14
True to our mutual promise, Hayden and I didn’t stop speaking again. We did, however, stop saying anything that really meant anything to each other, including I love you.
We fed Chrissy breakfast together the day after our fight, and we had a brief, civil discussion about the weather. Then, we mostly talked to and about Chrissy. That evening, while we fed her dinner and gave her a bath together, things were pretty much the same way. Later that night, I went to bed alone, wondering if Hayden and I had rushed into marriage too fast, or had gotten married for the wrong reasons, tricking ourselves into thinking that we really loved each other just because we both subconsciously thought that us getting married would be best for Chrissy.
Lying awake around midnight, despite being dead tired, I wondered if Kayley had been correct when she’d made her nasty comment about Hayden and me only lasting a year.
Several days went by, and we had another fight. This time, we both shouted. I cried. Losing a handle on my anger at one point, I wadded up a tissue and threw it at Hayden. It didn’t really “connect” with his washboard abs as much as it maybe “briefly tickled” them before floating harmlessly to the ground.
Surprisingly, given the level of tension in the room, Hayden and I both actually burst out with a little laughter, looking from the tissue at his feet to each other. Then, with genuine warmth in his eyes, which was something I’d missed desperately, Hayden actually cracked a grin at me.
“You know, if you want to hurt a vampire, you’re going to have to do a little better than throwing a tissue.”
Wondering if he’d catch me and just hold me if I just suddenly threw myself into his arms, I cracked a grin in return. But then, immediately, Trevor came tearing in the house, saying something about a Warren being spotted near the gate at the end of our long driveway that led to the main road. In a flash, Hayden was gone, leaving me to resume crying alone. When he returned home that night, we fought again, although I didn’t throw anymore tissues, nor did I throw myself into Hayden’s arms, or even have any thoughts about wanting to do so.
A few days and a few more fights later, Carol asked me if Hayden and I might be interested in marriage counseling, saying that she’d be happy to help us set something up.
Feeling completely demoralized that my marriage had reached the point that a family member was actually offering to help me set up marriage counseling, I thanked Carol but said that it would probably be pointless. “I don’t think Hayden’s able to keep an appointment these days, and even if he were, he could probably only stay for, like, ten minutes of it or something.”
Sitting up to the island with a mug of coffee between her hands, Carol said that ten minutes would at least be something. “It would be a start, anyway.”
Stirring sugar into my glass of iced tea, I shrugged. “What would we even tell a marriage counselor anyway? That a murderous coven of vampires is completely ruining our relationship?”
“No…I don’t think you’d have to go into those kinds of specifics. I think you could just tell a counselor that the two of you are having trouble communicating without shouting, and that you’d like to learn better ways to communicate.”
Suddenly deeply embarrassed, I asked Carol if our shouting matches had been bothering everyone.
She said no. “Not ‘bothering,’ exactly…that’s probably not the right word. Concerning maybe would be. I know Mark and I have both been concerned, and we both just want to help you and Hayden.”
Still embarrassed, I went back to stirring my iced tea. “It would take at least an hour to drive into Sweetwater, spend ten minutes with a counselor, and then drive back home…and Hayden just doesn’t have that kind of time these days, which is part of the whole problem. He doesn’t have any time for me and Chrissy.”
Carol said that Hayden and I wouldn’t even have to drive into Sweetwater. “I know a therapist that works with individuals and couples, and because she works with a lot of agoraphobic people who are unable to leave their homes, she’s completely used to making house calls. She could come here and see you and Hayden with no traveling necessary.”
“And what happens if she’s attacked by a Warren as she’s driving onto our property or something? Or what happens if she happens to see some of our vampires attacking or killing some of theirs? It just seems wrong to invite somebody onto a property knowing full well that there’s a chance of them getting hurt, or at a minimum, they might have to have their memory erased.”
Carol murmured that that was true. “I think we could take a calculated risk in this case, though. After all, we did have several dozen senior citizens onto the property for a barn party.”
“Right, but that was before the Warrens started really escalating their attacks, and that was before a decision was made to close the farm to the public for the rest of the summer.”
Carol said again that that was true. “Even with that being the case, though, I don’t think it would be morally wrong to invite a counselor here to the house. We’d keep her safe. But it’s, of course, completely up to you and Hayden. I’ll give you the counselor’s number, and you can call her, or not, or you can even have me give her a call for you if you want. I saw her for a while years back after my first husband died, and she really is a wonderful counselor.”
I said I’d give it some thought, and this seemed to satisfy Carol.
I really did intend to give the counseling issue some thought; however, I kind of changed my mind about that after having a conversation with Sam that night. Basically, we got into a general discussion about the Warrens and two small-scale attacks that day, and Sam said something about how Hayden was definitely trying to “send their leader a message.” I asked Sam what he meant by that.
Leaning back against the sink with his arms folded loosely across his broad chest, he shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I just mean ‘sending a message’ by the way that Hayden’s killing all the Warrens we find, I guess.”
“So, instead of just a stab to the heart, and then ‘off with their heads,’ he’s still been taking his sweet time with things?”
Sam said yes. “And he’s actually making sure that it’s all witnessed by another Warren, so that that one can run back to Axel Warren and tell him what’s up. Like, today, for example, when we spotted two Warren spies near the forest. We chased them inside until we got deep into the forest…maybe even a mile or two. Then, once we got them, Hayden had the seven of us running this particular patrol with him physically restrain one of the Warrens while he went to town on the other, making sure that he had a pretty drawn-out, painful death.”
