by Peter Moore
One more buzz and I’m out of bed. I pull on a sweatshirt and go to the front door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s your mother.”
What? This is impossible. She has never, ever come to Dad’s place.
“Really?” I call through the door.
“Yes, really. Could you please let me in? I’d rather not stand here and talk to you through a door.”
Dad is standing in the living room, his hair wet. He has jeans on and is putting on a long-sleeved Henley shirt, which has wet marks on the shoulders. “Who’s that?” he asks.
“Um, it’s my mom,” I say, still not able to believe it myself.
He raises his eyebrows and comes to the door. “Kat?”
“Would one of you please open this door? I’m standing in a disgusting hallway.”
We look at each other for a second. “Fine. Let her in.” Dad has what I guess is called a “wry” smile on his face.
She looks like she’s been holding her breath in the hallway. She hurries in, then exhales loudly. “Thank you.”
I lock up behind her.
“To what do we owe the honor of your presence in our humble home?” Dad asks.
She takes a look around. “Humble. I suppose that’s one word for it.”
Dad sits on the couch. “Have a seat, Kat. Unless you’re afraid the furniture will soil your outfit.”
“You know, you aren’t making this easy.”
“Making what easy? Why are you here? Want to tell us more about how ashamed we make you feel?” Dad asks, not exactly shouting, but not in a regular speaking voice, either.
She sighs. “I’ve been thinking. Thinking quite a bit,” she says. She takes a few deep breaths. I’m not sure, but it looks like her lower lip is quivering.
Good. Go ahead and cry. You should.
She turns and walks to the window, facing away from us. The light from the streetlamp makes her blond hair glow like a halo. “One thing we always agreed on, Ted, was that we both wanted what’s best for the children.”
“That’s true,” Dad says.
“We may not have always agreed on what was best, but we did always want them to be all right.”
“What’s your point, Kat?”
“Well, argue all you want, but we both agreed for many reasons that we didn’t want them to Change. We gave them the treatments to spare them pain. So forgive me for being just a little bit upset that it didn’t work.”
He holds his hands up. There isn’t much to say. “Katherine?”
Her shoulders are moving in tiny little jerks. She’s crying.
He goes to her and touches her back. “Kat.”
I figure she’s going to turn and smash him in the mouth with her fist. Instead, she goes into his arms and he holds her as she cries into his chest.
Hell just froze over.
It’s too awkward to watch. I go into my room and lie down. What is going on here? Can things get any weirder?
A few minutes later there’s a knock on the door. “Come in,” I call.
She comes in and sits on the edge of the bed, while Dad stands in the doorway. She looks at me with red eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry.
She takes a breath. “I just wanted to say how deeply, deeply sorry I am about the way I behaved the other day. I want you to know that no matter what, I would never be ashamed of you. I love you.”
We don’t get along most of the time, but she’s my mom, and I do love her. Oh man, I’m losing it. I’ve been so up and down over the past few weeks I keep feeling like I’m about to burst into tears or maniacal laughter. This time, it’ll be tears. I guess she sees this, because her eyes well up again.
I sit up and we hug.
“Let’s all go back to the living room,” Dad says. “Then we can talk.”
“Would you mind if we went back to my house, instead? I’m sure we would be more comfortable there.”
He laughs. “I’m sure you would be. But that brings up another problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Troy. We can’t have people knowing about this,” Dad says.
“Look. He’s my husband,” Mom says. “He’s in this as much as we are.”
Dad lets out a heavy breath. “You’re sure you can trust him?”
Her lips press tight. “I married him. Obviously I have confidence in him.”
“Yeah, well, you married me, too.”
“Good point,” she says, and her mouth loosens in a smile.
“You’re right. He’s entitled to know. But maybe we should have the first conversation here, so we have a plan. We can eat and talk.”
“Eat? Do you even have anything in your refrigerator?” She raises an eyebrow at him.
“Well, not much.”
“Let me guess: half a jar of mustard, ketchup, three hot dogs frozen to the bottom of your freezer. Oh, and milk, with an expiration date from around when Danny was in elementary school.”
“You think you still know me.”
“Am I wrong?”
He shakes his head. “The expiration date on the milk is within this past year. Definitely.”
“All right, then,” she says. “If I recall, I have leftover duck, filet mignon, grilled vegetables—”
“Okay, okay,” he says. “Your place is fine. I’ll be ready in five minutes.”
They say food heals all wounds. Okay, they say time does that, but I say food does it, too. As soon as we got home, we opened the refrigerator and took out everything that looked good, and as always there was a lot that looked good. We sat at the kitchen table, going at leftover pasta and shrimp and duck as though we hadn’t eaten in weeks.
Troy came down and put his hand on my shoulder. “Are you coming back home now?”
“I think so.”
“I’m glad to hear it. It’s good to have you back, my brother.”
Dad shook hands with Troy. “You’re looking fit, Troy. Hitting the gym, are you?”
“Squash. How are you, Ted?”
“I’ve been better.”
“What’s wrong?”
