A Different Kind of Normal

by Cathy Lamb

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

From acclaimed author Cathy Lamb comes a warm and poignant story about mothers and sons, family and forgiveness--and loving someone enough to let them be true to themselves. . .

Jaden Bruxelle knows that life is precious. She sees it in her work as a hospice nurse, a job filled with compassion and humor even on the saddest days. And she sees it in Tate, the boy she has raised as her son ever since her sister gave him up at birth. Tate is seventeen, academically brilliant, funny, and loving. He's also a talented basketball player despite having been born with an abnormally large head--something Jaden's mother blames on a family curse. Jaden dismisses that as nonsense, just as she ignores the legends about witches and magic in the family.

Over the years, Jaden has focused all her energy on her job and on sheltering Tate from the world. Tate, for his part, just wants to be a regular kid. Through his blog, he's slowly reaching out, finding his voice. He wants to try out for the Varsity basketball team. He wants his mom to focus on her own life for a change, maybe even date again.

Jaden knows she needs to let go--of Tate, of her fears and anger, and of the responsibilities she uses as a shield. And through a series of unexpected events and revelations, she's about to learn how. Because as dear as life may be, its only real value comes when we are willing to live it fully, even if that means risking it all.

Beautifully written, tender and true, A Different Kind of Normal is a story about embracing love and adventure, and learning to look ahead for the first time. . .

Release date: October 24, 2011

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 416

Sample

My mother told me all about the witches in our family. She heard the stories from her mother, who heard them from her mother, and so on, all the way back to the mid-1800s, in London, where the twins, Henrietta and Elizabeth, started The Curse.

Henrietta and Elizabeth were inseparable from the time they reached across their mother’s bosom for the other’s hand. Their mother was considered to be the best witch of them all, whatever that silly statement means, and she taught the twins. They practiced their spells in the forest behind the fountains and statues on the manicured estate their mother’s wealthy, titled family owned.

The twins eventually, reluctantly, agreed to marry wealthy, titled men. They did not feel it necessary to tell their husbands of a few wild years, sins committed and sins omitted, handsome men here and there, and their mother agreed, she of a colorful past herself. “It’s our secret, dears,” she told her daughters, a pinky tilted up as she drank her tea. “Husbands don’t need to know much.”

The twins’ elegant estates, with lands adjacent to each other, soon held all the herbs they needed for their spells, plus Canterbury bells, hollyhocks, lilies, irises, sweet peas, cosmos, red poppies, peonies, and rows of roses, which is what their mother and grandmother grew, too.

Together Henrietta and Elizabeth had eight children who would later prove to be both saints and raucous sinners, especially the girls, as is often the case in witch families, or so I’m told.

Sadly, though, in their late thirties the twins’ friendship fell apart because of a fight over, of all things, a tea set. At least that’s what started it. Henrietta bought the delicate white teacups, pitcher, and creamer with the pink flowers, knowing Elizabeth loved it, coveted it, but Henrietta could not resist. They were elegant, from India, hand painted, and the flowers looked as if they could talk if let loose for but a moment. There was only that one set and when Elizabeth found out what Henrietta had done, so sneakily, she was overcome with anger.

Other rigid resentments and prickly problems, built over decades of twinship started to explode, as if the teapot had cracked in half and exposed the fine fissures between the two women. They stopped speaking to each other entirely, despite their children’s pleas that they reconcile, until one pleasant Sunday in front of the church.

It wasn’t hot that morning, which was fortunate, as the heat could spread such rancid diseases, like scarlet fever and tuberculosis, and it wasn’t cold, which could cause a plain cough to become pneumonia in no time. There was a bit of wind, which carried off the natural odors of raw sewage, animals, rot, refuge, defecation, moldy vegetables, decaying meat, dead bodies, vagrant children, and people who had rarely bathed in their lives.

It was a perfect sunny day with no warning of the generational damage to come.

