A/N: Hey guys! So this was a really hard chapter for me to write, but it answers one of the most frequently asked questions so had to get it right! So without further ado…Actually one more thing. A request has come in from someone, who I will keep unnamed, to have my other story The Decisions be finished by someone who will actually finish it because I haven't (and most likely won't) finish it. Now as much as I would love to see my other story finished, I just don't feel right allowing someone else finish it. I would just feel weird letting someone else work on it knowing that they are choosing what happens to the characters I created and changing the plot that I thought of. I'm not trying to be mean and I hope you understand. So now without further ado…
To tumblechick13, FireflyDancer, aStromatMidnight, Green Eyes In The Rain, SweetDreamzz3116, murrey-2012, xrubyx, AsHlle'MaRiEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (& e), moon-called-princess (;D),Obssessedcrazedbookworm, suzi1811, all the people that favorited, and all the people who story alertedyou guys are the most deliciously, scrumptious, wonderful people ever (is it wrong that I'm referring to you as food?)!
Bookninja15: Thanks for the review! To answer your question, no, Scarlet is a completely new character I added. She probably won't be in this story too much, but she will have a significant part.
FireflyBlizzard: Thanks for the review! I have a feeling Jason will be fine ;) and it might have had something to do with a certain spell made by a certain demon wearing off…Scarlet is a new character I added! Her job is to pretty much do Mr. Tucker's (who you will find out more about later) dirty work.
BoOkWoR040: Thanks for the review! Your review made me smile and giggle to myself! I love being able to write a good story for people!
DramaQueen-who-loves-Romance: Thanks for the review! Derek and Chloe will meet soon, within the next three chapters I can almost promise!
Disclaimer: i don not own Darkest Powers.
(Cailey's POV)
"Daddy?" I screamed. He was standing over Jason with his head bent to his shoulders and his legs bent at his knees. He looked sad. Like the time when I asked him about his mommy and daddy…at the time I had only been curious. I had wanted to know more about his life before. But Daddy had refused to answer my question about his parents; he had just stared into his lap in a dream like daze. I had tried asking him what was wrong. Why he wouldn't look at me—though he would never answer. And when I finally accepted that he wasn't going to talk, I tried to undue my words. That hadn't helped either. We had sat in silence after that, neither of us knowing what to say, then he had simply gotten up and left, a soft sadness in his eyes. By the next day that sadness had been gone and I figured it had passed along with whatever weird silence thing he had had going on. But now it was back.
I wrinkled my eyebrows, dismissing whatever was wrong with Daddy, and watched Jason. His arms and legs were popping up and down like popcorn in a microwave and his wrists were making circles in the air that floated around and around and arou— His head was tilted back letting strange noises float from his mouth. They weren't words exactly, more like growls and grunts: sounds of jungle animals. And his face! His face was covered in a thick glow of sweat that dripped onto the floor and made tap tap tap sounds that I could hear through the panic in the room.
So many people were surrounding Jason. April was the closets out of everyone, her forehead brushing his. Her lips parted as words in the from of shrieks spilled from her mouth, her Adam's Apple bobbing up and down, up and down; up and down…I thought I might be sick.
I looked to Daddy as acid from my stomach rose to my throat. Grandma Laurie had warned me to stay away from him. Her words echoed in my ears. Dangerous, she had told me. He'll snap you like a twig. I hadn't listened to her; instead I had listed the names of presidents in order. Last names first, first names last. Washington, George;Adams, John; Jefferson, Thomas; Madison, James; Monroe, James; Adams, John Quincy, Jackson, Andrew…
Daddy still hadn't noticed me…I could taste bits of puke leak into my mouth causing me to bend over at the waist. I wouldn't let myself do it though. I swallowed back my sick and blinked away my tears. He'll leave you behind. And unless you find a way out, you'll drown in your own tears. Grandma Laurie had gripped my arm extra tight when she had said that. Her eyes were wild and crazy; so blue, the color of the sky, the color that would be imprinted in my mind forever. In my head I had kept naming presidents, by then I was at Pierce, Franklin. Buchanan, James; Lincoln Abraham…Johnson, Andrew; Grant, Ulysses S.; Hayes, Rutherford Birchard…Garfield, James Abram; Arthur, Chester Alan.
