Author: Molly Harper

Daddy was the one who persuaded Mama not to enter me in the Little Miss Half-Moon Hollow pageant. He was the one who declared that it was wrong to put me at another family’s table at my sister’s wedding. If not for his regrettable taste in middle names, he would be Father of the Century.

“Hi, baby,” he said as I opened the door. He kissed my cheek, smelling of old books and Aqua Velva. Before I could answer, Mama was shoving a hot foil-wrapped bundle into my hands and checking my furniture for dust.

“Don’t you worry, honey, everything will be fine,” she said, bustling through my kitchen to check for dirty dishes.

Setting the pot pie aside, I led Mama into the living room before she could start alphabetizing my spice rack. And then we started our usual passive-aggressive conversational volley.

“Don’t you worry about not being able to find another job,” Mama said, wiping her fingers down my mantel.

My internal response: That hadn’t occurred to me, Mama, but thank you.

“Nobody I’ve talked to thinks being fired was your fault.”

Exactly how many people have you talked to?

“I’ve already talked to DeeDee about you working down at the quilt shop with me.”

Oh, good merciful St. Jude on toast.

After Jenny and I hurtled from the nest, Mama took a part-time job at A Stitch in Time, a shop that sold fabric and quilting supplies. In the five years she had worked there, I’d received quilted vests for every birthday and Christmas.

I hope this gives you some idea of what I was dealing with.

I couldn’t visit my mother at the shop for more than a few minutes at a time. I had allergic reactions to fabric sizing and old women asking me when I was going to settle down. Working there would be my damnation to whatever circle of hell is dedicated to busybodies and fabric artists.

“Oh, Mama, I don’t think that would be possible. Ever.”

Aunt Jettie appeared at my right, laughing her phantom butt off. I growled at a decibel level below human hearing.

“Let me help,” Jettie whispered. I shook my head imperceptibly. She rolled her eyes and faded out of sight.

“Mama, I think you and Daddy need to sit—”

Mama sighed. “Now, Jane, I don’t want you moping around this big old place by yourself. I think, for the time being, you should move back in with Daddy and me.”

St. Jude had just jumped from the toaster to the frying pan. I made a sound somewhere between a screech and a wheeze. Sensing my distress, Daddy said, “Oh, Sherry, leave the girl alone. Can’t you see she’s got something to tell us?”

“Oh, um, thanks, Daddy,” I said, motioning for them to sit on the couch. Mama fluffed the pillows and beat unseen dust from the cushions before making herself comfortable.

Jettie popped up behind the sofa. It was so weird that they had no idea she was standing less than a foot behind them. “Tell them you’re pregnant with a married minister’s baby, then say, ‘Just kidding, I’m a vampire,’” she suggested.

“Not helping,” I whispered.

“What’s that, honey?” Mama asked, buffing fingerprints off my coffee table.

“Well, I have some interesting, exciting news,” I said, stalling.

“It’s about that Gabriel, isn’t it?” Mama squealed. “You’re engaged?”

“Mama, I’ve only known him for three days!” I cried.

Mama made that tsk/sigh combination sound only mothers can master. “Well, are you at least seeing him? Have you tried dressing a little more feminine? Making an effort? You know, you’re not getting any younger.”

I snorted. I wouldn’t be getting any older, for that matter. “Mama, I don’t think you—”

“You’re never going to get married if you don’t lower your standards a little bit.”

“Mama—”

“Don’t you want to be settled? Get married? Have a fami—”

“Mama!” I shouted. “I’m not engaged. I’m not dating anyone. I—I…”

Time slowed. I could read every muscle, every pore in my parents’ faces. Daddy’s eyes were narrowed, considering me carefully. Worry crinkled the lines at the edges of his eyes. Mama’s mouth was drawn, clearly expecting some sort of bad news beyond “your daughter was fired in a spectacularly public manner that will be chewed over for months.” Their emotions came in stinging slaps of scent. Confusion, disappointment, irritation, sadness, impatience, a sour haze that was making my head ache. And that was just from Mama. My eyes burned with unshed tears. How do you tell someone that their child has died? How do you explain when that child is sitting in front of them, seemingly alive? How do you tell your parents that you’ve moved beyond them on the evolutionary scale? And that your mama’s going to need to serve O negative alongside her Thanksgiving gravy?

Well, I didn’t. Because I’m a great big coward.

“I’m not ready to date anybody right now, Mama,” I said, swiping at my eyes. “And I’m not going to move back home. I just need some time to focus on finding a new job and figuring out what I’m going to do next. I’ll be fine.”

“I told you, you’re going to come to work at the quilt shop with me,” she insisted.

“No. Just no.”

Her lip trembled as she heaved a sigh and stared at the ceiling. Oh, crap. She did the same thing when I announced that I was attending college three hundred miles away and finally severing that pesky umbilical cord. That was the Christmas I got my first quilted vest. You have to admire a woman who exacts revenge through handicrafts. “What’s wrong with working at the quilt shop?”

“Nothing!” I cried.

“Do you have something better planned?” she demanded.

“No,” I said. “But I have planned not to work at the quilt shop.”

