Chapter 19

D anica had been allowed into the main house, via the back door into the kitchen, her instincts driving her forward. She didn’t know exactly what was wrong, but definitely something was off. As she walked into the living room, she saw both her grandmother and Cameron sitting on the couch, talking.

When the subject turned to Cameron’s brother, Jace, Danica winced. No way her grandmother would keep quiet on this one. Danica reached the living room just in time to hear her grandmother drop the bomb on him.

Cameron stared at her grandmother in shock, then bounced to his feet, exclaiming, “Like hell.”

She nodded sadly. “You need to hear me out,” she urged.

He started pacing. “Why the hell should I hear you out?” he muttered. “Absolutely no way that’s for real.”

She stared at him and waited until he stopped pacing. Then she caught sight of Danica in the kitchen doorway. Nana’s frown became more pronounced. “You should not be out of bed,” she snapped.

Danica moved slowly, accepting Cameron’s help, as she crossed over to the big easy chair. “Hopefully enough tea is in there for three,” she muttered.

Cameron snorted. “I don’t want any,” he declared bitterly. “And, if you don’t tell me that your grandmother is full of shit with what she just said, I’m out of here.”

Danica eyed him steadily. “I didn’t find out until after that whole mess with my mother.”

He stared at her, then shook his head. “No, no, no, no.”

Danica nodded and continued. “I think that’s why Jace is so mad at me. We were making out in the back seat, when he got repeated phone calls and finally took it. Immediately he was pretty grossed out, pretty upset, moving away from me, not wanting to touch me. He was yelling at me to get out of his car and to get out of town even. I didn’t even understand what he was so angry about, but he broke up with me in the harshest way possible, and I had no clue why. Then I was attacked by my own mother and left for dead. Literally,” she pointed out somewhat cheerfully, finding the humor in the situation. “Ever since then, your brother can’t look me in the eye. Apparently he somehow found out that I was his half-sister, even before I knew about it.”

Cameron sagged down into a chair in front of her and stared.

“I’m sorry. Apparently you didn’t know.”

“Know? How could I know?” he asked, looking at the two of them. “How could anyone know this?”

Danica hesitated, then looked over at her grandmother. “I didn’t know, and I’d gone to school with Jace, began dating him. He’s, what, a year older than I am?” she asked, looking at Cameron.

“I don’t know.” He waved his hands. “Maybe he’s a year older than you,” he replied, a bit confused. “How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-nine,” she replied. “Jace is thirty-two. He’ll be thirty-three soon. So can you think back to your family and what it was like back when Jace was born or soon thereafter?”

He stared at her, shook his head, and said, “No, I really can’t. I was a toddler.”

“Is your mother even your mother?” Nana asked Cameron.

He looked at her in confusion, then nodded. “Yes, yes, of—”

“It may not have mattered to you, but it mattered to other people,” Nana explained, “and one to whom it mattered a lot was your younger brother, once he found out.”

“Good God,” Cameron muttered, staring at the older woman. “I can’t believe it.”

“You shouldn’t necessarily believe it, but there will be records that confirm it.”

“Yeah, but not those kinds of records. Not adoptions. They could be sealed. They could be private adoptions.” Cameron frowned and turned to Danica. “I couldn’t find your hospital records from ten years ago, by the way.”

“Of course not.” Danica snorted. “What they don’t understand, they want to destroy.”

Nana continued. “I guess my question is whether your parents were married at the time.”

“Yes, they were married at the time,” he declared. “I was there.” Yet he frowned and looked off into the distance.

“Are you sure you’re not adopted too?” Nana pressed.

“Yes. No. Hell, I’m not sure of anything now,” he snapped. Then he pivoted and looked at the old woman. “Unless you are saying that I am your grandson too.”

She shook her head. “No, you are not.”

“Thank God for that,” he murmured, scrubbing his face. Harriet’s lips twitched, as she shared a knowing glance with Danica. Meanwhile Cameron glared at the old woman. “I’m glad this is all so funny to you,” he snapped again, “but you’re busy tearing down lives.”

“No,” Nana argued. “I’m not tearing down any lives. As a matter of fact, I’ve done my best to keep lives whole and contained by withholding this data. You’re the one who’s suddenly not too interested in this detail. You wanted to know everything, remember?”

He winced because, of course, he probably had told her that.