Henrietta and Elizabeth wore their whalebone corsets, white petticoats, beribboned hats, and elaborate, heavy dresses. They reached out white gloved hands to their proper husbands as they debarked from their horse-drawn carriages. Both couples and well-polished children were ready to show off their devoutness to the Lord, though church bored Henrietta and Elizabeth into an almost comatose state, the vicar droning on and on endlessly until both women thought they were perched on a shelf in hell.

The twins caught a glimpse of each other on the cobblestone path, each with a hand in the crook of their husbands’ elbows. Their husbands had been chosen for their kindness, business success, and knuckleheadedness, which would allow the twins to carry on their usual witchery and spells with no interference from an observant male.

Henrietta thought Elizabeth made a face at her. Elizabeth thought Henrietta was haughty and, as if they’d been swept up by the devil’s tail and smashed together, it all began.

They left the clueless, cultured husbands, locked elbows with each other to pretend friendship and deflect attention, and a quiet, but intense fight broke out, their fake smiles plastered hard on their furious faces.

Accusations were made about “stealing my precious tea set, I told you I wanted it . . .” But then things escalated viciously, as fights between sisters often will. “You’re always flirting with men like a peacock . . . you are way too prideful about your children. . . why you should get Maria married off immediately before she sleeps with another stable lad . . . what about your son, Michael? Is there any girl he hasn’t tumbled through the hay with? Your gowns are too low cut . . . you talk incessantly . . . always competing with me . . . you think your herb garden is better than mine, it never has been . . . you have to be joking, my herbs are always better than yours, stronger, that’s why we use them in the spells all the time. . . .”

And then, the source of true bitterness and jealousy, “I should have been married to Oliver, not you, he was interested in me before you wore your purple dress with almost your entire bosom hanging out.... My bosom was not out.... Oliver would never have been interested in you with that nose.... My nose? Dear, a big nose can be hidden with powder, but big buttocks, horse buttocks, balls and tarnation, that’s not hideable, is it?”

Oh dear.

Henrietta started to mutter and Elizabeth, knowing a spell was coming forth, slapped a hand over Henrietta’s mouth. Henrietta grabbed Elizabeth’s flowered hat and Elizabeth clutched a handful of Henrietta’s heavy skirt. Soon they toppled to the ground, rolling, whispered curses tossed through the air, uncaring about the lace petticoats flying up, the tearing silks and satins. They were quiet in their fury, because they had no desire to advertise their witchliness. Neither wanted to be burned alive at the stake or flogged or drowned or have their clitorises checked for being too pointy, one irrefutable indication of a true witch.

And they didn’t want it for the other, either, despite the delicate tea set with the pink painted flowers and their mutual love for Oliver.

The deadly dull vicar sprinted out of the church, black cassock flying. He was young and naïve, and hadn’t a clue how to handle two women locked in a combative fight whispering to each other. My heavens, and praise the Lord, this would not do! Especially on the Lord’s Day! He had an important sermon planned, too, about how women must submit to their husbands! Submit to your master!

Their husbands, chatting the pompous chat of self-satisfied, privileged men nearby, rushed over, shock pounding all the way around their lace collars and past their white underthings. What had happened to their demure, lovely wives? What on earth were they doing? This was church, and yes, it was tiresome to be told you were going straight to hell to burn as a sinner, but still! No fighting on the front lawn, surely they knew that?

Their children watched, surprised but highly amused, especially the teenage girls, who had already joyfully learned how to quietly rebel and not get caught. Look at their fighting mothers! Pulling hair and slapping, their dresses flipped over their knees!

The witches’ last, frantic roll together marked the beginning of decades of tragedy that affected someone in each generation of one of the witch’s families. In the ensuing struggle one witch hissed out a spiraling curse, and before the other witch could deflect it by shooting off a defensive spell, the husbands and vicar were forcibly separating them, their feet kicking, skirts whipped up.

