Damsel[ed]: Some Rescue Required (#2 of the Damsel[ed] series)

Chapter Forty-Five: History

Back at the Fibbs' household...

Storm Fibbs watches his wife draw as he sips Tennessee whiskey from his Number One Dad Mug. The light is low in the dining room, bottles strewn across the table like picnic goodies. Juniper bites her lip and rolls a pencil through her fingers as if it were a twirling stick. Her eyes, redder than the tattoos etched up her shoulders and back, narrow at the sketch pad. She stopped crying hours ago, but Storm knows his wife. Just because it doesn't show on the outside doesn't mean she isn't breaking within.

She shakes her head. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this." Her voice is creaky, as if she has to force it through a closed throat. "You know that, don't you?" But she never lets Storm answer. She lowers her eyes and continues to draw in her pad.

 The whiskey is mellow, almost sweet. Storm sips and peeks over his wife's head, curling a free arm around her shuddering shoulders. Her sweatshirt sleeve cracks at its printed 'ASPCA' letters, smeared with paint. A splotch of red here. A dab of gold there. When Angelos was little she used to buy industrial-sized rolls of white paper. She'd drape them across the floor, carpet and all, and set up a palette of acrylic paint for him. Then she'd stick a brush in his hand and set him free.

Storm stares at the mug, willing his hands to steady and his heart to slow. His wife wanted her adopted little boy to become an artist. She was going to love that kid until she got her biological son back. And now, he's gone.

Juniper scribbles. Her pencil whispers against the coarse paper, eating through the dining room's silence. Its hissing doubles the sound of his thumping heart. Toby snores on the couch, passed-out drunk. He's so quiet Storm would've missed it if he weren't trained to catch sounds others are supposed to miss.

He pulls back into his chair across the table. "We tried," he offers, holding out his cupped hands as if the words are something tangible, like a salve or a bandage or a wet rag to dress her wounds. "We raised them the best we knew how." He doesn't know how to phrase the rest of his sentence in a way that won't hurt her, so he doesn't try. "But we knew he was time-bomb from the—"

"How dare you." Juniper's voice is low and cold. She looks up slowly from the double helixes she drew, her jaw tight and her glare harsh. To him, her eyes look like two chips of pale wood. Hard. Hollow. The scratches from her pencil fade, the gray streak moving slower and slower across the paper. "How dare you talk about him like that."

"He's not our child," Storm says, matching her steely eyes with a steely voice. Her mouth is open, the lines drawn up tight in her face like they're about to split at the seams. "I love him. I do! For the love of God, I raised him! But he has parents, and we said we'd give him back—"

"He's not an adult. It was supposed to happen when he grew up. He should be able to choose where he wants to go and who he wants to be with." Her eyes lock with his, pleading. They don't look wooden anymore, now that they're wide and round and watery at the edges; they look like glass. "Or to stay with us."

Storm stares into his whiskey. The amber liquid sloshes in lazy circles, think and golden like honey to his bleary eyes. The AC unit blows a cool breeze in his face. It's a comfort to the muscles pulled taut like rubber bands, ready to snap at any moment. "He's not our child," he says again. "We have a child." He digs his nails into the mug's ceramic mouth, and suddenly, the 'Number One Dad' strikes him as the world's cruelest joke. Like renouncing his son wasn't enough. Like suffocating on the inside wasn't enough. Juniper just stares on. Then she snaps at him.

"You're drunk," she says. "Go away!" He obeys with painful laughter, turning toward the kitchen without another word. No, he wishes he were drunk. The liquid that shone so crystalline and honey-like at the table burns as he downs it. It feels all wrong somehow, like trying to put out a fire by drenching it in gasoline. He leans against the facet and finds it polished spotless by the damned kid himself. Storm turns around and cups his head in his hands. The kitchen was a bad, bad place to escape to. He slides down against the cabinets and sits on the floor, cross-legged like a child. Children.