Bailey sat at the porch table, working on college applications. Laylea had expected him to go inside when the Ruckers came over. She knew how hard it was for him to see Davis showing off his latest prosthetic leg. But Bailey stayed. Laylea wondered if he stayed to punish himself.
“Mom!”
“She’s in her tinkering room, kiddo.” Clark put a finger on the page to hold his place. “Can I help?”
“Why do I have to go so far away?”
“You don’t. You pick the school, kiddo.”
Bailey stared across the street. Ella had started crying. Parker held her on one hip as he crouched beside his brother. It took them two tries to get Davis to his feet. Bailey’s shoulders rose. He tucked his head. If he had a tail, it would be curled tight against his belly. Great big drops of rain splattered down on the house at the end of the cul-de-sac.
“What’s got you scared?”
“We just have so many secrets to keep.” He leaned his head on a fist. “Maybe Mom could make me forget everything I’m not supposed to know.”
The screen door cracked against the frame. Even the Ruckers looked over before they disappeared into the backyard.
“You would ask me,” Sher’s voice carried no further than the porch and sent icicles down Laylea’s spine, “to maim my own child?”
Dust made her hair the white of a grandmother’s. Splotches of grease took the place of blush on her cheeks. She wiped a hand on her white work apron before holding the screen door open.
Bailey tried to explain, “Mom—”
She stopped him. “Inside.”
“Mom—”
“Laylea, Clark, take Woodford for a walk before the storm hits. Bailey, inside.”
“Mom. It would solve everything.”
Sher released the door. She took a step over to put her back to the neighborhood. “I made your father forget. Think he’s thanked me? I made Jay forget. Trey, Maggie, Feranda. I made them all forget. And these new victims. I designed the procedures that wiped out all of their memories as well. Do you think, Bailey, that any one of them would thank me for it?”
“You wouldn’t do it like that. If you make me forget, it’ll keep you and Dad and Laylea safe.”
Clark added, “and Woodford?”
“Woodford doesn’t have any secrets.” Bailey rubbed a foot along the dog’s fur.
“That we know of.”
“Bailey,” Sher put a hand on his papers, “I can’t pick individual memories out of your brain.”
“Well, how should I know that?” Bailey slammed down his pen.
Sher laughed harshly. She walked away from Bailey and pounded a fist on the porch railing. “You shouldn’t. I shouldn’t expect you to know anything,” she crossed back, “because teaching you how to keep our secrets was more important to me than teaching you about our powers.”
Thunder rolled in the distance.
“I don’t want to learn about our powers. I won’t ever use magic again.”
Clark chuckled. Sher threw her head back as silent laughs shook her whole body.
When she could breathe again she told him, “You use it every day.”
“I do not. I never use magic.” He looked to his father to back him up.
He didn’t. “Kiddo, you made that baby girl fall down so that Davis would go away.”
Bailey rolled his eyes. “He’s my friend. Why would I want him to go away?”
Sher answered. “Because it’s your fault he lost his leg.”
Lightning lit up the sky.
“Sher.” Clark half-stood from the swing.
“Bailey.” All laughter had fled Sher’s voice. “You listen to me. Or I’ll make you listen.” She waited until she had his full attention, his eyes. “It’s your fault he has that leg, the one he designed himself. It’s your fault he has a purpose in his life now other than adoring his older brother. It’s your fault he’s alive.” She looked down at the small worktable for a moment and then back into his eyes. “It’s my fault he lost the leg.”
Bailey stuttered, “You . . . you weren’t even there.”
“No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t there when you needed to be taught how to use your powers. I told your father we should let you have a childhood.”
“That’s bullshit, Mom.”
“Bailey,” Clark interrupted.
“No, Dad. It’s bullshit. I’ve had these powers all my life. There is nothing you could have taught me that would change anything.”
“Really?”
Sher turned and walked into the house. The screen door slammed behind her.
Bailey picked up his pen and engraved some answers into the application.
