by Amira Rain
“Or, even ask if they could give him some medication in conjunction with a short stay at a rehab facility or something. Dad’s state medical might cover—”
“He doesn’t want it, Tara. Sorry. I know you want him to keep trying, but it’s pointless. The hospital just called me a little bit ago, telling me that Dad is saying he just wants to go home. He doesn’t want drugs, he doesn’t want a week in the rehab place they offered to send him to, he just wants to go home. And, being that he doesn’t have a concussion or anything, they have to release him soon.”
“Well, what if you go to the hospital again and try to talk to him? You could try to convince him—”
“Tara, how many times are you going to forgive him? You forgive him, and you forgive him, and you forgive him, over and over and over and over. When is it going to end? I thought it had finally ended when Dad nearly got himself killed and made you do what you had to do in order to pay off the mob, and yet here we are again. Here you are, forgiving him once more.”
Not used to Kevin speaking to me in a harsh sort of tone and kind of thrown by it, I didn’t answer right away. “It’s not that I’m necessarily ‘forgiving’ Dad, as far as condoning his actions or letting him off the hook for his actions. I’m not. I’m not saying that what he’s done in the past, and what he’s still doing, is okay. It’s definitely not okay. I hate it. I’m just saying that sometimes people do very bad things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad people, and that doesn’t mean we should completely close our hearts off from them when they’re at least making attempts to do better.”
I suddenly paused, realizing that that was exactly what I was doing to Warren. Closing my heart off to him because of his bad actions, despite the fact that he’d treated me well otherwise, and despite the fact that he seemed to be a man capable of love, at least toward his daughter, anyway.
But still, my dad hurting himself and his family by continuing to drink seemed like an apple to the orange of a man abducting a woman and essentially holding her captive. Which was why I was still planning to hold Warren at arm’s length.
In response to what I’d said, Kevin just said “Whatever,” then sighed, said he had to go pick up our dad, and asked me to give Sam a hug for him. I said I would, and we ended the call.
I sat on the couch, thinking, and after a minute or so, I texted Kevin, asking him to please send me our dad’s phone number. Less than a minute later, he did, adding a very cheerless message. I’d just save my time if I were you. Whatever you say to him or text him isn’t going to help.
I realized he very well might be right. I realized that sending a text might just be a waste of my time. Nonetheless, though, I began typing one out, then attached a picture of Sam I’d taken a few days earlier, a picture of her with wide eyes and an even wider smile, hair sticking up in a mini Mohawk when she’d just woken up from a nap.
After attaching the picture, I reread the message I’d typed, which said Hi Grandpa, I just wanted to tell you that you’re my only grandparent, and I love you, and I need you to try again. Love, Sam
I’d just hit send when Sam herself began stirring in her playpen, making a few feisty little squawks. I got up from the couch to go get her, hoping with all my heart that she really was a magical girl, and that her picture and “her” message might encourage her grandpa to not give up. As if reading my mind and wanting to prove to me right then that she was a Magical at least in one way, she reached up toward me with sparks of bright white light circling around her little fingertips when I reached her playpen.
A few more days passed, and Warren still didn’t return home. Despite desperately not wanting to, I couldn’t deny that I missed him in some funny sort of way, which made me feel a bit empty somehow. Cheering me up a bit, I got a text from Kevin, simply saying that our dad was “back on the wagon.”
I missed my meeting in the forest with Brooke, only realizing I’d done so until late at night. I wasn’t necessarily sorry, though. Now very unsure about the Graywolves, I was no longer certain that Brooke’s motive in wanting to help Sam and me was entirely pure.
Besides, I didn’t feel like Sam and I needed helping anymore, and as badly as I felt about not telling Brooke this personally, I hoped she’d figure in time that I hadn’t shown up because Sam and I were okay.
