The Single Undead Moms Club

  “I’ll get some breakfast started,” Kerrianne said.

  “My colds are cured by bacon!” Wade told her. “And more bacon!”

  Kerrianne replied, “Oatmeal for everyone!”

  “Bacon-flavored oatmeal?” Wade asked, his tone hopeful. He looked up at me, his eyes all pitiful. “She’s just making regular oatmeal.”

  “I know, the very nerve,” I said, rubbing my hand on his back. “I miss bacon.”

  “Maybe they could make bacon-flavored blood someday. I’m sorry you have to see me like this,” he said, waving his hand at his blotchy face.

  “It’s not so bad,” I told him. “It’s actually kind of nice, you letting me see you all vulnerable and pathetic. Rob always went to his mom’s when he was sick and stayed for days at a time. Said her chicken soup was magic or something.”

  “Rob was a dumbass. And was the ‘pathetic’ really necessary?”

  “You’re begging for bacon-flavored oatmeal, so yes, it was.”

  The boys stirred, almost simultaneously. Danny sat up, blinking blearily. Harley buried his face in his dad’s ribs and pulled the covers over his head. Seeing this, Danny rolled off the pallet and ambled around to my chair. He climbed into my lap and tucked his face into my neck.

  “I hate everything,” Danny grumbled against my skin.

  I laughed, hugging him tight. I could feel the weight of the sunrise, a wave of fatigue dragging me under. But I wanted to stay. I wanted more time with everybody. It seemed unfair, that I had to give up the daytime, that I missed out on so much of their lives. But I guessed this was the sacrifice I’d made for more time. A girl couldn’t ask for everything.

  “Thanks for taking care of us all night, Miss Libby,” Harley said.

  “There had to be some advantage to this vampire thing, like being able to stay up all night with you,” I said. “Well, that and the whole immunity to your gross germs.”

  “The gloatin’ was definitely not necessary,” Wade warned.

  “What are you going to do, sneeze on me?”

  Wade made a face that was downright diabolical. “Might.”

  “I already tried it,” Danny told him. “Didn’t work.”

  “Dang it. New plan, boys. We lick random objects in the room and don’t tell her which ones are contaminated.” At this, the boys cheered. Well, they cheered as much as two sick boys could muster.

  “And with that, I bid you good day,” I told them. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Aw, come on, Mom!” Danny whined.

  “I said good day!” I exclaimed, streaking toward the basement door. I took one last look at the boys, Danny hanging off the back of the chair while Wade and Harley sprawled on the couch. Sleep-rumpled and slightly snotty, they waved at me. I blew them a kiss and closed the door.

  “I’m going to lick the remote!” I heard Danny exclaim.

  I poked my head out of the basement doorway. “Don’t lick the remote!”

  Boys were so weird.

  10

  Though you will go through an instinctual withdrawal from people you don’t completely trust, remember that your child needs contact and support from the living world, just as you need support from the vampire world. Also, there are only so many homes that can support a panic room.

  —My Mommy Has Fangs: A Guide to Post-Vampiric Parenting

  Someone was knocking on my basement door.

  Why was someone knocking on my basement door?

  I sat up slowly from the single bed I’d set up in my little underground sleeping compartment, slapping my hand around my nightstand, searching for my cell phone. It was 5:56 P.M. The sun was barely down. Why the hell was someone trying to wake me up?

  Danny?

  Was Danny feeling worse? His fever had broken the night before, just after Harley’s, but it could have spiked again. I sprang up from bed, stumbling as the sheets tangled around my ankles. I didn’t need a light to maneuver toward the stairs. I’d kept the basement as simple as possible, just a bed and a nightstand and a framed photo of me and Danny, convincing myself that it wasn’t really my bedroom, just a place where I slept while the rest of the household lived aboveground in the potentially fatal sunlight. All of my clothes and shoes and toiletries were upstairs in the master bedroom. Unfortunately, that included my hairbrush, and my hair was falling over my face like something out of The Ring.

