I could have taken the train, and I told my father so when he pulled up outside my building and honked. I hated when Mom made him pick me up. He was in a serious accident when I was a kid. Since then, he’d avoided driving in the city as much as possible.
“Nonsense. Your mother would murdolate me if I didn’t come get you.” He somehow managed to scowl and grin at the same time. His shock of white hair probably hadn’t been combed all day, and the scruff on his chin was like flour dusting. He wore baggy jeans that he’d have to hitch up when he got out of the car, and a newish Redskins T-shirt stretched over his belly.
I slid into the car and kissed his cheek. “Didn’t work today?” He wore a suit to the small pharmaceutical company where he was head of security. He wouldn’t have had time to change before coming to get me.
“Nope. We’ve got a big symposium coming up, and I’ll be working extra hours. Took a preparation day.” He eyed me with a father’s critical eye. “You don’t look too battered.”
“I’m much better.” It was mostly true. My hip twinged occasionally, but my ankle was normal. My suit had protected most of my body from the debris at the building collapse, and makeup hid the few little cuts and scratches I had on my face. It didn’t matter. My mother would spot them, and cluck over them, and use them as ammunition. But they were minor.
“Seatbelt.”
I was already reaching for it, but he waited until it clicked before he lurched out into the heavy rush-hour traffic and started navigating his way to Rockville, Maryland, where I’d grown up and where my parents and most of my siblings still lived. We made small talk when traffic stopped. Otherwise, I let him concentrate on the driving.
Nearly an hour later—twice as long as the train would have taken—Dad turned into the driveway of our old rambler, and the comforting-slash-sinking sensation of returning home settled over me. I loved my family, had a good childhood, and didn’t usually dread coming back. But I knew what I had ahead of me, and I was just tired. Tired of enduring it, allowing it, fighting it. I’d tried all three, and nothing made it better.
“What’s wrong, kiddo?” My dad sat with one foot out the door, watching me watch the house.
I gave him a wan smile. “Nothing. Just . . .”
“I know.” He patted my hand. “We’ll keep her in check.”
I didn’t think that was possible, but climbed out of the car and followed him up the walk to the front door without arguing.
It was like walking through a portal into another dimension. Outside: serene suburbia with lush, carefully tended vegetation outside a squatting brick house. Inside: chaos. The only thing missing was shrieking children. But the three barking dogs—Sarah had apparently brought her Sheltie to play with my mother’s cockapoo and Spike’s mutt—three immature early twenty-somethings, and one newly minted adult were plenty loud enough.
The new adult—as Spike had taken to reminding everyone as often as possible since his birthday last month—gave me a bear hug that ended in a gentle enough squeeze that I knew Mom wasn’t the only one who’d been worried about me. Becca, Jeff, and Steven did run-by huggings before they rushed on to finalize whatever plans they had after dinner. I went to the kitchen, where Sarah and my father were helping Mom cook.
All of it was warm and familiar and answered the question I’d been asking myself for two days: why was it so important to me to be a superhero? It was the same answer I expected anyone in law enforcement, firefighting, the military, and search-and-rescue got when they started questioning why they did what they did. To protect the stuff worth protecting.
“Daley!” Mom set down her paring knife and swooped down on me. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She did the shoulder-holding-at-arm’s-length inspection, squinting at the cuts on my face. “Well, those shouldn’t scar, anyway. The rest of you’s okay? How’s your hip?”
“Fine. It barely hurts anymore.”
“Good.” She patted my shoulders and returned to her salad preparation. “How about the ankle? That Adam had a pretty good hold on it. Thank God, of course, but still, I can’t believe it didn’t break.”
“It’s fine, too. My suit helped.” Not really. It protected against impact and cutting injuries, not slow squeezing. But I routinely fibbed to her about that stuff.
“What happened to your date?” I asked Sarah.
She grimaced. “Didn’t work out.”
“I’m afraid you’re just too picky, dear,” Mom clucked. “After what’s-his-name, you haven’t trusted anyone.”
“Yeah. I canceled it when he got arrested for cocaine possession, Ma.”
She smiled proudly at Sarah and patted her cheek. “Smart girl. Here, Daley.” She handed me a knife and set a loaf of Italian bread on the center island for me to cut. I sat on a stool, resigned to the oncoming bombardment of questions and pointed remarks about my work. But she surprised me by asking Sarah about her job for a communications company in Silver Spring, instead.
Sarah snitched a slice of cucumber and tried to hide her smugness. It didn’t work. “I got a promotion today.”
Mom squealed, Dad rumbled congratulations, and I stayed where I was and grinned at her.
“It’s not a big deal,” she said, her pleasure pouring out of her and belying the modesty. “But I am supervising three people, and it’s a track that could take me to executive level eventually.”
“That is a big deal!” Mom kissed both of Sarah’s cheeks and hugged her hard. “I’m so proud of you. Of course, I always knew it would happen. You have such a wonderful career.”
I chose not to take that as a dig at me, even if she glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.