Danica motioned to the tea beside him and asked, “Could you pour it, please?”

He groaned, got up, poured tea, and served the ladies, as if that would solve all the problems in the world. As he handed her a cup, he asked Danica, “So you knew Jace was your half-brother?”

“I only found out when I came home after being killed,” she shared.

“Damn,” he muttered. “Do you have to put it that way?”

She shrugged. “I’m the one who survived my mother attacking me with a knife.”

He stopped and frowned. “I never heard all the details of that.”

“It’s probably just as well,” Danica murmured. “For those of us who lived through these things, it’s not as if we’re trying to hide them or to minimize them. However, those events definitely aren’t easy things to remember.”

“No. I’m sorry. That was very callous of me.”

She waved it off, smiled, then pointed to the chair beside hers. “Come sit.”

He sat down in a daze. “It doesn’t change anything though, does it?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, with a shrug.

“Does Jace really know?” Cameron asked the old woman.

“He knows,” Nana replied, much too quickly this time.

“How did he find out?” Cameron asked.

“I don’t know. Probably my daughter told him,” she shared in a heavy tone. “Jace did come talk to me back then. He was so angry. He wanted me to tell him that it was all lies and that he wasn’t the evil spawn of the crazy lady. He had a few other choice words at the time,” she added. “I had to tell him that, as far as I knew, it was true, but he didn’t take it well at all.”

Danica watched Cameron’s face and interjected, “It does, in a way, explain why he hates me so much.”

“It doesn’t explain it at all.” He looked at her in shock. “How the hell does learning that you were adopted also mean that you must hate your sister?” he asked, and he genuinely appeared completely dumbfounded.

She reached out and gently stroked his hand, trying to offer comfort if she could. He clasped her hand tightly, staring down at it. “I couldn’t figure out why there was so much hate for you. I didn’t see it before I was gone, but it does explain some of it now.”

“Yes, it does, but the reality that Jace carries around such hate for me doesn’t make anything easier for anyone,” Danica murmured. “It would be nice if I could at least be civil with him.”

“I don’t know that being civil is part of his nature right now,” Cameron admitted.

“No, probably not.… I suspect that he’s the one who shot me.”

At that, Cameron jerked upright and stared at her in shock. “Please don’t say that.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know that for certain, but he’s the only one I know of who hates me that much,” she murmured. “So, I don’t know what to say. Other people hate the idea of me or are frightened of me, but Jace is the only one I can think of who actively goes around hating me, spouting off his superstitions like conspiracy theories.”

“It’s got to be somebody else.” Cameron groaned, looking back over at Danica’s grandmother. “So, do you believe Jace is your grandson?”

She nodded. “Are there any other potential siblings?”

Danica jolted at that question.

Cameron frowned at Danica, as she stared at her grandmother.

“You don’t know, do you?” Nana asked of Danica.

“I never thought to ask,” Danica muttered. “It was always bad enough that Jace was there, hating on me nonstop. So much that it never occurred to me that there could be any more of them.” She stared at her grandmother. “Did Daisy have other children out of wedlock?” Just then Danica’s heart sank, as she saw the look on her grandmother’s face. “Good God,” she mumbled, closing her eyes. “Who? Who the hell else did Daisy give birth to, and why didn’t you tell me?”

“For one, you left. For two, no good could come of it. I wasn’t about to tell the townsfolk about it. Your mother wouldn’t have anything to do with either child, and that was probably a good thing for both of them. I’d already lost that part of my family, and I didn’t want to lose anybody else, so what was I supposed to do? You talk as if I enjoyed keeping things from you, but the contrary is true. How many secrets could I possibly keep? Particularly when they weren’t mine to keep or to tell.”

Danica stared at her. “I don’t even know what to say,” she whispered. “So, all that time when I thought I had no siblings, and then I found out that I have the one,” she began, shaking her head, “but he hates me. Now I find out there’s another one who I never knew about. Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” Nana replied, barely above a whisper.

“How can you not know?” Danica asked. “How can you know another sibling exists and not know who it is?”

“That’s the truth, child. Daisy told me that she was pregnant. Next thing I knew, she was gone, and God help me,” Nana added, “a part of me said, Good riddance . She had caused such havoc and such pain when she was here, but then she was back some six months later, and she wasn’t pregnant anymore.”

“So—” Danica began.

“Yes, I asked her, and, no, she wouldn’t tell me. She just continued to become more and more unstable.”

