“I decided it was best not to invite your grandma,” Mama said, carefully adjusting the folds of a chair cover. “And honey, if anybody has a problem with you being here, they can get the hell out of my house.”
I blinked back the mysterious moisture gathering at the corners of my eyes. “Thanks, Mama.”
“Who’s ready for some Texas Hold ’Em?” Daddy boomed as he came downstairs in his silly translucent green dealer’s visor. It went well with his lucky rainbow suspenders.
Dick was going to eat my father alive.
“You guys aren’t playing for money, right?” I asked.
I will admit to sweating a little when the doorbell rang.
The first guest to arrive was Iris Bodeen, a distant relative of one of my step-grandpas and an avid “band mom” when Zeb and I were in the Marching Howler Band. She handed Jolene a case of diapers and told her what a catch she’d snagged.
“Zeb was always good to my Jessica, even when she was going through her awkward phase,” Mrs. Bodeen said of her daughter, who had developed debilitating acne our sophomore year. “He was kind, even when it would have been easier not to be. He’s going to be a wonderful father.”
Jolene beamed at her.
Nina Tipton, whose rambunctious twins had made Zeb’s life hell his first year of teaching, almost cried when she talked about Zeb’s patience with them. “A lot of teachers would have just washed their hands of my boys … especially after the clown incident. But your husband worked and worked until they were able to sit still for a whole day without punching or kicking or trying out new wrestling moves. They would have been expelled from elementary school if it wasn’t for Zeb Lavelle.”
And on and on it went. It was a shame that Zeb couldn’t hear these testimonials, as he was sequestered on the back porch. An avid fan of the Gambler movies, Daddy was doing his best riverboat-dealer shtick for Dick, Gabriel, Zeb, and Mr. Wainwright. I frequently snuck to the back window to check on the “menfolk.” Mr. Wainwright seemed to be floating silently behind Gabriel giving Dick clues about Gabriel’s hand. I sent Aunt Jettie outside to even the playing field.
So far, I’d managed to stay under the radar, helping Andrea keep the plates filled while Mama handled hosting duties. The guests I did come across didn’t seem surprised or alarmed to see me. Well, my cousin Junie was making it a point not to speak to me. But that had far more to do with my discussing her stripping career near a microphone at a family funeral the year before than any vampire issues.
“Janie, honey, how have you been?” asked Loralee Warner, who worked with Mama at A Stitch in Time. Loralee’s usual mode at any party was to camp next to the buffet and watch the proceedings from there. She was a fan of tiny food she didn’t have to cook herself.
I lifted an eyebrow and searched for potential double meanings in Loralee’s words. I couldn’t find any.
“I’m fine, Miss Loralee. How are you?”
“Oh, my hair’s grayer, and my butt’s bigger, but what else is new?” She snorted. “You know, your mama told me about your, um, big changes that you’ve been going through.”
I could only imagine what Mama and Loralee talked about while trapped in the quilt shop for hours. On Mama’s frustrated days, I doubted I came across in a flattering light. “I’m sure she did.”
“You know, my sister’s boy, Jason, he was turned last year.” She sighed. “But it turned out to be the best thing for him. He actually had to think about what he did before he did it. Was it safe for him to leave the house? Did he have enough blood to get him through the week? Was he talking smart to a vampire who was older and stronger than he was? He had to do a lot of growing up. He’s almost tolerable to be around now.”
“Well, there’s something to strive for,” I muttered.
“Your friend Jolene,” Loralee said quietly. “She’s not quite human, either, is she?”
“Please don’t tell anybody,” I whispered, looking to see if the other guests overhead her. They were far too engrossed in Jolene’s opening what appeared to be a vibrating musical baby swing with five speeds.
“Oh, honey, I don’t care,” Loralee said. “The way I see it, you vampires and whatever Jolene is, you’re just making things more interesting for the rest of us. Are there any more sausage balls?”
And with that dizzying change of subject, the conversation was over. No one in this crowd, it seemed, cared that I was a vampire. These were people who had known me since the day I was born. Their children had attended my birthday parties. They’d attended all of my step-grandpas’ funerals. Being with them now was no different from when I was a human. As long as I kept the frothy punch flowing, I was welcome. Now, that wasn’t to say that I would be welcome in any crowd. There was a good chance that for the next fifty years, I would walk into any conversation with a human who knew me before I was turned expecting some sort of insult or rejection—which was a result of my own neurotic nature, really. Humans were neither all good nor all bad. And just as in my interactions with vampires, I would have to approach each of them on a case-by-case basis.
The fact that it had taken me this long to come to this “stunning” conclusion made me a little sad.
I wiped my hands on a tea towel and made my way over to Jolene, who was cooing over the double bassinet Andrea and Dick had given her.
“Dick wanted to buy you a breast pump.” Andrea snorted. “I learned never to take him into a baby store. Ever. He snickered every time he heard the word ‘nipple.’”
“Well, that’s what you get for dating a giant twelve-year-old,” I told her, sitting on Jolene’s left.
“Oh, honey, they’re all that way,” my mother’s best friend, Carol Ann Reilly, told me in a world-weary tone.
“Look who’s all smug and secure now that she’s made up with her boyfriend,” Jolene said.
