Unveiled by Ruth Vincent

Author:Ruth Vincent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Reggie closed the office early the Friday before Labor Day, and I decided to take the train out with Obadiah and have dinner with my folks in Grover Heights, New Jersey. I had planned to spend the whole holiday weekend with them, but I couldn’t if I was going to use it to go back and check out the situation in the Vale, so this was my compromise. I had told Obadiah he didn’t have to come. He was still dealing with the werewolf, and the overwhelming cleanup of his upstairs storeroom, and though he insisted he didn’t need my help, that the werewolf clan was pitching in to assist him, I still felt bad. But it wasn’t just that. Part of me was afraid to face a family dinner at my parents’ house with Obadiah’s hands potentially shaking under the table. It would just get my parents worried, and they couldn’t even know the real cause.

It wasn’t the first time Obadiah had met my parents. That had happened months before, and hadn’t been nearly as nerve-wracking as I anticipated. After eight months of dating, my folks had accepted Obadiah as a part of my life now. My mom had started referring to our visits as “the kids are coming to stay,” as if Obadiah was now their other grown-up child. I think they liked him. Sometimes my dad made a crack about how much older than me Obadiah was, and I always flushed with shame at the half joke. They thought Obadiah was thirty-three to my twenty-three. They didn’t know he was really three hundred and eight. But ultimately, I could see in my parents’ eyes that they saw Obadiah made me happy, and that touched me. I wished my other mother, the Fairy Queen, could understand that.

My parents met us at the train station in Grover Heights.

As we joined them in their aging Toyota, it occurred to me how much older my parents looked. It had been less than three months since I’d seen them last, so it wasn’t that. It was a subtle, almost imperceptible shift. My hands noted how my father felt a little frailer as I hugged him. My mom’s voice was bubbly and cheerful as she took my hand, but her eyes seemed tired. I felt bad about how little I’d visited lately.

Grover Heights was just as I remembered it: the shining chrome diner; the dying main street with its mostly closed-up shops; the various churches; the redbrick school with its sign proudly proclaiming a blue-ribbon award for excellence; the rolling green hills of suburban houses. It was just on the edge of being too far from New York City for a person to commute, though there were still many who did, and the quaint old-fashioned train station was always packed at 5:00 a.m.

Obadiah and Dad talked baseball scores, while Mom asked me all about my newest case with Reggie as we drove the winding, forested back roads to the house.

We pulled up

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