Picturing it in my mind, I felt disgusted, and maybe Sam could see this on my face, because he was quick to assure me that the vampire who was killed so brutally deserved it, saying that he probably even deserved more.
“See, he was one of the recent Warren recruits from that coven in Utah…and, Sydney, the vampires who got kicked out of that coven were kicked out for a reason. They were not very nice people out there, and they did very bad things. Some of them, including the one Hayden killed today, were not only draining humans dry, but were also involved in a cult thing of sorts that hurt kids…and I mean, hurt kids in the very worst possible ways. So, please don’t waste any disgust or pity on a vampire who deserved even worse treatment than he got.”
I said that I wouldn’t, but that I was still troubled by something else. Sam asked me what it was, and I hesitated for a few moments before asking a question.
“All issues of whether or not the vampires Hayden kills ‘deserve’ it aside, do you think he likes it? And, I just mean…on a general level, I guess. Do you think he simply likes killing, like how his dad apparently used to like it?”
After a long exhalation that made me think that Sam hadn’t been fully prepared for the question I’d asked him, he said he wasn’t sure. “I don’t think so, though. I don’t think Hayden likes killing just for the pure sake of it, or the actual experience of it. I do think he’s a lot like his dad, though, in the sense that he maybe enjoys the power of killing, and the power of taking out his enemies. In that way, he and his dad are probably the same. There’s one major way they’re different, though.”
“And what way is that?”
“Well, I think with Hayden’s dad, the power of taking out his enemies was the thing. That’s what ‘did it’ for him, so to speak. That’s what drove him. With Hayden, I think the power of taking out his enemies is definitely a thing that drives him, but it’s not the thing. The thing that drives him more than anything, I think, is taking out his enemies to keep his family and his community safe. That’s his ‘end goal’…keeping his family safe. And with his dad…the power itself was the end goal. The power itself was the thing. Does that make any sense at all?”
I said that it did, and Sam said good, raking his hands over his face.
“I wouldn’t blame you if it didn’t. I’m so wiped out these days, I feel like I’m barely even making sense half the time when I talk. This is the result of constantly being on patrol and skimping on ‘vampire naps,’ maybe only sleeping for fifteen minutes every day instead of the forty-five minutes that I really need. It was worth it this morning, though, just to be able to pop into Sweetwater to have a quick breakfast with Maria…even though that did require me to choke down a few eggs, pretending that I actually liked them.”
Maria was a young woman from Sweetwater that Sam had been dating for a month or two. According to Sam, they weren’t extremely serious yet, but he’d told me that he was “starting to hope” that they might “head that way” sometime soon.
After cracking a smile at his little joke about the eggs, I asked how things were going with Maria, and he said just fine.
“When I get a chance to see her, anyway…which is never as often as she or I would like. I keep telling her that we have so much work to do on the farm, but I think she’s starting to think that I’m actually married or something, and that’s why I can’t see her very often, or bring her home to meet the family. I just keep asking her to please be patient, and that after berry season, I’ll have more time, but what I’m really thinking is…well, these damned Warrens can just go ahead and attack us any minute, as far as I’m concerned. The sooner, the better.”
After stifling a groan of shared frustration into my hands, I told him to not even get me started. “If the Warrens attacked us this second, I’d be thrilled.”
Right then, a calamitous crash sounded from somewhere outside, and Sam and I exchanged glances before moving to look out the window by the sink, which was open because the day hadn’t been very hot. There, we saw that instead of the crash signaling the beginning of a large-scale Warren attack, it only signaled Jen coming up the walkway to the house. Bathed in the glow of a floodlight, she was kneeling down, scrambling to pick up what appeared to be at least a dozen metal pans of various sizes that had fallen on the flagstones. I called out to her, asking if all was okay, and she looked up, saying yes.
“That big crash was just because I got a little cocky. See, I cleaned up the kitchen in the RV with Phyllis today, and we weeded out all these old pans that were just taking up space in the RV and annoying her and Bucky half to death. I said I’d use them since I bake so much and live in a ginormous house with plenty of space for them, and Phyllis said that that was just great.
So, I put them all in my trunk, and I brought them all out in two separate trips. But then when I just got home, I just started to get cocky about my pan-carrying skills, and I thought I could bring them all inside in one trip. Turns out I couldn’t. Not without dropping them, anyway.”
Sam and I went outside and helped her pick them all up, and then Sam said he needed to grab a nap and a shower, stat, before he was needed back out on patrol. I told him I understood and thanked him for his time in talking to me, now feeling a little guilty that I’d taken up some of his precious minutes away from patrol. It seemed that time was now the most precious commodity in the family.
Later that night in bed, alone as usual, I decided that I wasn’t going to think any further about marriage counseling, because despite what Carol thought, I personally just couldn’t see how it would help anything. Although it was true that Hayden and I had definitely had communication problems as of late, my conversation with Sam had reminded me of what our biggest problem was, which was simply lack of time. And having to spend more of it sitting in a therapy session wasn’t going to help.
What we needed was simply for the Warrens to attack. Like Sam, I was hoping it would happen any second. That night, with a profound sense of relief, I actually even dreamed about it, having no idea that when it actually happened, it would be much more like a nightmare than a dream.