It’s a sunny day, and my son Kelly Abel Bennett has just turned thirteen years old. He’s tall and gangly, not having yet grown into his limbs. He’s smart, much smarter than I’ll ever be. It’s almost scary, if I’m being honest. He’s quiet, and sometimes I worry that he spends too much time in his head. I don’t always understand him (can one ever completely understand their children?), and there are times that I think him a mystery that I am desperate to solve.
Being a father isn’t as I expected it to be. It’s hard; there are days when I second-guess myself, days when I’m sure I’ve ruined them forever. This life… it’s not easy. The Bennett name isn’t quite a curse, but I sometimes think it is. We have been through much, and Kelly has seen the aftermath of what happens when someone tries to take everything away from us.
When Elizabeth was first pregnant with Carter, my father told me that I would spend the rest of my life in a constant state of fear. Even though my children would be wolves, he said, they were still fragile. Still capable of hurt and pain and suffering. It is a father’s duty to protect them at all costs. He told me of the days when they would hate me, days when they would think I was the stupidest person alive. Days when I’d want to pull my hair out and question everything I’d ever done.
But those days, my father told me, would be few and far between.
Because a child is a gift.
Kelly isn’t like his brothers. Carter is headstrong and blunt. He will make a fine second one day. Joe is going to be the Alpha, and with that will bear the responsibilities that come with the power and the title.
But Kelly….
He’s something different, I think.
Something more.
I wonder about you. Who you are. What you’re doing at this exact moment. Are you a man or a woman? Are you a witch or a wolf? Are you human? Do you smile and laugh and see the world for all it has to offer, for all it takes away?
Kelly is a mystery.
But he’s not unknowable.
Here is what I know about my second son:
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He prefers to spend time alone. If he’s not alone, he’ll be with Carter. Carter, as he’s wont to do, will think himself Kelly’s protector. It comes with being the eldest and with being each other’s tether. But what he doesn’t know—and what I’ve only recently come to understand—is that Kelly is fierce and brave, and he might be Carter’s protector just as much as Carter is his.
He wonders about all manners of things. Yesterday, for example, he asked me about our territory and why it felt different there than it does here in Maine. I didn’t know quite how to explain it to him. I can’t even be sure I know myself. When I told him as much, he wasn’t disappointed. Instead he asked me to come with him. We went outside and wandered through the forest, just the two of us. I felt guilty for a moment, not able to remember the last time we’d done this. With everything that has happened to us these last years, my attention has been elsewhere.
We went deep into the woods. He stopped after what must have been a few miles in a part of the forest I hadn’t been in for years. It wasn’t much different than any other part of the woods that comprise our territory. I wanted to ask why: why here, why this place, what drew him to this specific spot. But I waited.
He sat down next to a tree, his back to it. He took off his shoes, his toes digging into the grass. He patted the ground beside him, squinting up at me. His hair was too long. He had to brush it off his face. I was completely charmed by this skinny quiet boy and could only do what he’d asked.
And we sat there for almost two hours without saying a word.
Eventually he broke the silence.
Do you know what he said?
“I think any place can be special if you try hard enough.”
And that was it.
Simple, really.
But the more I think about it, the more I parse through those twelve words, the more I understand he wasn’t just talking about a territory.
He was talking about his entire world. His entire world was special because we’re in it.
And this is Kelly in a nutshell: simple, at a cursory glance, but just underneath, there is life teeming wildly. In his chest beats a tremendous heart, something so vast and extraordinary that it takes my breath away. He is a light, a beacon in what can seem like a never-ending darkness. A world in which he does not exist is a world I cannot even begin to comprehend. Carter made me a father by simply being born. But Kelly has helped me understand what it means to be a father, and all that it entails.
I don’t know you, whoever you are. But you must be someone who knows the light he is. If he has chosen you (and you were smart enough to choose him back), then I know he’ll be in good hands. Appreciate him. Love him. Never take him for granted. If you can do these things, then I promise that you will know what true love is. Kelly will never do anything to harm you, at least not intentionally. I think he would rather hurt himself than anyone else.
He’s not fragile. No, that’s not a word I’d ever use to describe him.
But he must be protected at all costs, because he deserves it.