Chapter Fifteen Family
“Lola says that you are welcome to come and stay with her and Tita Carla at the beach house she is staying in that she rented from her friend Marian. The one with the ugly yellow hair who plays Mah Jongg? Well, I say rented, but your lola actually won a week in Marian’s beach house because Marian got caught cheating. She had extra tiles in her caftan.”
“Scandal alert! Go, Lola!” I laugh at my grandmother’s exploits and tuck the phone under my chin as I open my laptop.
My principal has sent me the tentative schedule already.
The new strings teacher, Kelly Lupescu, has emailed and asked if we want to attempt a kiddie version of a musical like State Fair or The Music Man. Asks if we could get together for lunch.
“Daddy and I can join you down there on the weekend. I’m sure Danica, Meghan, and Shane could find one of their days off to visit, too.” My mother sweetens the pot, clearly aware that a week with Tita Carla is not on my summer bingo card.
“Aww, but I want you to come up here, Mom. Can you come up with the girls on the last weekend in August?”
“Well—”
“Please? You and Daddy need to meet Gordon. Soon.” I close my laptop.
Work is six weeks away, and I have other things on my mind.
I promised I’d give Gordon his first real piano lesson tonight.
We need a break from the cabin—and he misses Chopin.
So do I. As Mom makes spluttering noises in surprise, I pick up the cat and carry him to the piano, digging in the bench for my collection of basics for older beginners.
“Soon? Why soon? You didn’t... You aren’t...”
“In love? Yes. Thinking about settling down with a kind, quiet, mature pillar of the community and a heroic first responder? Yes. Making sound decisions about my future? Absolutely. So, before I go picking out wedding gowns, don’t you think you ought to meet him?”
“Wedding gowns! Slow down, anak!”
“I’m not actually rushing, Mom,” I chuckle, crossing my fingers.
To some, this would be a rush. To me? I already know what the right choice is.
I’ve never felt this way, and neither has Gordon.
Our worlds are different, but we discover new things together.
“I’m very happy, and I really like Gordon.
I love Gordon,” I declare, holding my breath as I wait for the backlash.
Silence.
“Sometimes you know so fast. Like you and Dad, right?”
“Right,” Mom says softly. “Okay. I think we can come up sooner. What about this weekend?”
“Uh. Maybe next weekend? Gordon took a few days off with me earlier in the week, and I haven’t checked his work schedule.” And he has to track down a succubi or her victim, and it just might be a little hectic.
“Yes. Yes, we will be there. Will his parents be there?”
“Um. No. His father passed away, and his mother isn’t well. He has brothers, but they’re all far away.”
“Hm.”
“So, this means that you can mother him. He’s never had a nice mom like you.
His mother was... Well, she wasn’t a patient person.
Probably needed therapy and didn’t get it.
” I wince. How else can I describe my potential mother-in-law?
She’s a troll, Mom. She ate people. She was what we’d call a cannibal, a serial killer, and a child abuser—and it was totally okay in her culture.
“Did you cook for him?” Mom’s voice is suddenly pointed.
“Yes, I—”
“What did you make? Did you make pancit? Did you make Daddy’s stew? Did you—”
“I didn’t make those things yet, but I will.”
“No. We will. We will come on Friday and cook all day, and he will come for dinner. Does he own his own house?”
“Yes, and it’s beautiful. Um. If I moved in there, I would save so much money. Enough money to pay for a big chunk of my own wedding.”
Explosive hissing makes me drop my phone.
Even from the phone’s new place on the floor, I can hear Mom telling me exactly what kind of ancestral curse will befall the family if I pay for my own wedding, and exactly what saints I need to consult for forgiveness for the grave offense of even suggesting it.
Chopin leaps down from the piano and investigates, batting at the screen. He probably thinks there’s some small, exceedingly angry bug trapped in there. “Mom. Stop. I was just trying to help out.”
“If you want to help out, you will set up a college fund for your children! He wants children, doesn’t he? Some men are just big, spoiled babies. They don’t want children. They want a wife, but they don’t want to do the hard work of being a husband!”
“Gordon is the most husband-ready guy I’ve ever met, Mom.
He’s already planning where to build a swingset for our kids.
I’m not rushing into that part, but I like that he thinks about it.
He had a rotten childhood and a rotten family.
Instead of being someone who shies away from responsibility, he goes and searches it out.
He looks for ways to make sure he’s better than where he came from.
I... I’m so proud of him, Mom. I’m so proud to have him in my life. So proud to be his girlfriend.”
“Send a picture.”
I roll my eyes, but push the appropriate buttons on the phone to appease her. “It’s going to your text messages, Mom.”
“I’ve never heard you talk like that, Andrea,” she muses. “Ohhhh. Oh! Oh, he’s a fine, fine-looking man. Oh, my goodness. His hair! Such a head of hair. And that face. He looks so happy with you—and more importantly, you look happy with him.”
