Chapter 14: The Showdown

Authors note.

As always, my thanks to Neurparenthetical, whose untiring vigilance makes my illegible scribble readable. Any residual errors are left there purposely in order to give you guys something to do.

Enjoy. – and please, whatever you feel about the story feedback is always appreciated. I can’t improve if I don’t know where I am going wrong.

Saturday morning, I got up at four. Everyone else seemed to be having a lie-in. I did a couple of hours of martial arts and then decided to go out for a run. The dogs came with me, and I had a lot of fun running with four hounds loping along beside me or dashing off to investigate something or other before catching up to me again.

Breakfast was over by the time I got back, but Cheryl had saved me a plate - well, more of a tray - of food. My appetite seemed to have gone into overdrive since I’d ramped up my TK usage. That was another reason it had felt so wrong to accept money from Dean for the work I was doing. I must have been eating them out of house and home.

Having showered and eaten, I was just about to join the rest of the family on the deck when my phone rang. It was my mother. For a moment, my finger hovered over the ‘Reject Call’ button, but I figured I would have to speak to her at some point. With a sigh, I answered.

“Hello?” I said.

“Caleb?” she asked.

I toyed with several sarcastic responses but decided against. “Yes?”

“Where have you been?” she asked. “I have tried and tried calling you and you haven’t returned any of my calls.”

“I wasn’t in the mood for any more lies,” I said without heat.

“Lies?” she sounded genuinely puzzled. “What lies?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, “let’s start with twenty years of lies about who I was. Of my power, of my family, of being manipulated into becoming another pawn of a living ancestor I never even knew existed.”

“You don’t understand, Caleb,” she said, “We had to...””No,” I interrupted her. “You didn’t. Your job was to prepare me to take on a massive responsibility, not to lie to me for my entire life and then present me to them on my
twentieth birthday, a literal virgin sacrifice.”

“But we didn’t know,” she argued. “It was only when the amulet came off that we knew that you had any power at all.”

“More lies,” I said. I was getting angrier but managing to hold a measured tone. “Maggie already told me that she saw me when I was three days old, and even then, she knew that I was the most powerful user she had ever seen. There is no way that you didn’t know I had power, and that one day I would be faced with dealing with them, with zero warning or preparation.

“Don’t tell me that she didn’t tell you,” I continued, “because I won’t believe you. Not unless we are face to face and I can see you when you tell me. You know I’ll see the truth then, so if there is nothing else you would like to lie to me about, then I have things to do.”

“Caleb,” she repeated. She was full-on crying. “You don’t understand. We had to...”

“You already said that,” I interrupted her again. “You had to follow their instruction? By what law? By what right did they decree that you had to put your child in so much danger? You may as well have sat me in a room full of loaded guns and just hoped I didn’t figure out how to pull a trigger. I could have seriously hurt someone, killed someone even, and whose fault would it have been?

“Even if - and it’s a big if - I didn’t get into legal trouble, I would have had to live with what I had done for the rest of my life. All because you were too weak or stupid to put the needs of your own child before the edicts of ‘The Matriarch.’ So much for maternal instinct.

“So, if there’s nothing else, Mother, I have things I need to be doing.” I ended the call. I was surprised to find that I had tears streaming down my face. I couldn’t decide whether they were tears of rage or sadness.

I looked at my phone. The picture of Angela holding her shirt up to show me her ass was on the screen and I wondered. What if? What could have happened? How easy would it have been for me to make her come back to me, peel those painted-on jeans down and...

My phone’s screen shattered as it hit the wall.

I should have been told, warned, and better prepared. I could have done anything, hurt anyone.

I felt arms encircle me, pulling me into a motherly embrace. Cheryl was holding me, talking softly and assuring me that things would be okay. Gently, she led me into the living room, and sat me on the couch, taking a seat beside me and holding my hand.

“Caleb,” she said quietly, “let me help. Tell me what hurts.”

“I don’t know how to explain,” I said.

