he’d had a reputation in the human world as an expert safecracker. My grandfather had been a locksmith, and my father had grown up surrounded by them. He probably should have taken over the business, but Dad had rebelled. One day a mysterious man had hired Dad to crack a safe. That man had turned out to be a vampire who worked for the Council. They’d taken a vote and decided Harry Wharton was trustworthy and had skills the supernatural world could use, and thus began his career. “That was why you needed a fierce reputation.”
“I needed more than that. I needed friends. I needed protection. Like Lee, I took every advantage I could get,” my dad admitted. “Lee feels his vulnerability every day. I wish he hadn’t heard that. He’s been looking forward to your homecoming for years and years. He’s missed his mother.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t Kelsey he missed?” I couldn’t help it. The question was out of my mouth before I could think to disregard the impulse. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I know why they’re so close.”
“Yes, but it still had to hurt when he would choose to spend time with her instead of you,” my dad said, sympathy plain in his tone.
“I don’t truly resent them for it. I’m glad they got to spend time together.” But I was self-aware enough to admit that it hurt. Now that I looked back, I could see that mere months ago Lee was already pulling away from me. Not in a bad way. He was growing up and finding a place for himself. Finding spaces that didn’t include me. It was the painful part of parenting. If you’re successful, they leave you behind.
“I like Kelsey, but it hurt the first time Lee told me he couldn’t go out for ice cream because he was working for Kelsey,” my dad admitted. “I had to tempt him with lessons to get him to spend time with me.”
“I’m sorry. Their relationship was new.” And on a level most of us couldn’t truly understand.
“Well, we’ve had a good time together now,” my dad said. “These last few years with the kids… I wouldn’t take them back for the world.”
“Not even if you could get more? Not even if you could have been alive all this time?”
“My darlin’, not even if I could have spent those years with you.” Tears swelled in Shy’s eyes. They shimmered in the soft light that illuminated the brugh. “It’s not that I don’t love you, that I didn’t miss you. It’s that these years with them were precious, and I’ve learned that we cannot change the past. We take what we’re given and we do the best we can. Watching my grandchildren become what they have…”
“They’ve struggled, Dad.” I had to argue with him. It wasn’t like they’d had some amazing time. “They’ve had to fight for their lives.”
“And so did you, and you wouldn’t take a moment of that heartache and hurt and pain back because it made you who you are. I know what you went through with Marini. Do you think I don’t cry about it? Don’t wish with all my heart you didn’t have to? It plagued me for a long time, thinking about what you went through. I had dreams about it at night, and I would wake up and sit there in the dark wondering if I could have done something to save you. Would you take it back?”
“It was the only way to save us all. No.” Now I was the one who was crying. I’d dealt with this a long time ago. At least I thought I had. Maybe we never get over the kind of violation I survived. I’d joined a club no one wants to be a part of, and yet there are so many of us. There are probably more of us in that club than are not. Women understand how fragile we are, how our bodies and souls are protected by the thinnest of armor. And yet we are resilient. We somehow pull ourselves back together and move forward, the great and grand majority of us still finding a way to live and love and open ourselves again.
It’s what women do. In the human world. In the supernatural world.
If this had only happened to me, I would be moving on, trying to weave my life back together. But it had happened to my children. How did I let it go?
And then I