
I made the most sympathetic face I could. “I’m sure it doesn’t help that this is your first time and you have no idea what to do. If only there were some kind of manual…hang on. Maybe there is!”
I jumped up and vamp blurred into the bunk room to dig through my jeans until I found it…the credit card Dad had given me the other day to buy stuff from the local gas station outside the park. He’d said the Clann shouldn’t be able to trace it because it was under one of his aliases that nobody else knew about, and that it was safe for us to use for whatever we needed.
I found my phone, pulled up the internet and found an ebookstore website. A long series of fast screen taps, and two minutes later we had an account all set up and ready for use.
“Here.” I tilted the phone so Emily could see the screen, too. “They’ve got tons of ebooks on pregnancy and motherhood. What to Expect When You’re Expecting. The Complete Single Mother. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Motherhood.”
“Seriously?” Emily laughed. “Let me see that.” She took the phone and peered more closely at it. “Wow. I had no clue they’d have so many guidebooks for mothers.” She glanced up at me, her smile turning wry. “I guess I’m not exactly the first female to ever get pregnant.”
I returned her smile, glad her mood was lightening up. “Or the first girl to get freaked out about it.”
Before she could protest, I went ahead and bought several ebooks for her, then happily handed her my phone to read them on. Anything to keep her happy and off Mom’s back!
“Just as long as you give it back every now and then so I can talk to my friends back home.”
“Right.” She started to read one of the ebooks, then hesitated and looked up at me. “Thanks, Sav. For the ebooks and for listening. I didn’t realize how hard it was just keeping all of that to myself.”
I smiled. “Vent anytime. Just as long as it doesn’t include calling my mother names.”
She laughed. “Okay. And for the record, you handled yourself way better than I would have if someone were talking about my mama.”
It was my turn to make a wry face. “I don’t know. For a minute or two there, it felt like a pretty close call. If Tristan hadn’t been here…”
She heaved herself up off the couch, then dug her knuckles into the small of her back and stretched. “Yeah, speaking of, when are you two going to work out your issues already?”
I stood up, taking my time throwing away my wad of paper in the trash beneath the kitchen sink before answering. “That’s kind of up to him. He and I don’t agree on some things right now.”
“And what, you can’t compromise and meet him halfway?”
I shrugged, not wanting to talk about Tristan’s and my problems with his sister. Besides, it wasn’t really the kind of issue you could compromise on. “Hey, listen, I’m really tired, so I think I’m going to turn in for the night.”
One blond eyebrow arched knowingly, but thankfully she didn’t push the issue. “Sounds like a good idea. All this bawling has wiped me out, too.”
The bunk room was a small space even for one person to undress in, much less two. So I let Emily get ready for bed in there first while I took a shower.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, I caught myself pausing in the kitchen, looking and listening. Hoping Tristan had felt…something after our talk together this afternoon and decided to come back to me.
But the living room and kitchen were empty, the rest of the trailer silent as well except for Emily’s snoring from the bunk room. Even Lucy had worn herself out for once and given up barking.
There were people within reach of me. But even still, I was alone.
And I couldn’t stand it.
I slipped on some shoes and snuck outside. Dad was right where I expected to find him, sitting in the front seat of the truck’s cab, the windows rolled down to let a cross breeze through while he read some book he’d found who knew where. Tristan wasn’t stretched out in the backseat as usual. He must be taking a walk along the creek. Good. I didn’t want to have to ask him for a private moment with my dad.
Dad looked up and smiled as I climbed into the passenger side of the front seat.
“You seem rather deep in thought,” he murmured, closing his book. “A penny for your thoughts?”
I started to tell him no one said that phrase anymore, then gave up. “I was wondering about you and Mom. About… how you two always fight all the time.”
“A difference in personalities, I suppose.” He frowned. “You do know our arguments have nothing to do with you and that we both love you?”
I waved off the parental reassurance. “Yeah, I know. It’s just…” I took a deep breath as my throat tightened. “How do you know when the disagreements are too much? When it’s time to just give up and let go?”
His head rocked back an inch. “Ah. That is a deep question to be thinking about. The answer is not at all simple, because it varies for everyone. For instance, part of being a vampire for many years is that it teaches us how to have a lot of patience. After all, if you cannot die and no longer have a natural lifespan, then your perception of the passage of time is quite different from a human’s. So for one of our kind, forever would not be too long to disagree with someone we loved enough.”
I looked down at my hands as my fingers twisted together in my lap. “What if the other person doesn’t feel that way? What if…” I swallowed hard and tried again. “What if they feel too strongly about the path they’re on, and it’s a path you can’t or don’t want to follow them down?”
Dad sighed. “You mean like your mother getting tired of being on the run with me and insisting on our divorce?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
He turned his head to stare through the windshield at the hills that rolled down to the creek in the moonlight. After a moment of silence, he said, “I agreed to divorce your mother because it was what she wanted. She needed to feel safe again, and she felt like I could not give her or you that safety. She wanted you to have a chance to grow up with a normal life for as long as possible. She also wanted freedom and independence. What can you do when the person you love no longer wants to be with you, other than to release them and allow them to live the life they choose, even though that life is not with you?”
“But couldn’t you have maybe found a way to change her mind eventually if you just kept trying to talk to her about it?”
His smile was sad. “It is both human and apparently vampire nature to want to hold on to that which you love with every ounce of strength that you possess. But if you truly love someone, that
is the only real way to love them. To love loosely is the hardest love to learn. But it is also the strongest and most self less form of love you can give another.”
Learn to love loosely. There was a clear ring of truth in his words. Maybe that was why they hurt so much. Because I knew it was what I had to learn how to do.
I had to learn to love Tristan loosely, to let him go instead of trying to hold on to him or change his mind.
“Thanks, Dad. Good night.” The words came out rough past my hoarse throat as I climbed out of the truck.
Back inside the trailer, I slipped into the dark bunk room and climbed into my bed as quietly as possible so as not to wake Emily on the futon below. Across from me, the third bunk bed where Tristan always rested while lost to the blood memories after each weekly feeding now stretched out empty and silent, waiting for his return. I stared at it until the lump in my throat hurt too much. Then I plugged my MP3 player into the wall charger Dad had bought for me at a store, put my earbuds in my ears, turned on my MP3 player and tried to lose myself in the music.
CHAPTER 18
The next morning, I asked everyone to gather in the kitchen area for a meeting.
I took a deep breath, pushing aside the guilt for the moment. This was for the best, for everyone. “Yesterday Mom and I talked about Lucy, and she agreed we need to take Lucy somewhere away from vampires for a while. I think we can all agree that Lucy’s health doesn’t look too good.”
Murmurs of agreement from the group. Mom stared down at Lucy, who was yapping out a hoarse cough from her arms.
“Mom?” I asked.
She nodded. “I know. Lucy needs a break.”
“Right. So I talked to Anne, and she talked to Michelle and Michelle’s mom, and they agreed to keep Lucy for us so she can get better.”
Mom’s mouth tightened as her lower lip trembled. But she didn’t argue.
She didn’t have to say a thing. I still felt like crap. “So we need to plan a trip back to Texas,” I finished, feeling like the world’s worst daughter.
Clann 03 - Consume Page 17