“You’ll probably get darker as you age, your skin. And, yeah, your hair will get lighter. Your mom had incredible magic, so maybe you’ll get that, too. I don’t know.”
Alison bit her lip and nodded. “What happens from here? I can’t go back with my dad even if he wanted me.”
Yeah, we made that kind of impossible anyway.
Brownstone let out a breath he didn’t even realize he’d been holding. “I’m gonna take care of you. At least for now.”
The girl looked down, her breathing shallow. Shay didn’t feel much pain when she left her parents. She hated them both, but at least this girl had grown up for some years in a happy family.
This is the price of love and friendship.
Shay wasn’t so sure if it was worth it, but she also wasn’t sure if it wasn’t. She sighed and headed toward the kitchen.
“You don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to,” Brownstone said. “I’m not good with kids. If you have some other relatives, I can help track them down. I’m not good with anyone, really, but I have space, and I’m clean.”
“Very fastidious,” she muttered from the kitchen as she filled a glass of water.
“I don’t have any relatives that I know of.” Alison smiled. “I wish to stay with you.”
“Okay, kid, your funeral.”
Shay watched the two, a soft smile on her face. After all the pain and suffering, at least the girl would have some hope for the future.
Alison laughed and looked over at Shay. “Is she gonna be my new mom?”
Shay choked on her glass of water, spewing droplets onto her countertop. “What? No, no, no. I’m not old enough to be a mom. Uh. I’ll be the aunt.” She nodded, a satisfied look on her face. “Yeah, that sounds perfect. I’m the aunt. Or the hot older sister.”
“I like aunt better.”
Brownstone shrugged. “That’s more than what I was going to ask. At least now when I ask you to babysit, it’ll be your niece, so you can’t bitch too much.”
Alison frowned and shook her finger at him. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’m a teenager, not a little girl.”
Shay grinned. Brownstone thought fighting the Harriken was tough, now he had to deal with the real threat, a teenager.
“Whatever. We’ll figure it out later.” Brownstone shrugged. His phone buzzed, and he pulled it out. “Oh, I almost missed it. Hey, do you mind if I watch some Barbeque Wars? With all this fun lately, I don’t even know what’s happening on my favorite show.”
Always the priorities. Huh, Brownstone? “Be my guest. The voice recognition’s on for the TV.”
“Don’t you have a remote? I fuc…” Brownstone glanced over at Alison and caught himself. “I don’t like voice recognition systems. They always have trouble with my voice. It’s like they think I’m background noise or something.”
Shay rolled her eyes. “You do have the weirdest problems, Brownstone.”
After thirty minutes of listening to Brownstone explain the finer points of sauce ingredient counterpoints and the advantages of different cooking temperatures, Alison excused herself and headed up to the guest room, a faint smile on her face.
Shay watched as the girl walked up the stairs. The minute her back was turned, Shay’s smile disappeared. “I’ve got to go check on something. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Sure, okay.” Brownstone barely nodded. He was too engrossed in one of the judge’s acerbic takedowns of the perceived failure of a contestant’s experimental “Divine Sauce.”
“There’s only one real God Sauce. And that’s at Jessie Rae’s. Fool shouldn’t have stepped up if he couldn’t really bring it.”
Shay resisted a scoff and hurried up the stairs until she stood in front of the guest room door. She knocked lightly.
“Come in,” Alison said.
Shay opened the door and found Alison hugging the pillow on the bed, her eyes tear-streaked.
“Thought so.” Shay quietly came in and shut the door behind her. “You don’t have to hide away if you want to cry about your mother, Alison.”
The girl shook her head. “I didn’t want Mr. Brownstone to see me like this. It’ll make him feel bad, and he’s already done so much.”
Shay sat down on the edge of the bed next to her “He may only have two settings when it comes to showing emotion. There’s asshole or clueless. But that doesn’t mean he expects you to be like that, too.”
“You don’t understand, Shay.” Alison sniffled. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“Explain it to me. I know about pain, Alison. I can’t say I’ve always dealt with pain well, but I do know what it can do your heart and mind.”
“I don’t want to cry and make him feel worse, though.” The teen sucked in a deep breath. “I can tell by the way he’s talking and his energy that he blames himself. He thinks he let me down or something. I wanted my mom back, but it’s not Mr. Brownstone’s fault. It’s my dad’s fault and those Harriken guys. I was happy when I heard about them being killed on the news.”
Shay stared at Alison, taken aback by the girl’s insight. They would have to stop underestimating her.
“You don’t worry about Brownstone. You worry about yourself. He’s the adult… well, adultish person, and you’re the teenager. No one’s gonna blame you for being sad over your mom dying. It’s what we’d expect.”
Alison nodded. Her face twitched as she threw her arms around Shay and the girl’s restraint shattered. She sobbed into the woman’s chest.
“Mom…”
They sat there on the bed like that for several minutes, Shay stroking Alison’s hair while the girl cried out a tsunami of tears over all that she’d lost. The tsunami became a mere wave, then finally a shallow trickle.
“Sorry,” Alison sniffled out, her cheeks and
