by Lane Hart
“Oh God,” he said softly, before rubbing both hands over his face. Then he started toward the bedroom.
“Jason don’t! You don’t need to see her like that-” I tried to warn him but it was too late. His screaming sob roared through the house, sending chill bumps down my arms, and piercing me through my soul.
When Kate stopped drinking from the bottle I took her to the nursery, put some clothes and a diaper on her, then laid her down in the crib. I needed to give her a bath and clean her up but I had to check on Jason first. He still hadn’t come out of the bedroom, so I tried to prepare myself to go back in there and make sure he was okay.
I found him kneeling with his head hung beside the bed, his quiet sobs only obvious by the shaking of his shoulders. When he looked up and saw me, he jumped to his feet and slammed my back against the wall. His hand grabbed my throat, squeezing tighter and tighter. I didn’t even try to fight him.
“This is your fucking fault! She was all I had left and you took her from me! I could’ve saved her,” he ground out through clenched teeth.
“Kill me. Please. Just … promise me you’ll take care of Kate … for Elizabeth,” I begged him.
“Kate?” he asked softly, his grip easing up.
“That’s what Elizabeth named her,” I said.
“And is she … she’s okay?”
“Yes. She’s perfect. She has your and Elizabeth’s eyes.” I’d never been this close to Jason before to notice his and hers were identical.
“Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you do something to try and save her?” he yelled, retightening his grip on my neck.
I asked myself the same question.
“There wasn’t anything. I couldn’t-” was all I could get out.
The look on Jason’s face was a determined rage behind his steady stream of tears. When the room started darkening, and spots formed I begged him again to end it. “Please.”
He suddenly stepped back, letting me fall in a heap to the floor.
“No! You don’t deserve the easy fucking way out. Every minute of every day I want you to suffer, thinking about how you killed her.”
He walked out of the bedroom while I tried to get air into my lungs. I heard something slam and shatter, then the baby started crying.
“Goddamn it!” Jason screamed from somewhere in the house.
I took a couple more deep breaths before standing up again. I glanced over to where Elizabeth still laid, looking like a sleeping angel. I couldn’t begin to grasp the fact that she’d never open her beautiful eyes again.
When I finally turned to leave I noticed the baby had stopped crying. I panicked and ran to the nursery, worried that Jason would do something to her because of his pain. I wasn’t expecting to find him cradling Kate to him like she was the most precious thing in the world.
“She’s so small,” he said when he looked up and saw me standing in the doorway. “Did Liz … did she get to see her?” he asked as his voice cracked with emotion.
I nodded since I couldn’t yet speak. “Yes, she got to hold her.”
He reached up with his free hand and wiped his face.
“Elizabeth said she knew she wasn’t going to make it. One of her premonitions. She told me she was worth it.”
He nodded. “Liz has always loved kids, and wanted to be a mother. When we were little she had these dolls that she took wherever we went, so she could take care of them.”
“I know. She wanted a baby more than anything. It’s what I wanted to share with her more than anything.”
“I’m sorry Kate will never know her.”
“I am too,” I said as I sat down in the rocking chair when my body couldn’t hold me up anymore.
Chapter Eighteen
It was surprising how easily being a father came to me. Kate and I got into our own routine, one she knew and expected, and since the day she was born she’d been such a good baby. She never cried unless she was hungry. Otherwise she was happily cooing or sleeping.
I missed Elizabeth every second of every minute of every day. After I took as much time off from work as I could, I had to hire a nanny to take care of Kate while I was gone. Jason helped the first few weeks, but then suddenly he was gone. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that he left right around the time Scott Haymore, the man who’d wrecked their mother’s car and killed her, was released from prison. Haymore suddenly died the next day of a heart attack. At age thirty-three.
When Kate was just three months old I had to take her with me back to Pennsylvania. It was the one year anniversary of my and Vanessa’s divorce, and I had to be go to court so we could make it official. I resented the hell out of the bitch for not letting us get an annulment. If she had, I could have married Elizabeth. Her engagement ring still hung around my neck, and I never took it off.
I was the first one in the courtroom so I walked up toward the front and sat down with Kate, who was sound asleep, to wait for my attorney. I wasn’t surprised to see my mother with Vanessa when she came in with her own lawyer. The look on both of their faces seeing me holding Kate was worth the long car trip. I wanted them to know I’d made my own decisions, and I was happy with them. Happier than I ever was when they made my decisions for me. Even though I missed Elizabeth so much it still caused me physical pain, I wouldn’t have done anything differently.
I steeled myself for their approach. Hearing my mother’s voice was just as I remembered, nails down a fucking chalkboard.
“Thomas, that can’t be … you had a … is that my ..." My mother was speechless, probably for the first time in her life.
“Granddaughter? Technically yes, but this will be the one and only time you'll ever see her."
She gasped, sucking in all the available air in the room.
“So you had a bastard with your slut?” Vanessa asked with a smirk. I’d never raised a hand at a woman, but at that moment I wanted to backhand her across the room.
“I loved her mother more the first day I met her than I did you after years. Actually, I never loved you.”