I recalled Brooke saying that she’d keep coming back to the forest path we’d met on weekly until we could connect, but I didn’t plan on ever showing up, just on the chance that the Graywolves were really as nefarious as Warren made them out to be, and Brooke was a part of that nefariousness.
The day after my missed meeting with her, I made a new friend, and this one from Greenwood. The weather had warmed up to the mid-sixties, making it feel like spring was finally, officially in the air, and after ordering a fruit smoothie and a salad topped with grilled chicken at the café in town, I took Sam and my lunch outside to enjoy it in the sunshine, at one of several umbrella-topped tables outside the café.
With Sam in the crook of my left arm, entertaining herself with her magical sparkling fingers, I hadn’t been eating long when a young woman strolled by, and I recognized her as Ally, the friendly young woman who’d introduced herself and had given me her phone number at the grocery store a couple of months earlier, welcoming me to town and telling me to give her a call anytime I wanted to meet up for coffee or lunch.
Not really trusting anyone or wanting to make friends with anyone in Greenwood because of Warren’s criminal actions, I hadn’t ever called Ally, and now I felt a little guilty when she gave Sam and me a big smile, then said hello and remarked about how big Sam had gotten since she’d seen her last.
“And look at those pretty magical fingers. What a special little miss you are, Sam.”
As if comprehending Ally’s words perfectly, Sam grinned, waving her hands wildly, as if wanting to further show off her neat power as a Magical.
Ally admired Sam a little more, and then I asked her if she happened to be free to join us for lunch. After smiling at me, looking very pleased that I’d offered, she said she’d love to, but that she’d already eaten.
“I’d love to grab a smoothie and visit with you, though. Just one second.”
She dashed in the café, long brown ponytail swinging, and soon reappeared with a large smoothie in hand. Sam greeted her with a huge grin, as if she was a long lost pal.
Only about ten minutes into our lunch visit, I began deeply regretting that I hadn’t called Ally and gotten together with her sooner. With a bubbly, positive personality and a quick laugh, she was like a ray of sunshine at the café table. She had a quick wit and even a devilish sense of humor as well. When we got on the subject of shifters, and she told me a joke about shifters’ notorious prowess in the bedroom, lowering her voice conspiratorially with a glint in her eyes. I started to laugh, but immediately, Ally looked horrified, briefly covering her mouth with her hands.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have told that joke around Sam. I forgot about little ears. Sorry.”
I laughed even harder than I would have at the actual joke, glancing down and seeing that Sam appeared to be off in her own little world with her sparkling fingers. “Please don’t even worry about it, Ally. I think complete verbal comprehension is quite a long way off for Sam.”
Soon, while I continued eating my salad, Sam got a little grabby with my plastic fork, trying to wrench it out of my hands with each bite. Ally offered to hold her, and I gratefully accepted, lifting Sam across the table, eliciting a little indignant squawk.
Once in Ally’s arms, her indignation turned to smiles, and Ally smiled back at her. “What a beauty you are, Miss Sam. What a beauty.”
Puzzled, I noticed that Ally’s eyes had suddenly become a little pink and shiny, and I wondered if something was wrong, or if she just had spring allergies.
As if reading my mind, she soon sniffed a little and looked up, still smiling. “Don’t mind me. I always get a little misty when I hold babies t
hese days. My husband and I lost a baby a little over five months ago, when I was seven months pregnant.
It was a boy, and we named him Michael. He would have been the same age as Sam now, and just feeling her weight in my arms… well, it just makes me think about what if Michael had lived, and what it would feel like to hold him right now.”
Eyes still pink, Ally smiled again. I myself was so misty I was about a hair away from flowing tears.
“I’m so sorry, Ally.”
Again, she smiled. “Thanks. I’m still heartbroken, and I always will be, but lately, things have been better. Every day when I wake up, I think, ‘Well, I can either smile or cry.’ And most days, I choose to smile, because I know that Michael would want me to be happy, and I see it as a way of honoring him. And now Nathan and I are trying for another baby, so that keeps me going, too.”
