7. Winnie
WINNIE
It was difficult for a vampire to get sleep while caring for four ill humans, especially since I could hardly slip away to my casket parked down the road. So, I decided to improvise.
Whenever the Lawrence family napped, I slipped into the basement, which had no natural light coming in, and slept on a pallet made of blankets and pillows I’d collected from the linen closet.
Billie’s old baby monitor had been stored at the top of her closet, so I hooked it up and turned the volume as high as it would go. When someone stirred, I heard it.
I’d always longed to have a newborn, but that dream had turned to dust when I was turned. Still, I knew that this was the type of sleep new parents succumbed to. They only slept when the baby slept. And right now, the Lawrence family was one big, sick baby.
Two full days after the storm hit and the house turned into an infirmary, everyone finally stopped looking like death.
Fantastic progress.
No one was well. Well was several hills away and probably wearing clean clothes, which none of us had seen consistently since Monday. But the children were keeping down water, soup, toast, ginger tea, and the occasional honey candy Billie treated with the reverence of a holy relic.
Conrad, meanwhile, had reached the stage of illness where he kept insisting he was fine, but his tone suggested he’d made peace with death.
“You are not fine,” I told him that morning as I set a tray on his nightstand. “You’re vertical, which is better than yesterday, but that is not the same as being fine.”
He blinked at me, hair flattened on one side and wildly ambitious on the other. “I’m a grown man. I think I can tell when I’m fine and when I’m not fine.”
“Oh, is that so?” I smirked. “Is that the same intuition you use to determine whether a pancake is fully cooked?”
“You know I try my hardest to cook pancakes. You’re being cruel.”
“I’m being accurate. There’s a definite difference.”
My time with Conrad over the past few days had been interesting.
I enjoyed the banter and providing care he obviously hadn’t received in many years.
There was something satisfying about looking after someone who spent every waking moment taking care of everyone else.
He accepted help awkwardly, usually with a joke and an apology, but he accepted it all the same.
I tried very hard not to wonder how easily I could become accustomed to doing it.
That thought lingered longer than I cared to admit.
It wasn’t Conrad, exactly, that frightened me.
It was the picture my mind kept trying to paint—a quiet life filled with ordinary moments.
Morning tea. Shared dinners. Looking after someone because they were mine to look after and letting them do the same for me.
I’d spent two centuries convincing myself those dreams belonged to mortal women.
Immortal vampires turned against their will didn’t get husbands.
They certainly didn’t get children. We drifted through other people’s lives until it was time to disappear again. That was simply the way of things.
CJ, who had taken up residence at the foot of Conrad’s bed, lifted one finger weakly. “Winnie has become our household physician, chef, nurse, storm warden, and legal counsel. I think we should promote her.”
“To what?” Bianca asked from the armchair, where I’d tucked her up with a blanket and a book.
“Queen of the Lawrence estate,” CJ replied.
“Queen of Throw-Up Castle.” Billie, who’d spent the morning tucked against Conrad’s side with one foot inexplicably bare again, blinked her blue eyes at me.
Conrad gave a weary shake of his head. “Please don’t name the house that.”
“It’s earned the title,” CJ murmured.
I poured some herbal tea into a cup and handed it to Conrad before he could mount a defense. “Small sips. If you drink it quickly again, you will regret it, and then I’ll have to pretend not to be disappointed in you.”
His mouth twitched against the rim of the cup. “That would be devastating.”
“It’s meant to be.” I brushed a strand of hair from his forehead and checked for a fever. I’d become accustomed to these small, casual touches. They were comforting—probably more for me than for Conrad. I knew I could only get away with them for so long, but he had yet to protest.
The storm had finally moved on sometime before dawn, leaving the world outside soaked and sullen beneath a bruised gray sky.
After two days of thunder, the house seemed almost peaceful, though the family had not quite followed.
They still moved cautiously, as though they no longer trusted their stomachs.
By late morning, however, the children had collectively decided they were well enough to leave the bedroom. This decision was made with no medical consultation whatsoever.
“I want downstairs,” Billie said.