Mom looked at Dad. He shrugged. “All aboard, I guess,” he said.
She nodded. “Troy, have a seat. We have a lot to tell you.”
And so we told him everything. He listened, he nodded a lot, and he asked a few questions. He called in to work to say he would be late and might have to take the whole night off.
Then it was down to business.
“I’m not sending my son to one of those compounds,” Mom says. “Absolutely not, under no circumstances.”
“No argument from me,” I say.
“Okay, agreed,” Dad says. “So what are we going to do?”
“I think we should find the best doctors and try a rest center,” Mom says.
“Even the best doctors can’t always avoid the…problems,” Dad says. “And the other thing is, we can’t just try it. He has to be registered to get admitted. Once he’s registered, then he has to go to either a rest center or a compound every month. He’s on the radar and there’s no way off. Not while he’s alive.”
I nod and push my plate away.
Troy leans back in his chair and drums a paradiddle with his fingertips against the tabletop, deep in thought.
Everyone is thinking. The silence is going on too long, and it’s getting loud. “Well, then. What do you want to do?” Mom asks me.
“Me?”
“You,” she says.
I can’t believe it. She’s asking my opinion?
“This is your life,” Dad says. “What do you think?”
The truth is, I’m not sure. “Well, the compound seems like the worst choice in every way. And I’m not too excited about the idea of blowing a circuit in my brain, so the rest center doesn’t appeal, either. If I become a moonrunner I’ll probably get shot to death by the LPCB. The only thing that sounds at all tolerable is finding a place to make a chamber.”
“We’ll do it in the basement,” Tro
y declares without missing a beat. He pushes his chair back about a foot and crosses his right leg over his left. He doesn’t look any more concerned than if he had just offered his house to host an anniversary party for friends.
“You mean here?” Dad asks.
“Of course here. Where else?”
Dad and Mom look at each other, then at Troy.
“I think we’re all in agreement that we’re not going to send him to a compound,” Troy says. “The medical route is obviously too dangerous. The best idea—the only idea that’s feasible—is completely clear. We’ll take care of him at home.”
Again, the three of us are pretty much dumbfounded.
“Harboring a fugitive wulf is a felony,” Dad says. “It’s a big deal.”
“This whole situation is a big deal,” Mom says.
“We’re going to have to tell the girls,” I say. “Right?”
“I don’t see any way around it,” Dad says.
Troy nods. “We’ll make sure they understand how serious this is and that they absolutely cannot discuss it with anyone.”
“One other thing,” I say. “What about school? If I’m out during the full moon every month, they have to report it to the LPCB.”
“How many times before they make the report?” Dad asks.
“I don’t know the exact policy, but I heard about Millbrook reporting a kid after he was out two full moons in a row. That was the last anyone saw of him. So what are we going to do after two months?”
There’s a silence, then Dad says, “We can’t worry about that right now. Let’s just get through this Change.”
Mom shakes her head. “Why move forward with a plan if we know we’ll run into a serious problem in two months?”
“Because we don’t have any time to lose,” Dad says. “We’ve got thirteen days to figure something out. At least he’ll be safe, and we buy ourselves another month to think.”
Troy starts nodding to himself. “Okay. I know a fellow. He’s the brother of Stanford Chase.” Troy turns to Dad. “A colleague of mine at the firm and a close friend. So Stanford’s brother comes to play golf with us a few nights a year. He runs a private school in the city. And I’ve heard tell from Stanford that his brother has done favors for people—wulves, specifically—for whom he has some kind of affinity. I have a feeling what he was alluding to is that this school has been a haven for some who choose alternatives to registration.”
“You’re saying I would go to that school?
“It’s a possibility. I’d have to look into it.”
“What kind of school?” Dad asks.
“Top notch. Very wealthy and influential alumni—and consequently, the government doesn’t audit their attendance or personnel files.”
A private school? “So wait. I’d have to drop out of Carpathia and go there?”
“I know it’s not ideal,” Troy says, clapping me on the shoulder. “I’m hip to that. But it’s better than going to a compound, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s true,” I agree. This would mean I’d have to leave my friends. Claire. And Juliet. We’d never see each other anymore. Would I have to break up with her?
“Are you still with us, bucko?” Troy asks.
“Huh? Yeah, I am. I was just thinking about how complicated this is going to be. Especially with my friends.”
“Don’t worry about it yet,” Dad says. “Maybe down the road we’ll think of another way.”
“So what do we do now?” Mom asks.
Dad pushes his chair away from the table and stands up. “Let’s take a look downstairs.”
We watch while Dad walks slowly around the bare basement, checking out the walls and ceiling. “I’m surprised you didn’t finish the basement. It’s big, could make a great space.”
Troy says, “We would have liked to, but it takes in water. Even with the sump pump, it’s too humid down here.”
“When we’re done with all this, I might be able to fix that,” Dad says. He starts to pace out the floor, getting rough measurements. He pulls a ballpoint pen from his pocket and writes them on his forearm. He paces it out in the other direction and writes that figure, too. Looks up at the ceiling, then the wall opposite him, and writes a third number on his arm. “I’ll build the chamber. I’m going to start tomorrow.”
