Matilda moved swiftly around the car, lightly smacking the back of Big Mike’s head on her way to Joss. She hugged him tightly in greeting. “Joss McMillan, I swear you get taller and better looking every time I see you. I bet the girls are just chasing you all over the place.”
Henry leaned closer and spoke to Joss under his breath, a smirk pulling up the left corner of his mouth. “Yeah. Mostly around the woods. With weapons in hand.”
Matilda shot Henry a questioning glance. “What are you muttering about, Henry?”
Henry’s eyes widened. “Nothin’, Mom.”
Matilda smiled, giving him a hug, too. “That’s right, nothing. Now come tell me about your summer while I help your aunt get some snacks and sandwiches ready for the ride home.”
“As times with Joss goes . . .” Henry smiled at his cousin, and Joss saw a glimpse of what their future might be. Friendly. Peaceful. Normal. “. . . it was pretty uneventful.”
Joss’s mom, Henry, and Matilda made their way back into the house then, leaving Joss’s dad, Uncle Mike, Nelly, and Joss alone by the car. Once they’d gone, Big Mike and Joss’s dad started talking about gas mileage, which almost bored Joss into an instantaneous coma. Nelly, who apparently also didn’t care about whether or not tire inflation affected gas mileage, smiled at Joss and said, “How are you? Matilda told me about your accident.”
It was difficult to meet her eyes—especially knowing that the last time he’d done that, hers had been full of tears over his actions—but he managed. “I’m doing all right. My doctor has me doing physical therapy. A lot of stretching, which sucks. But they say I’m getting stronger every day.”
An image flashed in his mind. Nelly, putting an arm around him, comforting him after he’d staked her nephew. Nelly, reaching outside of her own pain to quell his. He’d never forget the way she’d treated him that night. It was a debt that he would never be able to repay.
“That’s good to hear.” She tilted her head slightly and said, “Vlad said for me to say hello for him.”
Shock shot through Joss like ice through his veins. For a moment, he couldn’t speak at all, but eventually, the words came. “He . . . he did?”
“No. But that would have been nice, wouldn’t it?” She sighed, and then chuckled a bit as Joss visibly relaxed. Then she looked at him with her left eyebrow raised. Her words were hushed, as if she realized how fragile the situation between Joss and Vlad was. If anyone outside of the two boys understood that fragility, he supposed it was Nelly. “Is there anything you’d like for me to pass on to him from you?”
“You can tell him . . .” Joss searched his thoughts for the right words. He wanted to tell Vlad that he’d been having second thoughts about the Slayer Society’s rules. He wanted to tell Vlad that he’d been wrong to stake him, and that he hoped that someday, Vlad might find it in his heart forgive him. He wanted to say that he was sorry. But it was too much to say via a third party. Some things had to be said face-to-face, in person, directly to the person that you’ve hurt. “I guess tell him . . . I said hi.”
Nelly nodded, smiling. Once Big Mike and Joss’s dad had concluded their gas discussion, Big Mike turned to Joss, gesturing to Henry who was approaching with a big red cooler in his arms, a bag of Skittles clutched between his teeth. Mike asked Joss, “So did you boys work out whatever issues you had between you?”
Joss smiled, glancing over at Henry. “For the most part.”
Henry sat the cooler on the ground by the trunk. As he did so, he mumbled around the bag of Skittles in his mouth. “Yeah. Por da mope port.”
Mike nodded, eyeing them both. “Good. Because family is important. You boys need to remember that.”
“Your uncle Mike is right.” Joss’s dad looked from Henry to Joss. He then held his son’s gaze, and Joss felt comforted by the weight of the words he spoke next. “Family . . . is everything.”
Once the cooler was packed neatly inside the car and good-bye hugs were exchanged, Aunt Matilda, Big Mike, Nelly, and Henry piled into the car and drove off, hoping to make it home before the late summer storm was scheduled to hit. They wanted to get out of town to avoid it, if they could. It was hard to imagine a storm coming in, as the sky was a perfect California blue, but Matilda had insisted it would be sweeping across the country any moment, so they left without any further delay.
To Joss’s immense surprise, as he watched his uncle back out of the driveway, a hand closed over his uninjured shoulder and gently squeezed. The hand belonged to his father. It was the first act of real affection that he’d shown Joss since the night they’d lost Cecile. Joss glanced over, meeting his dad’s gaze with tear-filled eyes. It might have been a small gesture, but it meant more to Joss than anything ever had before.
“You should smile more, son. It looks good on you.” His dad’s eyes shimmered as well, matching his own. Joss couldn’t help but see a glimmer of hope that his family might rise from the ashes like a phoenix. Triumphant over adversity. Renewed. Whole. His dad smiled and gestured back to the house with a nod. “Come on. Let’s go make your mother smile, too.”
As they walked back to the house, Joss realized that his family was doing something that he hadn’t thought they were capable of. They were healing. And this life, his life, might not be perfect, but it was finally on its way back to normal.
Only not back. Forward.
Heather Brewer, Third Strike
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