by Karen Ranney
I’d done the same more than once and to the best of my knowledge I hadn’t looked afraid, either. But I was a woman and for me to do something like that was almost shocking. Women were supposed to be meek, demure, and subservient, at least to some degree.
Back to square peg, round hole or vice versa.
There weren't very many households headed by women in the Were community. A girl normally lived with her parents until she married. I was an exception there, too. A widow might choose not to remarry and that was perfectly acceptable. A woman like Doreen — if the Council ruled against her — would be a slightly different story. It was almost like a sign would appear overnight above her house: something is wrong with this one. The rationale being that no Were husband would divorce a good wife.
The husband was never thought to be responsible for a divorce. Nope, it must have been the wife. Either she hadn’t been a good enough cook or she’d refused her husband in the bedroom or she had other faults that rendered her unsuitable for marriage.
Doreen would be gossiped about for months, if not years. Some Were establishments might even go so far as to actively discourage her from conducting business with them. Some people would definitely shun her.
I was on the cusp of being treated the same way. If anyone in the clan learned that I was now Pranic, my name would be more sensational than Doreen’s. I could expect to be furry non grata just about everywhere. The fact that Hamish Boyd was my father wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.
It was only a matter of time. At least I was prepared to endure it. I’d lived for years among civilians. I was ready. At least that’s what I told myself.
I still sat there like a doofus, watching a few of the Council members get into their cars. The parking lights overhead were nearly obscured by the rain, their watery light making the scene appear like the Degas’ painting of Waterloo Bridge.
I couldn't help but wonder what kind of clinical trial Mark was participating in. Did it have anything to do with the super-duper blood we’d both received in the transfusion? Or had he lied about that to my father?
I didn't want to see Mark. I didn't want to talk to Mark. I didn't want to have anything to do with him. Then why was I still sitting here? The best thing to do was to treat him exactly like he’d treated me. Well, not exactly. I wasn't going to take him to bed, make wild passionate love to him, and then ignore him for the rest of my life.
The least the man could have done was to send me a note to explain. Dear Torrance, you’re too much effort. You don't interest me. I have a girlfriend back home. I prefer guys. Something other than a vast wasteland of silence.
I decided that I wasn't as angry as I was hurt. My pride was also affected and that most definitely was not a good combination.
The knock on the window made me jump.
I rolled down the window to see Doreen standing there drenched, her hair plastered to her skull. She was shivering, holding her arms around her waist. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so wet.
If I’d been a better person, I would've invited her inside the car, but it was only two weeks old and I didn't want the passenger seat ruined. Oh, what the hell.
"Get in,” I said. “You're going to drown out there.”
Thunder obliterated what she said.
I rolled down the window all the way and shouted. “What?”
"You didn't stand up for me in there," she said. "The first woman on the Council and you just sat there without saying a word. How could you?"
I didn't quite know what to say to that because it hadn't occurred to me to speak when my father was questioning her. You didn’t interrupt Hamish.
"You just sat there,” she repeated. “You should have said something, Torrance. For the friendship I have with your mother, if for no other reason."
When someone spoke to me in that tone of voice, I immediately felt defensive. I wasn’t a five year old. Nor do I like being talked down to or treated like a child.
She hadn't made any move to get into the car and I didn't urge her to do so now.
"Well," I said. "The Council hasn't made up their mind."
She gave me a look that I saw in the watery parking lot light. She and I both knew that the verdict was probably not coming down in her favor.
In all honesty, I was leaning toward approving the divorce, but I didn’t tell her that.
I had my finger on the window button. The rain was coming into the car and I didn't want to get any wetter than I was.
"You've always been a difficult person to like, Torrance."
Don't get me wrong, I'm not always Little Mary Sunshine, but it seemed to me that if I wanted a favor from somebody I wouldn't insult her.
I wanted to ask Doreen why the hell she considered me difficult. I stopped myself. Maybe I should have business cards made up: Torrance Boyd, DVM, disliked by Doreen Rice. I’d probably bring a lot of business to the clinic.
"Go home, Doreen," I said, as politely as I was able. "Nothing's going to be decided tonight." I wasn’t going to treat her like an idiot and tell her to get out of the rain — however much she deserved it.
Another rumble of thunder drowned out her words, and maybe that was a good thing, because I don’t think I could repeat what she said to my mother.
I rolled up the window, put the car in gear and headed for home.
Chapter Eight
Whoever said ignorance was bliss didn’t have an ounce of curiosity
After work the next day I decided that I needed to talk to my mother.
Doreen had called the clinic a dozen times, managing to irritate Marianne, our head receptionist.
Nothing irritated Marianne. She was the most unflappable person I’d ever met. In her sixties, she had shoulder length brown hair that was turning white. She didn’t care. Nor did she give a flying fig about a lot of things. Marianne had a face that could be alternately plain or beautiful depending on if her eyes sparkled with humor and she was smiling or if she was pissed.
