Fragile Brilliance (Shifters & Seers)

by Blackwell, Tammy

  On the other hand, her mother was wearing a pair of skinny jeans, an Abercombie shirt he would have thought came from the kid’s section if Abercrombie & Fitch had a children’s section, and a pink jacket with “pink” spelled out in pink rhinestones on the back, just in case you were confused as to what you were seeing. Basically, she looked like a million other teenage girls in the world. Problem was, she wasn’t so much a teenager as the mother of a teenager.

  “Sweetie, if you’re waiting for something better to come along, just give up now, because you are not going to get any better than that.”

  Charlie squirmed under another all-over perusal, and Maggie threw a hand over her face, muttering something about how dying of embarrassment would be a welcome relief at this point.

  Realizing she wasn’t going to get anything other than uncomfortable looks from the two of them, Lynn gave a dramatic sigh. “Well, I suppose it’s a good thing you two are ‘just friends.’” She added an eye-roll to the sarcasm and air-quotes. “You’re going to have to share a bed while you’re here, and I’m definitely not ready to be a grandma yet.”

  Maggie tensed under her mom’s arm. “What do you mean we have to share a bed? Charlie can sleep on the pullout.”

  “We don’t have it anymore,” Lynn said, dropping her arm and giving Maggie the freedom to move closer to the truck. Charlie could see the desire to jump in and drive away in her eyes.

  “What do you mean we don’t have the pullout anymore? Did it break?”

  Her mother played with the zipper on her jacket. “I sold the couch.”

  “You sold the couch.”

  “I needed the money.”

  “For what?”

  Lynn shrugged. “Stuff. Like the electric bill.”

  “Mom, I pay the electric bill. Try again.”

  Lynn turned to Charlie, all batting eyelashes and pouting lips. “Do you hear how she talks to me? Is that any way for a child to speak to her mother?”

  It is if you don’t realize you’re supposed to act like a mother.

  “Don’t worry about the sleeping arrangements,” Charlie said instead. “I’ve got a sleeping bag. I can just crash on the floor somewhere.”

  Maggie’s eyes met his from across the bed of the truck. “I told you this was a bad idea,” she said. “Let’s just go.”

  “Leave? What? You can’t leave, Maggie Mae. You just got here.” A tear trailed down the side of her face, but instead of making Charlie feel sorry for her, he kind of wanted to shake her a few times and tell her to get ahold of herself. “I’m sorry I sold the couch. I know you worked really hard to get enough money to buy it, but the brakes went out on the Mustang again, and it’s the only way I can get to work. I had to do something.” She surged forward and grabbed onto her daughters hands. “Please don’t leave me, baby girl. I miss you so much it hurts.”

  Maggie closed her eyes and took a deep breath before finally giving in and wrapping her arms around her mother. While they embraced, Charlie went ahead and got their bags out of the truck.

  An hour later, Charlie was looking at the pictures covering the wall of the living room when an older man saddled up next to him, a can of Budweiser in one had. The smell had Charlie’s stomach working itself into knots. Beer had always been his father’s drink of choice.

  “Who are you, Charlie Hagan?” Maggie’s grandfather asked. Charlie had been introduced to the burly man when he’d entered the house. Even though he hadn’t lived in Scotland since he was five, Barron McCray still had a touch of an accent. According to Maggie, he clung onto it for dear life, out of fear that once he lost it he wouldn’t be able to ramble on about “the way things are done in Scotland” for hours on end any longer.

  “Charlie Hagan, sir,” Charlie said, even though the man obviously already knew his name. Still, what was he supposed to say? If Maggie had asked, he would have had a million different answers. “I’m the guy who thinks of you twenty-four hours a day;” or “I’m the guy who doesn’t deserve your friendship but is damn grateful he has it anyway;” or “I’m the guy who can rip the door off of a car if the moon and mood is right, but would rather run and hide than talk to your grandfather.” “I go to school with Maggie.”