Jason was still struggling on the floor. April was holding his arm—clawing into his skin, drawling blood. Daddy looked pained. Everyone around Jason shouted their words too loud for the average sized room. My head ached along with the beat of someone's tapping foot. Still, nobody noticed me.
I couldn't allow myself to call out again. Maybe it was because I was somewhat relieved that nobody had heard me. I had gone my whole life with people tending to my every will. Sure I was only eight years old, but I wasn't stupid, not anywhere near stupid. I started reading at one, simple addition and subtraction came to me at two and a half, and grammar never seemed to be a problem. The only thing that I lacked in was understanding real life. That meant understanding why people didn't like each other, for example, was confusing to me, and why people made fun of you when you used big words was hard for me to understand. Because of this I often sounded more childish when I spoke than when I thought. In my head everything made sense, I could rationalize everything by putting it into terms I could understand, but when I tried to explain it to someone else—it all came out in a mess. So I stuck with small words. But sometimes, when I was with someone I knew well or felt comfortable with, I would be able to let a little of what was going on up in my head out.
I think it had been somewhere around fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of being invisible. It gave me time to think.
I mostly thought about Grandma Laurie and what she had said. About how she had told me, while taking a needle through my arm, that Daddy was going to hurt me some day. She also told me that he was a liar. According to her he had been lying to me about something my whole life. I didn't believe her in the beginning. And even towards the end I had still thought she was the liar. But then a little flicker of something (Was it reason?) had reached out to me in the back of my head. That's when she had said Daddy was a monster.
Another ten minutes later. Someone had finally noticed my presence and was coming towards me. It was him of course.
Daddy was reaching out to me, whispering words that I could hear even though he was a good amount of feet away. I had never questioned how I could hear his mumbled words or soft murmurs. I just could.
And in the past ten minutes I had done more thinking, as if I hadn't already done enough. I had come to the conclusion that I would get answers from him before I let him trick me anymore. The things Grandma Laurie had told me were starting to get in my head. They were starting to make sense. Like when she said that Daddy hadn't been telling me the whole truth? Well that made sense when I applied it to the question about where he went at night in the dark with Jason. Or when Grandma Laurie told me that Daddy had once hurt someone so badly that the person he hurt would never walk again. It made sense because Daddy had always been nervous when he saw people in wheelchairs. Yeah, things were starting to become clear as day to me.
Though, I will admit that there were still a few things I didn't agree with Grandma Laurie about. Trust me, sweetie, she had said, her blue eyes gazing into mine intently, he never loved you. That had to have been wrong. No matter how many lies he had told me or things he hadn't told me I knew Daddy still loved me.
Cailey, Grandma Laurie had crowned. But that's where I stopped thinking. I wouldn't let myself think about that. Not now at least.
I focused on Daddy now. He was slowly approaching me with his hands held out in front of him. I hadn't realized but I had been scooting backwards along the floor the whole time, keeping my distance from him. His eyes held the soft edge around them that they had when he had been watching Jason quiver on the floor. He took another step towards me.
"S-stay away!" I shouted at him. "Please."
Daddy stopped in his tracks. His eyes turned to mush and he opened his mouth in a small circle. I wanted answers before going any farther. I didn't want to keep being lied to.
"Don't come any closer," I warned, masking my tone so it was blank with just a hint of authority like he had taught me.
"Cailey," he said taking a half step, "don't be absurd." Absurd was his cover up word for stupid.
"I-I'm not kidding!" I glanced at the room around us, checking for nosy family members. I was utterly surprised to find everyone gone. The room was completely cleared except for the two of us. "Where'd everybody go?"
Daddy didn't respond, though he did, very subtly, nod his head in the direction of the hallway and grunt out a low noise.
"Oh," was all I said back. I hadn't seen or heard them leave. How odd. I must have been so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I actually missed something. That had never happened to me before.
We both kept quite. I left my eyes on him flinching with every move he made. We did this little game for a while were he would move his foot off the ground and I would push myself back a foot only to move myself forward again as his foot settled back in its original spot. I knew why he played that game. He was testing me. But it didn't work because we were too much alike, and no one could ever win as long as we both had the cheat sheet.
"Cailey Tara Sauller," Daddy said stepping forward, ending our game, "I do not know what has gotten into you but its going to end now. I don't have time to sit here and play silly games." He takes a few more paces towards me and I scattered out of the way. "You've got five minutes to pull yourself together and then I want you in the living room." Then he walked out of the room, a scowl evident on his face. He had won the silly game, and he knew.