She was a genius at handling impatient owners. Plus, she had a way of handling final bill issues that made her a diplomat. We weren’t the cheapest vet practice in town. Because we did a lot of specialized medicine our charges easily mounted up. But Marianne could deliver the amount to an owner with a smile, then ask if it would be debit or credit.
She only got angry when faced with an animal that had been left on our doorstep, something that unfortunately happened from time to time. Marianne would ask one of the vets to check out the animal then go about the task of finding homes for the abandoned pets.
I’d never known her to be annoyed at a caller before, but evidently Doreen was tweaking her last nerve.
"Is there anything you can do to get her to stop calling?" she asked me around noon. Six calls in and six more to come.
"It doesn't matter," I said. “If I talk to her or not, she's just gonna call me again. Evidently, she thinks I have Alzheimer's and I'm going to forget our conversation."
Doreen acted as if she hadn’t sworn at me the night before. I guess that was supposed to have also conveniently slipped my mind.
"What does she want?"
Now that was tricky. Since nobody knew what I was at the clinic, I couldn't very well go into an explanation of the Celtic Council. Nor could I explain the Were tradition of asking for permission to divorce. Despite the fact that I don't like lying, I made up something.
“She wants me to do her a favor,” I said.
"Well, she’s going around it the wrong way.”
I most emphatically agreed.
Something had to be done. I could not have another conversation with Doreen. Every single one of them was the same.
You have to do something.
He can't be allowed to leave us.
He can't just walk away from his family.
Just about this time I was beginning to feel a lot of empathy toward Michael. I couldn't help but wonder if Doreen had badgered him to death, too.
I wished I could c
onvince Doreen to go with the flow and change her life. Change wasn’t easy for most people. For some reason, they adopted a pattern in their lives and thought it was going to last forever. Things didn’t last forever. I encountered that glaring fact every day of my practice.
One of the hardest things I had to do was tell an owner that his pet had a life ending disease. I hated saying that the darling dog or sweet cat they cuddled yesterday wouldn’t be with them for long. Life held an impermanence I battled each day. Even though I’d been known to take the smallest chance to save an animal, I sometimes didn’t win.
Instead of going home right after work, I gave Simon a call and asked if he could feed the Brood. Thankfully, he agreed. That was one thing about Simon. He had a can do attitude. Regardless of what I threw at him, Simon just did it.
I headed for my parent’s house out IH-10. Their subdivision was designed for the uber wealthy and veddy, veddy elite, not necessarily Were. Some of the homes were examples of the worst taste imaginable. My parent’s house was a Spanish colonial with white walls and a red brick roof. It sat perched on a hill accessible only through a corkscrew set of turns. The day they invented flying cars, I was sure my father would buy one. In our rare ice storms, the descent proved to be impossible.
I don't know what going to see my mother would do, but if nothing else maybe she could pull Doreen off me. Besides, for some reason, I felt in need of a little maternal nurturing. My sister, Sandy, was in New York with a friend. I wondered if that friend was actually a female or if it was Craig’s brother. Their relationship wasn't exactly frowned on, but neither was it welcomed with open arms. The Palmers were on thin ice with my father.
My brother’s car was parked in front of the garage. I'd forgotten, until now, that he was home. My father had been working on him for the last three years. Instead of finishing his doctorate in psychology, Hamish wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and become an attorney.
Evidently, he’d been able to convince Austin to see the error of his ways. I know he’d dangled a few good-sized plums in front of him, not the least of which was an almost instantaneous partnership in his law firm. Pretty good for a brand-new attorney.
Frankly, I’ve never been able to envision Austin as a psychologist. He had zero empathy. I could, however, see him telling a patient that she should just pull herself up by the bootstraps and get on with her life.
Maybe he’d planned to go into research or a specialty that would allow him to work in law enforcement. I didn’t know since we never talked about his plans for the future — besides being a professional student.
If Austin was home that meant I wouldn't have a chance to really visit with my mother. She gushed around Austin. She flitted around him, desperate to make everything within his purview perfect. Would you like the crusts cut off your sandwich? Would you like another soda? Was it cold enough? Would you like a pickle?
It would've been irritating if I hadn't craved the exact same attention myself.
She did it with all of us when she hadn't seen us for a while. But Austin was a bit different, being the only boy. I think it was a Were culture thing. He was a future alpha and she was just female.
My mother had been a nurse before she married my father and she’d used her medical skill in many ways when we were growing up. Austin had been as stupid as the rest of us and had attempted feats of derring-do that had gotten him into physical trouble. Mom had always been there to soothe the hurt, bandage the booboo, and croon.
My mother was also one of those women who channeled Martha Stewart. Everything she cooked was from scratch. A box was not allowed space in her pantry. Cans were only acceptable if they were BPA free and contained an exotic ingredient she couldn’t find anywhere else. She grew most of her own produce, bought grass fed beef, and insisted on only organic veggies and fruits. She went to the farmer’s market three times a week, made her own tomato sauce and mustard, and dried her own spices.