“Are you going to bring your crew?” Mom asks.
“No. Can’t tell them. I’ll have Kevin help with some of it.”
“Who’s Kevin?” Troy asks.
“He’s my partner in the contracting company. Not a blood relative—actually, he’s human—but he might as well be family.”
“I’ll help too,” Troy says. “I’m supposed to leave for Vienna tomorrow, but I’ll cancel.”
“Don’t cancel,” Dad says. “We don’t want any changes in routine.”
“But I’d like to help,” Troy says. “I’m pretty handy with a screwdriver.”
“Do you have a lot of construction experience?”
“Well, none, really,” he says with a smile. The fact that he’s not pretending to be “one of the guys” kind of impresses me.
Dad says, “That’s okay. Believe me, you’ll help in other ways. Just keep up appearances, go about your work as usual. You know what could be helpful? I don’t know if I have the cash on hand to get all the materials….”
Troy waves his hand and shakes his head. “Money is absolutely not a problem. Don’t give it another thought.”
“Great. Thank you.”
Troy shrugs and smiles.
Dad tucks the bottom of his Henley into his jeans. The shirt is tight across his broad shoulders, chest, and arms. It’s funny: when Mom first married Troy, I imagined play-by-play scenes of cage matches in which Dad slowly beat the crap out of him. Now, we’re all working together. Weird how things turn out.
Dad looks around one more time. “I’ll need to be here pretty much day and night. Sorry, but you’re going to have to get used to having me around.”
“I can help build,” I say.
“You have school,” Mom says.
Dad says, “Maybe we can skip a day here and there when I need a pair of strong hands?”
“No problem,” I say. I look at Mom. She shrugs and nods.
“I’ll have the first materials delivered tomorrow.”
“The neighbors will notice,” Troy points out.
“True. Let word get out that you’re finishing the basement. The basement will be smaller because of the chamber, but nobody would ever be able to tell, not without checking against blueprints.”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “I just thought of something. What about Loretta? What do we tell her?”
Dad’s looking at me, confused, and Troy says, “Our housekeeper. She’s here every night. That could be a problem.”
Mom shakes her head. “I don’t think so. Loretta never, ever comes down here, not since that raccoon got in. We can tell her the same story: that we’re finishing the basement.”
“And she’ll be gone during the full moon when I’m down here.”
“I’m not worried about her,” Mom says. “Anything else we should be doing?”
“Tomorrow you need to go buy two large dogs.”
“What?” she says. The last thing she’d ever want in her house is a couple of dogs shedding all over the furniture. Okay, well maybe the last thing she would want in her house is an adolescent werewulf, but dogs would be next on her list. “Is that a joke?”
“Have to do it,” Dad says. “I’m going to put heavy soundproofing in the chamber, but there’s still a chance people could hear Danny howling.”
She shakes her head. “Of all the animals, dogs. They’re so high-maintenance.”
I could make a comment about the fact that she never complains about Jessica, the absolute queen of high-maintenance, but this is no time for jokes.
For some reason, Troy has a little smile on his face.
“What’s funny?” I ask him.
“Nothing. It
’s just that I always wanted dogs, and this is a horrible reason to get them.”
“Well, I never wanted pets,” Mom says. “But we’ll do what we have to do.”
Dad shows us where the new walls will go, where the door will be, ventilation, everything. It feels like we’re planning a war. Which, I guess, we are.
Building the chamber has been a good distraction for me. Lola and Poe, the two Siberian huskies we got, stayed downstairs with us while we worked. They seemed to like me a lot; probably because I was the one who walked them most. It was a good time to think, just walking with the dogs in the quiet of the night.
What with the Change, Juliet, building the chamber, school, and now this completely weird thing of Mom and Dad being back under the same roof every day, there was a lot to think about. “It’s crazy, right, Poe? Lola, what do you think?” They looked up at me whenever I talked, and I almost wondered if we would understand each other in a different way after I’ve been through the Change. Maybe we’ll have in-depth conversations about literature and politics.
It was a bad scene when we told Jess and Paige. We were all together. Troy stayed in the background and let Dad do most of the talking.
“I don’t get it,” Paige said. She sat back into the corner of the couch and put her bare feet up, knees to her chest.
“He had the genetic treatments,” Jess said. “How can this happen?”
“You know he wasn’t able to finish them,” Mom said. “We thought he made it past the critical point, but apparently he didn’t.”
Paige swallowed. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“We’re going to make sure he’s okay,” Dad said.
“Hold on,” Jessica said. “We’re not sending him to a compound, are we?”
I tried to laugh. “Come on, Jess. Getting rid of me for a few days every single month? This is what you’ve been waiting for. What could be better?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “This isn’t funny.” There was a quaver in her voice.
“Jess?” I said. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Shut up,” she said, punching me in the arm. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. I want to hear that from him,” she said, hooking her thumb at Dad without looking at him. I could see that she was scared. She twisted a lock of hair around her finger. “We can’t send him to a compound.”