“Dinner’s ready. Let’s sit and tell the others!” Mom bustled about getting the food to the table, and I went to collect the rabble. Becca was on the phone in her room and motioned with a finger that she’d just be a moment. Not holding my breath, I went and found my three brothers in the basement. They were quite a group. Steven and Spike were built like linebackers. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, fat heads. Actually, that was just a sister’s opinion. Steven was a geographer and spent a lot of time in the field. Spike kept his physique less naturally, but then, it was easier to meet girls in the gym than in a ravine. Jeff was a big contrast. He was taller than all of us, with almost no muscle mass. He had a kind face and lighter hair than his brothers, and seemed to be excelling in his premed program.
“You had it last, Spike,” he said now, bending over the pool table to line up a bank shot. “It’s my turn.”
“Hell it is,” Steven grumbled from behind his soda can. “I haven’t had the car in three weeks.”
Spike smacked him in the back of the legs with his cue, laughing. “It’s not our fault you didn’t need it for two weeks in a row. Wallflower.”
I smiled at their banter. They’d always been like this, and the unchanged décor of the rec room helped me slip into nostalgia.
It had been difficult for me, at first, to adapt to each new child in the house. I’d been extra sensitive, empathically, until I was nearly eleven and learned how to tune in or out. But I’d only been two when Sarah was born, four with Steven, five with Becca. I couldn’t understand the sharpness of their emotions, or why they felt them so intensely. They were much simpler than the ebbs and flows of my parents’, who figured out when I was a baby that they needed to be calm around me or I reacted negatively. They still didn’t realize why until Steven was born and I could tell them exactly what he needed.
I had been, apparently, baffled by Sarah, concerned by Steven, and extremely impatient with Becca. Jeff came along when I’d gained the wisdom of first grade, so I turned bossy and expectant. I think I honed a lot of my reading skill on him and the toddlers who embraced him wholeheartedly. Spike was a happy baby, calm and easygoing, and it was such relief to be near him.
&n
bsp; The upshot was that I owed a hell of a lot of who I was to these kids.
Mom’s voice drifted to me, calling Becca to the table. I stepped down into the rec room, catching their attention. “Dinner, fools.”
They dropped their pool cues and pounded past me with various pats and smacks.
“Geez, you guys act like you’re still ten,” I griped.
“Not me.” Spike scooped me up and tossed me over his shoulder to carry me up the stairs. “I’m responsible and mature.”
“Compared to them, maybe. Compared to an adult, not so much.” I laughed when he set me on my feet. My hair had fallen all over my face, so I pushed it back. Seeing his grin, I felt a stab of loss. He wasn’t going to be here much longer.
“Why the Army, kiddo?”
“You don’t have to ask me that, Dale.” He looked a little saddened that I had. “You of all people.”
“I guess I just need to hear it. I’m—” Did I want to admit it, even to Spike, the only Charm who’d keep it to himself? “I’m finding reason to question my own decisions,” I said.
“And since we’re so alike, you want me to remind you why you made them?”
“Where are you two?” Mom yelled from the dining room. “Dinner’s getting cold!”
He didn’t move. “I’m joining the Army because it’s the best way I have to give something to this world.”
“Is it, really? I mean, there are ways other than putting yourself on the front lines. Going to war over politics and other people’s values.”
He hesitated, glancing toward the dining room, where we could hear the commotion of dishing up. If we didn’t hurry, there’d be nothing left.
“We can talk later,” I said.
He shook his head. “I have to leave right after dinner. Come upstairs a minute.” He grabbed my hand and dragged me to his room, closing and locking the door behind us.
“What the hell? Spike, what is it?” My heart started pounding and my mind raced, trying to guess what he was about to tell me.
“I want to show you something.” He looked around the room, then started moving stuff on his desk. “A gun would be better, but Mom would freak.” Clothes started flying as he dug through a pile on the floor. “An explosive would be more impressive, but, again, Mom.” He finally came up with a stun gun and handed it to me. “Shock me.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Here.” He showed me how to turn it on and pressed the trigger on the side. Electricity arced between the leads. “Press it before you get to my arm.”
“Why do you have a stun gun?” I asked, not moving.
“For God’s sake, Daley, just do it before someone comes up here!”
“But—”
“Now!”
I jumped, pressing the button hard and shoving it at his biceps. The blue electricity crackled and popped. I cringed, but when I got a few inches from his skin, the energy leapt sideways and dissipated. My finger let off the trigger and I stared.
“You have . . . a . . . a force field?” My voice sounded weak. I’d always thought I was alone in the family. They’d always treated me like I was, though they didn’t always realize it.
“Not exactly.” He removed the stun gun from my slack fingers and hid it back under the pile of clothes. “I diffuse energy. It’s involuntary. I don’t think about it. So it’s got to be in my electrical system or something.”
My mind raced. “The wire in the puddle? When you were born.”
He nodded. “That’s what I think.”