  I yanked the door open to find Kerrianne gnawing on her bottom lip. “What’s going on?”

  “Your mother-in-law.”

  “She’s here?” I exclaimed. “Has she tried to take Danny? Is he talking to her now?”

  Kerrianne shushed me. “Yes, she’s here, but she’s out on the front porch. I didn’t want to let her in without talking to you first.”

  “Close all the blinds,” I said. “I’ll be out in a second.”

  “OK. Also, you might want to think about taking care of this area,” she said, waving at her head.

  “That’s my whole face,” I told her.

  She nodded. “Yes, it is.”

  Several minutes later, I had thrown on jeans and a cardigan and was trying to look respectable as I sprinted to my front door. I was maybe eighty-two percent awake, but that was as good as it was going to get. Kerrianne passed me a freshly warmed bottle of synthetic blood as I whipped through the kitchen.

  She was a wonder, that Kerrianne.

  “Hi, Mom!” Danny cried as I passed the foldout couch. I paused to kiss the top of his head and gauge his temperature. I guessed it was slightly less than one hundred degrees. Wade and Harley, it seemed, had recovered enough to drive home.

  Marge, as promised, was waiting outside my front door, holding an enormous CorningWare container of something that smelled like old socks—to me, at least. She was wearing her “Number 1 Grandma” sweatshirt and a tremulous smile.

  I stepped out onto my porch, crossing my arms over my chest and shivering slightly. The air was finally starting to turn crisp after the remaining heat and humidity of September had ebbed away. Fall would be blowing us over before we knew it. Danny was still debating his costume choices for Halloween but felt pressure to narrow it down since most kids wore their costumes to the Pumpkin Patch Party. He and Harley were trying to coordinate, of course, and while Danny was lobbying for characters like Ninja Turtles or Avengers, Harley was pushing for something clever, like Danny dressing as toast covered in peanut butter and Harley dressing as toast with jelly. Danny was trying to undermine the idea by claiming it was rude to the kids who were allergic to peanuts.

  They’d spent hours debating this matter from their sickbeds, to the point where I started coming up with fake “bookkeeping emergencies” so I could hide in my room with my laptop . . . until Kerrianne figured out what I was doing and gave me some super-judgmental looks.

  “I heard that Danny is sick,” Marge said.

  “You’re not supposed to be here, Marge. Not until we get everything settled with the courts,” I said. “I can’t believe I have to put it this way, but I don’t feel comfortable talking to you without a lawyer present.”

  “I know, I know, but I couldn’t bear to think of Danny being sick without anyone to take care of him.”

  “Danny has people to take care of him. The fact that you think I would leave him without someone to care for him while he’s sick, that’s probably why we have to have lawyers involved when we speak,” I told her, my voice ice-cold.

  “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  I gritted my teeth. When Rob was alive, I let Marge get away with a lot of comments and criticisms under the guise of “not what I meant” because it was too hard to convince her that regardless of her intention, insults still hurt. Rob always told me to just let it go because “that’s just how she is.” Well, I was done letting it go. I was done playing nice. I was held accountable for every damn word I said. Marge deserved equal treatment.

  “No, I don’t. Your court summons made it clear what you think of my parenting skills.”


  “I didn’t come here to start any ugliness, Libby. I just wanted to bring Danny some of my chicken soup. It always made Rob feel better when he was sick.”

  “Danny is not Rob. He’s a different little person entirely.”

  Marge stared at me with a bewildered expression on her face and then suddenly turned chalk-white. She dropped her CorningWare as she sank heavily onto our front-porch swing. I caught the container before it hit the floor and handed it off to Kerrianne, who was waiting just inside the door. She made a wincing face as she whisked the soup away but did not offer an escape from this horribly awkward conversation.

  “Do I need to call someone for you?” I asked.

  “Is that—is that why you got yourself turned into a vampire?” Marge wheezed, fanning her clammy face with her hand.

