Vicious Minds (Children of Vice 4)

Il triste mietitore.

She was the grim reaper. So was I getting closer to death or being spared from it?

Chapter 10

“Myth is much more important and true than history.”

~Joseph Campbell

ETHAN - AGE 24

Chicago, Illinois

Thursday, November 22nd

One by one they brought the food out, handing it to other members of my family to arrange around the table. None of them prepared it, but setting Thanksgiving dinner on the table was something my grandmother made sure we were all a part of. They spoke and laughed, while I sat watching in my chair at the head of the table. I glanced over to the chair beside me…the one my sister sat in. The one Calliope would someday take. This was still strange to me…this slight ache in my chest. Originally, I had settled on her because I knew she and I would be the most compatible with each other, I knew she would understand me, and I had dared hope she’d come to care about me…to love me. Instead I was the one who had fallen. I didn’t even see it. I didn’t even feel it, the fall. It was like I woke up on the ground and when I looked up, I realized, ‘Oh. I’m in love with her.’

I didn’t like it.

It felt like she was in my head. Like she was wrapped around me, and I couldn’t break free. But on the other hand, thinking of her made me want to smile. Who knew where she was, what she was doing, but it most likely would be something to make me concerned.

Dear God, I feel like my father. He looked so sad and lonely when my mom wasn’t around, and then when he saw her again he was over the moon, like a dog waiting for its master.

Is that how I look right now?

Do they notice? I glanced over to my sister as she watched Tobias. Not wanting to deal with that, I looked to my brother, who was laughing with Helen. Sedric and Darcy were arguing over sports again. My uncles were speaking to their wives. Of course, they don’t notice. They are never looking. I exist in this chair separate from them. They don’t want to look for too long. They don’t know how to speak to me…not on that level. Power does that, even in family. We were all fine to argue with one another, hell, even yell at each other, but the causal, the conversational everyday things, those things they didn’t speak to me about. Maybe it was because they didn’t want to burden me. Or maybe my responses were not what they expected or wanted. Either way, the wall was up, and they stayed on their side and I on mine. The only difference was it had always just been me here…until her.

I felt like just a man next to her.

She made me feel human, a person in need of answers, advice, comfort, love, laughter, anger…all of that she so causally gave. Just the two of us. Well, almost three.

She should be about four months now.

She had to be showing by now.

Was she still working?

“Ethan?”

I blinked and turned to my grandmother, who held a knife for me, and I stood up, moving to the center of the table. Staring at the glazed turkey with stuffing poking out of it, I began, “Dear Lord, we come together as a family today to say thanks for all the gifts and blessings you have given us, the most recent being Sedric not shooting his own eye out while hunting this turkey.”

“Hey!” he hollered while everyone snickered.

I went on as if I didn’t hear. “For the family who could not be here, I say thanks.”

“Amen,” everyone else replied as I cut into the breast of the turkey, offering the first slice to my grandmother as always before handing my uncle the knife and sitting back down in my chair.

“Now who wants the other drumstick?” Uncle Neal asked excitedly.

“The other? What happened to the first?” Darcy pointed to it. “You can’t take it every year, Uncle Neal.”

“Darcy, do not fight over things that existed well before you were born,” Uncle Neal replied.

“It was a good prayer,” my grandmother said, placing her hand on my arm like she did every year. “I’m sure your parents are here in spirit.”

I pulled my arm away, gently nodding even though I had only just realized what I had said…the family who wasn’t here. I wasn’t thinking of my parents. I was thinking of Calliope and our child. “Thank you, Nana.”

“What is wrong with you? I am getting weird vibes,” Dona snapped, and for second I thought it was directed to me, however, it was Wyatt.