by ReGi McClain
“That’s, er ” she took a deep breath to stave off nausea -- “fascinating. Did Jason tell you he liked dinosaurs when he was your age? Those brontosauruses are pretty cool, aren’t they?”
“Brontosaurus? Oh! Those aren’t real. That was a mistake. Anyway, I like deinonychus better. They had these big claws they used to slash open their prey. Like this.” He demonstrated a violent slashing motion. “And they hunted in packs, so, if you…”
Harsha decided to try trains or cars next time she needed to change the subject. Kel’s descriptions involved much blood loss on the part of his chosen subject’s prey. It reminded her of the bear attack. She tuned him out while she finished cooking and resolved to plaster his room with posters of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. even if it took a sizeable bribe to Elaine to see it done. The boy needed pacifist influence.
Kel’s monologue continued until his mother came inside and hushed him with a command to take a bath before dinner. Harsha shot her sister-in-law a grateful smile.
“I’m sorry. He likes to talk.”
Harsha shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me.” If I ignore the squishy brains and spurting blood vessels. “I don’t have much experience with kids, though.”
Elaine pulled a wine cooler out of the fridge and retrieved the bottle opener without a search. Harsha wondered how often the woman drank wine coolers while on duty and hoped the beverage reflected a shopping trip after the wedding this morning and not a stash she’d kept for working hours.
Elaine shrugged. “Who does? They’re all different.” She offered Harsha a wine cooler.
“No thanks. I don’t drink.”
Elaine pressed her lips together and looked wary.
“But I don’t mind if you do,” Harsha rushed to add, realizing the brevity of her comment made Elaine nervous. “I just don’t like wine.”
Elaine’s shoulders relaxed. Harsha stopped herself from sighing in relief and started to look forward to finding a new home. Walking on eggshells did not appeal to her. She pulled out salad bowls and arranged lettuce and various toppings in them.
“So, how long have you worked as a home care provider?”
“Six years.”
“I think it’s great you like to help people.”
Elaine shrugged. “It’s a respectable job. I wanted to be a doctor, but after Kel’s dad left, I couldn’t afford to stay in school.”
A pang of sympathy warmed Harsha’s heart toward her sister-in-law. She opened her mouth to ask whether Jason had told Elaine about their dad, but decided a relationship that went from professional to marriage in one day indicated a substantial amount of time spent conversing, so she assumed Elaine knew most of the pertinent details of her and Jason’s childhoods.
“You can go back to school, if you want.”
Elaine shook her head and got plates out to pile with rice and stir-fry. “Not until Jason can hold down a job. He says he doesn’t have work experience, and it’s hard to get a good job without work experience.”
Jason swiveled. He sat on the couch with his laptop, but a glance at his screen told Harsha he was not playing games, as usual, but perusing a search engine page. “I’m looking in the gaming community. I figure I have enough experience for something like that.”
Elaine smirked. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“Not Harsha. She doesn’t game at all.”
Elaine looked back to Harsha with eyes wide. “Not at all?”
“Not at all.” Harsha looked at the two TV trays and decided the new family needed a proper table.
Elaine put a chair up to the counter. “Kel usually sits here for meals. But… I was wondering… since we’re moving in…”
“You need a table,” Harsha finished for her. “We can go buy one tomorrow. You guys can turn my bedroom into the office.”
Jason scrunched one brow and wrinkled his nose. “Office? Why do we need an office? I can work from the couch.”
“You don’t have to.” Uh oh. He thinks I’m trying to control him. Maybe I am . After taking care of him for ten years, she’d gotten used to making certain choices for him, like what to eat and when to take a shower. “I thought you’d like having a dedicated space.”
“A dedicated space in my sister’s bedroom?” Both Jason and Elaine gave her quizzical looks.
“I mean after I move out.”
“Move out?” Elaine’s eyes widened and she sounded panicked. “Jason, did I say something wrong?”