“What has gotten into you, Elizabeth?” Philip Compton loved his family, but he was brought up around royalty and pompous, unearned titles, and this behavior was unseemly, improper! What was his wife doing on top of her twin sister? This was extraordinary!

“For God’s sake, Henrietta!” Oliver Platts was handsome, but dense like cheese, and he could hardly believe what he was seeing! He was running for political office, too. Didn’t Henrietta know they had appearances to keep up?

“Ladies, let’s take a moment to pray,” the vicar said, shaking, the women’s perky hats long gone, their thick, auburn hair curling wildly over heaving bosoms. He felt himself growing hot at the sight of the bosoms, and the hair, and the red cheeks! Oh, shame to him! Those bosoms were enough to make him forget his vows and certainly his chastity. He dropped his head, his pale white hands clasped together tight. Oh, deliver us, Lord! Save us from the devil and devilish thoughts about bosoms! “Lord, we ask for your forgiveness today . . .” His voice trembled as bosoms frolicked through his prayer. “We are all sinners, unworthy of you. . . .”

Henrietta and Elizabeth were having none of that droning, praying stuff. As everyone else bent their heads, they leaped at each other again with guttural cries, but their husbands, on alert, grabbed them midflight and shoved them back into their carriages, dresses askew, gloves gone.

In bed that night, the husbands, to their immense relief, had their docile, fawning wives back again. The witches pretended they had been overtaken by the stifling heat; perhaps it was the tomatoes they had both eaten the day before? Maybe the porridge had been poisoned? Could the devil had crawled inside of them? It took a few well-placed caresses, some dewy eyes, long kisses, a lifting of the nightgown, and soon their husbands, who saw only what they wished to see, rolled off to their side of the bed, mollified.

But in the pitch, thick blackness of the night, one witch shook with shame and guilt, and the other shook in complete and absolute terror. Both clutched the necklaces they always wore, the same necklaces they had given to their daughters. There were three charms: a cross, a heart, and a star. A cross for Jesus, a heart for family, and a star to represent the power of witchcraft.

Henrietta and Elizabeth were never friends again. How could they be with spells like that flying around recklessly? But they missed each other desperately and cried harsh, lonely tears, in private, often.

The Curse began immediately, afflicting the baby the witch didn’t even know she was pregnant with yet. He was born with only one arm. Henrietta cried over him, cursing her twin.

Elizabeth cried, too. She had never meant for the spell to be so strong, so insidious, and within ten years, her guilt killed her. She toppled over in her summer garden, right between the thyme and mint.

Her sister witch cried for a year. Henrietta became an attentive second mother to Elizabeth’s children. When she died at seventy-six years old, right before her eyes went blank, she sat straight up in bed, stared into a corner, her wrinkled face transformed with an illuminating smile. She held up a hand, as if she was reaching out to hold another’s, and said, “Elizabeth, I have missed you, sister. . . .”

At least, that’s the story I was told by my mother.

Her mother told her.

Her mother told her, and so on, who heard it from the daughter of one of the witches, who stood close by and listened with increasing fright as her mother and her mother’s twin sister spewed out intricate, menacing spells. The daughter recognized the final spell and clasped a hand over her mouth. The other witch’s daughter did the same.

Their mothers had taught them all they needed to know.

And that spell, well, that one was a doozer. On that pleasant Sunday morning, in London, in front of a church and a vicar who was fascinated by heaving bosoms, the damage was done. In each generation, The Curse reappears.

But I don’t believe in witches, or curses, or spells.

No, I don’t.

I really don’t.

It’s a legend. A story. A colorful history to laugh and chuckle about in our family line.

It is a fanciful tale. I am sure of it.

I am, at least, 90 percent sure.

I think.

He was born with a big head.

Not a slightly larger head than normal, but a huge head, as if another head had been added on and then shrunk down to about half the size, without the eyes/nose/mouth features, before getting stuck on the first head. One eye was higher than the other.

