16
The following morning, my dad told me that I wouldn’t be seeing Jake or Paul that day, because he needed them both for patrol until evening, and then, he was going to work with their patrol group on hand-to-hand combat and knife skills, skills that they’d all need to be effective against the Warrens. Deeply disappointed, I asked my dad how he knew that I was interested in both Jake and Paul anyway.
Pushing himself up from a lean over the island, my dad gave me a wry sort of smile. “It’s not that big of a farm, Chrissy…and I hear a lot. Specifically, I heard a few young women practically crying yesterday after you were spotted at the creamery with Jake. Apparently, he has quite a following, as does Paul. I think some women around here think you’re being a little greedy.”
Outraged, I snorted once I was able to pick my jaw back up off the floor. “That’s not true at all. Just because I like two different guys but don’t want to just jump headfirst right into a relationship with one of them—”
“Relax, sweetie.” Having come around to the side of the island where I was sitting with a mug of coffee, my dad put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “I didn’t say you were being a little greedy, and the person who did was definitely just joking.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, who said it?”
My dad looked at me with his eyes twinkling. “Mary.”
Mary was a vampire who’d been turned in her early sixties, over a hundred years earlier. And, with a vampire daughter and two vampire grandchildren who lived on the farm, she was not only an actual grandmother, but something like the grandmother of the whole community. Sweet and playful, she’d never been anything but kind to me, and knowing her personality, I knew that my dad was right, and that she’d surely just been joking by saying that I was being “greedy.” Still, though, I couldn’t help but be a tiny bit miffed anyway, and my dad gave me a brief tight squeeze.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have repeated what Mary said, even though she said it in a very lighthearted, joking sort of way, adding that she couldn’t blame you at all. I guess I just couldn’t resist teasing you a little.”
I made a little humph-ing noise. “Well, maybe I’m just getting too old for teasing…at least when it comes to guys I like.”
My dad planted a kiss on the top of my head. “I won’t do it again.”
Soon, after my mom and the boys had joined us in the kitchen for a quick breakfast of fruit and yogurt for the boys before heading off to open the childcare center, my dad said he’d better get going, too. I told him to have a good day, and he said the same to me, but then paused at the threshold of the kitchen.
“Chrissy? Maybe you’re not especially wanting your dad’s two cents about your dating life—”
“I’m definitely not, Dad.”
“But just for the record, I think Paul is a really quality young man. I just trust him for some reason. The more I get to know him, something about him just makes me think he has a good, strong heart.”
Surprised, just because my dad usually wasn’t so quick to trust newcomers, let alone praise one how he’d just done, I said it was good that at least he felt that way about Paul. “Jen doesn’t trust him one bit. She thinks he’s hiding something. Same with Jake.”
With his eyes twinkling a bit, my dad leaned against the wall, sighing. “I think Jen is probably just a little jealous. She’s probably just worried that you won’t have time for her anymore if you get involved in a relationship.”
I shrugged. “Maybe, but I honestly don’t think that’s it. If anyone’s been pulling away from our friendship lately, it’s been her, with David, the ducks, and the pond. I think she just really believes that Jake and Paul are both hiding something, which I don’t think is the case at all, but….” Recalling something, I paused. “Wasn’t Jen absolutely right when she got a funny feeling about that girl Carla years ago? That girl that tried to get mom to kill you?”
Giving his eyes a faint roll, my dad conceded that Jen had been correct about Carla. “I don’t think Jen’s a psychic or anything, though. I think Carla was just a rare instance of Jen’s occasional paranoia actually proving true. After all, I heard from Mark that Jen was getting ‘bad feelings’ about Carol supposedly wanting to cook and eat Johnathan last week, and Jen also got it into her head that the water truck lady who filled the pool wanted to kidnap Johnathan and take him home for her own.”
“Well…that’s all true.”
With his arms folded loosely across his chest, my dad straightened up from his lean against the wall. “At any rate, no matter how Jen feels about him, I’m happy that Paul is here on the farm. I think he’s going to be a huge asset to us Watchers if and when the Warrens decide to cause major trouble, and I think he’ll be an asset to us for years to come. I see a lot of leadership potential in him. Just so you know what I think about him.”
