Nope, he cared that way for every creature.
Every mammal, reptile, and beast.
He would bend over backward to protect, tend, and soothe.
But never humans.
Never people.
I was the one exception.
And that made me special…just like him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
REN
* * * * * *
2005
I WANTED TO do something special for her.
I had no clue when her birthday was, or mine for that matter, but they fell sometime around summer. So far, we’d had a couple of weeks of perfect sunny weather, and I figured it was close enough to celebrate.
This time of year was the hardest for me.
Winter kept me grateful for the farmhouse we’d borrowed for the past few years, but summer made me hate it.
All I wanted to do was burn it to the ground and run away from its ashes.
The packed and ready-to-leave backpack mocked me for not having the guts to grab it and return to the life that lived and breathed in my soul.
If it was just me, I would have vanished the moment the nights turned shorter and the days became warmer, but it wasn’t just me.
It hadn’t just been me for four long years.
And although I felt trapped some days, although life would’ve been easier and simpler alone, I would never trade the little girl who trailed beside me as I guided her into town.
She blinked up at me, her blue ribbon tied in her hair today, keeping blonde curls from her eyes. Summer always made the blonde turn almost white, and her blue sparkling eyes seemed to grow in wisdom every day.
“Why we here, Ren?” she asked in her soft, childish voice. She glanced fugitively at the shoppers around us, some with supermarket bags and others with gift shop junk in their arms.
I hadn’t taken her into town in almost a year.
We had no need to, and I preferred to stay as far away from these people as possible to avoid any disruption to our invisible world on their fringes.
But today was special.
And I wanted to do something special. If that meant something out of the ordinary and something we’d never done before, then I was prepared to do whatever it took to make this day stand out.
“It’s our birthday.” I squeezed her small hand in mine. “I think we deserve to eat something that we don’t have to skin and scrub first, don’t you?”
She slammed to a stop. “It’s my birthday?”
Pulling her into the shadows of a bookstore—the same store where I’d stolen the books we’d studied and learned from—I nodded. “Yours and mine. Or at least…we’ll pretend it is.” I shrugged. “I don’t know the exact dates but figured we should at least celebrate something.”
A giant smile cracked her face. “We’ll have cake like that TV show did when it was their birthday?”
“If you want.”
“With candles and balloons?”
“Probably not.”
Her face fell, then instantly brightened. “I don’t care. This is the best day ever.” She danced on the spot, her hair and ribbon bouncing. “Oh, wait…” She studied me, deadly serious. “How old are we?”
I fought the urge to tug her golden curls and pulled her back into walking. “Not sure but I was ten when I ran, and you were about one or something, according to the news reporter in the town I left you.”
She scowled a perfect imitation of my scowl. “Yeah, don’t do that again.”
I chuckled. “I promised I never would, didn’t I?”
“Huh. You might if I annoy you too much.”
I chuckled harder. “You annoy me all the time, and I’m still here.”
Her eyes widened with worry. “I do? I annoy you?”
“Yep.” I spread my arms to incorporate a huge amount. “This much. Constantly.”
Her lower lip wobbled. “But…you won’t leave me…right?”
The barb of her sadness caught me right in the heart, and my joke no longer seemed funny.
Crouching to her level, I pressed my palm against her rosy cheek. “Della Ribbon, don’t you get upset over something silly like that. You know I’m joking. I’d never—”
She shot off, squealing in laughter. “I win. You lied. I don’t annoy you. You loooove me!” She spun in the street before I grabbed her bicep and dragged her sharply back onto the pavement.
Wild little heathen.
I ought to have been stricter on the rules, but somehow, I’d failed at creating uncrossable boundaries. I did my best to yell and bluster, but for some reason, my temper seemed to amuse and soothe her rather than scare the living daylights out of her.
Keeping her glued to my side with tight fingers, I muttered, “When you act like this, I second-guess that promise.”
She blew raspberries at me, and for a second, two images slid over one another.
An image of a little girl with blonde hair and distraught eyes limping painfully from Mclary’s farmhouse and crying herself to sleep, and then Della with her vibrant soul and fearless confidence.
Mclary lived to tear children apart.