Unexpected Surprises

1: Six Years Later

Six-year-old Jaden "Jade" McCall-Lahey made her way down the stairs of the McCall house, dressed in custom-made pink silk pajamas with wolves on them (her Aunt Lydia's doing, of course). She didn't pay any mind to the photos she passed as she did, but they had changed from varying photos of Scott, to varying photos of Jade as a baby, toddler, and most recently, a beaming six-year-old. Humming, Jade continued towards the smell of bacon that had drifted up the staircase.

They had succeeded in making the office room into a decent room for a toddler, un-dusting the unused space (well, it had been used, but only for storage) and then Lydia had shown up, and re-decorated the entire space with a proper bed, painted the walls pink and blue, and insisted on picking out a desk and dresser, along with a mirror. However, now that Jade was getting older, Nana McCall had started nagging Scott about moving her to the spare room, or getting his own place, because she was, apparently, getting too big for the room nowadays. The main problem was, however, that Scott didn't want to leave his teenage house in Beacon Hills, lest Isaac return - which got unlikelier with every minute that passed, though Scott didn't like to think about him.

Jade knew perfectly well who Isaac Lahey was, because one night, when she was three years old, she had run into her father, sobbing over a picture of him and a curly-blonde-haired boy, both in lacrosse gear. Her father seemed clumsier than normal, and was holding a bottle of something Jade knew instinctively was bad.

Nana McCall had found her, staring with a wobbling lip at her father. "Oh, honey," murmured Nana McCall, clutching Jaden tightly. "Daddy's just upset. It's the anniversary of the day he left."

And Nana McCall would not say anything more, saying that it was Scott's place to tell Jaden. So in the morning, with the tact of any other three-year-old, Jade bluntly asked a pale-faced, silent Scott who was picking at his eggs and bacon, "Who left?"

Scott had spat out the orange juice and bacon he'd been drinking and eating at the same time - he was only twenty-one, after all. Still fairly young. 

"Ew," Jade wrinkled her nose, as Nana McCall silently agreed, but knew that today was not the day to chide her son on his eating habits.

"How do you know about him?" demanded Scott.

"Nana McCall said somebody left, last night, when you were sad," frowned Jade, hugging her pink teddy bear. "I just wanna know who made you sad, so I can find them and make Aunt Lydia scream them to death."

"Oh, baby, I wish I could find them, too," sighed Scott, setting down his fork and turning fully to his daughter. "I'll tell you the story, okay, but don't ask me to tell you again, all right? It still hurts."

Jade nodded, and it was times like these that people thought she was too smart for her age.

"Once upon a time, your daddy loved a girl," Scott told Jade. "And he thought she was a nice, pretty princess, like you, but she turned out to be an ugly witch."

"I don't get it," frowned Jade. "You're always saying him."

"Jade," Nana McCall chided gently. "Don't interrupt."

"When your daddy realized," Scott continued, staring off into space as he remembered, "that he loved somebody else, he did the right thing and broke up with the girl. He thought everything was okay, but it turned out that everything wasn't. The girl found a coven of witches, and made them give her a potion, all while your daddy was meeting up and, um, hanging out with Isaac." Scott smiled softly as he spoke the name. "His name was Isaac."

"Daddy, you can tell me the truth," Jade giggled at the smile on her father's face. "I know you guys kissed!"

Scott blinked at his daughter, and decided that he would have to have a talk with Malia about the things she told Jade - even if he suspected that Malia hadn't told Jade everything. Even Malia knows not to give a three-year-old the sex talk.