My dad gave me a winky sort of little smile that he sometimes did, and I sighed, fighting the urge to roll my eyes.
“Thanks, Dad. I’ll put your ringing endorsement of Paul in my mental column of ‘pros’ about him.”
Ignoring my sarcasm, my dad gave me another winky little smile. “That’s a good girl.”
“Now, anyway, why don’t you seem as thrilled about Jake?”
My dad’s lighthearted, teasing expression became replaced by one of complete neutrality.
“Jake’s all right.”
With that underwhelming statement, he turned and began heading over to the front door, telling me again to have a good day over his shoulder before stepping outside.
Later that day, Nora came by the house, examined my ankle, and declared that the following morning, I would have her permission to ditch the crutches, provided that putting weight on my ankle wasn’t painful at all. As it was currently, putting my full weight on it only caused me the slightest little twinge. In fact, Nora said it was probably more simple stiffness from disuse more than anything by this point.
As my dad had said, I didn’t see Paul or Jake that day. Instead, I spent most of the day at the new pond, just daydreaming about them, reading, and watching Jen swim in the pond with Johnathan and the other ducks. Now much better behaved than they’d been upon first arriving to the farm, the ducks actually swam after Jen in an orderly line, as if she were actually their mother. Also, even though I would have never dreamed this was possible, some of the ducks seemed to be responding to hearing their names. Jen was able to tell them apart in order to call them by name because during all the time she’d spent with them, she’d noticed different little things about each of them that made them unique. With Johnathan, it was his orange bill with the yellowish-colored dots, and with a duck named Grayfeather, it was a small patch of very pale gray feathers on his side.
To supplement the ducks’ diet of fish from the pond, homemade organic croutons, and worms they pulled from the ground, David had dumped thousands of live snails in the pond for them to eat. He’d also added sand, more rocks of all different sizes near the shorelines, and different aquatic plants that would benefit both the snails and the ducks. With all this biomatter added to the existing biomatter of duck feces in the pond, it was starting to look very pond-like in places, which was to say, kind of scummy and murky. Jen didn’t seem to mind at all. Currently, while I watched her, she was doing the backstroke in the deepest part of the pond, encouraging all the ducks following her to “just try it.” However, they didn’t really seem inclined to.
When she finally got out and began heading over to my lounge chair in her bikini, with Johnathan waddling after her, I noticed a big glob of something green on one side of her head, obvious against her vivid red hair. When she reached me, I sat up a little straighter, peering at whatever was on her head, and told her to check and see what it was. With all the stuff that was in the pond now, I could only imagine.
Not seeming perturbed in the least, Jen ran a hand through her hair and pulled out a big, slimy clump of something that looked like seaweed. “Oh, oops.” To my borderline horror, she actually sniffed it, then held it out to me. “This is some kind of special algae plant or something that David planted. It’s supposed to be good for ducks to eat, so maybe it’ll be good for my hair, too.”
I didn’t a hundred percent see the logic in that; however, I agreed that there might be a possibility of the slimy plant being good for her hair, no matter how slim. “What if it turns your hair into white duck feathers, though?”
I just hadn’t been able to resist the little joke.
Jen laughed. “Oh well, I guess. That would just cause the ducks to bond with me even more. Not sure how David would feel about me having feathers for hair, though. He seems to like my hair just the way it is. Did I tell you he even called it beautiful when we were shopping at Box-Mart at, like, one in the morning last night? Oh, and also, we made out in the sporting goods section, too. We just sat and French kissed on an inflatable raft, and there was no one around to stop us.”
When Jen soon showered and left the house to work a shift supervising customers at the gun range, I got to work in the kitchen, making a fairly elaborate meal of vegetable lasagna with from-scratch marinara sauce along with from-scratch garlic rolls for Jen, myself, and my little brothers to enjoy later that evening when everyone was home. Normally not one to enjoy cooking an extremely great deal, I threw myself into the task at hand, just wanting to stave off boredom and thoughts of missing Jake and Paul.