The night he was born, Dad was so frantic on the way to the hospital that he got them stuck in standing water that was deeper than it appeared. A wire, knocked loose during the storm that afternoon, dangled into the puddle. A passing pickup truck—what my mother asserts was our family’s one true miracle—managed to connect a chain to the bumper without electrocuting the driver or my parents, and dragged them free. But the metal hook had touched water, and my mother said a charge went through her feet and up into her body. Everyone insisted it was impossible, but she swore it happened.
I heard her call up the stairs, sounding angry. But I couldn’t go down yet. “It works on anything?”
“Yep.”
I threw a punch. He flinched, but my hand just . . . stopped, inches from his face. There was no impact, more like I’d pushed my hand into something thick and it lost momentum until it stopped moving.
“That was closer than the stun gun.”
“Uh, yeah.” He laughed a little. “The less energy there is, the closer it comes. The more there is, the further away the diffusion occurs.”
“Fascinating.” I couldn’t help myself. I touched his arm. It felt normal. He looked down at me tolerantly. “You could join HQ,” I said eagerly, forgetting for a moment why that might be a very bad idea. “It doesn’t have to be Army.”
“It does, Dale.” He shook his head, slowly. “It stops bullets, electricity, physical blows. And if someone is close enough to me, it protects them, too. I’m an ideal soldier, and that’s where I belong.”
I hated it, but I knew he was right. He’d been the most decisive person I knew, his whole life, with no regrets or second-guessing. No one would change his mind.
“You should tell Mom.” I looped my arm around his and started to lead him out. “It would make things a lot easier for everyone.”
“I can’t.” He shook his head again when I frowned, and stopped me before I opened the door. “She wouldn’t understand. You know that.”
I couldn’t say more, because not only did she bang on the door right then, I knew the rest of the dinner would prove him right.
She eyed us suspiciously when we came out into the hall, our arms still entwined.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you two were canoodling up here. Come on. I’m going to be royally pissed if you don’t get your asses down to dinner right now.”
She already was, or she wouldn’t be saying “asses.” So we followed. I decided I couldn’t let my baby brother be more noble than me. I’d just face what HQ had to face, and overcome it however we could.
My conviction lasted barely five minutes. That was when my mother started in.
Chapter 11
“Daley, dear, tell us about the heroism that nearly killed you.”
I pretended the jab hadn’t struck and related the events of the jumper and the building collapse. Maybe it was unfair, but I provided details I would normally have kept to myself. The knife. The man’s determination to take me with him. How I’d run to the back of the cavern we’d dug in the rubble, even though the damage above us showed signs of coming down. I received satisfying gasps and murmurs, though my mother grew paler and paler. By the end, I was ashamed for retaliating. She was only this way because she cared about me.
She set down her fork and took a deep breath, looking at her plate. “Daley, why? Why must you keep doing this?”
I put my own fork down, no longer interested in the lasagna. “I’ve explained why, Mom.”
“But look.” She waved her hands at my siblings. “Becca’s going to teach history. Jeff will be a doctor. And Steven has a nice, safe job with National Geographic. Why can’t you be like them? Why do you have to put so much stress on my heart?” She pressed her hand to her sternum.
“That building came down six blocks from me, Mom.” Steven shrugged. “If it had been my building, I would have been glad Daley was there to help. They got almost everyone out. People who would have died without HQ.”
“Pah. Daley had little to do with it. She’s an empath, not Wonder Woman. She has no protection.”
“I do! I have my suit—”
“Fat lot of good that would have done if that jumper hauled you off the ledge.” She was getting more agitated. No one was eating any
more. “You’re the only child in this family with a death wish. I don’t know if it’s more to punish me, or yourself.” She choked on the last few words. “Excuse me.” She stood and hurried to the kitchen.
Her words echoed in the silence. Becca looked at Spike, who had an odd kind of grin on his face. Dad’s eyebrows were practically touching his nose, but he didn’t apologize for Mom. He didn’t defend her, either, which was probably the best position for him to take.
I knew she wanted me to follow her. After all this time, I didn’t understand how she could keep throwing this in my face. She didn’t always do it, only when something happened with HQ that was dangerous. Usually I endured it. But knowing that someone was trying to crush us, and feeling ambivalent about how to personally handle that, turned Mom’s histrionics into unneeded pressure.
“I’ll be right back.” I tossed my napkin on the table, rose, and stalked to the kitchen. Mom stood at the counter, her back to me, her head down. She straightened a little when she heard the door swing, and sniffed with a hand to her mouth.
“Cut it out, Mom. You’re not that good an actress.”
She spun, her mouth open, her eyes wide. “Wha-at?”
“You’re putting it on to try to make me feel guilty. It won’t work. Sit.” I pointed to the stools around the island, and she sat. I took a seat opposite her, where she couldn’t touch me and had to work harder to avoid meeting my gaze.
“I didn’t attempt suicide, Mother, to hurt you.”
She jerked. She’d always done a verbal dance around the incident, like saying it straight out made it worse.
“And I don’t have a death wish. I work for HQ for the same reasons Spike wants to join the Army. You have no problem with him. So what’s your problem with me?”
The Color of Courage Page 13