She was a gourmet cook, a beautiful woman, and a wonderful mother.
We children, however, were not as perfect.
The older the three of us got, the less we had in common. I thought Austin was an entitled prig. Sandy, on the other hand, was a sweetie who stayed close to home, emulating my mother in all her skills and abilities.
If Austin went on to law school, he would probably go to St. Mary's here in San Antonio. For the last four years he’d occupied the apartment over the garage, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to think of him living at home.
Honestly? I think it was only a matter of time until my father and my brother clashed. They were both strong Weres.
Austin was as stubborn as my father. In a great many ways, however, I think Austin was less forward thinking. From our limited conversations on the subject — since I always lost my temper when he started to pontificate — he believed that women should be seen and not heard. Or if they were heard, it was to answer a male's questions and to ensure that his existence was a form of perfection.
Like how my mother acted.
Austin did not approve of my being a dog doctor — his words. He also hadn’t approved of my accepting the inheritance from my grandmother. According to him, I should have turned it over to my father, married, and settled down to a life of domestic bliss.
It's a good thing he didn't know about the Pranic side of things.
My father’s concubines had produced offspring for him as well. Even in this enlightened era, I’d never met my half brothers and sisters. I wasn’t even sure how many half siblings I had. I think that was because my father didn’t want all the families to meet.
The strange thing was: I’m the one he told when he left for Houston or Dallas. It was an odd feeling, being his confidante. He knew I wouldn’t say anything and the information was only in case of an emergency. If something ever happened and everyone was running around going, “Where’s Hamish? Where’s Hamish?” I’d calmly pick up my phone and call him.
I'm the oldest child in our family, but I have no idea if I'm the oldest of his children. That’s how much I know about his other families.
Whoever said ignorance was bliss didn’t have an ounce of curiosity.
I don't know what my brother thought of my father's other families. We never discussed it. No doubt he thought it was proper behavior for the head of a family and he’d behave the same way when the time came. After all, a male Were got to do anything he damn well wanted to do.
Chapter Nine
His legs aren't broken
I entered the house by way of the kitchen.
Caroline, my mother's housekeeper, was stirring something on the stove. Caroline had originally been hired as a maid, but my mother had promoted her within a few weeks. As it was she supervised a staff of two part time maids in a house big enough to require ten people to keep it clean. Frankly, I didn’t know how she did it.
I still had my own room on the second floor that looked just the way I left it when I was seventeen. I hadn't entered it in years and no doubt when I did it would be like entering a time warp. My diary was somewhere, either under the mattress or under the bed or in the secret compartment in my vanity. That was, unless Austin had already found it.
I heard him from where I was standing and immediately became annoyed. I didn't like anybody being mean to Mom, especially one of her own children. Sandy was a saint or as close to sainthood as a woman could get. Me, not so close.
“I don't like egg salad. And don't say it's good for me."
How truculent my brother sounded. I rolled my eyes at Caroline, but she only smiled. She was loyal and devoted to my mother and for that I loved her. I stood in the entrance to the breakfast nook off the gigantic kitchen. My mother called it the family dining room.
The view was of the garden where Mom cultivated her herbs, tomatoes, and special brands of lettuce. She also grew strawberries and as a kid I used to slip out there at night and sample a row or two. There was nothing quite as wonderful as a fresh strawberry picked right from the
plant.
Austin sat at the head of the rectangular table. Let him try that when our father was home.
My mother's back was to me, but she was bent over a little, in a customary subservient position, offering Austin something, maybe the aforementioned egg salad he disliked.
He looked up and saw me, but his face didn't change. It was arranged in what I’ve come to call the Austin sneer. His upper lip was curled ever so slightly. The expression in his eyes was borderline insulting, as if everything he saw disgusted him.
My brother was a handsome man, a perfect meld of my mother's beauty and my father's striking masculinity. His thick brown hair would probably turn to silver as he aged. He was almost as tall as Hamish, but his physique was slimmer.
However, I’ve always ascribed to the beauty was as beauty does school of thought. If a man had an ugly personality it tended to overshadow his looks. Austin had his toes on the ugly line.
"Hello, Austin. Back from school? Or just starting again?"
I’d often teased him about being a professional student. I probably shouldn’t have pulled his tail, metaphorically speaking, today. He didn't even look at me.
My mother turned her head and broke into a broad smile.
"Torrance, dear. How lovely to see you."
One thing about my mother, she was genuine. Whatever she said you believed. If she was sorry about something that had happened to you, you could feel the empathy and compassion. And like now, I had no doubt that my mother truly welcomed me.
I met her halfway and gave her a hug, not bothering to look at Austin again. He’d probably turned up the wattage on his sneer or consulted his phone for a more important email or text message.
“More tea," he said. He didn’t even add a please or thank you to that request.
We turned and walked back into the kitchen, sitting at the table at the far end, as far away from the family dining room as we could get and still be in the same area.
