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“Adam Morrow wants to date me,” I told Aunt Jettie, who stood next to me as I watched him drive away. “That’s weird.”
“That’s one very sweet boy.” Jettie nodded. “Respectful, thoughtful, and kind. His mama raised him right.”
“I know.” I sighed, taking the flowers into the kitchen and putting them into one of Jettie’s favorite pressed-glass vases.
Jettie nodded. “Nice ass, too.”
“Gross.” I shuddered.
She smirked. “I’m dead, not blind, honey.”
“And still, I say, ew.” I grabbed my purse and slipped into my coat. On a whim, I grabbed Jettie’s old wicker picnic hamper out of the front closet. “I don’t have time for this. I need to go be confused by the man I’m actually dating.”
As it turned out, Gabriel was the one confused.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as he opened his front door before I could even knock.
It was more than the weary tone that had little alarm bells going off in my head. Gabriel’s face was drawn and pinched. His eyes were a dull slate color and lacked the spark I’d come to expect. He looked almost ill. This was more than just traveler’s stress. Something was wrong. But I could tell by his guarded expression that asking would leave me without answers and alone on a perfectly good date night.
“Nothing,” I said, smiling to hide my worries. “Absolutely nothing.”
“You never come to see me unless you’re angry or something has gone wrong.”
I gasped, feigning hurt. “That’s not true.”
>The cracking of my unhinged jaw echoed in the empty kitchen as Mama Ginger resumed munching her dessert. She shrugged and chewed. “I mean, if you don’t have children, what’s the point of being a woman?”
I think I deserve some sort of karmic reward for not using my vampire strength to pull Mama Ginger’s lip over her head. Obviously, kids weren’t an option. That door closed the moment I swallowed vampire blood. In general, vampires do not make great parents. Our night hours are incompatible with healthy human sleep patterns. It’s hard to discipline a child when they can just run out into the daylight to escape you. And then there’s the whole “never aging and outliving your children by hundreds of years” thing.
Parents who have been turned while their children are still minors have to fight fang and nail to retain custody, even when there’s a living parent in the home. And the last legislator who brought an undead adoption-rights bill before Congress was literally laughed out of office.
Gripping the countertop in a way that left moon-shaped dents in the surface, I counted to ten and said, “That’s just—”
Mama Ginger dropped her fork dramatically and cut me off, “Honey, I just can’t stand it. I have to tell you. A mother’s heart can’t bear to see her son in such pain.”
“Zeb’s in pain?”
“Well, sweetie, isn’t it obvious? He only went after Jolene when you hooked up with this Gabriel character. He said he doesn’t see you nearly as often since you met Gabriel, and I know it’s just breaking his heart. Jolene’s just his rebound girl. He’s not in love with her. He’s trying to get back at you.”
“For what?”
“For not loving him back!” Mama Ginger cried.
“Zeb doesn’t love me. He loves Jolene,” I said in a slow, deliberate tone one might use with someone who was very dim or slightly drunk. Or both.
“But you’re the perfect match, you always have been. You have such a long history together. You can’t just throw that away. Hot pants and hormones do not make a marriage. Believe me, honey, I should know. I married for lust, and look what happened to me: a husband who doesn’t talk and in-laws who talk too damn much. What you have, friendship and companionship, that’s what makes a solid, lasting marriage. That’s what is going to make my boy happy.”
“Please, God, let that be the last time you ever say ‘hot pants’ in front of me.”
“It’s always been you and Zeb, in my head.” Mama Ginger paused to press her fingers to her temples, as if she were about to peer into a future where I was somehow living and bearing her lots and lots of little Lavelles. “Whenever I pictured Zeb’s wedding, it was always you walking down that aisle.”
“You’re just not making sense right now,” I told her. “If you’d just get to know Jolene, you’d see why Zeb loves her so much.”
“She’s not you! When you and Zeb are married, we’ll be the perfect, big happy family. You and Zeb can come over for dinner every other night. We’ll go to flea markets on the weekends. And I’m sure Mamaw or Daddy Lavelle would be dead by the time you and Zeb started having babies, so you could move right into one of the trailers behind the house.”
I think I might have sprained something trying to keep a straight face in response to that. “But if you really want a mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship like that, Jolene would be more than willing to do all of those things with you. She wants to be close to you.”
“But it won’t be the same. That’s not the way I pictured it.”
