Affliction ab-22

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  He looked at Nathaniel. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Hawthorne,’ his mother said, as if he’d been rude.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m Nathaniel,’ he said, and offered his hand to the boy.

  Hawthorne was obviously surprised, but he took his hand and they shook. ‘Do you work out with them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Same reason Micah gave.’

  The boy looked him up and down as if trying to figure out what, or who, he was to everyone else. ‘They don’t all look like marshals,’ he said.

  ‘Hawthorne, why don’t you take Frost and Fen back to clean up your backpack?’ Ty said.

  He gave a sullen look to his father. ‘Fen is four. How is he going to help with anything?’

  Fen rose up from Beth’s shoulder and said, ‘I can help.’

  Hawthorne gave an exaggerated sigh, rolled his eyes again, and said, ‘Fine, I’ll take the little kids with me, but I know you just want me to stop asking questions and talk grown-up stuff.’ He looked worried then, and it was real. ‘Did something else happen to Rush?’ He suddenly looked younger, the kid peeking through the almost-teenager.

  ‘No, Hawthorne, nothing else has happened,’ Ty said.

  ‘Promise,’ he said.

  ‘I promise,’ his father said.

  Hawthorne nodded, flashed us another worried and speculating look, then held his hands out for the kids. ‘Come on, brats, I’ll supervise while you clean up the Kool-Aid.’

  Bea set the little girl on the ground. Frost turned around to face us, hands on hips, elbows out defiantly, and gave us a clear view of her delicate triangular face. Her eyes were small, almost almond shaped, and a deep, solid brown. Except for the hair color she looked like Beth had cloned herself. I was looking at what Micah’s daughter might have looked like.

  ‘I am not a brat,’ Frost said, stamping her foot.

  ‘Are too,’ Hawthorne said.

  ‘Are not!’

  ‘Go with your brother and clean up the mess you made,’ Ty said.

  I looked at his bright blue eyes, and then at Bea’s blue-gray ones. Micah had actually gone pale. How did two blue-eyed parents end up with brown-eyed children? Somehow Fen’s golden-brown eyes hadn’t seemed so obvious, but these were Micah’s and Beth’s eyes staring out of a face that didn’t look like their mother or her new husband. What the hell was going on?

  Beth said, ‘I’ll go with them and make sure they don’t kill each other.’ She gave a look to Micah that I think was sympathetic. ‘I’m glad you’re home,’ she said, and carried Fen off after Hawthorne and Frost.

  Fen called back over her shoulder, his arms wrapped around her neck, and asked his question a second time. ‘Are you my big brother, too?’

  Micah turned to look at his mother as he answered the little boy, ‘Yes, I think I am.’

  Bea Morgan reached for her husband’s hand and looked guilty.

  19

  ‘Mom, Ty, what is going on?’

  Ty stood there straight and tall with an almost defiant look on his face. Bea clung to his hand and looked beseechingly at her son. ‘It just sort of happened,’ she said.

  ‘Frost isn’t Ty’s, is she?’ he asked.

  ‘She is my daughter,’ Ty said, ‘but biologically probably not.’

  ‘What do you mean, biologically?’ he asked.

  ‘Mike, please, don’t be mad. I thought you’d be better than Jerry about it, because you have two people, too.’ Her voice sounded apologetic and not sure of itself at all.

  The doorbell sounded. Bea went for the door, as if happy to have an excuse to be away from Micah. Bram shadowed her to the door without anyone telling him to; you never left a door totally unguarded, especially if it was about to open. Micah was still trying to deal with the last few minutes. His father hadn’t been the heartbroken abandoned spouse but had been at least sleeping with his ex-wife part time. There was an implication of much more.

  Nathaniel and I had moved up beside Micah, but I honestly wasn’t sure what to say. The look on his face said that part of his family history had just imploded. Nathaniel touched his arm. Micah didn’t seem to notice.

  It was Jerry at the door. ‘You guys never lock the door until bedtime. What’s up?’

  ‘I didn’t lock it,’ Bea said.

  ‘We did,’ Bram said.

  Jerry looked up at the taller man. ‘Why?’

  ‘A locked door gives us a few more seconds to react,’ Bram said.