Just then, a pair of preteen girls Ally apparently knew strolled by with a Chihuahua on a leash, and she greeted each of them by name enthusiastically. Smiling, the girls stopped and said hello, and their dog immediately began barking loudly, startling Sam and making her wail.
Reaching across the table to take her from Ally, I explained that she’d never seen a dog before. One of the girls picked up the dog, quieting it, and at the same time, I quieted Sam, rocking her and speaking in a low voice.
“That’s just a doggie, baby. It didn’t mean to scare you.”
Quiet but with a quivering lower lip, Sam looked at the dog, still with her fingers throwing miniscule white sparks. The dog looked at her curiously from several feet away, then did just a single fairly quiet bark, more of a woof, but that was enough to get Sam wailing again. However, that wasn’t all she did.
Or maybe she didn’t even mean to do it; maybe it just happened. But at any rate, within a blink, her body was suddenly enveloped by a bright, silvery white light that somehow seemed to be rolling out in waves, as if it were coming from Sam’s very pores. With her whole body positively glowing, she abruptly stopped crying and glanced down, surveying her body curiously.
One of the girls gasped. “Look at her! She’s doing a protection spell!”
I glanced up at her. “What do you mean? How do you know that?”
“Well, she’s a Magical, right? And she got scared of Barkley. So, I just figure she’s doing some kind of a magical protection spell on herself right now. It just makes sense.”
I had to admit that it did.
The girls were soon called away by a teenage girl who’d just exited the café, possibly a sister, and once they’d bounced away with their dog, Sam’s “magical protection spell” disappeared, and she just stared up at me, blinking, just as calm as could be, as if nothing had happened.
I smiled at her, incredulous. “Just wait until Daddy hears about this!”
Just then, Ally’s phone dinged with a text alert, and she picked up her phone and scanned the screen, smiling.
“It looks like Sam’s daddy should be home within the hour. Nathan just texted me that he, Chief Alexander, and the other men aren’t too far away.”
Even before she’d finished speaking, my heart had started hammering in my chest.
*
When Warren walked in the door, asking if anyone was home, Sam shrieked with joy, all but leaping from my arms into his.
After he’d cuddled her up for a good few minutes, planting kisses on her chubby cheeks and forehead and telling her how much he’d missed her, he looked over to where I stood finishing a bowl of fruit salad at the island. “And how have you been? Did you miss me as much as Sam seems to have?”
Seeing a mischievous little glint in his eyes, I snorted, though fighting a smile. “Oddly enough, I did.”
The instant the words were out of my mouth, I realized that I hadn’t really meant to say them. In fact, I hadn’t meant to say them at all. I had no idea why I had. I supposed that I just hadn’t had my “filter” on, so I’d just plain slipped.
Now, with my face a little warm, I struggled to cover it, turning my gaze back to my fruit salad and stabbing a few tiny red grapes. “I missed you because Sam missed you, I mean.”
Warren didn’t answer right away. “Well, how does that work?”
Chewing my grapes with a slight sense of irritation, I couldn’t think how what I’d said might “work,” exactly, but once I’d swallowed, I thought of something. “Mothers and babies, especially mothers and daughters, can pick up on each other’s emotions, and even share those emotions, Warren, and that’s what I meant with me and Sam. I picked up on her missing you, so I sort of started missing you, too.”
“I see. And was that the only reason you missed me? Just because you were sharing what Sam felt?”
I looked up from spearing a cube of watermelon and found the mischievous little glint back in Warren’s eyes, which irritated me further. “Yes. That was the only reason I missed you. Just because Sam did. And, frankly, I really don’t want to talk about it any further.”
Fortunately for him, because in my embarrassment, my irritation was veering toward anger, Warren dropped the subject and went back to cuddling Sam, making her giggle, patting her daddy’s face with one hand.
