Deek has gone very still, no longer devouring his steak and vegetable manna. “And Ginny has to stay with her mom?”
“CPS—Child Protection Services—have stepped in before. She always ends up back at her mom’s though. And things get better until the next boyfriend enters the picture. Suffice it to say, when Ginny wants to spend the night, she’s always welcome. And if there’s ever a day that she says someone hurt her, believe the girl,” I add with an inward frown.
“You’re just going to wait for her to be… hurt?”
I can’t stop myself from looking at him then. And to my distant surprise, Deek holds my eye contact. Not only that, he’s doing it with a surprising amount of force.
I shrug helplessly. “The law can’t protect her from circumstances that might happen. They can only punish or take action on what’s able to be proven or reasonably proven. And whatever has happened to her in the past is apparently not violation enough to remove her entirely. So she’s at the mercy of her mom’s choices. Poor kid,” I add sadly. It’s me who breaks our gazes.
It’s a good length of time before Deek returns to eating.
I get up and round the island on the opposite side to start cleaning the cast iron. I’m drying it and preparing to coat it with oil when Deek stands and says, “Susan?”
Surprised that he’d address me, I glance over my shoulder. “Yeah?”
Eyes fixed somewhere around my chin again, he says with sincerity, “Thank you. This was very kind of you.”
“It was no trouble,” I assure him. “And just leave your plate. I’ll get it tomorrow.” I send him a smile.
His dark gold eyes flash up, meeting mine once, and his lips curve up for a brief moment. “Thanks again. And goodnight.”
“Night.”
He leaves the kitchen, quietly padding on bare feet down the basement steps.
And in the morning when I shuffle to the sink to fill the coffee pot, I find his plate and silverware washed and set in the drying rack.
CHAPTER 5
SUSAN
“Signal.”
“MOM, I know,” Charlotte stresses. With a frustrated shake of her head, she flicks her fingers up to activate the blinker.
“Deek? Did you see her? This is my horse,” Maggie loudly whispers to Deek, who is situated in the right rear seat, behind me. He’s dressed nicely for church, complete with a tie. When I voiced surprise—and shock—that he’s wrinkle-free despite his things arriving in a duffel, he explained that simply hanging clothing in the bathroom during your shower works as a pretty decent steamer.
Huh. The things you learn.
He’s got the window rolled all the way down hoping fresh air will keep him from hurling. (And to stop the other windows from making that awful thumping noise from the air pressure as we speed along the road, everybody else has their windows cracked open.) He’s also gripping a salad bowl on his lap… just in case he has to toss his cookies.
Maggie’s in her car seat on the left, oblivious to the level of his misery. (To be fair, he’s being a really good sport about being driven around in a car that makes him want to die.) She’s showing him her handheld game.
“That’s a very nice horse,” Deek replies, voice so much lower in decibel than hers. “I like the pink bow in her forelock.”
The words strike me as funny—something about the polite sentiment delivered in his masculine voice. I stifle a snicker.
Charlotte glances into the rearview mirror. “Which way, Deek?”
“Keep going straight,” he responds. “Do you know where Culvers is?”
Maggie shouts, “CULVERS!”
“Shhhh, Maggie—” I start.
“Ice cream…” Maggie whimpers.
“Maggie?” I say.
Her whimpering stops. “Yes, Mom?”
“Not now, and remember the rule while Charlotte is practicing?”
“Be quiet,” sighs Maggie.
“That’s right. Thank you,” I confirm.
“Yeah, Snow Pea,” adds Charlotte. “I’m driving.”
Maggie giggles.
“Why… Snow Pea?” Deek asks haltingly.
“She used to tell me she’d snap me like a snow pea,” Maggie shares.
“Oh.”
“How’s your legroom situation?” I ask him. I don’t twist to look over my shoulder at him like I would anyone else. It’s a little strange, but I’ve only known him a few hours and I’m already getting the hang of it. I notice though that Maggie’s direct attention is no problem for him at all. She looks right at him and he doesn’t seem nearly as affected. He’ll look over at her if she asks him a question and everything. I guess she’s perceived by him to be less threatening? A child has little to no social hierarchy.
“I’m fine,” he claims.
In our ancient Ford Fiesta, his long legs are crammed up to his chin; he’s a polite liar. But he can’t sit in the front because he isn’t a licensed driver himself, and while Charlotte is working toward her fifty hours of certified driving, the law requires a licensed individual to be seated beside her. (Unfortunately, our schedules are such that we can’t always have her drive before I go to work and I’m often too tired after work to get back in the car and stay alert enough to watch the road (although we have managed to complete her ten hours of night driving), so it’s the daytime hours on weekends when we can log her time in.)
Thus, we’re crippling our werewolf.
“Ice cream,” Maggie sing-songs to herself as we pass Culvers.
“Turn right at the stoplight,” Deek directs.
Charlotte shoots me a brief look and pointedly flicks on the blinker. “Got it.”
Smiling, I tell her, “Good job.” Although I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of my fourteen-year-old driving, our State allows kids her age to get a permit, and Charlotte is very good behind the wheel. I really just need to check myself to prevent me from being a back-seat driver.
“Thanks, Mom,” she says dryly.
Deek shifts, his knees pressing so tight to my seat and therefore my spine that I could draw you a topographical map of his patellas. “You’ll follow Wolf’s Hollow Road til the end.” He’s panting slightly, and from the slice of him I can see out of the side mirror, he’s white-knuckling the bowl he’s clutching.
“Got it,” Charlotte chirps, and our bodies start to feel the change in our state of motion strongly as we take the tight curve to a tree-lined road.
Deek gags at the four-second relentless tug of gravity.
Meanwhile, I want to stop and take photos. “This is breathtaking.” The way the sun lights up the end of the road makes it feel like we’re driving through a tunnel of green. Even the tree bark is green, some kind of lichen that—fungus aside—makes the entire place a picture.
Deek coughs. After a moment of recovery, he agrees softly, “I’ve always thought so too.”
Charlotte is nodding. “It is really pretty.”
“Are there any horses?” Charlotte asks dubiously.
I feel my mouth quirk. This girl and horses. “Sorry, kiddo. Horses don’t grow on trees.”