  ‘React to what?’ Jerry asked.

  ‘Anything.’

  Jerry shook his head and looked past everyone to Micah, who was looking at his brother now. ‘The look on your face; you met Frost?’

  ‘Yes,’ Micah said in a voice that was almost strangled with tension.

  ‘Surprise!’ Jerry said, arms wide in a ta-da motion.

  ‘You could have warned me.’

  Jerry shook his head. ‘Oh, no, wouldn’t dream of it. This isn’t my explanation to give, I wouldn’t even try.’

  ‘Be nice, Jerry,’ Bea said.

  ‘Why? I didn’t know until Frost was three. I can’t believe I was so stupid.’

  ‘Jerry …’ Bea began.

  ‘No, Mom, just explain to Mike. I’m still working my own issues on this one.’ He moved until he was in front of Micah. ‘We both felt so sorry for Dad, remember. We were so mad at Mom for leaving him for the professor here, and all the time they were still seeing each other, still a couple.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Bea said. ‘At first it was everything you thought it was. I loved Rush, but I couldn’t live with him anymore. I met Ty while we were separated. Rush could have dated, too, but he chose not to.’

  ‘He was waiting for you to come to your senses and come home, or let him come back home,’ Micah said, and that edge of old resentment was suddenly very clear in his voice. Some issues stay fresh every time you open them up. It’s like evil magical Tupperware – it stays fresh forever.

  ‘You are thirty years old, Micah David Callahan, too old to believe I can fix something that broke when you were twelve.’

  Micah looked a little embarrassed but said, ‘So did you cheat on Ty with Dad, or what?’

  She looked back at Ty, and he moved up to take her hand again. ‘She never stopped loving Rush, and by the time you left for good he was spending more time over here with us and the boys.’

  ‘I remember Twain’s fourth birthday party. I was so proud of all of you for being grown-up enough to give the younger kids such a family occasion.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jerry said, ‘but what you and I didn’t know was that Dad was sleeping over.’

  ‘That long ago?’ Micah asked.

  Jerry nodded.

  ‘You want to tell this story?’ Bea asked Jerry.

  ‘Nope,’ he said, and flopped down on the nearest couch.

  ‘Then stop interrupting,’ she said.

  He spread his hands wide, as if to say, Sure, go ahead, I’m out of it.

  She turned back to Micah and the rest of us. ‘I didn’t think I’d have quite this big an audience for the story.’

  Bram said, ‘We can wait in the kitchen if you like.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  He and Ares went for the bar stools around the kitchen. Nicky and Dev looked at me. I nodded, and they went to join them. I didn’t have the heart to tell Bea that with their more-than-human senses they’d hear everything she said anyway. Sometimes illusion is all the comfort you get for stories like this.

  We all sat down on the nearly perfect square of couches. Ty and Bea were on one couch. The three of us sat on the couch opposite them. Jerry moved to the love seat that sat between them both. When we looked at him, he said, ‘I want to see everyone’s faces.’

  ‘Jerry, this is not a show for your entertainment,’ Ty said.

  ‘I just want to see one of my siblings learn about all of this the way I did, that’s all.’

&nbs
p; ‘Beth knew sooner?’ Micah asked.

  ‘She was only twelve ten years ago. She lived with Mom. When I asked her after I found out why she hadn’t told me, do you know what she said?’

  ‘No,’ Micah said.

  ‘She liked having Dad here in the mornings and everyone having coffee together. She said it felt like home. You and I lost everything we thought was safe, but little sister got a second bite at the apple.’

  ‘I don’t resent Beth and Dad being happy,’ Micah said.

  ‘I do,’ Jerry said, ‘because I was still on his side about the divorce, and all the time they were shacking up. He let me be all sympathetic and it was all a lie.’

  ‘It wasn’t a lie,’ Ty said.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t the truth either,’ Jerry said.

  Ty didn’t have an answer for that.

  Bea tried. ‘You have Anita and Nathaniel in your life, and I have Ty and Rush in mine.’

  ‘I only have one wife, not two,’ Jerry said.

