I instantly reject that idea. I don’t want her anywhere close to this. “Thanks, but I’m almost done with what I have to get together. Last of it right now, then I’m all yours. We can protect the pizza together.”
“Then the range with Vee, right?”
“Right.” In all honesty, I’d nearly forgotten about it. I want to ask her more about her day. I want to have her sit down beside me and give me a hug. But I’m derailed in the next second by the notice of facial recognition matches out of Kentucky.
Ten possibles come up, but I spot her immediately, right in the middle of the pack of similar features. Penny Carlson took an improbably good driver’s license photo as a blonde. She’d also changed her makeup style, going for something dramatic and glam, and she looks older and much more sophisticated, though according to the new driver’s license in the name of Tammy Maguire, she was just twenty years old at the time of the picture.
I realize that we don’t know Sheryl Lansdowne at all. Not her name, not her age, not anything except her face . . . and plastic surgery could put an end to that tracking, if she had enough cash.
I don’t know if she’s running from something, but if she was . . . it’s caught up with her this time. And that’s a sickening, horrifying prospect that makes me sweaty with memory: A decaying Louisiana manor. A camera watching me. My demented ex-husband’s face.
I know what it’s like to be the prey. And the hunter.
But I still don’t know which of those identifies Sheryl.
The search doesn’t turn up any more results before I have to leave it and help Lanny with dinner; Sam comes home in the middle of that process and pitches in, though I can see he’s tired. He tells me about his day, the training session in the late afternoon; I get the sense that he’s leaving something out, but I don’t press him on it at the dinner table. He’s aced the simulations, as usual. Sam doesn’t fail much, though he’s the first to say crashing in sim is the best teacher. I know he’s concerned about reactions slowing as he gets older, but so far, his twitch-times are damn good. Better than mine, I think.
There’s something on his mind. Something on mine too. We’re both holding something back for a quiet conversation later.
We eat, we talk. Lanny’s bright one moment, down the next. Connor’s quiet and a little sullen. Teens. I remember feeling those storms of emotion, and I know there isn’t much I can do to help him through it other than be understanding. It stings, though, and I miss the days when Lanny and Connor couldn’t stop excitedly talking except to shovel in food. The later teen years are different, and now I have two to deal with, and God, I don’t know how it should work.
But at least they seem relatively normal these days. Therapy has worked magic on Connor; he seems much less anxious, more relaxed. Lanny’s still a firecracker ready to pop at the first perceived slight, but she laughs more often, and I think she’s going to find her balance. But it frightens me how little time I have left to make sure she’s safe and well and protected, prepared to survive alone in this world. Her and Connor both.
Lanny eats a small bite of the pizza and says, “Mom and I are going to the gun range with Vee.”
“We,” Connor says. “I’m going too.”
“Excuse me, when did you suddenly like guns again?” Lanny frowns at him. “Don’t they still freak you out?”
It’s an attack, but not a mean one, and he doesn’t take it too badly. “That’s why I want to go, sis. Because they still freak me out. Mrs. Terrell thinks if I get familiar with them, it’ll help.”
Mrs. Terrell, his therapist, has talked to me about that. I’m a little worried about the effectiveness of that treatment. Connor’s problem isn’t rooted in an unfounded fear so much as it is trauma; he had a seriously violent reaction to a school-shooting drill, and that was before he was abducted and caught in the middle of an actual gunfight. Aversion therapy seems like the wrong move to me.
But taking control back after trauma sometimes works. It did for me. Connor wanted his own therapist, not to share mine; I’m not sure I altogether approve of Mrs. Terrell, possibly because she’s a part of my son’s life I don’t control, and I don’t understand why she’s advising some of the things she does. But the feral-animal part of me, the part that never quite goes away . . . that part wants Connor to learn to shoot properly. Because my son will always be at risk, given who I am. Who his father was. Who he is. The future’s coming at us fast. I just want to reset the clock. Slow it all down.
I hate it when I feel this tug-of-war inside me. I like clarity. Certainty. And I know I will almost never have it when it comes to the best thing to do for my kids.
Lanny and Connor are both looking at me. So’s Sam. His is the hardest expression to read; he’s going to let me make this call without weighing in. Lanny’s wanting me to tell Connor no, of course; she’s only recently won the right to learn to shoot, and the last thing she wants is to lose that special status. But Lanny hasn’t been through the same things Connor has, especially back in that grim compound at Bitter Falls. I lock gazes with my son and say, “Fine. We’ll all go to the gun range. But you need to understand: if you start to feel uncomfortable, even a little, you tell me or Sam, and we will get you out of there. All right?”
He nods, and I see tension ease out of him. Sam’s still watching me, and when I transfer my attention back to him, he nods once and digs into his salad.
Lanny drops her fork. Loudly. She sits back in her chair with her arms folded. “Wow. Really. Not even a discussion?”
“Not even,” Connor says. He’s way too smug about it. “What? You don’t think I can handle it?”
“Like I worry about you at all.” Lanny shoves her chair back from the table and leaves. I hear her door slam.
“That was mature,” Connor says. When I start to slide my chair away from the table, he rolls his eyes. “No, Mom, don’t go talk to her. She’ll be okay. Trust me. She’s just pissed off at me.”
“Just because of the gun range? Or something else?”
He shrugs, gaze on his food, and I know there’s more to it, but sometimes the kids need to work it out without me in the middle. I just shake my head and finish my pizza. We wrap up Lanny’s last slice and put it in the fridge.
Sure enough, she shows up when we’re loading the car for the trip to the range. I say hello, she silently takes the back seat, arms folded, face a stone mask. It’s unsettling, because I can see the shadow of the adult she’s becoming. There’s nothing dramatic about her just now. She’s centered, even in her disapproval.
Please stay my baby. Just a little while longer. Please.
Connor, oblivious, calls shotgun, which leaves Sam to slide into the back next to Lanny. When Connor and I get in the front, I check my daughter in the rearview mirror. Sam’s leaning over and asking her something in a calm, quiet voice; I see her lose a little of her stiffness as she answers. He puts his arm around her in a half hug.
And just like that, she’s okay. It breaks my heart that I don’t know how to do that anymore with her, make it all . . . fine. We sometimes clash like mismatched gears, my daughter and me. I know that’s normal, but it feels like failure, and it makes me want desperately to make it right.