  “Please stop referring to it as getting myself turned,” I told her. “You make it sound like I contracted a social disease.”

  “Is that why you wanted to be turned? Is that why you’re fighting us so hard on the custody case?” Marge amended. “Because you didn’t want us raising Danny? Because you think we’re trying to replace Rob with our grandson?”

  She sounded more hurt than angry. And to be honest, the idea of hurting her seemed so much more painful than her being angry with me. But she needed to hear this, and I needed to say it.

  “I didn’t trust you,” I told her. “Well, not so much you but definitely Les. You take him fishing, you talk about how much Rob enjoyed a certain spot or how Rob always liked using a cane pole. You watch Rob’s favorite childhood movies with him and eat Rob’s favorite foods. You don’t bother learning Danny’s favorite childhood movies or Danny’s favorite foods. That’s not fair to him, and it’s really unfair to you, because you are missing out on the opportunity to get to know who he really is. Because who he is, is really freaking amazing.”

  “I can’t believe—I can’t believe that after all these years, this is what you think of me. As a mother, I would think you would understand what it would be like to lose your son. I would think you would understand how hard that loss would be.”

  “I did think about it,” I told her. “I thought about it every day. I still think about it. So you should understand how desperate I was to make the decision I did. And you should think about how desperate I am, now that you and Les are trying to take Danny from me.”

  Marge’s dark eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening us?”

  “Not at all,” I told her. “I just think you need to consider this from my point of view. Consider how different this situation could be. If you two would just compromise, figure out a way for us all to be in Danny’s life instead of trying to make it an all-or-nothing situation, we might be able to get through this without destroying the relationship we have. Because as it stands, you two are doing a pretty good job of convincing the courts that Danny would be better off with me.”

  Marge shook her head, biting her lip. “Les would never allow it. He’s convinced he’s doing the right thing, bringing Danny to stay with us. He’s going crazy, ignoring the court orders, saying he has every right to check up on his grandson and no judge is going to stop him. And it just keeps getting worse every time the judge sends one of those letters. He would be furious knowing I’m here talking to you. Getting Danny home with us has become his whole reason for living. I’ve tried getting him to talk to somebody, but he says he knows he’s doing the right thing.”

  I sagged against the porch railing. This wasn’t new or unexpected information, but it was still distressing to find out that your worst suspicions were true. “I’m really sorry to hear that.”

  “I’m sorry it’s come to this,” she said. “In a million years, I never would have guessed our lives would turn out so . . .” My mother-in-law was polite enough not to finish that particular thought, which I appreciated.

  “What, vampire daughter-in-law wasn’t on your list of potential outcomes when you watched me toddle down the aisle?”

  Marge made an undignified noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. And against my better judgment, I said, “If I let you in to see Danny, could you talk to him without upsetting him or pumping him for information? Without reporting back to Les or the judge? Just a regular visit with Mamaw?”

  Marge’s eyes brimmed with tears, and she nodded frantically. “Yes, I could do that.”

  “Could you do it without telling Les about it? Or anyone else?”

  Marge’s head stopped mid-nod. After a long silent moment, she said, “Yes, I could do that.”

  I was trapped in the vampire version of Adventures in Babysitting. I remembered watching that movie when I was a kid and thinking, Wow, Elisabeth Shue’s night could not possibly get worse, and then being proven wrong over and over again. Nostalgic déjà vu was a bitch.

  It started off easily enough. I had to drive to Murphy to pick up a packet of gift cards for gas at a service station owned by a student’s grandfather. Considering it was more than five hundred dollars in gas cards that would be raffled off, I didn’t think it was asking too much for me to drive an hour to pick them up. Wade had to work late on a special order, so Harley was keeping Danny company with Kerrianne and Braylen.