  Mr. MrCray studied Charlie’s expression in the reflection afforded by the glass in all the picture frames. “I want to know what you are to my granddaughter.”

  “I’m her friend,” Charlie replied automatically, although even he wasn’t stupid enough to think that was the right word for what they were to one another. She wanted more. It was obvious when they were together, leaned against one another on the couch as they watched whatever BBC nonsense Jase and Talley were forcing on them or while they were bent over a project one of them was working on. In those moments Maggie would look at him like she was waiting for something to change, for their relationship to finally make that final shift. As if he had something more he could give her. As if he was holding part of himself back. What she didn’t understand was there was no more of himself left to give. The part of him she wanted was gone forever, and it was only when he was with her he regretted losing it. Because in those moments, he wanted to give her everything he’d once been and more.

  Charlie looked around for an escape route, but there was nowhere to go. He could hear Maggie humming in the shower where she retreated to hide from her family, and he silently begged her to hurry up and save him.

  “What are you doing with your life, Charlie?”

  “Ummm… I go to school?”

  The old man narrowed his eyes. “You plan on staying there your whole life?”

  “God no.” While it wasn’t nearly as bad as he imagined, Charlie was looking forward to the day he didn’t have to sit through a lecture ever again. “I’m going into the service.” Because being in the Alpha Pack was technically a type of service, right?

  Mr. McCray rocked back on his heels. “I was in the army for eight years. It’s how I met my wife.” He pointed to an orange-hued picture of a young man in a uniform with his arm wrapped around a woman who looked almost identical to Maggie’s mom. “I was stationed in Japan. She worked at a little store just off the base, and I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I made excuses to go to that damn store every day. Sometimes I would beg the other guys to let me go buy their smokes or magazines for them just so I could see her.”

  “Your strategy obviously worked,” Charlie said. There were several pictures of the couple scattered across the wall, and in all of them, they were clinging onto one another as if they were the only things worth having in this whole world.

  “It did. We got married right before I got shipped back to the States. I couldn’t leave her there, and luckily, she felt the same way.”

  They didn’t speak for a while. Mr. McCray seemed to be lost in his memories while Charlie tried to figure out where this conversation was going.

  “I may be an old man, Charlie, but I’m still a man,” Mr. McCray said, breaking the silence when Charlie was getting to the point that he was thinking about just walking away. “I know what you’re thinking about when you look at my granddaughter—“

  “We’re just friends.”

  The old man turned, his eyes drilling into Charlie. “You seem like a good kid, Charlie, but she deserves better than you.” And with that he drained the last of his beer and shoved past Charlie into the kitchen.

  Charlie’s gaze went back to the wall of pictures and stopped on one of a Kindergarten-aged Maggie, her hands caked in mud and a blinding smile on her face. Mr. McCray hadn’t told Charlie anything he didn’t already know. Maggie did deserve better than what he could give her. He’d been saying the same thing for a month now. But knowing that didn’t stop the growing ache in his chest or the desire to prove the old man wrong.

  Chapter 22

  “Mom, where is the turkey?” Maggie asked the next morning. She picked up a gallon of milk, and when the stuff on the inside didn’t move, she tossed it into the garbage can, making a
mental note to drag it out to the curb before the whole house started smelling like homemade cheese. “Please tell me you didn’t leave it in the freezer.”

  Lynn McCray looked up from her Nora Roberts paperback and took a puff of her Salem Light before answering. “I didn’t get a turkey.”

  “What do you mean you didn’t get a turkey? It’s Thanksgiving, Mom.”

  “Why do you care? You don’t eat meat.”

  “But I like the smell of turkey cooking.” It reminded her of her grandmother. Thanksgiving had always been a favorite holiday of Taeko McCray. As an immigrant, she had a sense of national pride missing in most natural-born Americans. The Fourth of July and Thanksgiving were always cause for massive celebration at the McCray residence, Grandmother always making every effort to make sure every tradition was followed. “And how am I supposed to make gravy for the mashed potatoes without the broth from the turkey?”

