My mother’s shoulders slump, her face crumbles. She begins to cry, rasping sobs that wrack her body. I start to reach out but hold back.
Maybe the tears are because she’s repulsed. Maybe she would pull away from me in disgust. I couldn’t bear that. I stand up, step away from her bed, tears of my own cascading down my cheeks and spilling onto my hands.
“I’m so sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have said anything. If you want Frey and John-John and me to leave, we will. We can be gone by morning. I’ll tell Dad something’s come up. That we—”
And in the next instant, Mom has pushed herself off the bed and is hugging me so tightly my words are choked off. “How long has it been like this for you?” she whispers.
“Almost two years.”
“Oh, Anna.” Her words are muffled against my shoulder. “How can you ever forgive me?”
I have to step back, too stunned by her words to do more than hold her at arm’s length to study her face in disbelief. What is she saying? “You’re not afraid of me? You don’t hate me?”
She takes a step back, too, and sits on the bedside, pulling me down to sit beside her. She cradles my face in her hands. “I’m not crying because I hate you, I’m crying because of what I’ve done to you. You’ve had to face so much alone. When you needed me most, I made you afraid to come to me. Even before, when you left teaching, I was judgmental and cruel, trying to mold you into what I wanted instead of letting you find your own way.”
I raise my hands to stop her words, but she grabs them and continues on.
“And you were attacked . . . My god . . . One of the worst things that can happen to a woman and you couldn’t come to me. I made you afraid to come to me. What kind of mother does that to her daughter?”
I’m crying again now, too, and grasping her hands like a lifeline.
Mom’s voice softens. “Instead of applauding the strong woman you are, I forced you away.” She draws a sharp breath. “I’ve heard such awful things about vampires. The blood. The killing. I never believed they existed, of course, I thought it was all fiction. But I only have to look at you to know that there is nothing inherently evil in what you’ve become.”
I put my hands over hers. She doesn’t wince at the contact. “I could make you well,” I say simply. “It would be painless. There’s a period of adjustment, but I would take care of you. We could tell the family we’re going to a clinic—to try a new treatment. When you come back, you will be strong again. The cancer will be gone. You’ll have your life back. Yes, it will be different, but I’ll stay with you as long as you need me to.”
Mom is quiet for a long moment, her eyes straying to a picture on her dresser. It’s a family portrait, taken when I was a child. My mother, father, brother and I, all in our Easter best, posing with broad smiles and happy faces.
“Thank you for offering,” she says at last. “But I can’t accept.” Her hands tighten on mine. “My faith is strong and I believe in an afterlife. I know it will be hard on Dad and Trish when I’m gone, but they have you and Daniel and each other. I think it was God’s plan to bring Trish into our lives, knowing I had not long to live.”
She pats my hand. “We will be together again one day. You and your brother and the daughter he never met. All of us, when it is time. For now, it seems you have a destiny to fulfill. An important destiny. And you will soon have a husband and a wonderful little boy to raise. Make the most of your time with them, Anna. Don’t let it slip away.”
Then we’re hugging again, holding each other tightly. Mom’s voice at my ear. “I am so proud of you, Anna. So proud of the woman you’ve become. You are so much stronger than I have ever been.”
After a long moment, she breaks away. She’s frowning. “I suppose this isn’t something we should share with your father.” Her expression is serious, but her words carry a hint of humor.
“Probably not,” I agree. “At least for now. He has enough to deal with, I think, without the knowledge that his daughter is not exactly normal anymore.”
“Then it will be our secret.” Mom pats my cheek. “Don’t you worry about it. I’ll tell him when I think he’s ready.”
A shudder wracks her body. She leans back against her pillows, her face drained of color. “I think I’d better rest now. We have another big day tomorrow.”
I bend over her, tucking the blankets around her, trying to keep the alarm from my face. “We will take care of everything,” I reply. “If you want to spend the day in bed, you just do it.”
She smiles—a real, genuine smile full of love and acceptance and it warms me. Suddenly, I feel better, lighter in spirit, than I have in days. I sit at her bedside until she drifts off.
It’s only as I tiptoe out of the room that sadness descends once again.
I glance back at my sleeping mother. In some ways, telling her about me, offering her the chance to overcome the illness strafing her body was a victory.
In other ways, though, it was a bitter defeat, because for all my talk of immortality, I can do nothing now to save her.
FREY FINDS ME LYING IN THE DARK—CURLED ON OUR bed, knees drawn to chest. He shuts the door quietly and slips into bed beside me, letting me burrow back against him.
“I guess I don’t have to ask how it went,” he says.
My voice is a soft monotone when I recount the conversation. When I finish, he strokes my hair.
“Your mother’s faith in her own kind of eternal life is strong,” he says. “She does not fear death. It isn’t surprising that she wouldn’t agree to be turned.”
“But she’s not thinking of anyone else,” I snap. “She’s being selfish. She’s not thinking of what her death means to Trish or Dad or me. We need her.”
I’m crying again, angry tears that burn hot and seem to sizzle on my skin. Frey’s arms tighten around my waist but he doesn’t say what I know he must be thinking. He simply waits for me to say what he knows I will.
“That was stupid, wasn’t it?” I struggle into a seated position, wiping my face with the sleeve of my shirt and shifting so I’m facing Frey. “I just called my dying mother selfish. She accepted what I told her. Made me feel accepted and loved. Even apologized for criticizing my life choices when I left teaching. And I just called her selfish.”
Frey is smiling, one arm resting behind his head on the pillow. “You didn’t mean it. I understand.”
I snuggle back down beside him. “How do you put up with me?”
“It’s a constant struggle.”
I push myself back up. “One thing I didn’t tell her,” I say, half turning so I can look at him. “Is the part sex plays in the vampire dynamic.”
“Probably a good thing,” he says, slipping his free arm around my waist. “That might have been a little too much information.”
Then I’m smiling, too. To a vampire, sex and feeding warm the blood. They are the two things that make our bodies feel alive, feel human. The two things that make what would be an intolerable existence endurable. I read the fire in Frey’s eyes, know what he’s thinking, feeling. He understands. He always has.
“So do you really think we should practice abstinence for the next couple of days?” I ask, pulling my sweater over my head.
Frey sits up straighter. “Probably. We don’t want to cause your dad any more embarrassment.”
Leaning down, I gather Frey’s T-shirt at the waist and strip it off, dropping it on the floor.
“Or we could be very, very quiet.” I’ve got his jeans unzipped about the same time he’s managed to lower mine and we kick out of them together.