“Just say what you are feeling,” she responded. “I promise, I’m not here to criticize or judge you. I just want to help you find your way.”

“I just feel so alone,” I said. “I know that sounds stupid. I have three wonderful girlfriends, so how can I be alone? But everyone I thought I could rely on has lied to me my entire life. When you can’t trust your own parents - who raised you - to be honest, and responsible, and tell the truth, and then you find out your entire childhood has been some macabre parody of The Truman Show ... how can you trust anyone after that?”

“What about the twins?” she asked gently.

“I love them,” I said, “I really do. But they are so free with their power; it’s like a drug. They use it to pep me up or settle me down, to get me to sleep at night. Just sometimes, I long for a night I can’t sleep. Sometimes I can’t tell if what I’m feeling is real or just something manufactured by them.

“When I was a kid, we used to get ice cream with sprinkles on, and I could never get enough sprinkles. So when I went to University and I could buy what I wanted, I got myself a whole bowl of sprinkles and ate them. I made myself sick, and now I can’t even look at the things.

“It’s kind of like that. There are too many sprinkles. I need some normalcy.”

“And Jules?” she asked. Strangely, there was no edge to her voice. I would have thought she’d have felt defensive on her daughter’s behalf. If she did, she hid it very well.

“ ... is the one person I am certain of,” I said. “But that puts so much pressure on her. It’s not fair. She is a beautiful young woman with enough of her own issues, without her having to take on mine.”

“I am prepared to bet,” Cheryl said, “that your parents love you too.”

“Then how could they lie to me all this time,” I asked, anguish in my voice, “and leave me so woefully unprepared?”

“Did they?” she asked. “Did they leave you unprepared?”

“They didn’t tell me about my powers,” I said, getting angry but trying not to raise my voice. I knew I wasn’t angry at her.

“Caleb,” she said softly, “I saw that picture, of that girl on your phone. She is very attractive. You had power. Once you realized that, why did you not just make her come to you, take off her clothes, and have sex with you?”

“What?” I was astounded she would even ask me that. “That would be rape. I could never do that to anyone.”

“Why not?” she asked. “I’m sure you could even make her feel like she wanted it in the first place - that it was her idea, even. So, where’s the harm? Who would care?”

“I would care!” my voice was starting to get an edge to it now.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because...”

“Because?”

“Because I was brought up to...” I tailed off.

She took my hand.

“Do your parents have power?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Not so you’d notice, no.”

“So, they had no way of controlling you,” she said, “or resisting your powers, even as a child. All they could do was bring you up to be the best person you could be. It looks to me like they did a pretty good job. The fact that you didn’t go out and force yourself on any good-looking person you could find speaks volumes not only about your personality but also about your upbringing. They prepared you as best they could with the tools they had.

“They had to defer to others with more power and experience regarding your powers. In hindsight, it may not have been the best course of action, but, as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty. I can tell you this as a parent: there is no way that you could have turned out as well as you did, without a solid, loving family behind you.”

I sat, my hand still in hers, starting to feel a little ashamed about the way I had spoken to my mother. I had been angry and thought I had a right to be, and I possibly did to some extent, but I knew that Cheryl was right. Neither of my parents had any significant power, and they couldn’t have gone against the mighty Eversons and their edicts for keeping children in ignorance - especially since their own matriarch, Maggie Forbes, subscribed to that practice as well.

I swore then, that no child of mine would be touched by an amulet. They would be brought up with the full knowledge of their powers, and prepared for when they had to go out into the world and make their own way.

“Why don’t I see if your parents would like to come up here for a couple of days?” she asked. “They could meet Jules and get to know us, and maybe give you a chance to talk. Neutral ground.”

“Neutral?” I asked, and she smiled.

“Well,” she said. “They don’t need to know it’s your home turf, do they?”

I was touched by that, and by that point, I really had started to think of the farm as my home. It wasn’t the place, though; it was the people. I thought back to Dean’s half-joking offer of employment and knew for a fact I could do a lot worse.

