As they approached Cadence’s neighborhood, Aaron turned to Elliott and said, “I don’t think you can just walk in there. That’ll be a little too much all at once.”
“Right,” Elliott nodded. “Why don’t you let me out here, and I’ll disappear for a while. You can just let me know when you’re ready for me to make my grand entrance.”
“How are we going to do that if you don’t have an IAC?” Cadence asked as Aaron stopped the car and Elliott opened his door.
“I have my ways,” he replied with a wink, and then he was gone.
“Has he gotten faster now that he’s back from the dead?” Aaron asked as he took a moment to stare after Elliott’s ripple in the air before resuming their journey.
“Maybe,” Cadence shrugged. “You did.” After Aaron had come back from his death experience, he had become capable of speeds and feats of strength she would have never fathomed before. “Maybe I need to die and come back to life so I can increase my speed.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Aaron insisted, peeking at her in the rearview mirror.
She had obviously been kidding, but the thin line between life and death was growing blurry, and the more she thought about it, the more she began to reflect on her own mortality.
Aaron pulled the car into the driveway and flashed around to open the door for her. “My lady?” he said with a smile, an attempt to make her laugh.
It worked. She grinned at him and slid out, taking his arm. “Thanks,” she said, and before they made their way to the front door, she wrapped her arms around him briefly, beginning to feel as if they’d gotten past the chasm she’d caused.
“Are you ready?” he asked, leading her up the steps.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Liz and Eli Findley were there to greet them before they could even knock, and her mother’s warm embrace was enough to make Cadence forget for a split second exactly what had brought them in the first place. But a glance at her father’s concerned face, which looked so similar to his mother’s, particularly around the eyes, brought it all crashing back.
“What in the world could possibly be the matter to bring us all together on a Thursday afternoon?” Liz asked, leading them into the living room.
Before she could answer, Cadence was taken aback by Brandon’s presence. He was sitting on the sofa next to Cassidy, and they both stood up in greeting as Cadence and Aaron approached. Cadence looked at Aaron, but his expression didn’t reveal whether or not he was aware that Brandon was already at her parent’s house. “What are you doing here?” she asked as she gave him a quick hug and then forced her sister to embrace her as well.
“I live here,” he said with a shrug, plopping back on the couch next to Cassidy.
Cadence just shook her head, not bothering to argue with ridiculousness. She squeezed her way onto the couch between her sister and Aaron and waited for her mother and father to sit down in their respective recliners. Her mother offered, “Brandon visits frequently, so we weren’t too surprised when he showed up a while ago. How was your trip?”
Small talk. Polite but not necessary. “Fine,” Cadence replied dismissively. “Look, I know you’re all wondering what I needed to talk to you about, and there’s no easy way to say this. So I’ll just get on with it.”
Her parents were leaning forward, concern in their furrowed eyebrows. Her sister was rigid next to her, as though she were bracing herself.
Cadence took a deep breath. “I actually have good news and bad news, but they are both extremes. So I’ll start with the bad news.” She felt Aaron squeeze her shoulder, and clearing her voice, she continued. “We’ve just come from Grandma Janette’s house… and she’s gone.”
There was a pause as her audience collectively gasped. “She’s gone?” her father echoed. “You mean, she’s passed away?”
It was a legitimate question, one Cadence had asked herself, but she wanted to be honest with her parents without overwhelming them with too many details. “Not exactly,” she said. “Like all things related to the Ternion, it’s complicated. Essentially, there is a portal that can open under specific circumstances related to the blue moon. Grandma had been using this portal to communicate with Grandpa Jordan for the past several years. Last night, when the portal opened, she went through it.”
She let that sink in and watched her father’s face in particular as he processed. It was her mother who spoke first. “You’re saying that Janette went through a portal to the other side to be with Jordan?”
“Yes,” Cadence confirmed.
Her father leaned back in his chair, opened his mouth, closed it, and then shook his head for several seconds before he said, “Are you sure?”
“She wrote a letter,” Aaron replied, calmly, drawing it out of his jacket pocket. He handed it to Liz who was closest.
Cadence turned to see how her sister was reacting as her mother began to read the letter aloud. Cassidy’s face was a blank slate, and Brandon’s arm was wrapped around her. Other than a lack of expression, Cadence could tell no difference between her sister’s initial reaction to seeing her sister and having received the news. Perhaps her Vampire blood left her a bit colder than she would’ve been before. Or maybe she just hadn’t come to terms with the news yet.
When Liz finished reading the letter, she handed it to Eli, as if he might need to see it in person to believe she hadn’t just made it up. “Well, that is… shocking,” she muttered, clearly at a loss for words.
“I know,” Cadence nodded. “It’s all very surreal. I am having a little trouble accepting it myself.”
Eli read through the letter, wiping tears from his eyes. Cadence could only remember a few times when she’d seen her dad cry, the most recent being when Aaron was asking for her hand, though she didn’t know at the time that’s what was being discussed. She absently twisted her ring on her finger.
“Did you want to see it, Cass?” Eli asked, once he’d finished reading the letter.
Cassidy merely shrugged, and Brandon stood to get the letter in case this particular shrug actually meant “yes.” Once she had the paper in hand, Cassidy did read it to herself, and Cadence noticed the shell beginning to break a bit. She longed to see traces of her sister’s former self, even if it meant seeing her tears. The entire drive over, she’d been leery of telling her sister the news for fear of seeing her cry; this reaction was far worse.