The next day, I finally got to see them both, although only briefly, Jake for a few minutes in the early afternoon, and Paul in the late afternoon. Now off my crutches, I was back to work at the creamery, and that’s where they both came to say hello. However, during each visit, I got a rush of customers and soon had to reluctantly say goodbye. Both Jake and Paul seemed reluctant to say goodbye, too, but the way my dad was working them, neither of them had more than a few minutes to spend with me anyway.
The day after that, Paul brought me a stunning bouquet of pink roses from a florist in Sweetwater, along with a boxed lunch from my favorite sandwich shop. Several hours later, maybe having heard about Paul’s surprises and not wanting to be outdone, Jake also brought me a bouquet of roses, along with Chinese takeout from a place in Sweetwater that someone had told him I loved. Taking a break to enjoy my delicious dinner at a little table in the back of the creamery, with all my roses on the table, too, I noticed the two other girls I was working with that day cast a few looks of possible envy in my direction.
Things with Paul and Jake went on similarly for a few days, until Saturday, when my dad gave everyone time off, and I was able to have a long, leisurely date with Jake in the afternoon, and then a long, leisurely date with Paul at night. Jake packed a picnic basket full of my favorite foods, and we went to Sweetwater lake to swim. Paul and I went to dinner at a new restaurant in Sweetwater, where he surprised me with a sketch he’d done of me. Touched by the thought and the effort he’d put into this surprise, and impressed with his considerable artistic talent, which I hadn’t had a clue about, I became a bit misty-eyed and had to fight not to let tears fall down my face in the packed restaurant. After that, we went to see a movie, although we didn’t actually watch too much of it. Instead, sitting in the back of the near-deserted theater, we spent most of the time talking in low voices, laughing near-silently, and kissing in the near-dark.
It was when I got home that night that I realized that instead of coming closer to making a choice between Jake and Paul, I was only becoming more and more uncertain. In fact, it suddenly hit me that I was falling in love with them both. Horrified, I flopped down on my bed with tears in my eyes for the second time that evening.
Shortly after, without knocking, Jen entered my room, cradling Johnathan in her arms. “Look who came to see you, Chrissy. It’s my little feathered son.”
Just as unnaturally tame as could be, Johnathan quacked so softly that the sound was barely audible. While Jen shut the door behind her, I quickly wiped my eyes and sat up, not wanting to answer any question about why I was crying. Fortunately, the fact that I only had a single small lamp on in the spacious room would help conceal my misty eyes, too.
After crossing the room, Jen had a seat beside me on my bed, petting Johnathan’s soft white feathers. “You know, David and I have been talking about how Johnathan is my animal-son, but just as important to me as a human son; and I’m starting to think that maybe I never want any human kids. I think I just like animal kids better, just because they’re a little funner, and also, sometimes, you can just completely leave them alone for long periods of time, and nothing really bad ever happens to them. On the other hand, you can’t just leave a human baby in a pond all by themselves for eight hours, can you?”
I agreed that you couldn’t, and Jen continued, still petting Johnathan.
“So, neither of us has come right out and said it yet, but David and I are probably going to get married. We’ve already said I love you to each other, and we’ve both talked about how we both feel like we’ve been waiting for each other for our whole lives; and, like me, David is pretty sure that he only ever wants animal kids, too. So, this will free me up to get turned into a vampire whenever I want, either before or after our wedding. And if we ever change our minds about wanting animal kids only, then we can just adopt some human kids, like Mel and Matt. That’s a pretty good idea, isn’t it?”
I agreed that it was, and Jen kissed Johnathan on the head a few times before speaking again.
“You know how most human women, their biggest concern before they get turned into a vampire is, have I given birth to all the human kids I could ever possibly want before I can’t have any more anymore?”
I said yeah, and Jen continued.
“Well, my biggest fear is, have I eaten everything I could ever possibly want?”
I couldn’t help but giggle a little, but Jen didn’t.
“I’m serious, Chrissy. Food is super important to me. I’d even say that it might be, like, at least…I don’t know. Thirty-seven percent of my joy in life. Some days even higher. You know?”
I said I knew.