  Lynn flicked her foot-long ash into a red Solo cup. “We don’t have potatoes either.”

  Maggie stood up slowly, praying this was another one of her mother’s attempts at a prank. “We don’t have potatoes?”

  “Do you know what they want to charge you for just a couple of potatoes? I could buy a whole ten pound bag for that.”

  You cannot kill your mother. You cannot kill your mother. You cannot kill your mother.

  “Mom, what exactly are we supposed to eat for Thanksgiving dinner?”

  Lynn took another puff of her cigarette and flicked over the page of her romance novel. “I think we have a tray of salisbury steak in the freezer, and there is a can of peas and carrots in the cabinet.”

  When she was a kid, Maggie would sometimes imagine what it would have been like if she’d lived with her dad instead of her mom. Unlike Lynn, who had dropped out of school after giving birth to Maggie in the tenth grade, Luke Norwood graduated high school and then went off to college. When she was young, Luke’s parents would invite Maggie to their house out in Sherman Hills, the nice subdivision on the edge of town. She would sit on their matching leather furniture and go out to dinner at nice restaurants where you didn’t have to stand in line to place your order and someone else cleaned up your mess after you were done. Mr. and Mrs. Norwood always bought her really nice Christmas and birthday presents, and generally made some effort to treat her like a granddaughter even though their son hardly acknowledged her existence.

  Sadly, that all changed when she was ten and Luke got himself a wife and a real kid. Maggie had a few moments of proper angst over the whole ordeal, but it didn’t take her long to begin to understand. She wanted to go off and start a new life and forget all about her mother as soon as possible, too. She couldn’t blame him or his parents for starting fresh, even if it meant she was coming out a loser in the whole situation.

  But even when she’d grown up and knew there was no way it was ever happening, Maggie would still sometimes fantasize about the Norwoods coming to take her away to live in their nice, clean, middle class world. It became a coping mechanism, which is how Maggie found herself standing in the middle of her mother’s kitchen in the early morning hours of Thanksgiving, imagining sitting around the Norwoods’ large oak table, helping her younger siblings spoon sweet potato casserole onto their plates. Her father would ask how her classes were going and her stepmother would be polite to Charlie without trying to undress him with her eyes.

  “I’m going to the store,” Maggie said, opening her eyes. Maybe they would get lucky and the deli would have some pre-made Thanksgiving meals. She woke up at dawn to start cooking so they could get back to the Alpha Pack before the full moon rose, so the chances of getting the good stuff before all the other last-minute shoppers got in there and started throwing elbows was pretty good as long as she left now.

  “Grab me another pack of smokes and a case of Mountain Dew.”

  No, I’m not going to enable your quest to kill yourself slowly.

  “Sure, Mom. Anything else?”

  Another puff. Another turn of the page. “Yeah, you better grab some paper plates while you’re there so we’ll have something to eat on.”

  “It’s Thanksgiving. We eat off of Grandmother’s china.”

  Lynn didn’t say anything, and Maggie’s body went icy cold for one full second before blazing with unbearable heat. She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking as she went over to the pantry and opened the door to find the bottom shelf empty.

  “Mom, where is the china?” Her voice didn’t shake or screech or bellow. She wasn’t sure how that happened. It probably had something to do with adrenaline. In tense situations some women could lift cars off their infant children, and others could speak in a calm and controlled manner when they were mere seconds away from painting the walls with blood.

  Lynn mumbled something around the cigarette in her mouth.

  “What?”

  “Gold Brothers.” Lynn threw out like a challenge, and Maggie wanted to meet that challenge so bad the bones in her hand threatened to snap from the force of the fist she was making. But she knew yelling at her mother wouldn’t do anything but bring on a poor-pitiful-me cry fest that would end up making Maggie feel guilty, and at the moment, Maggie was too pissed off to do anything to dull her righteous anger.

  “How much?” When Lynn didn’t answer Maggie fought the urge to throw something, preferably her mother. “How much will it take to get it back?”