“My boyfriend is more of a giant fourteen-year-old,” I muttered. “Just as emotionally immature but somehow more dangerous.”
“Oh, honey, they’re all that way, too,” Carol Ann assured me again.
It was far from the small family shower I had planned, but Jolene was positively glowing with every exchange. We cooed and awed appropriately over every little outfit, crib sheet, and stuffed animal. Hell, I got a little emotional over Jolene’s shiny new wipes warmer.
By the end of the evening, my relatives were convinced that they remembered Jolene from family reunions when she a little girl. She was invited to join several Mommy and Me groups and a sewing circle. Mama considered her baby-shower-related social debts settled.
The boys were allowed back into the house after the ladies left, trailing cigar smoke and chip crumbs in their wake. Considering what Gabriel and I had been up to, I fully expected to burst into embarrassed flames at being in the same room with both him and my father. Let’s just say that we’d spent several evenings experimenting, and we’d figured out that I could read Gabriel’s mind if I was drinking his blood during exactly the “right moment” during sex. Unfortunately, his thoughts tended toward the possessive grunty male part of his personality. We were still working on deeper, more meaningful communication, hence the spontaneous combustion of parental shame.
I focused on helping Mama with the dirty-dish patrol. The heavily pregnant Jolene, despite having eaten her weight in sausage balls during the shower, tucked into a heaping bowl of ice cream and Canadian bacon. Daddy, Andrea, and Zeb made a furtive grab at whatever food Jolene hadn’t claimed.
When Daddy finally took a break from grilling Dick and Gabriel about their nineteenth-century childhoods, Gabriel took Dick into the parlor and handed him a little leather portfolio containing the deed to the Cheney family manse. Considering that they’d spent the evening gambling, I took this as a bad sign. But it seemed to be something that Gabriel had been thinking about for a long time.
“I want you to have it back,” he told Dick. “There’s no way I can ever really repay you for being the kind of friend Jane needed, but I can give you this.”
“I can’t,” Dick protested. “You know what that bet cost us. To take it back now would just make it all pointless.”
“Not to be rude, but it was all pointless,” I noted from across the room. Four eyes narrowed at me. “What? I said not to be rude. That’s like saying ‘God bless them’ right after you say bad things about someone. It means it doesn’t count!”
“What are they talking about?” Daddy whispered, clearly fascinated.
“Did Dick win at cards tonight?” I asked Daddy. Daddy nodded. “Well, he tended to play drunk when he and Gabriel were human, so he usually lost. Dick lost his family’s house to Gabriel. The pair of them are so stubborn that it’s taken them this long to get over it.”
“Wow!” Daddy couldn’t have been happier than a desperate housewife watching her favorite “stories.”
Gabriel cleared his throat. I had the good sense to seem sheepish and mouth, “Love you.”
“After all you’ve done for Jane, it’s the least I can do,” Gabriel said, pressing the portfolio into Dick’s hand.
“I don’t know what to say, son. I’m sorry we let it get this far. I’ve missed having you around the last hundred or so years,” Dick said, looking the most human he had since I’d met him. He looked younger somehow, more vulnerable. He took the portfolio but then looked up, his eyes pleading. “Can I still irritate the hell out of you?”
“I don’t know what I would do if you didn’t,” Gabriel said honestly. “I think you would sicken and die.”
They shook hands and gave each other manly punches on the arm. Dick announced to Andrea that they were moving up in the world, to a deluxe antebellum home that she could redecorate to her heart’s content. Then he lovingly fed her a deviled egg. Andrea blushed, especially when Dick tried to kiss her afterward. Deviled eggs are not a sexy food.
“Does this mean that we’re going to be double-dating now?” I asked. Andrea rolled her eyes.
Gabriel’s grin was wicked. “Yes, because I think it’s only fair that since Dick got my girlfriend into a bar fight, I should be able to take his girlfriend out on the town and put her in danger while he watches. Maybe we can go to a biker convention.”
Dick growled. “Hey, Jane fared better in that fight than I did.”
“I thought you weren’t involved in the fight with Walter,” Gabriel said, his brow furrowed.
“Not that one, the other one, with Todd. The one … you don’t know about.” Dick grimaced. “Crap.”
“You got her into another bar fight?” Gabriel exclaimed. “You were supposed to be looking out for her, not putting her in harm’s way! That’s it. Dick, Jane, from now on, all of your play dates are supervised. Andrea, sweetheart, I’m taking you sky-diving. It’s only fair.”
Daddy laughed and headed into the kitchen for another round of beers. Andrea climbed into Dick’s lap and suggested alternative activities, such as bull riding, swimming the Ohio River during peak barge traffic, motocross racing without helmets, and letting me cook for her. Dick’s scowl grew deeper with each suggestion. Having finished the world’s most disgusting sundae, Jolene was propped up against Zeb’s side, both of their hands gravitating to her enormous belly. Jettie was distracted from inventorying Jolene’s loot with a fond pat on the cheek from Mr. Wainwright.
I had a family. A family that loved me, without judgment, without reserve. And my parents had somehow fallen right into this motley crew and were enjoying themselves. Sure, there were blood relatives out there who couldn’t stand the sight of me, but I could fall back on these people. They would fight for me, kiss my booboos, take me out for tequila shooters when life got me down. I didn’t need more than that. All was right with my world.