“Spending eternity with David will be worth giving it all up, though. At least, I hope it will be. That’s what marriage is, though, right? Just kind of taking a leap of faith. Just going with your gut feeling, and using your brains a little bit, and listening to your heart…but at the end of the day, it’s just a leap of faith. Right?”
I told Jen she was right, realizing that I just needed to take a leap of faith in my own life, too. I just needed to go with my gut feeling, and use my brains a little bit, and listen to my heart, and ultimately just take a leap of faith, choosing either Jake or Paul. Feeling suddenly a bit scared, I made a decision right then and there that I’d do it the following day. I’d sleep on things, and then I’d spend the day doing some thinking, and then by evening, I’d make a decision and tell both Jake and Paul, before things went any further, and before I fell any further in love with them both. As far as my decision, once made, I’d simply take a leap of faith that it was the right one.
Yawning, Jen soon said that she’d better get to putting Johnathan back in the pond before she went to sleep. “Either that, or have my dad blow a gasket if Johnathan wakes him up by quacking at three in the morning or something. We already had a close call when I smuggled him into the house so that we could watch TV in my room together. When we got in the kitchen, he started quacking, but then he suddenly stopped, because he could just tell that my dad was out in the living room. See Johnathan is just like me. He just knows things sometimes.”
Just on the off-chance that this was really the case, I wondered if I should ask Johnathan who I should choose to begin a relationship with. Quack once for Jake, Johnathan, I thought. Quack twice for Paul.
The next day, after a terrible night’s sleep, I agonized during my shift at the creamery, just trying to listen to my gut and my heart. However, my gut and my heart kept telling me that I was in love with two different guys equally. As far as what my brain was telling me, I wasn’t exactly sure, but it was at least periodically urging me not to leave the freezer door open yet again. Making the creamery’s stock of frozen pies and ice cream cakes begin to thaw, I’d left the freezer door open at least three times by the time I ended my shift at six in the evening.
Walking home, I came across Mel, who told me that there’d been several serious Warren attacks just outside the farm that day. Immediately worried, I asked her if everyone was okay, and she said yes.
“Some kind of major trouble is brewing, though…and I think it was even before the attacks.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Matt and I talked to your dad a few hours ago, and he seemed really upset about something, and he said that he’s having a meeting at the house at seven o’ clock. Family members and council members only. No newcomers.”
“Well, what is the meeting about?”
Mel shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that Matt and I intend to be there right at seven, because whatever is going on, we want to know right away if it’s some kind of a threat that will affect the kids.”
She and I soon parted ways after I said that I’d be there right at seven, too.
I ran the rest of the way home. Carol and Mark were in the kitchen, and I asked them if they knew what was going on, but they said no.
Mark actually said that he had no clue. “We were just told that your dad wants a meeting in the dining room at seven sharp. No newcomers. Just family members and council members.”
Growing increasingly agitated about not knowing what was going on, I all but flew upstairs, took a quick shower, and then got dressed. Blow-drying my hair, I got the feeling that whatever had upset my dad so much, it had to be something to do with the Warrens. Maybe he’d heard plans of a large-scale attack, I figured. Maybe he’d gotten word that the Warrens soon planned to hurt my mom, me, or my little brothers, just like they’d always wanted to do. However, even if one of these things were the case, this didn’t explain why my dad had insisted that no newcomers be present at the meeting. And now that I was really thinking about it, this was the part that had me most agitated.
I cruised into the packed dining room a full five minutes before seven and took a seat beside Jen, who told me that everyone was already present. Somewhat to my embarrassment, I’d been the last one out of thirty-something people to arrive to the meeting, and I had the feeling that everyone had been waiting for me.
My dad, at least, had been waiting for me, because not ten seconds after I’d slid into my spot next to Jen, he called the meeting to order from his seat at the head of the main table, thanking everyone for coming. While everyone hushed, he then fell silent for a long moment or two, frowning with his gaze on the table, before lifting his face and speaking in a somber voice.
“Family, friends, and council members…I don’t want to alarm anyone. However, I need to tell you all the truth. Here, on the farm, which is supposed to be our sanctuary, we have a Warren spy in our midst.”