And so for the next five minutes I sat thinking, Silly: another word for stupid.
In the living room everyone was sitting cozy against each other. Jason, who had calmed down to only twitching every once and a while, was lying on the long red couch with April at his head and Smart holding his feet on the other end. Below him on the ground sat Wood with a clear plastic bowl. Across the room on a love seat sat Dale and Bree, holding each others hands talking slowly. Then there was Daddy.
He stood pacing back and forth behind the couch. He had his arms held behind his back and his face was as hard as stone. I walked past him as he was making a turn to circle back towards the front door. I hurried to the middle of the room. Having so many familiar people around calmed me and I sighed gently as I dropped to the floor against the Love seat Bree and Dale were sharing.
Not even thirty seconds later, as the big clock above the TV set off into a chorus of ding-dong-diings, April spoke up, her voice shaky. "How is he?" she asked, petting Jason's head in that way grownups do. That was another one of the few things I didn't understand. Why would you ever feel the need to pet someone? Does it make you feel like you're in control; like the person your petting is your little dog that will be under your command once you're finished rewarding him?
Daddy paused. "He'll be fine."
"But what—what happened to him?" she whispered as though if she spoke to loud she would scare the unresponsive Jason away.
"He must have had a small fit caused by…too much stress in the brain or something…" Daddy mumbled, his eyes lost in space.
"But he was…you know…" she stopped short, glanced at me, and then in a lower voice said, "He was cha—"
"I know." Daddy stopped his pacing again, shutting his eyes.
"So what should we do about it? We can't just sit around and wait for him to collapse into a-a-a…a coma!" April chocked out. Her hands were making wild gestures in the air, dancing like ballerinas, careful not to disturb Jason.
"I know; I know! I'm figuring it out."
April didn't say anything back, probably because there was nothing to say back. Instead she whispered to herself. Having nothing better to do than think more to myself I lapsed into a fit of curiosity.
What was April about to say before Daddy cut her off? Cha- what? Was what Grandma Laurie had told me playing out right in front of my very own eyes? Lies, sweetie, it was all lies. Those words, the ones Grandma Laurie had muttered while pulling out pieces of glass from my arm, gave me chills up my back.
I shook my head dislodging the memory. My eyes absently wondered around the room. From the window I could see rain pounding against the glass. The wind blew hard; I could hear its whistle as it squeezed through tree branches. And from somewhere off in the distance I could see the lightening strike. Lightening. Thoughts hurtled through my head as fast as light. It was all so simple. How could they not see the solution? Unless…they could see it and they were purposely not suggesting it. Either way I had to say something. So, breaking the silence, I suggested, "The hospital."
"Excuse me?" April asked turning towards me as does everybody else.
"I said," I alliterated, "the hospital. Why don't we take Uncle Jason there?"
April raised her eyebrows at me, tilting her head to the side. She nodded her head once, and then she looked away. With the same expression she gave me, she turned to Daddy staring him down.
"What?" he demanded from underneath her pointed gaze.
Her eyebrows arched higher. "Did you not just hear your daughter?"
"I did," he replied.
"And?"
"Yes?" he probes.
"And do you plan on answering her question?"
"No."
April let out a huge huff of air. To herself I could hear her muttering, "In through the nose, out through the nose." After a few more of April's breathing techniques she was calmed enough to start again. "I think it is about time you tell her."
"No."
"You didn't even think about it!" she screams back, forgetting completely about her effort to not mangle Jason in any way.
"I don't have to," Daddy shouted back, slightly softer than April's roaring shriek. "I'm the parent and I get to decided what my daughter does and doesn't know!"
"Cant you see you're hurting her more by not telling her!" April demanded, a frown deepening on her face.
"I'm not hurting her, I'm saving her!"
"Oh really?" April said accusingly.
"Yes!"
"And how is that?" She asked her voice flattening on "that".
"Because the less she knows the less her life will be like mine!"
"Exactly," April ends.
Daddy, stuck with his mouth half open ready to throw his next defense, stopped. For that second it was like the whole room stopped. Then there was laughing. It wasn't coming from either of the two fired up beings, huffing and puffing in their own corners, but from the opposite side of the room. In fact, it came from right above me.