“Loved her as in the past tense? What did she do, run off and leave you all alone to raise your bastard by yourself?” Vanessa snapped.
“She died in childbirth. And I don’t care where we happen to be standing right now, I will knock the ever-loving shit out of either or both of you if you refer to my daughter as a ‘bastard’ again, or the woman I loved more than anything as a ‘slut’.”
That finally shut them up for a few seconds, only Vanessa couldn’t help herself.
“But I thought you didn’t want kids.”
“I didn’t. Not with you. But I love Kate and will do anything for her. So if you think you’re going to take a penny away from the money she needs then you’re going to be leaving here disappointed. I refuse to let a spoiled bitch take anything away from her.”
Luckily that was when my attorney came into the courtroom and intervened before I lost my temper.
After the divorce was finalized I applied for and received a promotion in the Cincinnati D.R.A. office. The position took me off investigations, and had me in the office ordering weapons for all the districts, then training agents how to use them. With Kate depending on me I couldn’t keep traveling or taking the risks associated with being out in the field. I knew those weapons under my control were sometimes used against innocent supernaturals, and their blood was on my hands, but that was the sacrifice I felt like I had to make to keep Kate's secret safe.
I tried to give Kate everything she could ever want or need as a baby, as a little girl, and then as a teenager. When I couldn’t be around I made sure someone loving and kind was there taking care of her. On weekends the two of us did everything together, and I tried to give her as much of a normal childhood as she could have. I worked hard to protect her from my guilt and depression, especially on her birthdays. She didn’t deserve to have my sadness ruining her day, and the celebration every year was bittersweet.
I thought I was a pretty good father to Kate, until
she became a teenager. Every year that passed she looked more and more like Elizabeth, which brought back regular nightmares of how I’d lost her. I still missed her so much I wasn’t sure how I’d survived so long without her.
It also didn’t help our relationship when Kate started into her more rebellious phase. She’d always been so polite and well-behaved, but when it came to her having a social life I was overprotective, and there was no way for her to understand why. I didn’t want her being treated badly by fool boys. I didn’t want to risk someone finding out what she was. I loved her too much to let anything to happen to her. I'd promised Elizabeth I'd keep Kate safe, and there was no way I could handle losing her too. She hated me for being so protective of her, but I didn’t feel I had a choice.
During Kate’s senior year of high school she begged me to let her leave home for college. The first few months I flat out told her no. I wanted her to live at home and commute to school somewhere close by in Ohio. She wanted her independence, and was so lonely. I knew I was being selfish, and couldn’t keep her locked away from the world forever.
I didn’t even know she’d applied to Madison University until the acceptance letter came in the mail with the offer of a full scholarship. I felt like it was a sign for me to let her go and live her life. I knew it was a good, safe, almost entirely all female school. Madison had also been important to Elizabeth, even though I never told Kate its significance. I'd never been able to tell Kate anything about Elizabeth. It was impossible for me to even speak her name without falling apart.
Kate was such a sweet and innocent girl that I was completely shocked when I realized the danger she'd put herself in after just three weeks away from home. She had found out, and then announced to the world, the secret I’d kept from her since she was born. She was wanted by the agency I worked for to be executed because of that secret. She’d fallen in love with a vampire named Sam West, and she was being manipulated and stalked by Chris Turner, a maniac warlock. All because of the secrets I had kept from her. I was father of the year alright.
Chapter Nineteen
Present Day
Rio Bravo, Mexico
“Kate? Sam? It’s just me,” I called out as I knocked lightly on the front door of their small, quaint ranch home.
Ten seconds later Sam opened it.
“You scared the shit out of me!” he said breathlessly, and then I felt bad for showing up out of the blue, knowing he had to already be on edge.
“Sorry. How’s Kate?” I asked.
I hated having to kill that crazy son of a bitch in front of her, but I didn't have a choice. Chris had tried to have Sam killed, stalked them, kidnapped Kate against her will, and was ready to do God only knows what to her. The whole ordeal had to be almost too much for Kate to handle.
“She’s still out of it. She passed out when I picked her up, and has been out since. I got her cleaned up and put her in the bed, but I don’t know what else to do,” Sam said.
The last time I'd seen Kate I'd left her sitting by the side of the road waiting for Sam in a confused and almost hysterical state, covered from head to toe in the lunatics disgusting black blood, after I'd just blasted a bullet through his skull.
“She’ll be okay as soon as the shock wears of,” I told him, and prayed it was the truth. It was obvious that he was worried to death about her, and probably wished he could take her to a doctor or hospital. Unfortunately, we couldn't risk it.
“Thank you for being there today. I don’t know what I would have done. I would have never found her,” he said as he ran his hand through his hair.
I already knew he cared about Kate, since he’d been willing to die for her, but now I could see how terrified he’d been of losing her.
“You were right,” I told him. “He wasn’t going to give up trying to find her. I saw him when he pulled over at the D.R.A. truck right after the two of you left that Friday night. I went after him, and have been following him ever since. He finally caught up with you yesterday, and was just waiting for you to leave her by herself. I’m sorry I didn’t kill him sooner, but he had a gun, and was paranoid enough not to ever be alone. I had to wait until I could catch him off guard.”