“Kid.” Clark looked at Laylea but his tone made it clear he was giving Bailey an ultimatum.
Rain pounded on the porch ceiling and a gust of wind shuffled Bailey’s application papers. He took a breath to argue with his Dad.
“Kid.”
The look on Clark’s face convinced him to shut up and follow his mother inside.
“We’ll be in shortly.”
“Okay, Dad.”
Bailey stopped in the doorway, listening to his dad mumbling his old song as he encouraged the two dogs down the steps.
“I will not kill another soul today. His life on my hands and I will not throw it away.”
Bailey first looked in her tinkering room but she wasn’t there although the place smelled just like the sizzling lightning outside. He started up the stairs but a noise in the kitchen drew him through the swinging door. The garage door stood open. The racket came from out there.
Bailey left his application papers on the kitchen island. He found his mother in the garage working on his bicycle. She had it sitting upside down on the saddle and handlebars. The front wheel spun as she dragged a tire lever along the rim. She snaked the flattened tube out and tossed it to the cement. After working the tire off the rim, she unscrewed the axle and threw that bolt aside. She lifted the wheel out of the dropout, removed the tire, and set the rim, spokes, and hub aside. Bailey didn’t know what to say as she repeated the process with the rear wheel.
She dipped the adjusting barrel, removed the chain and grabbed a multitool to split the chain and unscrew the pedals.
“What are you doing?”
She flipped through the wrenches and removed the water bottle cage, brakes, cables, chain rings, seat post, saddle, fork, handlebars, headlamp, and bell.
“You’ve had a bike all your life.” She handed him the black and yellow multi-tool and plastic lever. “You’ve got the tools you need.”
Bailey stared while Sher wiped her hands on the once-white tinkering apron. She picked her way through the pieces of his former bicycle to open the passenger side door of the truck. She hopped up and sat with her legs dangling out, watching him.
“Put it together.”
“Mom, I’m gonna need this to go to school tomorrow.”
“So put it together.”
Bailey fumed for exactly five seconds. Then he grabbed the pump from beside the steps and gathered the pieces of his front tire. He reassembled each tire. He reattached the water bottle cage to the frame and the light and bell to his handlebars. He screwed on the right pedal but couldn’t get the left one to seat in the threads and when he tried to force it, the wrench slipped out and scraped all the skin off his knuckles. He was working on reattaching the fork to the frame when Laylea limped out. She did downward dog off the bottom step.
Clark laughed in the doorway. “It’s raining pretty hard. Can I give Laylea something for her hip?”
“Give her a quarter Tramadol. How’s Woodford feeling?”
“He’s stiff. But he’s doing okay. Already crashed in his bed here.”
Clark disappeared into the kitchen. Laylea grabbed a rag from the bucket beside the washing machine and dragged it over by the door to watch Bailey. She dug and pulled at it with her paws and teeth to make the thin fabric more comfortable while her brother worked.
He gave
up on the fork and turned to the broken chain. He held the two ends of the chain together but couldn’t see how to connect them. Even the tiniest hex on the multitool did him no good.
“Need some help, kiddo?” Clark gave Laylea a piece of cheese with the bitter medicine hidden inside.
“I think that would negate her point.”
“No, Bailey.” Sher hopped out of the truck. “That is my point.”
“That I can’t do anything right?”
“Yeah, genius. I expect you to be able to put a bicycle together via your psychic connection to the mechanic gods.”
Clark, Laylea, and Bailey all gaped at her.
“You are a superhuman. You’re unreasonably strong and observant with a possibly eidetic memory from your father. You have an IQ through the roof and magical powers from me.” She shut the truck door. “But you still can’t fix something if you don’t know how it works.” She took the multitool from her son and flipped through to the teeny little thumbscrew looking instrument. Showing him how as she did it, she removed another link from the chain and then attached the newly open end to the closed end in his hand.