Most would call it a deformity, a mistake, a handicap. In the future, they would pity him, or be disgusted, uncomfortable, mean. Oh, how mean they would be.

When my baby nephew arrived from between my sister’s shaking legs at the hospital, bluish in color, he wasn’t breathing. His head seemed to be pulsing, his veins engorged, the fontanel swollen.

I thought he was dead. I thought he’d been dead a long time and I stifled a ragged, anguished cry.

My own mother, the baby’s nana, America’s most famous soap opera actress, a woman who is ambitious, focused, and rational, cried out, “Oh my God, it’s The Curse again.”

“No it’s not—” I grabbed her arm. “Don’t even say that!”

“It is, Jaden, it is.” She sank against the wall, her slender legs giving out, her pink lace, couture dress, designed especially for her by Ruben, a new designer, wrinkled as she slid. “It’s The Curse.”

“Move, people, move!” one doctor, in blue scrubs, shouted over my sister’s piercing screams. “We’ve got seconds, make ’em count. Move!”

Immediately, the doctors—already sweating the difficult labor and delivery, berating my sister for not getting any prenatal care, for this should not have happened, this birth should not have happened, this bigheaded baby should not have happened—went to work.

“Shit,” I heard one of the frantic doctors whisper. “Aw, shit.”

“Baby’s not breathing!” another doctor shouted.

“Mother’s bleeding . . . oh my God, mother’s hemorrhaging!”

The bluish, throbbing baby and my sister were surrounded, and I was pushed aside, but those words sent panic skittering through my body, tears blurring my vision.

Brooke collapsed back on the bed, all blood draining from her face, as she screeched one more time, her green eyes rolling back in her head, neck arched, as if it were her last breath. Her auburn hair, the same color as mine, the same as my mother’s, was glued to her head from sweat.

The doctors and nurses, a wall of blue-scrubbed people, continued barking orders and shouting, some fighting to save my sister’s life, the blood gushing out, spilling from the gurney to the floor, and others fighting to save the baby’s life.

My mother was half-lying on the floor, as white as her daughter. She put her trembling hands up in the air, her perfectly polished red nails twitching as she whispered a chant, something to do with freeing the living spirits, jasmine, and love force, and when she was done she uttered, finally, a prayer, “Dear God, get in here right this minute and help us, damn it.”

I tried to get to my sister, to hold her seizing body, to bring life back to the fading green eyes that seemed to be only half with us, but they wouldn’t let me near her.

“Get out, get out!” one nurse yelled at me, pushing me toward the door as I fought.

“I want to be with my sister! Let me stay with Brooke!”

Oh no, that could not happen. No staying. “We’re taking care of them! Go, go!”

“Move the family out of the way, out of the way!”

The baby, his head swollen, was placed in an Isolette in seconds as the doctors whipped him out of the room and raced into the corridor.

I tried to run after the baby, my mother wobbling behind me on her heels in shock, but two nurses stopped us at the swinging white doors of the ICU, grabbing our arms, holding us close, our hands outstretched toward the baby as we cried, we pleaded. They were gentle, they were firm, both men strong and immovable. We could not go. They were sorry.

The doors slammed shut, locking, as that teeny-tiny body was rolled away into the sterility of a white corridor, more doctors rushing to meet him.

“Help Brooke,” my mother gasped, pushing me with weak hands back into the hospital room, as she tumbled straight down. The nurses lunged to help my mother and no one noticed me this time as I raced back into my sister’s room. There was blood all over. I didn’t know someone could bleed that much and still live. She was covered in doctors and nurses, an oxygen mask over her face, cloths between her legs.

“Okay,” one of the doctors panted. “We’re moving mother, on three.” Again, for the second time in less than two minutes, a family member was whipped out of the hospital room and rushed behind those swinging, locking white doors, where my mother and I couldn’t go.

We couldn’t go there.

