Page 13 of Unnatural (Men and Monsters #2)

Nine Years Later

Autumn smiled as she stepped from the car, the sun streaming through the trees and hitting her face. The leaves crunched beneath her feet as she headed toward the small blue house, rapping twice on the door.

It was only a minute before it was pulled open, the old woman standing there in a faded red robe, her hair in tight curlers. “Autumn.”

“Hello, Ms. Hastings,” Autumn greeted, stepping forward and giving the dour old woman a quick hug.

Ms. Hastings appeared momentarily stunned, and Autumn used the opportunity to breeze past her into the tidy house with the paisley sofa and a fireplace mantel full of framed photographs, none of which were current.

“They didn’t tell me the house calls were going to continue indefinitely,” Ms. Hastings mumbled as she followed Autumn’s lead to the porch at the back of the house where the TV was still on, a panel of highly made-up, coiffed women drinking their coffee and solving the world’s problems, or at least the “problems” of those who carried thousand-dollar purses and made weekly visits to the spa.

Autumn switched it off. Ms. Hastings took her customary seat in the well-worn velvet recliner, sighing as she sank down into it.

“Not indefinitely,” Autumn said. “Only as long as it’s determined you need them.” Autumn dropped her purse and medical bag, shrugging out of her sweater and grabbing the instruments she needed.

“Determined by whom?” Ms. Hastings grumped.

“Determined by me, your nurse and healthcare professional.”

“Humph.”

Autumn placed the stethoscope in her ears and put the chest piece on Ms. Hastings’s warm, wrinkled skin.

“It’s a beautiful day out,” she said, satisfied with the sound of the woman’s heart, removing the earpieces and hanging the stethoscope around her neck.

“We should sit in the sun for a bit,” she said, nodding to the small patio out the window where a wooden bench sat directly in a puddle of sunlight.

“I’m just fine in here.”

“Vitamin D is good for you.”

“What’s good for me is my fanny parked in this chair watching my shows.”

Her shows. Autumn wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Ms. Hastings’s arm and pressed the button. The soft purr of the tightening cuff sounded as Autumn tipped her chin toward the dark TV. “That stuff rots your brain. Those fake people rot your brain.”

“They’re not fake—”

“They are fake. They live in a box.”

The machine let out a whistling sound as the pressure released, the cuff deflating. “You sound like my mother.”

I sound like your daughter should sound if she cared about you and had anything to do with your life , Autumn thought, picturing the dusty picture on the mantel of the high school graduation photo of the girl, now a woman, who had called once after her mother’s surgery, been told she had made it through, replied with a terse word that reeked of disappointment, and not called back again.

Nor visited, though she only lived an hour away.

Autumn didn’t know all the ins and outs of their relationship, so she supposed she shouldn’t judge.

All she knew was that the grief of loneliness hung on Ms. Hastings, and her body wasn’t going to heal as quickly if her soul was withering away.

“I’m wise beyond my years,” Autumn said, giving the woman a cheeky grin and holding out her hand.

Ms. Hastings grumbled a little bit more but let Autumn pull her to her feet and walk her out the back door and onto the sun-drenched patio.

They sat down on the bench, and Autumn scooted close, taking the woman’s hand in hers and patting it. “Doesn’t that feel good?”

“I know these visits aren’t necessary,” Ms. Hastings said, and there was a small tremor in her voice. Fear maybe. Sadness.

“They’re necessary to me,” Autumn said, patting her hand again and holding it tighter.

“For how long?” the old woman asked, and the tremor that time was definitely fear.

“A while, Ms. Hastings. Quite a while.”

Ms. Hastings’s shoulders lowered, a breath releasing.

“What’s sun got to do with medicine?” she murmured.

Autumn squinted up at the sky, breathing deep. “Everything, Ms. Hastings. Feel that vitamin D soaking into your skin?” she asked. “It’s invisible but it heals. It’s sort of like magic, isn’t it?”