  ‘You barely have enough social skills for one,’ Beth said, as she walked in from the hallway. She looked at Bea. ‘I’ve got Twain reading the kids a story.’

  ‘Good,’ Bea said.

  Beth sat down on the love seat beside Jerry, and though she wouldn’t have said it out loud the way he had, I was betting she wanted a good view, too.

  Micah laid a hand on both our thighs and we automatically covered his hands with ours. ‘Yes, they are both in my life,’ he said, ‘but it was that way from the moment I met them. We’ve always been a threesome, sometimes more.’ I wasn’t sure if he added that last bit of truth to shock, because two of the extra people were listening, or so that later no one could accuse him of leaving stuff out. It didn’t matter; they ignored it. Maybe they felt that explaining themselves was enough for one day. I was all for waiting to try to explain the entirety of our love lives. I wasn’t ashamed of what we were doing, but it was a lot to explain. One long story at a time; we still had to get dinner before heading back to the hospital. We’d save our romantic epic for another night.

  ‘I loved Rush, but we couldn’t live together. I fell in love with Ty, but I missed Rush.’ She wrapped both her smaller hands around his one larger hand and smiled up at him. It was a look of love, but I thought it might have been more a reassurance to the man at her side. Maybe that was just me overthinking.

  Bea looked at me and said, ‘I know you understand what I’m talking about.’

  What I wanted to say was, Don’t drag me into this, but Micah squeezed my hand, which let me know not to say the first thing that came to mind. Prospective in-laws needed gentler handling than my usual. ‘It wasn’t exactly like that with Micah and Nathaniel.’ In my head, I thought that was more like Jean-Claude and Richard, back when the latter was more in our lives, but since that hadn’t worked out well, I kept my mouth shut again.

  ‘I told you that Nathaniel and I came together with Anita at almost the same time. She knew Nathaniel before me, but they weren’t a couple.’

  Nathaniel leaned into Micah, smiling. ‘I think if Micah hadn’t come along, Anita and I would never have been a couple.’

  ‘Why not?’ Bea asked.

  He glanced past Micah at me. I just gave him raised eyebrows, because I had no idea what he was going to say. He smiled wider. ‘We work as a threesome. I’m not sure either of us would work with Anita as a regular couple.’

  ‘That’s it exactly,’ Bea said, and she sounded relieved. ‘Rush and I alone weren’t enough for each other, but with Ty’ – she shrugged and gazed up at him – ‘we were.’

  ‘And you were okay with that?’ Jerry asked.

  Ty looked at him. ‘Bea and I were beginning to have problems, and I knew we loved each other, but something was missing.’ He turned back to look at Bea, and his face glowed, the picture of a man who was still dead-gone on his wife. ‘Rush helped us find that missing piece.’

  Micah’s hand tensed in mine, and I glanced at him. He looked stricken, or shocked. I wanted to ask what was wrong but couldn’t in front of the parents. But Micah saved me the trouble, because he said it out loud. ‘I understand that.’ He turned and looked at Nathaniel, and whatever look was on his face made Nathaniel glow. I smiled at them both, my two men.

  ‘Oh, for the love of God,’ Jerry said.

  We all looked at him. ‘What’s got your panties in a twist?’ I asked.

  ‘You guys are all looking at each other in the same damned way. It’s the way Dad … it’s, fuck.’

  ‘Jerry,’ Bea said, ‘we don’t use words like that.’

  ‘The kids aren’t here to hear me,’ Jerry said, arms crossed across his chest, as he slumped lower into the couch.

  ‘I think it’s great,’ Beth said. She was smiling at everybody.

  ‘I wanted at least one person in the family who I give a damn about to be pissed like me.’

  ‘You’ve got plenty of people in the family pissed, as you say,’ Bea said, and her face looked suddenly older, strained.

  Jerry sat up and reached out, as if to reach past Ty and touch his mother, but he let his hand fall back. ‘I didn’t mean that, Mom; I would never be as stupid as all of them are being.’

  Bea said, ‘You’ve met everybody from Rush’s and my family who are coming to the hospital now. His parents will come, but only if Ty isn’t there. They’ll tolerate me, but not him.’

  ‘What did Grandpa and Grandma get upset about now?’ Micah asked.