Couldn’t go with my sister, couldn’t go with my brand-new nephew.

Why? Because they were dying. One wasn’t breathing, one was bleeding out.

A “Code This” and “Code That” were shouted over the intercom, people in blue scrubs and white jackets sprinting past me. I gathered my semi-hysterical mother up and we clutched each other on the floor, our tears a river.

My mother and I did not sleep for two full days. My brother, Caden, flew in from college. He is six foot six inches tall and has shoulders the breadth of a semitruck. As soon as he saw us, he burst into hiccupping tears, his black ponytail swaying as he hugged us close.

My mother and I traversed from the tiny crib where the baby with the big head was hooked up to all kinds of pumps and tubes, to my sister who was, initially, a ghastly white color, and not moving.

“The baby might not make it,” Dr. Rebecca Black told us the first night. “He wasn’t breathing at birth. . . .”

“There’s a chance your daughter won’t make it,” Dr. Sanjay Patel said. “She lost too much blood, we transfused her. . . .”

“Traumatic birth . . . head swollen . . . eye placement issues . . .” Dr. Black said.

“There are complications because of the drugs in your daughter’s body, we’re having trouble getting the bleeding to stop, she is having seizures, problems breathing. . . .” Dr. Patel said.

“The baby’s heart seems to be struggling, too . . . distress . . . gasping. . . .”

“Your daughter’s blood pressure is dangerously low . . . we can’t get it back up. . . .”

“The baby has . . .” Dr. Black went off on her medical-ese, the language normal people don’t understand, especially in a crisis.

“That’s enough of that,” my brother said, his voice sharp as he held up a hand. “We aren’t doctors. Explain it in English.”

The doctor explained. The baby was born with a big head. If he survived, and that was doubtful due to his critical condition at birth and the drugs, the size of his head would stay as it was. He would need a permanent shunt in his head leading to his heart because of an excessive amount of cerebrospinal fluid.

“Oh my God,” my mother groaned, her face white and drained. “I told you it was The Curse. It came right down the family line. . . .”

“It’s not The Curse, unless The Curse is Brooke.” My chest was a wall of thudding pain. I touched the cross, heart, and star necklace given to me by my mother, the same one she and Brooke wore.

“The curse?” Dr. Black asked, eyebrows raised.

“Never mind,” I said.

She seemed baffled, but then composed herself. “The baby has the same drugs in his body as in Brooke’s. Cocaine, painkillers, alcohol, nicotine . . .”

“Why did she do this?” I said, grieving for the baby already. “Why?”

Why had been the question for years. The pain my sister had caused our family with her addictions had been endless.

And, for the baby, a baby I named Tate, the pain was only beginning.

Seventeen Years Later

He had been beaten up.

Again.

Tate’s face was red, bruised on the jaw and along his blue eye on the left, cut on the eyebrow, blood was under his nose, and his auburn hair was a mess.

He had a basketball under his arm and a backpack over his shoulder.

I felt my heart squeeze and expand, then squeeze again, the pain of seeing my son beaten up stabbing me for the thousandth time. I wanted to kick the kids that did this to him. I whacked the wooden spoon on the edge of the pan where I was making an orange sauce with marmalade and chives for our chicken dinners.

“Chill out, Boss Mom. Hey, Nana Bird,” Tate said, smiling, waving.

He dropped his backpack on the wood table my blue-eyed, formerly redheaded, curly-haired Grandma Violet had used for decades to heal people with her herbs and spices and “Silent Spells,” as she called them.

“I don’t think I’ll need stitches this time, which is too bad ’cause I was gonna do it myself. You know, Tate, The Tough Guy Hero, sews himself up.”

My mother put her arm around me, squeezing my shoulder, warning me not to fly into a rage. It never helped Tate to see my temper triggering after something like this happened, it only made things worse.

“I know the slinkiest of solutions to this problem, Tate,” she drawled, her tone hiding her own anguish. “Have a shot of tequila. Tip your head back and I’ll pour it down your throat.”

