Amanda Hocking: My Blood Approves

“Within my first few hours as a vampire, I nearly killed our neighbor, I was so hungry. But after that, my bloodlust calmed down, and I felt safe enough to just check on my daughter. I hid in the backyard and peered in through the window. Before I even got near the house, I heard Sarah crying. Philip was carrying her around trying to calm her down, and he said, ‘I know you miss your Mama. But we’ll find her. She’ll come back to you.’” Fresh tears were streaming down her cheeks, and the car started to slow. We were on a suburban street I had never seen before, and Mae parked on the side of the road, underneath a tree.

“I slept in the woods during the day, and at night, I would sit outside the window and just watch Sarah. She cried for me every night for a month. Philip had the police searching the area for me, so I had to be very careful so no one would spot me.” She sighed heavily. “I lived that way for over six months. I wore the same dress, and mostly, fed on our neighbor, since he was nearby and he had been taken with me. If Ezra hadn’t found me, I don’t know what would’ve become of me. Maybe I’d still be living out behind that house.”

“What happened to your family?” I asked quietly.

“Philip eventually remarried a girl I had known from the deli. She was very kind, and I’d like to believe that she was good to him. They had two more children together, and Sarah eventually started calling her Mom. I don’t know if she even remembers me anymore. It’s probably better if she doesn’t.”

Mae nodded towards a house in front of us, and I saw the silhouette of an older woman it the window. She was carrying a small child, a little boy, on her hip, and she looked happy. There was something familiar about it, and I couldn’t quite place it. Then it dawned on me. Her hair graying wavy hair, pale skin, and even the way she smiled — they were all Mae’s.

“That’s your daughter!” I gasped, looking over at her.

“It is.” She looked pleased that I had been able to see the resemblance.

“She’s a teacher. She used to be married, but her husband left her years ago.

Ezra threatened to teach him a lesson, but I told him not to. Sarah has to live her own life. She’s fifty-four now. She has a daughter, Elizabeth, and that little boy on her hip, that’s her grandson, Riley. My great-grandson.” She smiled painfully. “During the week, she watches her grandkids until eight, while Elizabeth works and goes to school. Riley’s three, and Daisy just turned five.”

“So you just come out here and watch them?” I asked.

“It’s the only way I got to watch her grow up,” Mae explained sadly.

“When she was little, I would come into her room at night and watch her sleep. I even did that a little while with Elizabeth, but Ezra says that I need to start letting them go. I can’t spend my entire existence stalking my great grandchildren and my great-great-grandchildren. Sarah has a wonderful life, and I should just be happy with it. Or at least that’s what Ezra says.”

“It sounds like he’s right.”

“I’m sure he is,” Mae mused. “And I know it will get harder watching her as she grows old and frail. Watching her die.” She swallowed painfully. “I don’t want to outlive my daughter. I outlived one of my children, and I swore that I’d never do it again.” She turned to look at me and whispered harshly. “It is so much harder to watch everyone you love die then it is to simply die yourself.

Immortality is much more of a curse than it is a blessing.”

“But you have Ezra, and Peter and Jack,” I attempted to comfort her. “I know it’s not the same as a child you gave birth to, but you love them too, and you get to spend forever with them.”

“I know, and I am grateful that I have them. Without Ezra, I never would’ve made it this long.” Mae had gone back to staring at her daughter.

Through an open curtain, we could see Sarah chasing after a small girl with soft, blond curls. “Three years ago, Philip died. I cried more than I had thought I would after all these years. But he had always been good to me, and he’d been wonderful father to our daughter.

“That’s when Ezra built the house that we live in, and he said it would be the last place we lived in Minneapolis,” Mae exhaled deeply. “He doesn’t normally like to stay in one city for this long, especially one that has family.

Jack’s mother launched a missing persons search for him after he turned, but they eventually chucked it up to another drunk kid falling in a frozen lake. That happens surprisingly often around here.”

“How does Jack feel about leaving his mother and family behind?” He had never mentioned his family at all, but then again, neither had Mae, and they were incredibly important to her.

“He severed all contact with her after he turned,” Mae explained. “He had never been that close to her anyway. She left when he was very young, taking only his sister with her, and his father raised him, but from what I can understand, his father wasn’t a very nice man either. Then his father got cancer, and his mother was forced to take him back in. Truthfully, I think he was rather happy that he had an excuse not to see her.”

“So why did you all stay here for so long?” I asked, even though I thought I knew the answer.

“I refused to go,” Mae said simply. “But the boys are getting restless. Jack has never lived anywhere else. Peter will randomly go stay somewhere else, but he’s always been more of a drifter. In a few years, I’ll have no choice but to move, and I suppose it will be better for me to remember my daughter this way, while she’s still vibrant.”

“Where will you move?” It seemed ghastly to leave that house behind, a house that was so obviously meant for them.

“I’m not sure yet. Jack has a list of places he’d love to go, but there has been some talk of England since that’s where both Ezra and I were born, and I haven’t been back since I was sixteen.” Then she turned her serious gaze on me. “But you’re not understanding. In two or three years, at the latest, we will be moving, and we probably won’t come back for another fifty years or more.

We may not even come back to America for many years.”

“I don’t understand why that’s a bad thing.” Moving to another country sounded ridiculously exciting. I didn’t know why she made it sound like a threat.

“You will not be able to see your brother again,” Mae explained softly.

“Even if we stayed around here, the best you could hope for is watching him grow old from afar. Even as much as I’ve watched my own family, I never interacted with them. After you turn, you’ll be unable to talk to Milo ever again.”

“But…” I trailed off, trying to think of an argument that would win her over. “But he’s met you all! And why can’t I just tell him what you are? What I’ll be? He’d understand. And he wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Telling humans just makes their lives worse,” Mae told me gravely. “If you decided not to turn, or if we’d never even offered it to you, can you imagine how you would feel? In a year or two, we just up and leave you behind, here.

Knowing what we are, knowing that we exist. Every time you’re enamored with a boy, you’ll wonder if its just because he’s a vampire. You’ll age, and you’ll wonder what it would’ve been like to stay young forever. And you’ll wonder if you just made it all up, if you’re insane.”

“But you think it would be better for Milo to think that I had been murdered or kidnapped or something?” I asked her incredulously. “That’s the better alternative?”

“You don’t want to watch him die, Alice!” Mae insisted with tears in her eyes. “I know that you don’t love him quite the same way that I love my daughter, but even knowing that Philip died was devastating. Leaving them behind is hard, it is so very hard, and you’ll question it forever. But there is no other option. Immortality requires you to leave everything behind.”