“I don’t think so. Harsha, I know this is sudden, but it’s no reason to dislike Elaine. We spent like ten hours a day together for ”
“Dislike Elaine?” Stunned, Harsha tried to figure out what she said to give him that impression. “No. I didn’t say ”
“Then why are you talking about moving out?”
“Because…” She floundered. It seemed obvious to her why she planned to move out. “I mean, yeah, I paid for the house, but you’re the one with the family. It’s my wedding gift.”
“But we don’t want you to move.” Elaine took Harsha’s hand. “You mean so much to Jason. You mean a lot to me, too. Half the time all he talked about was you. I wouldn’t have ” Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want to be responsible for causing friction between you and Jason.”
Harsha gaped, not sure what to do with a person on the verge of crying. Her professional relationships rarely called for such a skill. Mindful of Seraph’s comforting embraces, she wrapped her arms around Elaine, uncomfortable but doing her best, and wondered how Seraph managed to seem so casual about giving hugs.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I assumed you guys would want your space.”
Elaine returned the hug with a fierce squeeze. Harsha held her breath and waited for the other woman to let go first. Elaine’s mascara ran down her face in dark streaks. She wiped at her cheeks, smearing it, and smiled, which gave her an appearance evocative of Alice Cooper.
Harsha scrambled to return the conversation to a useful topic. “Well, if I’m living with you, you might as well go back to school. I can support all of us.”
“But that wouldn’t be fair.” Elaine’s wide-eyed, hopeful expression belied the sincerity of her statement.
“Sure it would. I’ll work and cook. You raise Kel and go to school, and Jason can do all the housework.”
“How is it fair for me to do all the housework?” Jason asked.
Harsha started to give him her reasons, pure nonsense intended to tease, but Kel walked in and asked about dinner. They settled down to eat and the discussion of who needed to fill what role got put off for another time.
Chapter 16
With Jason’s new family dominating the house, Harsha decided to go back to work before her vacation ended, to give them space for bonding and give herself something to occupy her time. After a few days of trying their best to find common interests, Harsha and Elaine decided to let well enough alone. They got along but they found idle conversation difficult. Elaine contributed her fair share to housework and raised Kel with reasonable standards, in Harsha’s opinion. Conflicts were mild and brief and dealt mostly with minor matters.
At Elaine’s request, Harsha kept her candy in her room and stopped giving Kel snacks whenever he asked, though she made an exception for Friday nights. On Friday nights, Jason took Elaine out while Harsha and Kel watched zombie movies and stuffed themselves with ice cream and cookies. Or rather, Kel stuffed himself. Often, Harsha found the subject of their entertainment too gruesome to facilitate gorging.
After school started, Harsha decided to switch the emphasis of their fun night to games. They’d run out of zombie movies she was willing to watch and Kel expressed great reluctance to try such classics as Sleepless in Seattle or Steel Magnolias . A week before Thanksgiving, Harsha and Kel chased each other around the pool with sponge balls for a game of cowboys versus aliens.
“Ha! I have you now!”
Kel’s yellow ball flew at Harsha. She tried to dive out of the way, but the p
rojectile caught her shoulder with a squashy smack.
She laughed and threw it back. “That’s a point for you. About time, too.”
She expected him to respond with a sassy comeback, but his mouth hung open and the whites of his eyes ringed his irises all the way around.
He recovered and bobbed toward her. “I’m so sorry, Aunt Harsha! I thought sponge balls weren’t supposed to hurt.”
Harsha looked down. A large, purple bruise, mottled with the pattern of the sponge, covered her deltoid. She crossed the pool to Kel with a finger over her lips. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”
“Jason won’t be mad at me, will he?” Kel looked like he wanted to emulate movie men who never cried, but tears poised on his bottom lashes.
“No, no. He won’t be angry. At you. It’s only…” she put a hand on his shoulder and bent to be eye level with him. “I’m kind of sick and I don’t want him to know, yet.”