  ‘Until Rush got hurt, they could do a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” about our … domestic arrangement, but we couldn’t hide how upset we both were.’

  ‘Have they met Frost?’ Micah asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘Then they didn’t want to know,’ he said.

  ‘Probably, but we also had to come back to this house to get Rush’s things … he lives here. He still owns the cabin, but he hasn’t really lived there for almost six years.’

  I shifted beside him.

  Bea said, ‘What is it, Anita? Talk to us, tell us what you think, please.’

  I glanced at Micah, and he nodded, then shrugged. We were too far into places he hadn’t expected to be able to guide me, I think.

  ‘I think that if they didn’t know their son was living here for six years when they live in town – They live in town, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Then they’ve been ignoring the elephant in the room for a long time. I don’t think knowing his address would have made them look at the truth.’

  Ty, Bea, and Beth exchanged a look.

  Jerry sat up straighter. ‘What happened?’

  Ty answered, ‘Your grandfather saw me holding Rush’s hand and crying.’

  Jerry frowned. ‘So?’

  ‘You did more than just hold his hand,’ Micah said, and there was no condemnation in his voice, no anger. It was actually the calmest he’d sounded in the last few hours.

  Ty nodded and wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Micah said. ‘We understand.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Jerry said.

  Beth said, ‘Just leave it, Jerry.’

  ‘No,’ he said, sitting on the very edge of the love seat and looking from his mom and Ty to Micah.

  ‘Ty,’ Micah said.

  The other man looked at him.

  Micah raised Nathaniel’s hand in his and laid a gentle kiss on the back of the other man’s hand.

  Ty’s eyes were shiny with unshed tears as he nodded. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Because it was either that, or you kissed him – kissed him, and Grandpa saw you.’

  ‘Have they disowned their son?’ I asked.

  Bea shook her head. ‘No, they seem to think that Ty is the evil influence. If—’ She stopped herself, took a shaky breath, and said, ‘When Rush gets better I think they’ll either give him a chance to move out of the house or kick Ty out.’

  ‘He won’t do that,’ Beth said.

  ‘No, he won’t,’ her
mother said.

  Micah turned to Nathaniel and me. ‘My grandparents aren’t as crazy religious as Aunt Bertie, but they are very serious about certain things. They finally accepted me as a shapeshifter because I couldn’t do anything about it. It wasn’t a choice. If I had chosen to become a monster, they would have disowned me.’

  ‘Rush is their son,’ Bea said, ‘and he feels like he’s outside God’s grace now. He loves living here with all of us, but he still believes a lot of what he was raised to believe. It’s really hurt him to love us all here.’

  ‘It’s made him happier than I’ve ever seen him, Mom,’ Beth said. She got up and went to sit on the other side of her mother so that she and Ty each comforted Bea.

  ‘That’s true enough,’ Jerry said. ‘I’ve never seen Dad this happy.’

  ‘He wasn’t just keeping his home address at the cabin to get around his parents,’ Ty said. ‘It’s also because as sheriff he has to live in the town to serve.’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, if he lives in Boulder then he can’t be sheriff.’

  ‘No,’ Ty said.

  ‘He loves his job,’ Jerry said.

  ‘If the worst thing we have to worry about is that he has to change where he’s protecting and serving, we’ll be doing okay,’ I said.

  Bea nodded. ‘You are so right, Anita, so right.’

  ‘Do the other kids know?’ Micah asked.

  ‘We had to sit down with Twain and explain why we all use the same room at night,’ Ty said.

  ‘He asked outright?’ Micah said.

  They nodded.

  ‘You haven’t met him yet,’ Beth said. ‘He’s a very serious kid and he’ll ask anything if he wants to know. He’s like a walking social disaster.’

  ‘He was a serious kid even at four when I saw him last.’

  ‘Hawthorne knows we have one bedroom, but he won’t ask outright. He’ll just accept it and not ask any questions that he doesn’t want to know the answer to,’ Ty said.

  ‘Were you all a couple back when Hawthorne and Twain were little?’ Micah asked.

  ‘We’d started working on that by the time Twain was four,’ Ty said.

  ‘So, while I was still around?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ty said.