“Of course she did,” Danica murmured, “and then had me. The last one.”

“Yes, you were the last of Daisy’s children.” Her grandmother nodded. “After that, when she was in the hospital, she got herself fixed , as she put it, saying she wasn’t having any more brats.”

“That explains why she was never the least bit maternal to me. It seemed she never cared because she didn’t,” Danica shared, trying to hide the hurt in her tone.

“Apparently she wasn’t maternal for any of her kids,” Cameron stated, turning to look back at Danica’s grandmother. “You didn’t take them all in?”

“I couldn’t,” Nana murmured. “It was all I could do to keep us together. Cameron, your father accepted responsibility for his transgression at the very least, and I know it was always a bit of an issue between him and his wife, but she accepted the child with good graces. Part of the reason for that, I believe, is that he never told her who Jace’s mother was.”

“Of course,” Danica snorted. “If you were raising the crazy lady’s bastard son, it’s not exactly something you would want the genteel townsfolk to know about.”

“Exactly,” Nana murmured.

“Jeez,” Danica said, looking at her grandmother. Silence fell over the room, as they all thought about the implications.

“I don’t know if that explains why Jace hates you so much,” Cameron interjected, “but maybe it explains why he got so weird. Back then he was hanging around your mother a lot, and I was afraid it was for the wrong reason.”

She looked over at him and winced. “Yeah, I did too. Until I found out.”

“Good God,” Cameron added. “What if all he was doing was getting to know his real mother?… You know, after the shock of it all had calmed down a bit?”

Danica snorted. “Has he ever calmed down since high school? I would say definitely not. So I don’t think he wanted to know the crazy lady who birthed him. What I would believe was that he was trying to get his birth mother off his back because, at that point, I think she realized that her three kids could all make money for her, and money was something that Daisy needed and would always need.”

When Cameron stared at her in horror, she nodded. “In high school, I had a part-time job, and every time I got paid, Daisy was right there, looking for her percentage , as she called it.”

Nana stared at her, obviously shocked to hear about this.

Danica nodded. “It was the only way I could get her off my back,” she admitted, with a humorous laugh. “So I paid her from every paycheck. It was like she got her tithe.”

“I am so sorry to hear that,” Nana muttered, frowning at Danica. “I didn’t know she was doing that.”

“That’s because I didn’t tell you. You were struggling to put food on the table as it was.”

“Yet you paid every month out of your paycheck for that too, as well.”

“Sure, I was living here too,” Danica noted. “Believe me that I was trying to get out of here and as far away as I could, but I also refused to be my mother,” she declared, giving Nana a sad look. “That was a never-ending cycle of crises.”

“Okay, so we’ve got a few things locked down,” Cameron noted, as he now sipped the hot tea in his hand. “I can’t believe that Jace had anything to do with your shooting, but obviously somebody has got that hate for you.”

“Not just somebody,” Danica said pointedly, “but somebody very specific.”

He winced. “Fine, Jace is a possible suspect. Yet a lot of other people here hate you and what you’re doing too.”

“Absolutely. But most of what I do, people don’t know about.”

Her grandmother eyed Danica with interest.

Danica shrugged. “Some things we just can’t not do.”

Her grandmother studied her for a long moment, and then Nana brightened. “Are you healing?” she cried out in delight.

Danica shook her head and sighed. “I work with a hospital, and I work with certain patients,” she shared. “I still have a lot to learn, but I’m getting there. It happened by accident, and—sometimes—sometimes it works, and I feel good when I help somebody. So, I do it,” she muttered. She waved her hand at her grandmother. “Don’t get too excited.” Yet her grandmother laughed and laughed, way more than Danica thought she should have.

Nana smiled, ear to ear. “Oh, my dear, you don’t understand. That is brilliant news.”

“No, I don’t understand. What’s so brilliant about it?” Danica asked.

“I needed you to open up those energy pathways,” Harriet exclaimed. “I really needed you to, and I didn’t know how to make it happen. Yet you’ve gone and done it all on your own.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Danica muttered, frowning at her grandmother. “What are you talking about?”

Nana hesitated and then smiled. “You’ll understand when I’m gone.”

“Maybe not,” Danica snapped. “Enough with the secrets already.” Her grandmother looked over at Cameron, but Danica shook her head. “No, enough secrets, Nana. Let’s just get this all out in the open, so we can figure out what we’re supposed to do from here on out.”