“Magic, humph. You’re some kind of nurse, Autumn Clancy.” But Ms. Hastings tipped her face, closing her eyes, a very slight smile gracing her lips. The warmth of the sun. Human contact. Not things listed in medical books but medicine all the same.

Who knows that better than me?

***

“Bill?” Autumn called, dropping her sweater on the back of the couch and walking to the hall that led to his bedroom.

The door was open, and she didn’t hear him puttering around inside, so she turned, leaving the house, walking around the side to the large shed at the edge of the trees.

She heard the momentary buzz of the saw, and when she opened the door, Bill looked up from where he stood at the counter, a piece of freshly cut wood in his hand.

His smile was instantaneous. He took off his safety glasses and set what looked like a table leg aside. “Hey, darlin’. I didn’t know you were stopping by.”

Autumn smiled too, walking forward and squeezing him tightly. “Do I need an appointment?”

“Never. This is your home. But I would have had some tea made and been a tad less dusty.”

“I don’t need tea, and I’m used to you dusty,” she said on a laugh.

He grabbed a nearby rag and wiped his hands off. “And,” he said, “I would have hidden this because it’s not quite done.”

Autumn’s eyes widened as she caught sight of the rocking chair right next to him, the stained wood dark and rich.

Her breath caught. It was an exact replica of the two on his front porch.

“You made me a rocking chair?” she breathed, tears gathering at the backs of her eyes. “But…but my chair is here. ”

He smiled, shrugged, looking as pleased as could be. “And it always will be. But I figured you needed one at your place too. I’ve been meaning to make you one since you moved out and finally got around to it.”

She moved her hand along the curved, butter-smooth wood of the back. “It’s beautiful. It’s the best gift I’ve ever received,” she said, meeting his eyes. You’re the best gift I ever received. She reached up and hugged his neck. “Thank you, Bill.”

“You’re welcome, darlin’.”

She gave the chair one last admiring look. “Do you have a few minutes to visit?”

“There will never be a time when I don’t have at least a few minutes for my favorite girl.”

Love and warmth enveloped her. She smiled, and together they walked toward the front porch, taking their usual seats in those old rocking chairs.

The ones where they’d first established the rules of their newfound, unexpected father-daughter relationship, the ones they’d sat in as Autumn had later complained about teachers, shed a few tears about bad dates and breakups, talked about plans and dreams. She’d confided that she wanted to be a nurse as they’d sat in these chairs, and she’d later opened the letter that had told her she’d been accepted into the nursing program at a nearby college.

He’d brought out a bottle of champagne that she hadn’t seen next to his rocker because he believed in her so wholeheartedly and popped the cork, and she’d laughed and cried and hugged him hard.

“What would you have done if I hadn’t gotten in?

” They clinked glasses, hers very small.

And he’d grinned and said he would have very covertly used his foot to slide the bottle under his chair.

She’d laughed and then cried again. And now here she was, an RN who loved her job every bit as much as she’d dreamed.

It was in this very spot where she’d told him about the first fourteen years of her life and then later haltingly confided in him about waking in the woods, about the dream that was no dream, and about the boy made of moonlight.

She’d expected Bill’s disbelief. But he had believed her.

He’d asked questions, tried to puzzle it out with her, and though she hadn’t cried in that instance, she almost had.

It was the first time she’d put her experience to words.

And talking about it had brought it back to life.

She’d needed time to adjust to her new life, her new home, her newfound health, and in that time, she’d almost begun to believe that the experience had been a dream…

or…something misty and inexplicable, brought on by the medication.

But telling Bill had brought back the feeling of what had happened while she’d supposedly slept in her bed and of him , the specifics of his eyes, the silken shine of his hair, and the particular scent of his skin.

He was real . And though easier, though far away and removed from her current life, she would not forget him.

There hadn’t even been time for an inquiry.

The Mercy Hospital for Children had mysteriously closed a year after she’d arrived on Bill’s doorstep, two months before she’d worked up the nerve to spill all her secrets to him.

She’d been crushed when she’d found out, not only because she had no idea how to find her friends or potentially the boy from the woods but because there was now no way to prove what she’d experienced had been very real.