I looked to Daddy for help, but he was staring out the window with a puzzled expression.

“What’s this interesting news, then?” Mama demanded. “You said you had interesting news.”

I groped for some plausible fib. Fortunately, this was the moment Daddy noticed the absence of Big Bertha. “Janie, where’s your car?”

“Oh, it broke down the other night,” I said, a little too quickly. “It’s in a shop over in Murphy. That’s kind of what kept me held up for the last couple of days.”

Daddy scrutinized my face. I made a comprehensive study of the crown molding. I’ve never been able to lie to my father. I rat myself out before I can be accused of anything. The one time I smoked pot in college, I called Daddy the next morning to confess because the idea that he could find out any other way made me want to throw up. After expressing extreme disappointment and making me feel two feet tall, he promised not to tell Mama, because she would have made me leave school to enter rehab that very minute. It’s not exactly a healthy dynamic, but it’s the only one we have.

I managed to shush the two of them long enough to describe Big Bertha’s post-Shenanigans breakdown. Mama proceeded to skin Daddy for not performing routine maintenance on “that old hunk of junk.” Over the din, I gave a heavily edited version of my long walk home that night. I decided to omit the part about being shot or identifying the drunken hunter. I did not like Bud McElray. At the same time, I didn’t want my cousins Dwight and Oscar to beat Bud bloody with a sock full of batteries. Is that considered forgiveness?

I also skirted around the “got turned into a vampire” portion of the proceedings. Again, I’m a huge coward. I told them I’d been so caught up in the wounds to my pride I just couldn’t face anybody. I had holed up at an undisclosed location to think. Technically, that wasn’t a lie. It was stretching the truth to the breaking point, but it wasn’t a lie.

“But we’re your family,” Mama huffed, stretching the word out to “faaaamily” in a way that set my fangs on edge. Being faaaamily justified a lot of things in Mama’s book, including signing me up for an online matchmaking service without my consent and attempting to wax my eyebrows while I was napping. “Who are you going to turn to if not your family? That’s why you need to come stay with us, Janie. You need someone to take care of you.”

“I’m twenty seven years old!” I cried. “I can take care of myself! I don’t need you folding my laundry and pouring my Cheerios every morning.”

Jettie appeared at my left and whispered. “I can take their car keys if you want me to, pumpkin.”

“You think I want to prevent them from leaving?” I whispered back.

“Who are you talking to?” Mama demanded, turning to my father. “John, she’s talking to herself.”

“I’m not—” I started, then reconsidered the wisdom of reintroducing my parents to dear departed Aunt Jettie, who never liked my mother anyway. “Yes, I am. I’m talking to myself.”

“And you won’t even think about coming back home?” Mama asked.

“Mama, you remember what it was like when I lived at home. I think one of us would go insane,” I said. “And I don’t think it would be you.”

“Well, if you’re going to be that way, I’m not going to stay here and be insulted.” She exhaled her “You don’t care how much I worry about you” martyr’s sigh. She tucked her handbag under her arm in a prim gesture and made her way to the door. “John?”

Daddy shot me a bewildered look and rose. “We’ll talk soon, honey.”

“’Bye, Daddy.” I kissed his cheek. “Love you.”

He squeezed my hand and winked at me. “Love you, too, pumpkin.”

“John!” Mama yelled from my front porch. As Daddy walked out, Mama poked her head back inside. “Just pop that pot pie in the oven to reheat at three-fifty for thirty minutes.” Then she disappeared, leaving me and Aunt Jettie gaping after her.

I flopped down on the couch. “I’m adopted, right? Or maybe Dad had some torrid affair with a brilliant but sensible humanities professor. I was the result of their passion, and Dad forced Mama to raise his bastard child as her own?”

“Nope,” Jettie said, shaking her translucent head. “She’s your mother. I asked. Plus, you do look a bit like her. When you’re angry, you both get these tense lines around your mouth…Look, there they are.”

“You’re lucky you’re dead already,” I said, chucking a throw pillow at her. It went right through her torso and bounced off the TV cabinet.

“So, you didn’t tell them,” Jettie observed as I stomped into the kitchen, my bare feet slapping loudly on the tile.

“Nothing gets by you,” I muttered, whipping the aluminum foil cover off Mama’s pot pie. “I just couldn’t. Did you see the looks on their faces? They’re already freaked out by the whole ‘unemployed spinster daughter who lives alone’ thing. I don’t think I want to add ‘dead’ and ‘drinks blood’ to the mix right now.”

“You have to tell them, Janie,” Jettie said, in a firmer tone than she normally takes with me. “‘Did you hear Jane’s a vampire?’ is not something you want your parents to overhear at the Coffee Spot.”

“I will tell them at some point. I just need to get a better fix on my powers, my schedule…”

“Fraidy-cat,” Jettie muttered.

“Poltergeist,” I shot back. The pie was still warm, the gloriously flaky golden crust buckling under my fingers as I scooped out a bite. But it smelled off, as if the cream of chicken had expired. And the onions were strong enough to make my eyes water.

“Honey, you don’t want to do that,” Jettie said. “Look, there are strings attached to this pot pie.”