"Mission accomplished?" Ben said when I got home.

"Yeah." He met me at the door, and I folded myself in his arms. "I need a hug." He obliged.

"What's Carl going to do when he finds out?"

I mumbled into Ben's shoulder. "Nothing he can do. Not if he doesn't know she got help. As far as he's concerned, she just left. And there's nothing he can do about it."

I almost wanted to call him myself and shout the words at him.

There's nothing you can do about it, you bastard.

Chapter 8

Mom had a surgery date: Friday, barring unexpected test results or complications in the meantime. The doctors were calling it a "reexcision" and kept saying it was routine, but that was just to make us feel better. They were still cutting chunks out of my mom. I wanted to stop it if I could. But there were no good solutions, any way you looked at it.

After sending Jenny off, I had a free evening and spent it with Mom, working up the courage to mention lycanthropy. It was a crazy, stupid idea—I couldn't suggest that my own mother take up this life. I'd have to take care of her the way I'd taken care of Ben when he'd been infected last winter. That had been hard enough, watching him struggle with the changes to his body, what the pain did to him, knowing what he was going through and being unable to make it any easier. I couldn't imagine Mom in that situation.

But if it was a choice between going through that and losing her entirely, it wasn't a choice at all. I had to talk to her about it before the surgery.

We sat at the kitchen table and ate ice cream out of the carton. She'd handed me the spoon as soon as I walked in the door. "Life is short," she said. "I'm going to be completely decadent this week. To think, all those years I was worried about my weight. If I'd known I might lose it all in a heartbeat, I'd have eaten more ice cream."

"Mom, don't talk like that," I said halfheartedly.

She gestured for me to dig into the bucket. Rocky Road. The whole kitchen smelled like rich chocolate. "I'm entitled to a little grim humor."

"It sounds like you're giving up."

"Oh, no," she said around a mouthful of ice cream. She shook her head. "Not at all. Trust me, I won't give up. I've got too many reasons to stick around." She sounded tough, like an Amazon or a Valkyrie, with a tone of fight in her voice that she usually only revealed when she talked about her tennis matches. I was proud of her. She'd survive this. She'd survive anything. She took another bite and continued. "Nicky and Jeffy—those are two big reasons right there. I can't wait to see what they're going to turn into. Can you? And you—don't think that just because Cheryl has kids you're off the hook. I'm going to stick around and see what your kids are going to turn into."

I started crying. Couldn't help it. I didn't want to cry; I wanted to be strong. But I did, my face turned away.

Mom set down her spoon and stared at me, looking shocked. "Kitty? Oh, don't do that. It's too soon for that." She went and retrieved a box of tissues from the kitchen counter.

I should have told her straight off when it happened. Too late now. I tried to speak, but my throat had closed up. The words wouldn't come. I grabbed a whole handful of tissues and tried to pull myself together. Patiently, she waited, sitting across from me on the edge of her seat, like she was restraining herself from coming over and gathering me in her arms. But I wasn't four and this wasn't a skinned knee, so she waited. Finally, I got it out.

"It's not that." Not yet, anyway. "I had a miscarriage." Had to get it out all at once, somehow, around the blubbering. I wished I could say it without crying. "A couple of weeks ago. I didn't even know I was pregnant."

"Oh, honey, I'm sorry."

"I didn't want to say anything, because we were all worried about you. You were more important."

"You should have said something."

"I know. But—there's more. It's the lycanthropy, the shape-shifting—it'll cause a miscarriage every time. I can't have kids at all. And I didn't think I'd care, I didn't think it would matter, but I do, it does—"

Then, she came over and put her arms around me. We stayed like that a long time, hugging. She kept saying, "It's okay, it'll be okay." And I marveled that she could even say that, with everything that had happened to us.

As much as I might want to turn four years old again and have my mother take care of me, I couldn't. And I couldn't keep this up all night. My eyes hurt. My whole face hurt. I pulled away to grab a new handful of tissues.

"I just wanted a normal life," I said, my voice thick. "I always thought I was going to have a normal life."

Smiling a wise, knowing smile, Mom brushed a wet strand of hair out of my face. "Nobody gets a normal life. You think it's normal, then something like this happens. You find a lump. You get bitten by something out in the woods. And you think, 'Why me?' But the universe says, 'Why not you?' And I think about how very lucky we've all been. I've been married to my best friend for thirty-five years. My beautiful girls are making their way in the world. Most people don't have it this good."

"So something was bound to come along and wreck it, is that what you're saying?"

She shook her head. "It's not wrecked. I'm very lucky to have this life. I think that luck’ll hold for a little while longer. I can handle a lump or two. And you—you've held on this long, Kitty. You've been through so much. I can't imagine anything keeping you down for long. We'll be fine, we're all going to be fine."

It was a mantra of pure faith.

She kept on with the ice cream, and I switched to hot cocoa. My insides needed warming, and my throat needed melting.

I couldn't not say it any longer. If I was going to make one revelation tonight, I might as well make them all. I'd stopped crying and felt a little less wrung-out. I gripped my mug and made a start of it.

"Mom, I have to ask you something. You may not like it, but I have to say it and I want you to think about it, seriously, before you blow me off. Lycanthropy—it does something. Like what I told you—I'll never get cancer, I'll never get sick. If you were infected, if you were bitten right now—it would cure you. It's a trade-off, I know. The lycanthropy, it's hard to deal with. But…it would cure you. You wouldn't have to go through this surgery." She could keep her body intact.