“Tools are useless if you don’t know how to use them. Even dangerous.” She rubbed her thumb over the bloody knuckles. “Let’s clean that before you heal it with grease inside.”
Clark held the door. Laylea followed Sher who pushed Bailey ahead of her to the kitchen sink.
“You need help. You need training.” She scrubbed the knuckle with their hippopotamus nailbrush and dish soap. The grease didn’t budge.
Clark grabbed an orange from the fruit bowl and ripped off some peel. He bellied up beside the two to rub it on the wound. He flipped on the water and the grease washed away with the orange pulp.
He grinned. “Knowledge is power.”
Bailey slapped the faucet handle shut. He dried his hand in his hair and scooped Laylea up from the floor. “I don’t want to be a superhuman.” He paced the kitchen. “Please, can’t you just make me forget those things?”
Sher turned the water back on. She took another peel from Clark and washed her own hands clean. When she wiped her face, her wet hands just streaked the tears.
“My methods have so badly broken the Consortium’s volunteers that Jay can’t keep them from going back anymore. The best he can do is condition them to resist further conditioning. Those victims, Jay, the hermit who won’t pick a name, your father, all the others, they will none of them ever know who they are because I scrambled their brains. The ones we were able to help are still hiding in the mountains up there because they don’t know what they’ve done, who they’ve hurt down here.” She turned, her hands still gripping the sink. “And you’re asking me to do that to you because you don’t think you’re adult enough to keep a secret?”
Bailey stood. “A secret?” He faced his mother. “You were an evil scientist experimenting on humans. Dad killed people for your company. Jay still rescues soldiers from that company one by one AFTER they’ve been broken by your methods. They hide in these mountains right here. Our last name is Hillen because when I was born you went out and found some frozen homeless guy and stole his social security number. Oh, and we’re home schooling a dog that was dumped on our porch.” He stopped to catch his breath. “Anything I’ve missed?” He paused and then asked more quietly. “Anything I don’t know?”
Clark popped an orange slice in his mouth. “Woodford used to be in the mob. He’s in Witness Protection. His name is actually Makers Mark.”
“Dad.” Bailey didn’t smile. “What’s your real name, Mom?”
Clark swallowed the last of his orange. He dumped the peel in the sink and went to take Laylea from Bailey. He continued around the island back to the sink where Sher still stood, her fingers gripping the cold metal behind her. Laylea set her head on the mom’s shoulder as Clark kissed her cheek.
He whispered, “It’s up to you.”
Sher took Laylea. She poured herself a glass of wine one-handed and pulled Laylea’s baby towel from its hook on the wall beside the fridge. She set the towel and Laylea on the island counter.
“Laylea’s secrets belong to her. But since she’s a minor and we’ve agreed to care for her, your father and I have decided to keep her secrets among us.”
“I don’t think we should be less secretive, Mom. Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Bailey.” Clark threw a bulb of garlic at him.
Bailey threw the bulb back. “I’m scared of what happens if I slip up. I’ll be all alone. No you. No Mom. No Lee. Do you get that?”
“Bailey, we trust you.” Clark smashed the garlic between two bowls.
“I don’t have to go to school. I can stay.”
Laylea sang out. She pulled a pencil from the cup and wrote on her paper, Pay up.
“You took bets on if I’d go away?”
“No, Kiddo,” his dad pulled a ball of mozzarella from the fridge. “We bet on when you’d freak out about it.”
Sher took the cheese. “My money was on day of.”
Laylea barked for their attention again. You have to go. I want my own room.
Bailey wrapped her ear around his finger and pet her head. “No you don’t.”
Laylea pasted her ears back, tucked her tail, and shook her head.
Sher took a stool. She held the cheese out for Laylea to eat from her hand. “You want to be a doctor, Bailey. You can’t do that if you don’t go to school. We don’t even have internet access.”
“To keep the outside world outside. I know.”
Clark barked a laugh, tossing the garlic skins in the trash. “Ha!”