Dale was the one laughing.
He laughed so hard his breath started coming jagged and his face turned tomato red. It was like watching a twisted comedy. We all turned to watch him.
As soon as all of our eyes had settled on him he began his breathy speech. "You guys are such…" he paused to take a deep breath in, "…idiots! You're both sitting there arguing, and the whole time you're just…" he breathed, "…giving it all away! If she didn't know something was up before she does…" he breathed, but we all knew what he was about to say, "…now!" Then he rolled into another fit of laughter.
April sat quietly for a minute more, thinking over who knows what, and then she gave a few hoots of her own. She looked to Daddy with humorous eyes, her lips stretching into a grin. Daddy didn't find this situation funny, and neither did I.
I was stabbing myself with invisible, pretend needles, wincing at the pain of being right. And even more for knowing Grandma Laurie had been right. Daddy was lying to me and I suddenly felt sick again. Holding my stomach with my arm I raced to the bowl straddled in Woods arms and puked up bits. There was no holding back; my breakfast, lunch, and appetite for anything food related flew out the door head first, some of it landing on the carpet on the way.
Daddy didn't waste a second; he was at my side rubbing light circles on my shoulder, pulling my hair back into a bun. But this didn't calm me. I hated the way he could get by telling me lies my whole life and then think he can just waltz over and try to soothe me. I puked again. I felt bad for poor Wood. He was the unlucky holder of my bowl and the contents of my stomach. I hoped I hadn't sprayed any of my sick on him. I wouldn't be able to live that down. I spit out the nasty taste left tainting my saliva into the bowl to join its friends.
Holding back tears that were sure to leak from my eyes any moment know, I shrugged Daddy off and pulled away. A crash of hurt flashed on his face. I didn't want it to be this way. I wanted my Daddy back, the Daddy that never lied, and that read me books by the fire while eating oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and hot tea (he was too much of a health freak to let me eat regular cookies or hot chocolate). That was the Daddy I wanted back.
Someone standing above me dropped a towel to the floor against my feet. I picked it up loving the soft feeling of cotton touching my fingers. I wiped it across my face regretting having to ruin a perfectly good towel. I would never be able to get the rotten smell out.
The room was quite again, filling up with that all too loud thing called silence. I had a sudden urge to leave this place, to run away, maybe I could go to Demi. There was never silence like this when I was with Demi...
"It's now or never."
I glanced up looking to April. She had her serious face on again. She was locked, engaged, in a silent war between her and Daddy. I asked myself who I though would win, but I couldn't come up with an answer. Daddy had a hard shell around him that kept him from being easily persuaded, but April on the other hand, was born to break down those walls and enter reason and enlightenment where you were lacking.
"'Never' isn't really a choice," she added, foreseeing his answer.
Daddy grunted.
"Don't you want to get it over with?" she asked gently, knowing just the right time to settle her voice.
Daddy shrugged.
"The answer you are looking for is yes. And since you can't seem to make a decision, I'll do it for you." She smiled wickedly. "You're going to tell her. Now." She paused, vouching his reaction. "And if you don't," she started again after he didn't respond, "then I'll tell her."
Daddy growled. Or he did something that sounded like a growl because obviously humans can't growl. I kept quite the whole time. I wanted to know the truth but what could I say that would persuade him to tell me? I couldn't come up with anything so I stayed a mute.
April became a mute along with me. I figured she was giving Daddy some time to sort through things. I could wait. That gave me time to ready myself…And by that I meant it gave me time to think. Yes, more thinking.
I thought about why nobody had questioned me about Grandma Laurie yet. Or Colton. I was glad they hadn't, but I didn't understand why not. Was it because they had forgotten? All too wrapped up in their own problems that they hadn't had the time to remember someone else? That was possible. Though, it's not like I would know what to tell them anyway. How could I explain to them to horrible thing I had seen; heard! Better yet, how would I be able to tell them about what I had done? How would I be able to say the words? Join me, sweetie, together we will take them down, they wont be able to hurt you anymore…Her long talons reached out to me as she screeched like a hawk swooping down for its pray. Her bright blue eyes the color of flowing water clouded over. Her long, dirt bathed nails poked at my skin…And that's when I had done it.
