Cotton From Clouds

Most of the town might’ve been working on hunkering down inside, hiding from the dump of snow that was gonna drop on the town before the night was over, but he was trailing through it. Kids would emerge from school soon, shrieking the way he and Karin had when it had snowed on Christmas Day one year, the only time he’d really seen any coming down. Snowballs tossed at each other until the yard was practically scraped clean. Noses red, bruises already welling, they’d trailed back inside laughing. It had taken an eye to get warmed back up again but neither one of them had cared. Michael dragged his teeth over his lower lip, check the rear view, the wing mirrors again. Now he had no clue where Karin was, no clue where Sara was either. The only one he was certain of was Aubrey. For now.

His shoulders stiffened as he caught sight of a dark blue pick up sliding back into view behind him. He’d seen it half a dozen times around town in the last week, not unusual for a place small enough you could walk from one end of the town to the other in less than half an hour, but still jarring. Michael’s jaw tightened, his left hand tightening its grip on wheel while his right loosened to reach for the glove compartment and the gun he still had a carry permit for thanks to the badge in his wallet. He’d tried to hide all of that from Aubrey the way he had done when she was small but she was older now, something in this town kicking in to tun his newly returned daughter into a teenager overnight. A shock for sure when he’d started to pick through the memories that had blanketed his brain but he wasn’t going to complain about a single moment he got to spend with her now.

There was a toot of a horn behind him, an elderly man shooting him a confused look from the driver’s seat of the pick up as he shot past. Michael sagged in the seat, watching the lights turn red again as he shot past. Between the hunt for Sara and trying to figure out how all of this had happened there’d been no place for paranoia at first, no real place for explanations either. Now there was a thin path to tread with Abi to make sure she didn’t end up in the same trouble he had and tonight, with the full moon coming in fast he had so much to map out for her.

The lights slid green again and he goosed the car forward. She hadn’t been blind to what was going on at home before, even if she’d been too young to really understand what was going on between her parents and how deep her dad had gotten them all into a nightmare. God forbid she remembered what had actually happened that night before he’d gotten home. Getting her to see someone professionally had been a scary prospect but he couldn’t let her go through years of nightmares, shrieking herself awake as things came back to her slowly. Not the way he had.

Michael tried to relax his grip and let the worries bleed away with deep breaths as he pulled into the school parking lot. Students were already pouring out and he squinted through the snow from his spot at the curb to see Abi emerge from the school. He leaned across the car, flipping the lock to nudge it open for her. ”Hey kiddo.” Leaning over, he smacked a kiss on the side of her head the way he had done when she was tiny – it might have felt like more than a decade since he’d last picked her up from school but in reality it had been a handful of short, brutal years. ”You’ll get back into the swing of it eventually,” he promised. Michael slanted his daughter a grin as he started the car up and nudged back out into that falling snow. ”How ‘bout we take a little pressure off of both of us tonight. Pick up pizza on the way back to the house? Maybe some ice cream and soda too. Have a night staying warm while all of this comes down?” While he tried to find a way to broach a subject he’d kept under lock and key for most of those years. Words sticking in his throat, the truth too agonising to unpack.

Tagged: AUBREY SHEPARD * Word Count: 752

Getting out of work early enough to pick Aubrey up from kindergarten had been rare but sitting outside of her high school now, Michael could remember the way she’d run out the minute she spotted him. Little arms flung around his waist before he’d scooped her up. His throat tightened at the memory. Did she remember it as a rare treat now, did she remember her mom picking her up all those other times at all? He’d tried so hard after she’d been brought back to make up for Sara not being there, not being able to do it anymore but sometimes he’d had to trust some teenager from the neighbourhood to do it for him, feeling that knot grow in the pit of his stomach until he got home and that same joy at dad being there burst out again. A relief for both of them he guessed.

Things changed as your kids got older. Embarrassment over helicopter parents taking the place of that joy. Michael remembered it well, from before his parents had bough him his own junker of a car. Shoulders down, face turning red as you noticed that familiar vehicle, the scowl when your parents teased you about it. The wrench in your gut even as an adult when the chance at that shame is never gonna come again. A hollowness that never entirely disappeared, more bitten out of your core when it was your child instead.

So much had filled in since she’d come home, for both of them, Michael supposed, but there were more questions now, answers having to be given sooner rather than later. How much she remembered was one of them but that was going to have to wait. Michael saw her pause as the left the school, felt that nibble in the pit of his stomach that had him smacking a kiss on her when she got into the car. The laugh that rolled out was a croaking bark, just a little rusty after all those years of grim silence. ”You’re lucky they don’t know your old man’s a government agent. I hear the badge gets teenagers real jumpy.” Not that he actively worked for the agency anymore. Even with Aubrey back he hadn’t spoken to his former bosses about being reinstated. How did you work that kinda job when you lost control and turned into an animal once a month?

Jesus, how could you be a teenager and be like that?

Their lives hadn’t exactly been normal before but now Michael wanted to give his daughter that at least. The usual sort of chat as he pulled away from school, griping over classes and grades and which friend had turned on another by flirting with her boyfriend. Michael winged a brow as he pulled out of the lot and started towards the square. ”If you tell me it was econ, I might just cry,” he joked. He’d taken after his parents there, had always told Sara that he hoped their daughter would do the same. The nightmare would be if she’d taken after him in another way and that was partly what this evening was about.

Snow was already falling thicker, smearing the windshield as the wipers beat at them. They were gonna be heading home at a crawl through this. Michael squirmed forward in his seat, squinting into that low visibility to make sure he didn’t end up in a fender bender. ”I got your favourites, I figured you still liked pepperoni…” It had been all educated guesses after she’d come back, dinners (had they been real or were they other bursts of a life they hadn’t really lived?) ending in tears when he’d miscalculated and mushrooms were now on the hate list.

Michael chewed his lip as traffic started to thicken as they pulled into the square. The pizza and ice cream had been a way of easing into the real conversation but maybe a movie would be the band aid on the scraped knee of this nightmare afterwards. ”Only if I get to pick,” he shot back, knowing he would cave anyway. ”I don’t know if I can make it through the Notebook again. You … uh … you mind if we have a little talk over dinner before we watch? Just … you know … a catch up?” That was lightest way possible of saying ‘opening up old wounds, changing your opinion of who you thought your dad was forever’. Just the thought sent a shiver running down his spine. His parents couldn’t have known the curse that was lurking in their DNA, there was no way they would’ve left him going into all he had blind.

Tagged: AUBREY SHEPARD * Word Count: 781