I’d taken off after him and tailed him through the states for weeks. I was exhausted from only sleeping a few hours a night in my car.
“How the fuck did he find us?” Sam asked.
I shrugged. “Finding spell, using Kate’s hair, or something he stole from her apartment most likely. I think he’d been following her, and was there the day I was.”
Since Chris was a warlock, I'd figured he'd been using a spell that was leading him south to Mexico, exactly where I'd told Sam to take her. If Chris hadn't been so damn sure he could find Kate, then he would have just given up right away.
“So you blew his head off, huh? I’m jealous,” Sam smiled. I laughed in relief that the son of a bitch was dead and Kate was finally safe. Chris was the reason she, Sam, and myself were all wanted by the D.R.A. It was a miracle we'd all made it out of the country alive. Hopefully things could finally get back to normal for Kate. She was too young and innocent for all the shit she'd been through.
“She’s pregnant,” Sam said quickly, and the words cut so deeply I couldn't think or breathe. When my body finally remembered how to do both it came out in a rush.
“Ah goddammit!” I yelled before I could catch myself. What was she thinking? How could she have been so irresponsible?
“It’s his?” I asked, knowing that vampires couldn’t conceive.
“Yep,” he sighed heavily, then fell back onto the couch.
“And I assume she’s keeping it?” Kate would never have an abortion, even if it was that motherfucker’s baby.
“Of course,” Sam said, telling me no other choice had even been discussed.
I couldn't believe how calm he seemed to be, knowing she was having another man's child. “Now you know why I wish I would have been the one to remove his head.”
“Kate’s even younger than her mother was when we had her,” I told him with a shake of my head. “Elizabeth got pregnant right after we were together, and never got to finish school. Now Kate won’t either.”
After nineteen years it still hurt to even think about Elizabeth, and saying her name almost brought me to my knees.
“How do they get pregnant without having cycles?” he asked.
“They’re apparently always fertile. I should’ve told Kate so she’d have been more careful.”
I should have told her she was a witch too. I thought she was safer not knowing, less chance of her secret getting out if she didn't know it to tell. That had been a really stupid decision on my part.
“She was careful. He wasn’t.” Sam said as he clenched his jaw.
“Why am I not surprised?" I muttered. "So you’re staying with her? You plan on marrying her?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I knew what his answer would be.
“Yeah, of course. I mean, if that’s what she wants. I love her more than anything, and I’m over what she did with him. Fuck, he basically took advantage of her. I don’t deserve her.”
“You’re right, but you have my blessing, even though she probably doesn’t need it or want it.”
Sam’s mouth dropped open. I knew he hadn't expected me to accept him into Kate’s life so easily after the last few weeks. But Elizabeth's premonition had been spot on, and I knew they really did love each other.
“What? I know you care about her, and she could do a lot worse. You’ll keep her safe. And the baby. That fucking asshole.” I couldn't hold back the curse, as I rubbed my face.
“Can witches be turned?” Sam asked, and I could see the anxiety in his eyes. Of course he’d want her to live longer. I did too, but I’d learned the hard way that witches couldn’t go the vampire route.
“Don’t you think her mother would still be alive if they could?” I asked him.
“Oh fuck. What about a spell? For longer life, no aging or something?” he asked,
desperate for some way to keep her with him longer than her normal lifespan.
“I don’t know of any such thing, but I’ll spend the rest of my days looking for one,” I promised him.
I reached around and took off the silver necklace I hadn't removed in nineteen years, and handed it to Sam.
“That’s the ring I gave Kate’s mother, although we never had a chance to get married. I hope you’ll give it to Kate when you ask her,” I told him, while trying to hold my shit together.
Giving him her ring, I felt like I was letting Elizabeth go, but I wanted Kate to have something of her mother’s. Her mother who loved her more than anything, and who she never got a chance to know. I knew it had hurt Kate growing up without knowing about Elizabeth, but it had hurt too damn much to talk about her.
Sam held the ring delicately and nodded. “I will. Thank you. I know this will mean a lot to her,” he said.
A second later the doorbell rang, making both of us jump and my heart stop.
“Oh fuck,” Sam said as he headed for the door.
“Answer it. I’ve got you covered,” I told him as I pulled my .40 Smith & Wesson from my waistband.
He looked out the peephole and then his shoulders relaxed. “Thank God! It’s just Joselin.”
“Joselin?” I asked. I'd thought about her over the years, remembering the night Kate was born when I’d called her in a panic, because I didn't have anyone else to call for help. I also thought about her when the depressing loneliness weighed down on me more than usual. After Kate left for school I’d felt it more keenly than ever. I’d always wondered if what Elizabeth had told me about the future would actually happen. The hope that she would be right is probably what had kept me going this long. That possibility and Kate.
“Hey, Joselin. I completely forgot you were coming in today. There’s been a lot of shit going on,” Sam told her as he opened the door and hugged her.
“Oh Sam, I’m sorry. I should have called and given you a heads up when I got to the border. What’s wrong? Is Kate okay?” Joselin asked. As she walked into the living room my jaw dropped.