Daddy had finally given in. He said he would tell me everything. Of course that made me happy. I had actually started to smile, too, but then I remembered what he was telling me and I wasn't so happy anymore.
So the mood was set. The lights were flickering buzz, and candles were placed on the window sills just in case. The storm was raging outside, howling for unknown reasons. Blankets were passed around the room soft and fuzzy to keep us all warm, and everyone had a partner. That is, except for Daddy and I. We stayed alone in our own separate corners hugging blankets around our knees listening to the eerie creaks of the wooden house around us. It really was crazy that no one had noticed the two missing people.
Wood walked past me hurdling packets of fruit snacks around the room. He tossed one over his shoulder and it landed in my lap. I stared down at it hungrily before remembering the foul taste of the puke and setting it softly next to my foot, out of my eyesight. Sounds of small voices and crinkling wrappers made the room sound more like the home I was used to and I relished in it. But the moment was ruined too quickly for my liking.
"I know I said I would tell her the truth but—"
"No buts!" April shouted to him, astounded that he was still trying to slide around the problem that he had placed upon himself.
"Let me finish," he said completely ignoring her outrage. "I know I said I would tell you the truth, Cailey, but if I do—"
"When you do," April corrected for him.
"When I do," Daddy said giving April a pointed look, "I need you to understand that I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to get hurt. I was only thinking of your safety."
Daddy stared at me. "And I need you to agree that after I finish you will tell me why you have suddenly decided to hate me."
I chewed on my lip. "Okay."
And then he started. "To understand this story you're going to have to listen and keep up. Save as many of your questions until we get to the end. No random outbursts. You break a rule I end my story. All rules go into effect now."
I stayed silent, shifting slightly in my blanket.
"Here are the basics," Daddy started, calling up his formal tone. "My name is Derek Souza. I am your biological father. Your Uncle Sam is your real Uncle, but his real name is Simon. Grandma Laurie is not your real Grandma. Your "Aunts" and "Uncles" in this room are part of my pack. I am a genetically modified werewolf."
What? I cocked my head to the right. I must have heard wrong. Werewolf? Ha! No, no, no, werewolves weren't real. No. Never had I ever read a book where werewolves existed outside of science fiction; the underlined word being fiction. It was just not logically possible. No, I heard wrong.
"Yes, werewolves." Daddy stared at me making sure I got it. And I didn't. Werewolves. Weren't. Real. The whole bone moving transformation thing just wasn't possible
"I don't understand it either, it just is," he stated, "And since I am a werewolf and you are my daughter that makes you a werewolf, too."
No.
"In fact, you're the second female werewolf to ever exist; April being the first…Though, now that I think about it, you were born before April was bitten, making you the first female werewolf to exist."
No one congratulated me on my accomplishment. Not that It was something to be proud of—not that it was real. Grandma Laurie had told me he lied and that was all this was: more of his lies.
"Your mother—she wasn't a supernatural like us. She was human. She was lonely; all her relatives had died off years ago. And she had desperately wanted a child. Word had gotten around about her situation—too little money to get a sperm from a donor and too high of morals to sleep with a random man. That's when the Cabal stepped in. The Cabal is a group of supernautrals with varying powers: sorcerers, half-demons, and shamans to name a few…The cabal contacted your mother, Rosalie Sauller, and made her an offer she couldn't refuse. They offered her a free sperm operation with a readily supplied amount of sperms, and a job."
April had told me about that before. Not my mother, but the sperm thing. She had told me about boys and all their parts along with what happened with them. When I asked her why she was telling me she replied, unmoved, "I just want you to be ready for anything." I had been confused at the time. I mean, why would I want to know about gross boy parts? But I guess I know why now. Though, this whole thing is still completely impossible. I am obviously not a werewolf because such things don't exist—you know, along with sorcerers and half-demons. No way.
"She grabbed the offer without any questions," Daddy went on, watching me. "Later, after she had been successfully impregnated, they sent her out on her first job. Her job was simple really. All she had to do was find me, tell me she was pregnant with my child, and then bring me back with her to the Cabal headquarters. I had been a wanted subject there for quite a while, and after I had escaped from there grasp…" Daddy rolled his eyes. "…they wanted me more."
Grandma Laurie was defiantly right. These all had to be lies. But why wasn't anyone denying it? Did they really believe all this mumbo-jumbo? Why couldn't they see how dumb this was? None of it was true. It couldn't be.