“Mom, why is that more important?” I challenge with a laugh.
“Because you are my daughter, and your happiness will always come first. You will understand that one day,” she snaps. “But I like this boy. He has a good face. I will send this picture to the family chat so all of your titas can see, too.”
“What?! Mom, wait, I—”
“We’ll be there next weekend. What is the seafood like there? Should we bring our own? Is there a good butcher?”
“Uh—”
“Never mind, you’ll tell me tomorrow. Tita Marisol is calling.”
The phone call ends abruptly, and my text notifications immediately start. The phone rings.
Please, please, please not Tita Carla, I think to myself.
It’s Gordon.
“Thank God! I just had a family encounter that dropped me in it. Don’t worry, everything is fine, but our cute campfire selfie is now the talking point of the entire family chat,” I exclaim by way of a greeting.
Gordon makes a noise that I don’t know how to interpret.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I bragged about you to my mom. She’s coming up, not this weekend, but the next, if that’s okay with your schedule. Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Gordon? You okay?”
“No.”
“No. More fires? An accident?”
“No.”
I wait. I understand that sometimes my boyfriend’s mind needs time to sort out what’s okay to say, what needs to be said.
“Ardy couldn’t find a match for the blood, and he asked everyone on the FD volunteer list and the Night Watch if they could give a sample for typing. So I did.”
“And?”
“It’s troll blood. It’s also some kind of a match for mine.”
I blink. I was asleep when whatever happened last night happened, and my first memory is Gordon rushing and carrying me to his truck, my head bouncing all over his shoulder.
My boyfriend had a rotten childhood. This damn dream sex demon better not have touched him. “But... You weren’t bleeding. How did she get you?”
“No. Sorry, not an exact match of mine. A different kind of match. Ardy says it means it’s a relative. A close relative. A brother.”
“What?” I sit down hard on the piano bench, my elbow creating a jangle of loud sounds on the keys. “Your brother was here?”
“Yes,” Gordon’s voice sounds vague and dreamy, but not in a good way.
“Babe, did you eat?”
“Hm?”
“Did you eat? You sound lightheaded. Is that the shock talking, or are you going to pass out?”
Gordon starts to speak in a low, quick voice, like he’s disconnected from whatever is happening, just spitting back information.
“Big cities and big companies can do DNA assessments in seven hours to three days. Big departments with tons of crimes to investigate are backlogged. Pine Ridge has a small budget, but we don’t use most of it, Ardy says.
Have you ever been in their interrogation room? ”
“No, Gordon.” I shake my head, getting up. “Where are you at? I’m coming to you.”
“I’m almost to your apartment. We are having dinner there.”
I don’t mention the piano lesson. “Okay, honey. Chopin and I are waiting. What were you saying?”
“The interrogation room is mainly used for storing the holiday decorations that go up around the department. Ardy had me the results by the end of the day. There are these things... CMs.”
“Centimeters?”
“Centimorgans. Which makes no sense. I’ve never measured anything in a morgan. Have you?”
“No, honey.”
“My centimorgans and the blood centimorgans are a fifty-three percent match. That’s a sibling or a parent.
It’s a male’s blood. That means it’s a father or a brother.
My father is gravel somewhere. It’s one of my brothers.
One of my brothers is here. In town. He almost made it to me, Andrea—and that demon scared him off. ”
“It’s okay! It’s okay, we’ll find him. We’ll go look tonight. We can... Can’t Alban scry him based on the blood?” I’m proud of myself for using new terms—and knowing what the heck they mean.
“Now that we know it’s not the succubus’ blood, yes. He’s going over there now.”
“But you’re coming here?”
“I wanted to be with you.” Gordon’s voice shrinks. “I have feelings. I don’t like them.”
“I bet. Are you... What feelings? You can tell me if you want,” I encourage.
“I can’t tell what they are,” he grinds out. “Because I don’t know what my brothers have become, or which brother it is. Do you know how dangerous this could be?”
“Dangerous?”
“My brothers... Who knows who they are now?”
“Well, he came here, whoever it was. That means he wants to see you, right? That’s a good thing.” I hope.
“He could want to see me to kill me for dishonoring trolls by living among humans and actively helping to save them. Or he could want to move in with me.”
“Well, he could! For a while. I don’t have to live there, Gordon, not now while you and your brother are getting—”
“My life was not good. After years of wandering, and then years of semi-isolation in this place, it was peaceful. It wasn’t good until you. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose the good things,” he rasps, and his breathing through the phone sounds broken and wet.
I think he’s crying.
“Baby, you’re not going to lose me! Oh, my gosh. My family could make some guys run a mile.”
“I won’t run.”
“Me, either.”
“If he’s evil... If he’s like my mother...”
“Then he’ll have to leave Pine Ridge, won’t he?”
A long, long silence. “If he’s like my mother, he’ll want to kill humans. He won’t leave Pine Ridge. He’ll be buried here.”