  “You don’t understand.” Lynn put down the book and pulled another cigarette out of the pack. The lines that formed around her mouth as she took a pull on the cancer stick didn’t completely go away when she opened her mouth to let the smoke roll out, making her look much older than her thirty-five years. “You don’t know what it’s like to be an adult and have all these bills and responsibilities.”

  Maggie considered pointing out how she did understand since she’d been paying most of the bills and taking on the majority of the responsibilities for the past five years.

  “Just tell me how much money it’s going to take to get it back, Mom.”

  Lynn’s eyes narrowed on Maggie before darting to the window.

  “Three hundred.”

  Maggie closed her eyes and once again she was in her grandparent’s house, surrounded by normal people doing normal family things. But it didn’t work. Instead of calming her, this time it only fueled her anger. Why couldn’t she have that life? It should have been hers. It wasn’t fair.

  Without another word to her mother, she stormed out of the kitchen and into the living room where Charlie was hunched over his computer. The sound-eliminating earphones strapped over his head gave her a profound sense of relief. It was bad enough she had to live the conversation, she didn’t need to also endure the embarrassment of knowing he had overheard.

  She waved a hand in front of his face and almost teared up at the blazingly beautiful smile he shot her as he uncovered his ears. Over the past few weeks, Robot Charlie had made fewer and fewer appearances. The smiles Charlie gave her now weren’t practiced or calculated, and the difference was heart stopping. Every time he graced her with one, which was becoming quite often, she felt the urge to throw herself at his feet and swear lifelong fidelity. She would follow him to the ends of the earth for one of those smiles.

  “Walk me to the store?” She could have gone by herself, the Food Giant was only two blocks away and she seriously doubted anyone was going to attack her in Monarch, but the truth was, she needed to be near him right now. Her life seemed more normal and balanced with Charlie around.

  “We won’t be gone long, will we?” Charlie asked as he stuffed his feet into his shoes. “I promised your granddad I’d help him with the gutters before lunch.”

  Maggie grabbed her coat and tossed Charlie his. “You’re going to work on the gutters on Thanksgiving?”

  “Well, they’re in pretty bad shape—“

  “No. Just… no.” It was like everyone was conspiring to make this the least Thanksgiving-like Thanksgiving since the Pilgrims and Native
Americans shared some corn-on-the-cob a few hundred years ago. “This is Thanksgiving. You can watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the dog show, or you can go outside and throw around a football, but you will not be messing with the gutters.”

  “Mags, your granddad can’t do it himself, and we’re leaving right after lunch. It won’t take long. I’ll be done by the time Santa rolls through Time Square. Promise.”

  “We’re leaving today.” She knew they were leaving after lunch, had known it all along, but it wasn’t until he said it that she realized what it meant. “We’re leaving today, and Gold Brothers won’t be open. I can’t… I won’t be able to…” And then, because there was no force on the earth that could have stopped her, she burst into tears. It was the first time she’d really cried in front of him since the day someone ruined her pieces of pottery, and she was just as embarrassed as she’d been then. But unlike the first time, Charlie gathered her into his arms and held her against his chest as the tears streamed down her face.

  Her heart couldn’t decide if it wanted to burst from finally being in Charlie’s arms or crumble from knowing she couldn’t get her grandmother’s china back.

  “Tell me what is wrong,” he whispered into her hair. “Whatever it is, I’ll fix it.” One of his hands came down to cradle her face. His thumb worked as a windshield wiper on her cheek, brushing the nonstop flow of tears away. “Come on, Maggie. Tell me what’s wrong. These tears are killing me.”

  “My grandmother’s china. It was… it was important to her.”

  “The pattern on your side?” he guessed, and she nodded against his chest, crying too hard to answer.

  For years Maggie’s grandmother had made dinnerware for a small company specializing in handmade ceramics. For years she’d made expensive plates and bowls for other people, her family ate on chipped Dollar store dishes. The company didn’t offer employee discounts, and they sold them for more money than they paid Maggie’s grandmother in six months.