"I guess," Daddy said, bringing me back to the story, "they figured that I would feel so compelled to keep my child safe and happy that I would willingly follow Rosalie back." Daddy shrugged. "But that's not what happened. Instead, I kept Rosalie under constant surveillance in the house."
"Like a prisoner," April added.
"Yes," Daddy agreed, "Exactly like a prisoner."
The clock tick-tocked its way into a new hour. The house groaned against the wind. The bright paint on the walls seemed to drip with anticipation. I wiggled in my seat.
"Rosalie started to become depressed. She would sit in her bedroom staring out a window all day, rubbing her stomach. She talked to you sometimes, I think. I would pass by her room and she would be whispering words. I never stuck around long enough to understand though. I didn't want to invade her privacy along with everything else I was doing." Daddy ran his hand through his hair. "I visited Rosalie once a week, just a quick checkup. During those times she would always try to convince me to come back with her. Back to the Cabal. She promised me a life there, said that I could help her raise you. It shocked me to know how much hope she still had after being basically imprisoned."
April glanced up. "She used to talk to me about it too." A sad smile slid across her face. "I would bring her breakfast and sit next to her on her bed while she ate. You meant the world to her you know?"
I shook my head and glanced down. I didn't remember my mother. I grew up knowing she was dead, so seeing other girls with their mothers didn't bother me. I knew I had a family twice the size of theirs anyway and my aunt, April, was like my mother so I had no room to complain. But now hearing about the woman who gave birth to me…I wanted more than just an aunt. I wanted a mother. I wanted someone who would hold me when I cried and read me bedtime stories. I wanted someone that would sing to me when I was scared and stop what they were doing to listen to me when I had a problem. I knew that April would do all of those things for me too, but I also knew one day she would have a kid of her own and I would simply fall into second place. I wanted someone who would never put me second.
"Anyway," Daddy said gearing back towards his story, "she was starting to get depressed. I wasn't positive, but I was starting to think it was because of her pregnancy." Daddy scrunched up his face. He closed his eyes making wrinkles form across his forehead. "You can't even imagine how guilty I felt."
"It wasn't your fault," April murmured stroking Jason's hair.
"No, it was." Daddy sighed. "She was pregnant with my child. If I had—"
"There was nothing you could have done," April insisted.
"Okay, yeah. But I still felt guilty, so I started researching werewolf pregnancies. I was amazed with how much I found. I had known that for a werewolf impregnated with another werewolf's baby that the pregnancy would be about three months long. But I found that with a human body things would take longer to mature, while at the same time, with the baby being a werewolf, it would mature faster than a normal human baby. So, taking those two facts into consideration I found that Rosalie would have been given about five months after the time she was impregnated until she had to give birth. And, since she had already been here for three months, figuring that it had taken her about a month to find me, I found that we would only have one month to prepare."
April laughed. "The day you found that out was one hell of a day."
Daddy ignored her, going on. "So I kept reading on and I found out even more. Like how Rosalie would need to eat three times the amount of food a normal werewolf eats because she needs to supply enough food for her and the baby. And I learned that she would suffer contractions only on the day of the child's birth."
I nodded my head, openly listening for more information on my mother.
"Then I learned that it was highly unlikely that she would survive past giving birth."
This was the part I was dreading. Though I did know about my mother being dead all these years I was never told how, and more importantly, why. And to tell the truth, now that it had come down to the moment when I was going to learn the answers to those questions, I was scared. Just hearing it out loud was going to be a major eye opener. Like, wow, my mother really is dead. And although I never knew her, now knowing all these new things about her is going to make it even more heartbreaking when Daddy says those words.
"I didn't know if I should tell her," Daddy said. "And I was stuck having to make that impossible choice of whether it would be better to know that you're going to die or not to know for her. I turned to your Uncle Simon for help and, surprisingly, he had a good answer. He told me to ask myself what I would want. And then I knew what I had to do."
Daddy looked to April, who in turn looked down at Jason. "The next day I brought Rosalie breakfast and told her the truth. She took it well considering. She even had a couple requests: 1) She wanted April and I to be with her while she gave birth, and 2) she wanted me to promise to keep you safe no matter what happened. I agreed to everything on her list."
April looked up and gave me a smile. "During her last weeks she really became part of the family. She sat at the dinner table with us and joined in on the family movie nights. She was never without a smile those last two weeks."