Her grandmother groaned. “You’ll be sorry.”

“I’ve been sorry a lot in my life, but Cameron has helped me almost at every step since I came back home,” she admitted, then glanced at him. “I haven’t been very fair with him either.”

“No, you sure haven’t,” Cameron agreed. “If you already work with a hospital, why the hell won’t you work with this one?” Then he held up a hand. “Never mind. I get it. You don’t need to answer. Nobody here would appreciate it.”

“They might if their loved one was dying and if I was the last possible solution left to them. However, if I saved them or not, they would only continue to hate me—and likely you afterward.”

Silence fell over the room, and then somebody pounded on the front door. Danica looked over at her grandmother, one eyebrow raised, and her grandmother shook her head.

“I’m not expecting anybody,” she murmured.

The pounding happened again and then again. At that, Cameron hopped up and muttered, “Somebody’s interested in talking to you, but they’re certainly not being very nice about it.”

“Welcome to our world,” Nana said, with a shrug. “Lots of people come here banging and crying and screaming at us, sometimes for help, even if the rest of their family doesn’t know. Sometimes because they want us to be gone.”

Cameron looked to Danica for confirmation, and she nodded. “Ever since I was born, it’s been that way,”

“Christ,” he muttered, as he strode toward the front door. “No wonder you left.”

She smiled at that. “Yes. No wonder.”

Nana looked over at her and whispered, “Thank you for coming home.”

“It’s not an issue,” Danica murmured. “It’s a sadness that this is the way our world is now.”

Nana clarified, “It’s not even a case of now . It’s always been this way and became much worse since your grandfather passed away.”

Danica stared at Nana, wondering about that. “I haven’t heard very much about him at all.”

The old woman sighed. “Not a whole lot to tell. My father lived, he worked, he loved, and he was gone.”

Such was the summation of somebody’s life, someone who obviously had been well-loved, and yet, retold in such cold terms, it had a clinical sound to it and was not at all pleasant to hear. Danica wanted to say something about it, try to get more information, because she knew that, when her grandmother was gone, all this information would be gone as well. She wanted to know more about her family.

When the doctor returned, the deputy was with him. He looked at the two women and glared.

“What do you want now?” Nana sighed and muttered, “Why can’t you leave an old lady in peace?”

“I would like to leave an old lady in peace,” he snapped, glaring at her, “but apparently she’s up to no good.”

Cameron asked, “What are you talking about? What has Harriet supposedly done?”

Danica watched the deputy try to control himself, but it was obvious he had a completely different attitude toward Nana than Danica had expected. “I don’t understand what the problem is, Deputy,” Danica stated, “but, if you could clarify it, then both my grandmother and I could get back to resting.”

His gaze pivoted to her, intensified, and then returned to her grandmother. Danica had no clue what was going on, but it was obvious something was. “The town says you did something,” the deputy finally said.

Nana stared at him, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Something?” she repeated. “Would you care to explain?”

“No, I don’t care to explain, but they’re on a tirade, and I’m having a hard time holding them back from coming here and burning your house to the ground. You should stop inciting riots.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Cameron stepped up, confused and dismayed. “One, you shouldn’t be talking to her like that. She’s still recovering from a blow to her head. And, two, what the hell are you talking about?”

Benson shrugged. “Something happened today, apparently to set somebody off. I don’t know what it was, but it involves Harriet. Any damn time, anytime trouble happens around here, it involves her .”

Cameron added, “I asked you earlier if you knew Harriet, and you said barely , as I recall.”

“I barely do know her,” he confirmed, “but she and her kind have been around, tormenting this poor town for a long time.”

“Harriet and her kind?” Cameron asked. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious,” Benson snapped, “and you’d best stay out of it.”

“Stay out of what?” Cameron cried out. “I haven’t a clue what you’re even talking about.”

“Good. Keep it that way.” Benson turned to look at Danica. “Now what the hell are you doing?” he asked, facing her, furious. “Shooting yourself just to get attention? Are you after the good doctor here?”

She stared at him, nonplussed. “You seriously think I shot myself?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “No bullet was found on your grandmother’s front porch.”

“Maybe because I was shot on the front lawn. Maybe because, after I was taken to the hospital,” she suggested, “the shooter came and collected it, so that there wouldn’t be a bullet for you to find.”