“We don’t have internet to save money. You can’t exactly apply for financial aid.”
“We’ve always known you’d have to go, Kiddo. I think Chicago is a great choice.” He slid a cutting board and onion across the island.
“I haven’t decided on Chicago.”
Clark flipped over the application papers with his knife. “This is the fourth Chicago school you’ve applied to. Big chunks please.” He flipped the knife into the air.
Bailey caught the handle and let the momentum drive the blade through the onion. “My counselor said it was a bad choice. He said a small town boy would get lost there. Idiot doesn’t know that’s what I want.”
“Respect, Bailey.” Clark whisked the onion skins away as Bailey chopped.
“Dad.”
Sher took a sip of wine. “I have a friend in Chicago.”
“An ex-boyfriend.” Clark spun his paring knife around a tomato. The skin landed on the counter in front of Sher as a perfect rose.
Sher picked the rose up and tossed it to Woodford. “He owns a well-established consignment shop. He’ll look out for you. If you need help and you can’t get hold of us, you go see Orin Morton.”
Clark reached over and refilled Sher’s empty glass.
She took a deep breath and let it out. “You can trust him. He’s the other man I can do this in front of.”
Sher shut her eyes and shook her head. The hair Laylea thought matched her fur so well suddenly bounced on the mom’s head in black curls. Her deep brown eyes sparkled green out of a pale face covered in freckles.
“Mom.”
“He’ll help you any way he can. Just tell him that you’re Katherine Coogan’s son.” Sher stared into the wine.
“Mom.” Bailey couldn’t catch his breath.
Clark sang, “I will not—”
“I’m not angry.” Bailey shot at his dad. He jerked a hand up to tangle his fingers in his mother's curls. “I have your hair.”
“You can have any hair you want.”
“How?”
“Change your DNA.”
Clark spun away from the stove. “Sher, he’ll try it.”
“Or just change the melanocytes in your hair. Change the shape of your follicles to change the texture. My sister could just think of blue hair and have it but I need to scientifically understand what I’m doing.”
Behind h
er, Clark shook his head. When Sher saw Bailey looking at him, he said, “You’ll hide your run bag at Orin’s place. His co-owners are safe too. Their shop is full of secrets. Yours will be well hidden there.”
Laylea barked. I thought I had Mom’s hair.
Sher shook her head. Her dirty-blond hair came back with deeper brown eyes and a crooked diamond of smooth white skin over her third eye.
Laylea sang and waved her dark paw. Sher toasted the little dog. The skin of that hand had turned dark brown.
“Have you ever made yourself look like Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Could you make Dad look like you?”
“Not temporarily.”
Clark threw water in his pan to make the vegetable sizzle. “Come over here and stir this, will you?”
Laylea waved at Sher. Sher’s hair turned red. Laylea waved again. Mousy brown. She waved. Blue.
Bailey wandered over to take the spoon from his dad. “After I leave, who’s in charge of Laylea if you have to run?”
“Your father.”
“I am.”
His parents answered together. Clark went on, “When you pack, we’ll take her things from your go bag and add them to mine. Your mom’ll take charge of Woodford.”
“You’re very smart Bailey.” Sher shook her head back to her familiar appearance. She set her wine glass aside and stood to gather plates and flatware. “I’m one of the few people you’re gonna find who understands how hard that is. I thought being smart was everything. It’s,” she watched Clark slice bread, “taking me a while to understand that love is everything. I hurt people because I was having fun being smart. My brother was killed,” she set the plates down with a clatter, “lots of people have been killed because I’m smart. It’s not easy for me to change. I can make people do what I want. Why should I care who they are?” She circled the island to stand with her husband. “I don’t know how your father ended up in my lab. But I will be ever grateful that he did and that he was such a poor soldier we were able to catch him within a week.”
WereHuman - The Witch's Daughter: Consortium Battle book 1 (Wyrdos) Page 23