Bianca lowered her book. “That sentence is grammatically incorrect.”
“Winnie understands it.”
CJ rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “I too yearn for the lower realm.”
Conrad sent me a look full of apology and despair. “They’re still weak.”
“They can be weak in the family room,” I said. “A change of scenery may improve morale.”
Billie raised her hand, before letting it flop down onto her stomach. “My morale is in danger.”
So, downstairs we went.
It took thirteen minutes to get them all down there, with Conrad overestimating his stamina, and Billie being adamant that she needed a stretcher because she wouldn’t possibly survive the trip. By the time we reached the family room, my patients looked worse for wear.
I arranged them with blankets, bowls, water, and strict instructions to rest.
The television played a nature documentary featuring frogs with alarming coloring and intense mating habits. The girls were both fascinated, though Bianca pretended not to be and was arguing with the narrator under her breath.
CJ lay across one end of the couch, occasionally whispering, “The frogs understand me. They, too, live an unappreciated life of adaptation and failure.”
I didn’t ask for an explanation; I’d grown accustomed to CJ’s dramatic commentary.
Conrad huffed lightly where he sat in the armchair closest to the couch, one elbow braced on the armrest, face still pale and lightly sheened with sweat. Some people wore illness petulantly, but Conrad seemed embarrassed by it, as though his body’s temporary surrender was a failure of manhood.
I returned to the kitchen to start another pot of broth and gave myself a firm mental correction while mincing ginger.
My mind wandered to a fact I’d tried to ignore for days.
I was falling for this family. Hard. They were the last thing I thought about when I drifted off to sleep, and the first thing I thought of when I awoke.
I quickly scolded myself. This family was vulnerable, and I should know better than to emotionally attach myself to them.
My hand stilled.
There it was. The thought that I somehow belonged in this family.
I had been avoiding it since the first morning, when CJ hugged me and looked startled by his own heart.
Since Bianca sat a fraction closer when I explained old remedies.
Since Billie had wrapped both arms around my waist and informed me that leaving a mug behind meant somewhere was home.
I’d always wanted to be a mother, but that opportunity had been stolen from me when I was turned.
There had been other families, other children, but my heart hadn’t taken to any of them the way it had to the Lawrence kids.
They were the closest I’d come, other than my own siblings, to having children of my own.
And Conrad. Conrad, who looked at his children with guilt and devotion mingled so tightly that one could not be separated from the other.
Conrad, who laughed as though surprised his body remembered how.
Conrad, who had nearly flinched when I touched his forehead because he wasn’t used to tenderness anymore.
I had lived too long to mistake attachment for kindness.
Kindness was a choice.
Attachment had consequences. I knew that better than anyone.
Once, before all of this, I had loved children without fear.
My younger siblings had clung to my skirts in a cottage far smaller and colder than this house, their faces wind-chapped, their hands always reaching.
I had raised them as much as my mother had—it was the norm in those days for the eldest daughter to become the secondary mother.
I had fed them porridge and patched their sleeves.
I had threatened them at bedtime—not that they’d ever believed me.
I had told stories by candlelight when hunger made them restless, kissed bruised knees, untangled hair, washed fever from foreheads.
I had believed, with all my heart, that one day I would do the same for my own children.
Then poverty decided otherwise.
I went into household service because there were mouths to feed, because a position in a fine house was salvation when one had too many brothers and sisters and too little bread.
I told myself it would be temporary. I told myself I would send my wages home, earn my place, return one day with gifts and grand stories and enough money to make everything easier.
I did return, in a manner of speaking, years later.
Hidden beneath a veil, I’d stood at the edge of a road, far enough away that none of them would recognize the woman who had not aged. My little brother had children by then. My sister had our mother’s hands. Life had continued without me because life always had the indecency to continue.
The onion beneath my knife blurred.
I blinked the old memory back into place and continued my task. This family was not mine. It was important that I remember that.
It was also increasingly difficult to do so.
From the family room, Billie called, “Winnie, the frog is poisonous and beautiful. I approve of her choice in a mate.”