He glared at her. “Or maybe nobody else was here in the first place.”

“So, what did I do with the gun that I supposedly shot myself with?” Danica asked.

“That would be nice to know too,” he declared, turning back to Nana. “Where’s your old gun?”

“Where it always was,” she stated calmly. “What is it you’re trying to do? Arrest us? Would that make you happy? You want to take me to jail?” Nana asked, an odd note in her tone. “I wonder if I would even last the night. I certainly wouldn’t if you put me in with other people, as you well know.”

“I don’t have accommodations for every nutjob around this place to have their own facilities,” the deputy replied in a harsh tone.

Danica had never seen anybody quite so riled, but no way in hell she was letting her grandmother put up with this. As she opened her mouth to stop Benson’s insane tirade, Cameron stepped in first.

“Deputy Benson,” he snapped, a warning in his tone, “I’m not sure what you’re playing at here, but I don’t like the tone of your voice or the way you have barged into this place without warning or clarifying what you’re even doing here. This is not what I would have expected from you or any local authority,” Cameron explained, anger in his tone.

Cameron’s disapproval was so clear, and, for many, it would have been an obvious slight, but, for the deputy, he didn’t appear to even give a crap. “For all I know, you’re a part of this too,” the deputy shared, turning to Cameron.

“Part of what?” Cameron asked, raising both hands. “This is unbelievable.”

“No, it’s not unbelievable,” Deputy Benson snapped. “What these weirdos here do, that’s unbelievable.”

“That’s enough,” Cameron bellowed, raising his voice. “You came barging in here, screaming all kinds of nonsense. You don’t have any proof. You have absolutely nothing but accusations, yet haven’t even been clear on those. Is this the way you treat the citizens of this town? I’m absolutely dumbfounded,” Cameron continued.

“I don’t give a crap if you’re dumbfounded or not,” the deputy replied, looking at him. “She’s obviously got you wrapped around her heart, just like her mother had everybody else in this town bamboozled.”

At that, Nana groaned. “Of course he’s bringing my daughter back up again, isn’t he?” she muttered. “She really made a name for herself.”

“Aye, she did at that,” the deputy snapped, “and a lot of people have some very long memories.”

“Like you?” Danica asked.

“I wasn’t here back then.” Benson shrugged.

“Are you sure?” she asked, staring at him. “Because you have an awful lot of anger and hate in your tone for Daisy, someone you never had anything to do with.”

“I don’t need firsthand knowledge to know what’s wrong,” he snapped, glaring at her, “and you stick to yourself. You stop coming to that damn hospital and don’t you dare go and shoot yourself anymore. I’m talking to the judge when he comes through about what we can charge you with,” he openly threatened. “Until then, you stay put.” He turned his gaze to Danica’s grandmother and then raised a finger, the same as he did for Danica. “And you, old woman, you just need to fucking die.”

And, with that, he stormed out, slamming the door, leaving the rest of them to stare at each other in silence.

*

Cameron was still dumbstruck and in a fury, like he’d never known before surged through his blood. He hopped up and raced out behind the deputy. Even as he got to the front door, all he could see was the gravel fly, as the deputy pulled out and took off. Cameron slowly returned to the two women, still sitting calmly in the living room. He stared at them suspiciously. “Are you serious right now?”

They looked over at him, as if nothing had happened. Danica smiled. “Welcome to our world,” she stated calmly. “You sure you want to be here?”

He sat down in a chair, more confounded at what had just happened than they appeared to be. Was it really possible that this is the behavior these two women had experienced from the locals? “He’s a deputy. He’s supposed to help you.”

“No help for people like us, in case you hadn’t gotten the message,” Danica explained, staring at him. “When I tell you that we are treated horribly here, you should believe me. That’s exactly what I meant.”

“Which makes your wanting to buy land here even more confusing to me.” He stared at her. “I can’t imagine you would do anything but run for the hills when this is over.”

“I probably will,” Danica admitted, with a nod toward her grandmother. “Nana knows perfectly well that she’s dying. She might even know exactly what day.”

Her grandmother gave a cackle. “Just think how this used to be such a nice place to live.”

“When?” Cameron asked, turning to look at the old woman. “I had no idea. I only came back a year ago and have never seen this side of the townsfolk.”