Kel leaned away, his nose wrinkled. The tears spilled over onto his cheeks, but a look of disgust took over his face. “Am I gonna get sick ’cuz you touched me?”
“No, it’s not contagious. Just please don’t tell Jason, okay?”
“I’m not supposed to keep secrets.”
“Please? For a little while? I’ll tell him myself, soon.”
Kel squinched up his face in a conflicted expression but nodded.
“Thank you. Come on. Let’s clean up and we can make cookies after I call my doctor.”
She put on a light jacket to cover the bruise and called Dr. Brown, who prescribed cyclosporine. “The iron above ground has a more detrimental effect than the iron nestled down in natural, unrefined deposits, which is part of why you felt better in Alaska,” he explained. “Even in a town as small as Waimea, there’s enough iron to make trouble for you. The medicine might slow the effects for a time.”
Time. She needed it to work up the guts to tell Jason about the bruise. She and Kel made white chocolate chip cookies. And strawberry cream puffs and pineapple ice cream and caramel cheesecake. Jason and Elaine returned home in time to see her pulling out ingredients to make lemon bars.
Jason looked at the dessert covered counter and scowled. He took Harsha’s mixing bowl away. “Hey, Elaine?”
“Hmm?”
“When was the last time you read Kel a bedtime story? Think he’d like one tonight?”
Elaine looked from Jason to Harsha to the cheesecake. “Yeah. I’ll go do that.”
Anxiety wrenched Harsha’s stomach into a knot. Regretting giving in to her compulsion to bake, she grabbed at her bowl. “Can I have my mixing bowl back?”
Jason lifted it overhead, out of her reach. “Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Her stomach roiled. She swallowed to keep it down.
“Don’t lie to me.” He glared at her.
Pushing the cheesecake toward him, she swallowed bile and tried to meet his eyes.
He slid the cake back to her. “Tell me what the problem is.”
She braced for his reaction and took off the jacket.
Jason’s face twisted in an expression of anguish. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
No sound came out when she answered, “Yes.”
With a wail, he pulled her into a fierce hug, as if he meant to keep her alive by sheer force of will. “Why? Harsha, why?”
She held him without speaking while sobs racked his body and hot tears soaked into her hair. He knew the answer to all the questions encompassed by that single word. She heard Elaine come out of Kel’s room and steal into her own before Jason pulled away and wiped the tears off his face.
“You should have told me sooner.”
She stayed silent. He knew why she kept her illness to herself.
“We have to do something about it. You can’t die on me.”
The hypocrisy of that statement filled her with indignation. “You had no problem with the idea of you dying on me. ” She let bitterness fill her tone, to show him how she felt about this reversal in his attitude.
His face hardened in determination. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t understand. You’ve always taken care of everyone.” He pulled her back into a hug, this time with a gentle, paternal embrace. “Now, I’m going to take care of you.”
Harsha considered protesting she needed no one to take care of her. She looked after others, like he said; they didn’t look after her. She walked without a walker, carried a reasonable amount of weight, and made it through a whole day without needing a nap. Well, usually. She fell asleep on her lunch hour a couple times a week, but overall, she felt fine.
Jason took her hands and guided her to the couch like she needed his help to get there.
Harsha rolled her eyes at him, detached her hands, and hopped over the back of the couch.
Jason scowled. “There’s no need to show off. Yes. Given ” His voice faltered and his face wrestled itself for mastery of his expression, contorting with anguish, then settling back into concern. “Given how advanced the disease is, you’re doing great. Incredible, really, but don’t you see?” He sat down next to her and took her hands. “That’s why we need to fight. Because you are doing so well. It means something is helping. Your low-iron diet, or one of the meds Dr. Brown gave you, or whatever. “
He stared beyond her. Harsha turned to look out the window, but nothing interesting lurked outside, so she guessed he was focusing on inward images rather than the view.