  I hoped I’d made the right decision, letting Marge visit with Danny. They’d both enjoyed it enough to warm even the cockles of my still heart. They fell right back into their dynamic, without a mention of their separation. Danny simply kissed her cheeks, told her about his new friend Harley and their “sick-person campout.” He showed her his new room and his new Ninja Turtle and asked for a bowl of her soup. It was as if he’d seen her just a few days before.

  For purely selfish reasons, I hoped that renewing Marge’s visits with Danny would somehow result in Les going the opposite of crazy and dropping his suit. But I also hoped it would give Danny a greater sense of security, one more thing in his life that hadn’t changed. Because with the direction things seemed to be going with Wade, I couldn’t help but think that something in our lives was about to change all over again.

  Just as I reached the far east side of town, my van’s dashboard lit up in an explosion of color, beeping and flashing like one of the video games I refused to let Danny play. I couldn’t tell which of my warnings was going off; I just knew that my engine was very angry with me and I should probably do something about it soon.

  I glanced around, trying to determine my exact location. I was just inside the town limits, on Cary Street. Because the street was lined with storage facilities and used-car lots, there was no traffic at this time of night. In fact, the only motion I could make out nearby was a lone pedestrian walking down the middle of the street toward me, which didn’t make me feel entirely safe. I mean, as a vampire, I had a higher-than-average chance of surviving a mugging, but that didn’t mean I wanted to test the theory.

  I could park my van here, lights and alarms flashing, and call Jane or Dick or Wade—wait, Wade’s shop was on this side of town. I pulled my phone from my purse and Googled the address of HMH Custom Cycle Parts. I was only two miles away. Maybe I could make it without my van catching fire?

  I gently guided my poor vehicle around the corner, while the dashboard continued to bleat and flash. By the time I pulled into the shop’s parking lot, the van’s alarm system was going off for reasons I couldn’t quite figure out. I was surprised to find that instead of a mechanic’s shop, it looked more like an engineering firm. A clean, quiet blue building with an unassuming, unlandscaped entrance. The exterior didn’t even have a garage door, more of a freight entrance.

  Wade came out the front door, a scowl on his face. When he saw me climbing out of the van and frantically clicking the keyless remote, his expression switched to one of concern. He rushed over and yelled over the noise, “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know!” I shouted as he ducked into my car and popped the hood. He started yanking and pushing, all the while looking very competent. “I was just driving along, and everything was loud and bright and?
??”

  Suddenly, the blaring horn died. Wade straightened, looking triumphant.

  “Oh.” I sighed. “That’s better.”

  “That’s gotta suck when you’ve got superhearing, huh?”

  “You have no idea,” I told him.

  “What are you doing out on this side of town? I thought the boys were with you tonight.”

  “Well, Kerrianne decided to show the boys how to make homemade pizza, which made the house smell to high heaven. I made my escape to drive over to Murphy to pick up some stuff for the Pumpkin Patch. And then my car had some sort of tantrum.”

  Wade commenced poking things in the engine. “Yeah, I think the motherboard for your computer system has short-circuited. And your brake line looks a little worn. But I’m not sure. I can have my guys take a look at it. Terry loves that kind of thing.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t. You said you had a special project to work on tonight.”

  “Eh, we’ve reached a stopping point. And frankly, the guys could use a change of pace. They’re starting to get a little punchy, which is never good. I’ll give you a ride over to Murphy while they take a look at it. We’ve probably got the parts you need right here.”

  “What is it exactly that you do here?”

  He grinned at me but didn’t answer. “Just hold on a second.”

  He jogged back into the building, and a few minutes later, the freight door opened. Two men came walking out—a tall man of solid build and a much shorter man with a rounded belly that hung over his belt. They were both young, the taller one much younger than me, with faint acne scars still spotting his cheeks. But they were moving swiftly toward me, as if eager to meet me. In fact, the shorter of the two had his arm outstretched before he was anywhere close.

  “Hi!” he exclaimed. “I’m Terry. Are you Wade’s lady friend?”

  “I am his friend,” I agreed, adding awkwardly, “who is a lady.”