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“I have to think of them,” he said. “Good man would,” I said. His grey eyes stared out at the lake. “Everything is going to change,” he said. “Yeah.” “I’m scared,” he said. “Yeah.” Something in his body language relaxed, and suddenly he was just my brother again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That I got edgy. I … don’t like to talk vampire stuff with you.” “You’d rather pretend we were just normal brothers, with normal problems,” I said. “Wouldn’t you?” he asked. I squinted down at my feet for a while. “Maybe. But you can’t ignore things that are real just because they’re uncomfortable. I’ll sit on
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Ah, well. There was no sense in brooding over it. Life never stays the same. There’s always some kind of curveball coming at you. Nothing to do but swing away.
“Yeah, well. I’ve never had much opportunity to fight with family,” I said. “I have,” she said. “Everyone cares about everyone else, so when you get mad and say something horrible, it hurts that much more. And too many things go unsaid. That’s the worst, I think. Everyone thinks they know one another better than they probably do, so you fill in the silences with things the other person never actually said. Or thought. Or thought about saying.”
“First, you should know that your dad is one tough son of a bitch,” I said quietly. Her eyes widened. “Dad!” “I have to tell the truth,” I said. “And I will fight to come home to you safe and sound. Always. I’m strong, and I’m sort of smart, and I have a lot of tough, smart allies to help me.
She hugged me tight again and said, “I’d rather have you. Making me pancakes.” “Me, too,” I said, and kissed her hair. “Don’t let them get you,” she said. “Make things right and kick their … their butts.” “When you’re eighteen,” I said, “you can say asses.” She let out a titter and nodded against my neck.
“Make things right?” I asked. “Where did you learn that one?” “From Mr. Carpenter,” she said. “He says making things right is the first and last thing you should do every day. And that it’s what you always try to do.”
“Only the young think being called old is an insult,” I said, still smiling. “I am what I am, regardless of what anyone calls it. No one can change it, regardless of what anyone calls it. And it mostly means that nothing has managed to kill me yet.”
Because it’s hard, it’s really, really hard, in fact damned near impossible, to exercise power without it having some unexpected consequences. Doesn’t matter what kind of power it is—magic, muscle, political office, electricity, moral authority. Use any of it, and you’re going to find out that as a result, things happen that you didn’t expect.
I put my hand on her shoulder, squeezed slightly, and gave her another smile. “Hey. It was hard, for everyone. But we came through it. And with all these scars, we have to have learned a lesson somewhere, right?”
Home is where you embrace the present and plan the future. It’s where the books are. And more than anything else, it’s where you build that world that you want.
“When you have a problem, you have a problem,” I said thoughtfully. I nodded at Cristos. “When you have two problems, sometimes one of them is a solution in disguise.”
The pain we feel in life always grows. When we’re little, little pains hurt us. When we get bigger, we learn to handle more and more pain and carry on regardless.
