Page 101 of How a Vampire Falls

“Okay, um… Dad was pretty straightforward. He was born in Knoxville, which I knew. I’m assuming how he got to Missouri is a true story—that he went to visit a cousin, met Mom, and stayed.”

Both her parents nodded. Mom’s fingers were laced in her lap, so tight they had turned white. Her jaw was clenched tight, and she seemed to be grinding her teeth.

Keep going. No quitting now. Ryker’s arm tightened around her. She glanced down at the notes she didn’t need, then back up, focusing on Mom, who would not look at her.

“Ryker found Mom’s birth certificate in the county records of Meredith, Missouri. So I know both of you have the birthdays you’ve always claimed to have. You’re not relics.”

“Of course we’re not,” Mom blurted.

Leslie shrugged. “I wanted confirmation.”

“Because we’re not the type of parents to spill all our early life experiences to our child, you assumed we must be relics?”

“That one was me,” Ryker said. “My speculation based on what I know of older vampires. They tend to hold a lot of secrets, which you’ve been doing with Leslie all her life.”

Why did he have to be so direct all the time? Leslie held Mom’s gaze with every ounce of effort she had. While she did, Mom’s eyes turned charcoal.

“I’m sorry,” Leslie said. “But I needed to know, Mom.”

“You should have asked me.”

“Would you have told me the truth?”

Mom flinched. “I wouldn’t have lied to you.”

“But you wouldn’t have told me. You would have hung up the phone or…or told me not to ask careless questions.”

It was a solid memory now. Leslie had been no older than seven when she asked about Mom’s parents, why she’d never met them. After all, she’d met Dad’s parents, Meemaw and Papaw. She’d even met Papaw’s papaw.

“Some stories aren’t safe to tell,”Mom had said.“Don’t ask careless questions, Leslie.”

Leslie had walked away in confusion, held onto a sort of murky guilt. She never wanted to be careless. Disturbing to find out she could be careless by accident.

As Mom held Leslie’s gaze, the memory seemed to flash between them. Quietly she said, “I might not have explained very well back then.”

“You can fix that. You can explain now. There’s a lot of detail I couldn’t find.”

“Tell us the rest, what you did find.”

“I know you were nineteen and Dad was twenty-two when y’all got married. I know you lived in Meredith for the next ten years, and then your residence transferred to Harmony Ridge. So you were pregnant when you got here. I was born eight-and-a-half months later.”

“Anything else?” Dad said.

She was suddenly pinned down by the weight of the story. She couldn’t say the rest of it. She couldn’t see them shut down in front of her, couldn’t bear to hear them stonewall her or blame Ryker for investigating. She wrapped her arm around his and leaned into him.Please do the talking for a minute.

He squeezed her hand. Message received. “I found some old news articles from theMeredith Chroniclethat included the name Wilkins, including the deaths of two vampires named Derek Wilkins and Edmund Wilkins. The articles claimed they’d been attacked by a bear.”

Mom closed her eyes and began to wring her hands in her lap. Dad got up and went to her, and Leslie fought tears as he sat on the arm of her chair and pulled her into a protective embrace. He was glaring at Ryker with flat eyes and bared teeth.

“I’m sorry,” Ryker said.

“If you’re sorry,” Dad said, “then let this go. Let it go, Leslie.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe she was wrong to ask. These things had happened before she was born. She couldn’t possibly carry the weight of them.

Except…she did. She carried the uncertainty, the loss, the disorientation every time she collided with an experience she’d never had, a factoid she’d never learned, a story she’d never been told. She carried the hurt of only partly knowing who her family was, whoshewas.

She held Dad’s gaze. Mom wouldn’t look at her at all now. Leslie reached out blindly with her free hand and found Ryker’sknee. She held onto it while he squeezed her other hand in his. He understood, and he was here.

---