“No, you haven’t. And maybe you never will again,” Harriet added, with a smile. “If you stay clear of us, you certainly would do better. However, if you insist on sniffing around my granddaughter,” she noted indelicately, “then you’ll definitely get the same treatment. So, you might want to consider that your job is on the line. Your career, in fact, is likely to be on the line.”

He stared at her in shock, as Danica chided her grandmother. “He’s not sniffing around me , thank you very much. He’s been very good to me and to you.”

“Sure,” she conceded, “but you and I both know where that goes.”

Danica let out a sigh. “Nana, that’s not necessary.”

“Maybe not,” she muttered, fatigue in her voice. “I just saw so much of that with your mother.”

“May I remind you, once again, that I am not, nor ever will be, my mother,” Danica declared, her tone firm, but a wealth of patience was evident, as if she had said it to her grandmother time and time again.

“How can you be so calm?” he asked in wonder.

“Because we know we have no way to change it,” Danica acknowledged, looking at him. “I’m not kidding. This is the behavior I’ve encountered ever since I woke up at the morgue. I had hoped that people would forget, but they haven’t. So be it.”

He stared at her and repeated, “When you woke up in that morgue—”

She looked over at him. “Yeah, what about it?”

“It’s because you could heal yourself, isn’t it?”

She winced and then nodded. “I guess, though it took me a long time to figure that out. I don’t know the full extent of my injuries when I went in there, but I was pronounced dead and was put away in the cold room storage,” she replied, with a shudder. “Somehow my body started to heal, and I’m not dead anymore,” she muttered. “So, you can see how the simple folk here took that the wrong way.”

“Oh, I can see. I can definitely see it,” he confirmed, not fully recovered from what he had witnessed so far. “I saw your leg heal today, and I still couldn’t believe it.”

“Of course not, and that’s another reason I question why you’re still sitting here,” Danica shared, with half a smile. “You’re one of very few people who even know much about us and our healing energies.”

“Yet I feel like there’s so much more I could know,” he admitted.

Danica nodded. “Probably. So much more I could know too, and my grandmother’s been doing it for years. However, you can bet that nobody in town wants us to know any more witchcraft or whatever they call it.”

“Christ,” Cameron grumbled, “this is such a mess.”

“No, it’s not,” Nana declared, looking over at him. “In your case, it’s quite simple. You have a decision to make. Your life will continue as it is, if you maintain a neutral attitude toward us. However, if you stay friendly with my granddaughter or with me,” Nana pointed out, “you can expect this to continue.”

He shook his head. “It’s wrong,” he declared stoutly. “It’s wrong today, and it was wrong yesterday.”

Danica murmured, “It didn’t stop anybody, and it definitely didn’t stop your brother. He’s one of the worst offenders when it comes to how he’s treated us. Now that I know why and how, yes, it would be all about fear. Fear that he is like us, gifted . Fear that he might end up like us. The other consideration is that my mother was obviously unstable, so maybe Jace fears he has a good chance of heading down that same pathway as well.”

Cameron slumped in his chair and nodded. “That’s already becoming evident. I keep hoping that I can get him in for some rehab or some professional help, but, so far, he keeps refusing to even talk to me about it.”

“Refusing to talk to you about it is fairly normal, given that you didn’t know what he’s trying to keep you from finding out.”

“Of course,” Cameron agreed, groaning, “and, as long as he’s trying to do that, he won’t open up and be honest.”

“Of course not. How can he be?” Nana asked, with a gentle smile. “Yet he’s still your brother. You were raised together, and, regardless of who your mothers were, Jace is still an important part of your life.”

Cameron nodded at that. “Only the two of us are left. Almost a year ago my father was the doctor on shift to work the hospital on Halloween. He died of a heart attack the next day, and my mother followed soon afterward.”

Danica shared a glance with her grandmother and just nodded. “I’m so sorry. That must have been tough.”

“It was very tough. Jace and I were pretty shaken up by it, losing both parents in such a short amount of time,” Cameron muttered, “Plus Jace was going through a divorce at the time and found out his son isn’t his genetically. All of which added to his depression.”

“That makes sense.” Danica looked over at her grandmother. “Will you be okay if I walk Cameron out?”

“Absolutely,” Nana replied, with a sigh. “Talk some sense into him. He shouldn’t ruin his life right now. He has a good life. He has a chance at something other than this. You know best, but ensure he doesn’t ruin his world too.”