"Then on May 18 at 9:12 pm you were born," Daddy said. "Surprisingly though, Rosalie didn't die right away. She held you first, gazing into your sky blue eyes. She would pat your full head of hair and run her fingers along your face. She let me hold you, too. I would take you from your mother's arms and you would settle into my arms and curl your fingers around mine. And as I gazed into your eyes and bounced your small body I would know that I loved you. I guess your mother saw it too because she insisted that I be the one to name you. And so I did. I told Rosalie that your name would be Cailey and when she asked why I told her it was because it reminded me of an old friend. She didn't press, just said the name Cailey was beautiful and she loved it." Daddy paused, then restarted, "For a while later, everyone came and visited you and your mom. The house was buzzing with excitement and we were all happy that Rosalie hadn't died—she had become somewhat of a beloved sister to us all.
"At about midnight I brought Rosalie a snack thinking that she might be hungry. I made my way into her room laughing and making jokes but when I saw the look on her face everything stopped. She had gone a sickly pale color and was gasping for breath. I could see every one of her veins making trails of blue up and down her arms. I think I chocked a little as I took in her appearance. I had hurried over to her, whispering soft words, racking my brain for information that I knew must be there, but she pushed me away. Her hands were burning hot and her eyes seemed to beg me to stay away. I couldn't help it, I started to cry. I hadn't thought I would have been that sad when she died, but as it happened, just thinking about what was sure to come moments from then, brought a pang to my chest. It was like losing my best friend. I tried to talk to her but she shushed me. Instead she kissed you lightly and handed you off to me. She watched with beady eyes as I took you from her arms and held you closely. Not until her eyes had closed and she was gone did she look away. But by then she was dead.
And there were the words.
From the couch April sniffled and said, "Rose really was like a sister to me."
No one had anything else to add so we all sat in silence. It was like the whole room was feeling the pain of my mother's death. Even me.
After a few minutes I felt a shuffle next to me and looked sideways to see Uncle Simon giving me a sad smile and opening his long arms for a hug. I relented and threw myself at him full force. It felt good to have some one. Especially right now while I was so confused. I know I had decided that Grandma Laurie was telling the truth and Daddy was lying, but after hearing my mother's story, I didn't want it to be that way. So I had to make a decision and like Daddy said he had done, I turned to Uncle Simon for help.
"Uncle Sam—uh, Simon?" I whispered, mentally hitting myself for getting his name wrong. It was going take some getting used to.
"Yeah," he whispered back.
"If I ask you a question will you tell me the truth?" I asked shyly. These were the kind of things that were hard for me. I mean, what of he said no? Then I would never have the courage to ask him a question like that again.
"Of course," he said looking kind of hurt that I would suggest other wise.
"I-is Daddy telling the truth? Am I really a w-werewolf?" I was bone numbingly terrified of what his answer would be. I didn't want to me a monster. I wanted to be a human that had a normal life and lived with normal people…I wanted a life like Demi's. She was a normal grown up probably with a normal family, and I wanted that.
"Hey, it's not so bad—you know, being a werewolf. It's a hell of a lot better than being a sorcerer!"
No, he was trying to soften the facts for me. I was a werewolf and it was going to be horrible. Would I have to change into a wolf now? Sleep in the woods? Eat raw meat?
"No!" I cried not really to Uncle Simon anymore, more of just to myself. Tears fell down my face and my nose got all stuffy. I wanted to kick and scream but I restrained because would it trigger my animal side now that I have one?
"Oh, don't cry…" Uncle Simon patted my shoulder and held my hand.
I reached my decision as those stupid tears of mine fell down my cheeks.
"She was right and she was wrong," I said. It was out now and it felt right. Grandma Laurie was right, but only a little. She called Daddy a monster and maybe that was true, but I was one too then. We were both monsters; both werewolves. She said Daddy would hurt me but I didn't believe that, not anymore. My mother's story had changed that possibility. I mean, he could have killed both of us from the time he meet Rosalie, but he didn't. So no, Daddy wouldn't hurt me. Was he a liar? I don't think so. Though, I'm not sure on that one because he was for the first eight year of my life. And was Grandma Laurie right when she said I should join with her and take them down? No.
And that made what I did to her a little bit more bearable.
R&R