My Last Name Read online

  Dad paled as I turned, slowly, to look at him. I didn’t say a word. I just stood, shaking my head, and started after my husband.

  I almost made it to the door before I started running.

  Dominic must have done some running of his own, because he was already at the U-Haul when I got there. He had the back open, and was sitting on the bed of the truck, one knee drawn up against his chest, one foot dangling. His hands were empty. His eyes were fixed on the horizon. He looked, for a moment, like a sketch from one of my cousin Artie’s life drawing classes, the ones he’d started taking back in high school during his “learn how to co-exist with human girls without running away” phase. The phase hadn’t lasted, but the interest in art had managed to take root. Life drawing was often the only thing that got Artie out of his basement—and since he was still concerned about the effect his powers could have on women, he mostly attended classes with male models. In that moment, in that pose, Dominic could easily have been one of Artie’s beautiful boys.

  (No one really talked about it, partially because it was none of our business, and partially because everyone under the age of thirty knew that Artie was hopelessly in love with our cousin Sarah, but I was pretty sure that Artie’s mother—my Aunt Jane—thought he was gay, at least based on the comments she made every time she leafed through one of his sketchbooks. Things like “I love the way you drew him, there’s love in the lines” and “Oh, did you get his phone number after class?” No amount of pointing out that his sister Elsie was gay, openly so, and hence he probably wouldn’t have felt the need to stay in the closet, seemed to get through to her. She was a mother and she wanted her son to be happy. She just didn’t realize she was barking up the wrong tree, in terms of both gender and species.)

  I didn’t make any effort to muffle my footsteps as I approached. Dead leaves crunched underfoot, and Dominic raised his head, turning a blank stare in my direction. I forced a thin, strained smile.

  “Hey,” I said. “You okay? I mean, that was better than it could have gone. No one went for their knives…”

  “Were we fools to think, even for a second, that this could work?” There was a deep wound in his voice, like he was bleeding somewhere deep inside.

  Maybe he was. Dominic had always been a man without a family. His parents had died when he was young; he had no siblings, no cousins, no weird grandparents who popped in whenever they felt like it. He’d been raised by the Covenant to be the perfect soldier. Maybe if they’d been smart enough to make him feel like someone—anyone—actually loved him, he would have been what they’d wanted. Instead, he’d been lonely and ready to be led astray by the first person who actually listened when he spoke.

  Lucky me. “No,” I said firmly. I walked over to the U-Haul and boosted myself up next to him, so that our hips were pressed together, leaving not even a whisper between us. “We weren’t fools, and this will work. If we have to, we’ll get an apartment in Portland for a few months. Things will work out.”

  Dominic’s eyes widened in obvious horror. “Verity, no,” he said. “I refuse to…I won’t be the thing that comes between you and your family.”

  “Uh, as if?” I socked him lightly on the arm before leaning in and resting my head on his shoulder. “Families fight. It’s sort of what we’re designed to do. Mom says it’s training for the rest of our lives. And you’re my family now too. If they want to be shitty about you, they can deal with us living somewhere else until they calm down. I love you. I married you because I was planning to stick with you. I’m not going to let a little snottiness on my dad’s part be the thing that breaks us up.”

  “How about a bullet to the forehead?” asked a sweet female voice.

  I didn’t lift my head. “Hi, Mom. Mom, this is my husband, Dominic. We’re pretty sure he’s going to take my last name, for simplicity. Dominic, this is my mother, Evelyn Price.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” said my mother, stepping around the corner of the van and into view.

  Most people, upon meeting my mother, can’t avoid the visions of 1970s sitcom housewives, complete with pantsuits and pearls. She’s a little taller than I am, with short blonde hair that never seems to shift from its perfect Carol Brady bob, and a grasp of casual daytime makeup that is just shy of supernatural. She was wearing bellbottom jeans and a loose blouse when she met Dominic for the first time; the outfit is seared into my memory, along with the small, ladylike pistol she was holding gripped tightly in one hand. In my family, we liked to say “hello” with firearms.

  Mom’s eyes were fixed on Dominic. Dominic, for his part, wasn’t moving. I’d always known that he was a smart one.

  “Verity, dearest, when you say ‘husband,’ do you mean…?”

  “I mean I married him, Mom. In Vegas. Because I was sort of afraid that if I didn’t, you would make him disappear forever, and I would miss him a lot if that happened.”

  “Don’t be silly.” She lowered her weapon, eyes still on Dominic. “Your young man impressed my mother with the way he took care of you and Sarah. He impressed her even more with the way he let Sarah into his mind.”

  “How is Sarah?” My telepathic cousin—legally my aunt, and Mom’s sister, thanks to them having both been adopted by the same family—had been severely injured in the process of getting the Covenant out of Manhattan. The last time I’d seen her, she had been in a coma. According to Alex, she’d improved somewhat since then, but nowhere near enough. She was broken. Not everything that has been broken can be fixed.

  “She’s getting better,” said Mom. “She still can’t use her telepathy without hurting herself, which makes things a little hard on her. She doesn’t know who anyone is most of the time.”

  Cuckoos, like Sarah, like my Grandma Angela, were completely face-blind. What was the point in learning those little details when you belonged to a species of psychics? Without the ability to read minds, she wouldn’t be able to “see” the differences between people. For right now, she was moving through a world of strangers who loved her desperately, and only time was going to bring her back to the world where she belonged. Time, and maybe a miracle.

  “Artie is driving your grandmother up a wall with his demands for information,” Mom continued. “I think she’s afraid he’ll hop on the next flight to Ohio if she stops talking to him, so of course she keeps taking his calls, but the recovery is slow.”

  The image of my cousin Artie on an airplane full of other people, many of whom would be female, was both amusing and disturbing. I shook it off. “Mom. Why are you staring at Dominic?”

  “I’m trying to decide what to think of him,” she said. The corner of her mouth curved upward. “I thought you liked taller boys.”

  “I like this boy.”

  Dominic, wisely, didn’t say anything.

  “I never expected you to be the one to elope. I thought you’d be demanding the laciest dress and the biggest cake.”

  I shrugged. “Elvis was good enough for me.”

  “All right, then.” Mom holstered her gun, smiled, and offered Dominic her hand. “Welcome to the family, Dominic.”

  Dominic blinked. I blinked.

  “That’s it?” I demanded.

  “That’s it,” she said, hand still outstretched. “Do I like that he’s ex-Covenant? I do not. But your grandmother would give me a lecture that lasted for weeks if I let that be the reason I rejected him. Your grandfather, your great-great-grandparents, all ex-Covenant. He chose you over a way of life. That makes him smart, in my book.”

  “Does she realize I can hear her?” asked Dominic, glancing at me as he took Mom’s hand and shook gingerly.

  Mom laughed. “I do, and that’s why I’m saying these things. If you hurt my little girl in a way outside the normal bounds of matrimony, I will break you. Your body will never be found. But apart from that, eh. My little girl got married. When are you going to make me a grandmother?”

  “Mom!” I said, scandalized.

  Dominic stared at my mother, mouth h
anging slightly open. Then, slowly, he started to laugh. She joined in. The two of them were still laughing when I started to unload the U-Haul. There’s nothing in the world like family. And thank God for that.