When he met her eyes, he blurted, “How do I get in touch with Zeeb?”
“Zeeb?” Harsha pulled back, surprised by the question. “What does Zeeb have to do with it?”
“His parents are doctors, right? They’re also hiders. They know stuff other doctors don’t. Maybe they can figure out a treatment no one else could.”
“Jason,” Harsha slanted him a doubtful look. “They specialize in lyco … They specialize in whatever it is that makes werewolves into werewolves. Besides, not even the faerie could fix me with magic .”
Undaunted, Jason snatched her cell off the side table. “Does the faerie have a medical degree? I don’t think so. Here it is. Wow.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Do you realize he called you every day this week?”
Harsha shrugged in casual disinterest but kept her gaze on the phone instead of meeting Jason’s eyes. She shouldn’t feel shy about her conversations with Zeeb. His crush, if he kept it going, never surfaced in any of their talks. He called around nine and they discussed whatever had happened during the day, the mundane details of life, for about an hour. Then they said goodnight and hung up without sweet talk or proclamations of love.
“He doesn’t lead tours in the winter, and Seraph spends the off-season with her mom. He’s stir-crazy. Seraph called every day, too.”
Jason smirked and shot her an amused expression before he hit the send button to call Zeeb. Harsha took advantage of his distraction to start making the lemon bars. Elaine eased out of her room and joined Harsha in the kitchen when she saw Jason on the phone. She picked up a lemon and started zesting it.
“You’re still sick, aren’t you?”
Harsha nodded but kept her eyes on the egg yolks in her mixing bowl.
“Only one unicorn horn?”
Harsha snapped her head up to look Elaine in the eyes. “He told you?”
Elaine nodded. “And showed me the horn. It’s pretty hard to believe, but then…” She glanced at Jason. “He was really bad. I wanted to call you to tell you to come home a few times, but he told me not to. Nothing short of a miracle or magic could have made him so much better overnight.”
Harsha felt her blood pressure rising. She slammed her spoon down on the counter and glared at the back of Jason’s head. How dare he not call me? She glanced at the cheesecake. Not like I need it anyway. She picked it up and stalked into the living room, fully intending to smash the cake onto Jason’s head and lay into him with the lecture of the century.
With a smooth, swift motion, Elaine li
fted the cheesecake out of Harsha’s hands and returned it to the counter. Harsha glared at her.
“He deserves it, yes, but so do you.” Elaine picked up a cream puff in each hand. “How about I smash these into both your faces and you two hard-headed siblings can call it even?”
Harsha continued to glower. Elaine arched her brows, her expression stating she felt no compunctions about carrying through with her threat, and worse, if need be. I work with sick people, it declared. I know how to deal with stubbornness.
Harsha took a deep breath and pushed it out through pursed lips in a slow, controlled exhale. “Okay. You’re right.” She went back to mixing. “But if he tells me to retire, he’s getting cheesecake up his nose.”
Elaine went back to zesting the lemon. “Agreed.”
An hour or so later, Jason wiped cheesecake off his face while he listed the things he wanted Harsha to do. She agreed to send her medical records and weekly blood samples to the Lowells, as facilitated by Dr. Brown. She also agreed to cut her work hours if the cyclosporine failed to produce a noticeable effect. Maybe. She promised to think about it, anyway.
Harsha pulled a pillow over her head and tried to fall asleep. The party at her neighbor’s house had been going strong since ten. She’d hoped it would fizzle after the midnight countdown, but the timepiece on her nightstand read two o’clock and the music blared on, rattling her window. If Kel wasn’t at a friend’s for a sleepover, she might have asked them to stop, but with him away for the night and Jason and Elaine out at their own party, she doubted the pros of trying to reason with a swarm of drunk people outweighed the cons.
Her phone rang, its highest volume a mere peep compared to the din of the New Year revelers next door. She snatched it off her nightstand and huddled under her pillow to hear the speaker. “Hello?”