Giving the two of them some daddy-daughter bonding time, I spent the rest of the afternoon doing laundry while they played and spent time together out in the living room. Poking my head in while waiting for the dryer to finish, I saw a sight that made my heart melt. Reading Sam an illustrated book called The Wiggliest Puppy, Warren sat on the couch, with Sam looking like a tiny baby doll in the crook of one of his muscular arms.
Reading animatedly about a puppy so wiggly that it wiggled right off its puppy bed, Warren really did seem to be a natural father. Looking at the pictures in the book with an unusually serious expression, Sam looked as if she was on the edge of her seat to find out what the wiggly puppy was going to do next.
After I’d folded a load of her bigger new clothes, I heard her crying and took her from Warren to nurse her, then handed her back for him to change. I’d just gotten back to the laundry room when Kevin called, reporting that our dad was “shaking and sweating like crazy,” but refusing to go to the hospital or a clinic.
“He keeps saying he just wants to be in his own bed.”
I asked Kevin how long these symptoms had been going on, and when he said about twenty-four hours, I said that hopefully, the worst of it was over.
“He’ll probably turn the corner soon, but in the meantime, I think you should stay pretty close to him. Bring him water and juice to keep him hydrated, popsicles, too, if you have them, and if you don’t, maybe send Derek or Joey down to the store. Have them get some soup, too, if you don’t have any in the house. Just keep pushing fluids so dad stays hydrated, and maybe just sit and talk to him, too, when he’s awake.”
“Talk to him about what?”
Transferring a pile of my shirts from the washer to the dryer, I sighed. “Just, anything, Kevin. Talk to him about your life. Talk to him about any movies or TV shows you’ve watched recently, and ask him what some of his favorite movies or shows are. Ask him how he’s feeling.”
“Because he’s been so concerned with how we’ve all been feeling the past six years, right?”
Shutting the dryer door, I sighed again. “He’s been a terrible, terrible father, Kevin. We all know it, and I think on some level, he realizes it, too. But he hasn’t always been the way he has for the past six years. He’s been very ill. That doesn’t excuse a single thing he’s done, and I myself still have a lot of anger and resentment toward him like I know you do, but I just don’t think now is the time to display it.”
I paused, leaning a hip against the washer. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, Kev, but I think you should soften your heart toward him a little. Just for right now, just while he’s trying. If he falls off the wagon again, you can do whatever you want. You can go back to not speaking to him.”
After a long pause, Kevin said fine, and we soon hung up. I went to put Sam’s laundry away,
wondering if I should or could take some of my own advice but applying it to a different person, softening my heart toward Warren. I just didn’t know.
All I did know was that since he’d come home, I’d developed a lightness in my chest similar to what I’d felt the day I’d read the note that he’d written posing as Sam. I also knew that I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen him look as devastatingly sexy as he’d looked when he’d first stepped in the door a few hours earlier, dressed in a white t-shirt, battered jeans that hung low on his slim hips, and heavy brown work boots, and with his dark hair rakishly tousled, matching the same “just back from a mission” vibe that the scruffy dark stubble on his face was giving off.
That evening over dinner, I told Warren about the “protection shield” Sam had done that day, adding that I wasn’t positive that’s what it had been.
“Honestly, thinking about it now, it might have been less a ‘protection shield’ and more simply some sort of an unconscious manifestation of her just being scared. Because after all, I’m not sure what the glowing light around her would have done to stop the dog if he’d lunged at her, which he wasn’t even close to doing, thank God, but still.
There’s just really no way to tell if her ‘shield,’ if she does it again, will really protect her from whatever particular thing that she’s scared of, or if it’s more just a sign that she’s scared.”
Warren agreed that there was no way to tell, but said that he was glad that there was even the possibility that her “shield” might really be a shield. “I hope with everything in me that she’s never in a position of needing to defend herself from someone trying to hurt her, but it’s comforting to think that just in case, she might have a built-in magical defense system for the rest of her life.”