“Mother!” I reprimanded, but it was halfhearted, my whole body throbbing with anger. Wind whipped up against the bay windows of my yellow kitchen nook, scooting around my old white house as if it owned the place.

“Yes, darling? Tequila soothes the nerves.”

“Good idea, Nana Bird,” Tate said. He calls my mother Nana Bird because when he was little he loved birds and he loved his Nana. He tried to smile, but it hurt his mouth. “Nothing better to top off a fight than a shot of tequila.”

I have a terrible temper when it comes to Tate. Tate has named my temper Witch Mavis.

My mother squeezed my arm again, then shook her bob of hair and drawled, “Did you beat any of them up?”

“Yep.” Tate was six feet three inches tall and muscled because of daily workouts with weights. That he won wasn’t surprising. He’d won before, many times.

“Spectacular! Was there a lot of blood?” She wiggled her fingers excitedly.

“Yep.”

“What about bruising, cuts, things that will scar?” She grinned, leaning forward, all those expensive pearly whites showing.

“I think I got ’em, Nana Bird.” He grinned. Tate had perfect teeth, too.

“Did you knock any to the ground, flat on their backs? Boom, smash, clunk?” She clapped her hands, full of glee. My stylish mother has a love of violence when it comes to her grandson.

“Sent ’em flying.”

“That’s my boy.” She chortled, wiggling her shoulders. “God gave you fists. Use them.”

“I did.” He put his scraped fists up in victory.

“Mark my words, if he only wanted you to use your hands for eating, he would have had your left hand formed into a fork and your right hand formed into a spoon.”

“That would look odd, but culinary.”

“Not if we all had a fork and spoon for hands, Tate, instead of fingers,” my mother said. “Fist the fists and let ’em fly when people want to pound your soul.”

“Got it.” He smashed his fists together. “Fist thumping equals pounding of soul crushers.”

“Right. You have it! I love your violent streak! It’s so gleeful, so animalistic!”

She hugged him tight, then I hugged him, briefly pondering how gleeful and animalistic went together, my jaw tight.

“Boss Mom, I can tell that you’re all mad because you’re quivering, but I’m okay, okay? I know you want to blow up and go to these kids’ front doors and haul them out by the hair, remember you did that one time, or scare the heck out of them or their parents or threaten to call in butt-devouring attorneys, but don’t.”

Tate calls me Boss Mom because I am the boss.

“I’m okay. I can fight on my own.” His eyes pleaded with me to stay out of it.

“I want to know who did this—” I glared at him, then pointed the wooden spoon at him. “Tell me.”

“I’m not telling you, and hello to Witch Mavis. You’ll make me look like a baby. I can’t take care of myself so my mommy comes flying in to beat up the bullies.”

“You can, but they need to suffer a consequence for this. They need to be suspended just as I’ve had other kids suspended who beat you up. They need to be shoved into a wood box and have the lid of that box nailed down on their heads until they can promise to shape up and—”

“Sort of like me in upcoming shows, Tate!” my mother interjected, her green eyes giving me the look that said shut up. “Next year I’m going to be locked in one of those ship containers by a stalker!”

“Cool, Nana Bird. But I’m not going to be able to watch it because it’ll scare me.” He pushed his hair back. There was blood in his hair, too. “Watching you screaming gives me nightmares.”

“Remember when I’m screaming, I’m surrounded by lights and cameras and handsome men, darling.”

My mother, Rowan Bruxelle, is the star on Foster’s Village. Her conniving, husband-stealing, scheming character’s name is Elsie Blackton. She and I have the same auburn hair, only mine is longer and wavy and hangs halfway down my back while hers is bobbed. I have a string of tiny crystals tied into my hair on the left side that Tate gave me for Christmas because, “They’re pretty, like you, Boss Mom.” She has ski-slope cheekbones, green eyes, and I have one eye that is blue, one that is green.

