The Single Undead Moms(32)

“Danny, talk to me.” I rubbed a hand down his arm. Slowly, he lifted his head and pierced me with his big blue-green eyes.

“Mom, Mrs. McGee said you were a monster. What did she mean?”

I was going to drown Mrs. McGee in applesauce. “What did Mrs. McGee say, honey?”

“We were making family trees in class on big pieces of construction paper,” he said. “Everybody was so busy that Mrs. McGee came in to help us, ’specially with writing the names.”

I nodded. I’d known about this assignment. Miss Steele had asked the parents to send in a list of relatives and their correct name spellings to help the kids construct their trees.

“I spent a lot of time drawing my trunk, so I was one of the last ones to get done. Everybody else was getting ready for snack time. Mrs. McGee was writing the names on my tree, and she kept talking about how one side of my tree was almost empty. And how it was a ‘shame’ that you didn’t have more names for me, because you didn’t even know who your daddy is. And she said it would have been better if you just left your side blank and gave me to Mamaw and Papa. She said that you went looking for, uh, ‘ankneesyfix,’ instead of what God wanted you to do. You should have just died, but you’d gone and turned yourself into a monster. And that’s when I threw my applesauce at her.”

“Danny.”

“Well, Charlie left it out on my desk for me! It was right there! And she was asking for it, Mom. She was being mean.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you, hon. But why didn’t you just go to Miss Steele if Mrs. McGee was hurting your feelings?”

“Miss Steele was busy helping Anna with her tree. And I was so mad I just didn’t think to get up and tell her.”

“Hmm.” I buried my nose in Danny’s hair, praying for the strength and patience to deal with this situation correctly.

“What did Mrs. McGee mean, Mom? What’s a ‘ankneesyfix?’ ”

I took a deep breath, even as my fangs ached to stretch from my jaw, to tear and bite into the evil old biddy. I couldn’t help but feel this was my fault on several levels, not just because of my undead altered state but because of my inability to fill out my half of Danny’s family tree. I barely had information on the parent I did know. And I could only imagine how it felt for Danny to put question marks in place of his grandfather’s name. I allowed myself to feel just a momentary flash of guilt and hurt. Guilt because I couldn’t give Danny a second set of grandparents to love and spoil him, hurt over one more reminder that my father had run off, leaving me with those blank spaces.

But Danny didn’t care about me or my abandonment issues. He needed answers now.

“I think she means that Mom’s different now. And she doesn’t know how to deal with it.”

“Why not?”

“You know how Mom got real sick a while ago?”

Danny nodded, wiping at his cheeks. “Yeah, when you went to the hospital and you were so tired all the time?”

“Well, I was very sick, and I wasn’t getting well. And I found some people who could help me feel all better. But to do that, I had to change.”

“Change, like, how?” he asked, leaning into me while I stroked his back.

I took a deep, unnecessary breath and braced myself. “Honey, I’m a vampire.”

I waited for him to wrench away from me, to cry or yell or laugh. But all he did was snuggle against my arm and grumble, “Yeah, duh.”

Well, that was anticlimactic.

“Do you know what that means?” I asked.

Danny stayed silent, and when I poked his arm, he said, “You’ve told me it’s rude to say ‘duh’ more than once, Mom.”

“It’s rude to say it once, Danny.”

“Oh, sorry. But yeah, I know what it means.”

“So you figured that out already, huh?”

“Well, yeah, you were only coming out at night, and you haven’t eaten anything in a week. We talked about vampires during Undead American Appreciation Week at school last year. I’m a kid, Mom, I’m not stupid.”

“Fair point,” I said. “Remind me to start spelling things around you again.”

“I’m learning to read.”

“Well, there goes my whole parenting strategy.” I sighed dramatically, making him roll his eyes.

He picked at the cuff on my blue thermal shirt. “Is it fun, being a vampire?”

“Sure. I feel so much better than I did before, which was the whole point. I can take care of you much better now. The only problem is, like you said, I can’t go out during the day, but that’s a small price to pay if it means I get to stay with you. It’s going to be different for a while, but we’ll work it out.”