Kelley Armstrong - The Gathering

“You said you were hungry,” Mom said. “Maybe a sandwich?” She pointed at the Vietnamese submarines. “You like those.”

“I’m okay.”

“Ice cream, then,” she pleaded, like if I didn’t eat, she’d know I’d been permanently scarred by the old woman’s words. “They have Nanaimo bar. You love Nanaimo bar ice cream.”

“Sure, I’ll take a bowl.”

When we sat down, she was quiet for a minute, then said, “What that old woman said, about you, the adoption …”

I sighed and set down my spoon. “My mother left me in the hospital because she cared enough to want a better life for me. She must have had a good reason for not going through traditional adoption means. Maybe her family opposed it. Or maybe no one knew she’d been pregnant.” I looked at her. “Did I get that right? Because I’ve heard it, oh, only a million times.”

“Just checking. As you get older, your feelings might change.”

“Nope.” I slurped up a few boba balls from my tea. “I’m happy right where I am. And being abandoned is cool, in an old-fashioned gothic kind of way.”

That was a lie. Sure, other kids thought it was cool. I didn’t. I had no interest in meeting my birth mother, not because I’d felt she’d “abandoned” me or didn’t want me. I’d been a baby. She hadn’t known me long enough to reject me personally. She’d just rejected the general idea of having a kid, and I’d won the adoption lottery with my parents.

Abandoning me had been inconsiderate. I’d said that to my parents once, and they’d laughed. It was a strange word, I know, especially from an eight-year-old. They’d then given me the whole spiel on how my mother was a good person blah, blah.

What I meant was that she should have left a note detailing my family background and medical history. If I’m curious about anything, it’s my family. Was I Navajo? Did I have grandparents? Brothers? Sisters? And, even more important, was there a history of medical problems? I suppose that’s a weird thing to worry about, but I blame growing up in a medical research town.

When I was little, my grandmother used to tell me this story about how I came to live with my family. She said my real mother was a cougar who’d had a late summer litter. She’d been an old cat and knew the signs that it would be a long, hard winter and her cubs wouldn’t all survive. So she’d begged the sky god for mercy and he turned her smallest cub into a human girl and told the cat to take her into the city. She’d left me at the hospital, but before she went, she’d pressed her paw to my hip, leaving me a mark to remember her by.

That, she said, explained not only my birthmark but also my love of animals and the forest. Even as a kid, I knew it was only a story. Still, that’s exactly how I felt, even now—like I’d just appeared, from nothing, with no background, no history.

I was still thinking about that when Dad showed up. He didn’t get mad like Mom had. She always jokes he’s the only Irishman born without a temper. He was upset, though, and confused, not understanding how any person could lash out at a stranger like that. He was mostly just worried about me and how I was taking it, and because I didn’t want him to worry I went through the whole reassurance routine again, insisting I hadn’t been scarred for life by the mutterings of a senile old woman.

We left shortly after that, no one being much in the mood for dinner out. By the time we got home, the sun was dropping behind the house, setting it off in a glow of sunset. I love our house. My mom designed it, getting permission from the St. Cloud company to take down the cabin they’d built for the last warden.

Coming up the drive, you can’t see it at all. It blends right in with the forest, like it’s been there forever. It’s a two-story modified log cabin, with huge windows and skylights, so when you’re inside, you feel like you aren’t. It smells like the forest, too, even with the windows closed in bad weather.

Both stories have wraparound decks. Right now, there was someone sitting on the bottom one—Daniel with Kenjii stretched over his feet as he played a game on his DS. Beside him was a duffel bag.

As we drove in, he stood.

“Got your text,” he said when I climbed out. “How much did it hurt?”

“Not at all,” I said. “Apparently, I can’t get a tattoo because I’m a witch.”

“I could have told them—” He stopped. “Oh, you said witch.”

“Ha-ha.”

“You’re serious?”

“Kind of. I’ll explain later.”

“Hello, Daniel,” Mom said.

“Hey.” He nodded to my dad, then gestured at his duffel. “This okay?”

He didn’t say, My dad’s drunk again and I need a place to stay . He didn’t need to.

Mom said, “Of course it is.”

“You still have your key, don’t you?” Dad said.

Daniel shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s nice out.” Even if it was pouring rain, he’d have waited on the porch. Daniel’s funny about stuff like that. He has this rigid sense of right and wrong, and even if he has a key, he wouldn’t go inside until we were there.

We put Daniel’s duffel in the spare room. He stays at least once a month, sometimes for a couple of days, so it would make sense to just keep some stuff here, but Daniel refused. I think he keeps hoping that this will be the last time he needs to stay with us. It never is.

We went outside so I could check on the animals. On the side porch Fitz stretched out in the last sliver of sunlight.

“Dad felt sorry for you, didn’t he?” I said. “That’s great, but you’re not going to learn if we keep getting you out of trees.”

Fitz only lifted his head, yellow eyes slitted, and yawned. Daniel laughed and crouched beside him, scratching behind his tufted ears, then under the ruff around his face. Fitz rolled onto his back and Daniel rubbed his stomach.

“Uh-uh,” I said. “If you get—”

“Scratched, it’s my own fault, I know.”

A cat scratch is bad enough, but a bobcat is twice the size of your average tabby. When he takes a swipe, there’s blood involved.

Fitz was on his best behavior with Daniel, though. He usually is. He can sense Daniel likes animals. That’s how we met. A week after we moved in, Daniel brought us an injured squirrel. The old warden had taken in wounded animals, and Daniel had figured that was part of the job. As for what a five-year-old was doing riding his bike deep into a predator-laced forest, well, that says something about the level of parental care in the Bianchi household.

When he’d brought the squirrel, I’d asked my dad if we could look after it. After some talks about conservation and how the goal was to release the animals—not make them into pets—my parents agreed. That was how I discovered my passion for rehabilitating wildlife. It was also how I made my first friend in Salmon Creek.

As Daniel played with Fitz, I sat on the grass, stretching out my legs and closing my eyes. I swore I could feel energy filling me. I inhaled the smells of the forest, the sharp tang of long grass, the sweet perfume of the trees. As I relaxed, I realized how tense I’d been since leaving the tattoo studio. I could say I was just disappointed, but what the old woman said bugged me, as much as I tried to shrug it off.

As I rested, Kenjii circled the house. She gave Fitz a respectful berth—having been on the receiving end of his killer claws many times—and lay down beside me, head on my knee.

I petted her awhile and then asked Daniel what had happened this time. He shrugged and said, “The usual,” which meant his dad got drunk and started in on him. Not physically. I think Daniel would have preferred that. Violence was something he understood, something he could deal with. This wasn’t.