Chapter 134
Thursday morning, I was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt my grandma had given me for my birthday last year that had a picture of a unicorn on it reading a book that said, “The Last Human,” which I thought was hilarious. My grandma really was pretty cool. I couldn’t sit still, though. I was pacing the living room while my mom went about her normal routine of cleaning everything. I must’ve been driving her nuts because she finally looked over at me from the shelf she’d been dusting across the room and shouted, “Cassidy Elizabeth! Sit down!”
“Sorry,” I said. She laughed, though, so I guess she wasn’t really mad. Just teasing.
“Did you drink coffee again?” she asked, moving on to the hutch.
I remembered trying it once before, when Elliott was here, actually, and I was trying to be a mature young adult instead of an awkward adolescent. “No,” I muttered, my mood going from anxious to somber almost instantly. “I’m just nervous.”
“Why?” she asked, running the green feather duster over the top of the antique hutch. “You’ll be perfectly safe with Jamie.”
“It’s not that,” I said, wondering why she thought that was my concern. “I just don’t know him very well.”
“He’s a nice young man,” my mom assured me.
“Mom, we both know he’s, like, a hundred and fifty.”
She paused and turned to face me now. “I can’t do that, Cassidy,” she said with a shrug.
I was sitting in my dad’s chair across the room from her, so it was sort of hard to make eye contact, but I did my best. “What do you mean?”
Mom let out a loud sigh and crossed the room to sit in the seat across from me, feather duster still in hand. “I can’t look at these people and see that they appear to be only a year or two older than you but know they were around during the Industrial Revolution. Or in Christian’s case, the Revolutionary War. I just can’t do it. I know it drives you and your sister crazy to hear me call them ‘young man’ or ‘young lady’ but that’s the only way I can process it. Maybe it would be different if I was in your shoes….”
“No, Mom, I get it,” I nodded. “I guess I never thought about it that way. I mean, I don’t have to process the fact that Jamie is so much older than me because he seems to be older than me anyway. I don’t look at him and think, ‘That dude could be my great-great-great-grandpa.’ I guess it’s different when you seem to be older than the person, even if they were born way before you.” I hadn’t really thought about it from that perspective before. “Do you wish….” I stopped myself. I didn’t want to hurt my mom’s feelings.
“Do I wish I wouldn’t have gotten so old?” she asked, laughing. My mom is almost fifty, my dad a little older than that, but neither of them look particularly old, although Mom has little laugh lines around her eyes and I know she colors her hair to keep the gray at bay. “Sometimes I do,” she admitted. “When I realized Aaron looks the same today as he did when I met him, when Cadence was a baby, when I see Hannah,” she shook her head at that, “and think, ‘Hey, that could be me,’ but for the most part, I’m happy with the choice I made. I know I wouldn’t be able to do what they do, what your sister does. What you will do.”
I was glad she had included me. It made me think she was confident in my ability. “What made you so sure?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Just a feeling. I’ve never liked violence of any kind. I have trouble squishing spiders. I can’t imagine tearing the head off of a Vampire.”
“Cadence almost threw up that time she saw a mouse in the trap in the garage,” I reminded her. “But she ripped that Vampire’s head off who had Drew without even thinking about it twice. Maybe you were just never in the right situation.”
“Maybe,” Mom shrugged. “Guess we will never know. It doesn’t matter. I’m happy with my decision. So is your father. He got enough of LIGHTS growing up there.”
“Do you think he’s sad that Cadence has already joined, and I am going to?” I asked.
“No, I know he’s proud of both of you, proud of his family’s legacy. But your dad’s a much better engineer than he ever would’ve been an assassin.”
Her choice of words had me laughing. I could see my dad in ninja garb with nunchucks. My giggling stopped abruptly when I heard a knock on the door, and my stomach climbed into my esophagus. I leaned over and peeked out the blinds and was startled to see an SUV in front of our house. I hadn’t even heard the engine. “They’re sneaky,” I muttered.
“It’ll be fine,” my mom assured me, resting her hand on my knee before she headed to the door.
I took a deep breath and tried to remind myself I was just going to my grandma’s house. With a friend of my sister’s. Who was a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old doctor. With magical healing powers….
“Hello!” my mom exclaimed, opening the door. “How are you?” I thought she was being overly welcoming because she knew I was freaking out. I walked over behind her, trying to remind myself to be cool so they didn’t think I was a goofy little kid, but it was harder than expected.
Jamie stepped in and hugged my mom, kissing her on the cheek, and Christian followed, shaking her hand. They were both wearing khaki shorts and T-shirts, which seemed so odd to me. It was hot outside, so I could imagine they would be dressed like regular people, but I was so used to seeing everyone in either black jackets or suits, it just seemed off.