Tonight she was wearing a purple silky wraparound top, black velvet leggings, and four-inch red heels. I prefer jeans, some tough, stylin’ boots, hippy-ish sorts of blouses, an assortment of bangle bracelets, and dangly earrings.

I’m Earth Momma with an explosive temper meets cowgirl.

She’s firecracker meets perfume.

“Give me their names, Tate.”

“No, Boss Mom. I’ll get teased more if you get involved.”

“No, they’ll be stomped into silence. What are their names?”

“You gotta relax and flow with this more.”

“I don’t relax and I do not flow.”

My mother linked an arm around my shoulder again and poked me. “Your mother, Tate, for once, is going to try to not be quite so uptight and controlling, and so very serious but not so very fun. She has a turbulent nature that causes all sorts of storms for the people around her. It’s the Bruxelle in all of us, from our royal witch line, Tate, you know that.”

“Turbulent,” Tate said. “That’s a word for it. The other word might be interfering.” He raised his eyebrows when I wanted to interrupt. “And, Mom, I won the fight. There were three of them. The other guys’ lips were split open and two are going to have black eyes the size of Oklahoma tomorrow. I won.”

My mother clapped, her bangle bracelets clinking. “This pleases me immensely, Tate!”

He grinned and gave my mother and me a hug, and the anger, momentarily, swooshed out of me.

“Now, laaaddddiieess, I have a new project and I’m going to work on it in the experiment room. But here’s a hint: It’s not an experiment.”

“What is it, rebel child, oh my rebel child, what wild ride will you take us on tonight?” my mother sang, her voice low and husky.

“Can’t tell you. I will say that it has nothing to do with this reaction:


“What about computer stuff that I can’t possibly understand because it’s too dreary?” She examined her manicured nails.

Tate spun the basketball on his pointed finger. “It doesn’t have anything to do with computer stuff like super-computers that will soon solve problems to three times ten to the fifteenth power. That’s in one second. And it doesn’t have anything to do with quantum electrodynamics or my interest that never goes away: brains and more brains.”

“You are so smart it makes me nauseous,” my mother said. “Shouldn’t you be sneaking out to peek in girls’ windows or writing cheesy love songs with your guitar?”

“Ha. No, I don’t peek, Nana Bird. And when I sing I sound like a raccoon being swung by its tail. Hey, Boss Mom, the guys are all getting together to practice basketball and I—”

I tensed. “No.”

“I want to practice with them, for fun, no contact, I promise—”

“No.” We’d been through this before. Tate could not play contact sports because he had a shunt in his head and the shunt needed to stay in place for him to live.

“I’ll be careful.”

“No, Tate, don’t start with me.”

“Please—”

“Forget it.”

“Mom! Come ooonnn!”

“No.”

I heard him sigh in frustration, then he turned and pounded up the stairs, his big feet thudding.

Tate was obsessed with basketball, watching it on TV and shooting by himself for hours every day, for years, on our court with two full imaginary teams in his head.

“He’s the best damn person on the planet, Jaden,” my mother said. “He has a golden heart and a sensitive soul. He’s a gift.”

“Yep, he is.” I turned and fiddled with my spice sets. I have sixty spices. A small obsession that has genetic roots. “He’s asking about Brooke lately.”

The atmosphere changed and became prickly and tight.

“And?”

“And I’m heading him off, somewhat.”

“He’ll want to know all there is to know. He’ll want to meet her. That child has too many brains stuck in his head, and they’re always working overtime. He has brain machines.”

“I know.”

We were quiet, the silence between us edgy with anxiety.

She took another sip of wine. “You should let the gift play basketball.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Think about it.”

“No.”

“Look at this, Mom,” Tate said to me the next night after a steak and blue cheese dinner, which he has named “Heaven and Blue Cheese.” “I have my own blog and it’s on the Internet. What do you think? Cool, right?”

Tate’s