“If you think that would be okay with Dean,” I said.

She huffed. “I’ll tell him it’s okay with him,” she said, then grinned. “I choose his skivvies too.”

I laughed.

Jules came into the living room and sat on the other side of me. “Here,” she said, handing me my phone.

“It’s a good thing we have the same phone,” she said. “I had a couple of spare screens.”

While Cheryl and I had been talking, she had repaired the phone I had smashed.

“Did you have to use that hot air thingummy?” I asked, knowing she had been dying to try it out.

She shook her head. “Not this time.” She looked into my eyes. “Caleb, do you remember Point One?” She was referring to the conversation from the diner.

I nodded, feeling even more ashamed, but despite what had happened in the diner, there was still some lingering uncertainty in my mind regarding the twins’ feelings.

“It’s okay to be scared,” she said, “and I understand that when you’re scared you get angry, and that’s okay too. But you can’t lose sight of the facts. I love you; Mary loves you; Amanda loves you. Ness loves you; Mom loves you, and your Sugar Daddy loves you too.” That raised a chuckle. “Your parents also love you. They made mistakes, sure, but they were not the ones manipulating you. They were being manipulated too.

“You can’t be angry at the entire world,” she went on. “You need someone on your side, and if not your parents and us, then who? At least speak to them, face to face, and then see how you feel.”

I nodded.

Cheryl held her hand out for my phone. “May I?” she asked.

I unlocked my phone and handed it to her. She looked at my recent calls, found my mother’s number, and called her. Jules took my hand and led me out of the room, while her mother spoke to mine.

The twins were out on the deck, and they both came over and enveloped me in a hug. I was expecting to be wrapped in feelings of love and trust, but there was nothing. I caught a fleeting thought from Amanda - ‘No sprinkles’ - and I realized. They were deliberately not using their powers. They must have overheard our conversation.

“Your parents will be here in the morning,” Cheryl said as she came out onto the deck and handed my phone back to me.

“But they live in...” I began.

“Dean is sending the jet for them,” she said, walking back into the house.

My jaw dropped and my eyes bugged out of my head.

I looked at Jules, and she shrugged. “Well, it’s a long drive,” she said as if that explained everything.

I was in the barn an hour later, training my TK. I was picking up bales of hay and moving them side to side. I had started with just one, and although it moved easily enough, I had wanted to start off gently. Now I was moving them twenty at a time. It wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but I could feel that it was starting to become a little difficult. I guessed each bale weighed in at about six hundred pounds, so I was moving twelve thousand pounds back and forward. I had been doing that for about an hour and was starting to get tired.

I heard the door open behind me, and Mary’s voice. “Caleb.”

I turned to her, holding my arms out. She came and hugged me. She was a little stiff though, and I wondered why. I soon found out.

“Grandmother just called,” she said. “She is asking if she can come up with your parents.”

“That’s not really for me to say,” I said. “It’s not my jet, nor my house. You need to ask Cheryl.”

“I spoke to Cheryl and Dean,” she replied. “They both say it’s up to you. They are okay with her coming if you are, but if you say no, then it’s no.”

I was touched by their consideration, but I’d been hoping that the decision wouldn’t fall to me. I didn’t want to deny the twins access to their grandmother - they missed her - but I didn’t know if I was ready to see her yet. My ideas about how she might redeem herself had felt great when they’d just been ideas. The possibility of them becoming a reality shook my certainty. I also had worries about what she might get up to with access to the twins. I doubted very much that her manipulations were over. I really wanted to say no but knew that wasn’t realistic. If I didn’t let her come up, then the twins would likely want to go to hers at some point, and that would be worse.

I figured that if worse came to worst, I could probably hide in one corner of the Steadmans’ grand manor and barely even detect her presence.

“I don’t know that I’m ready to talk to her yet,” I said, “but I won’t object to her coming up. You and Amanda have missed her and should get the chance to see her. As long as she doesn’t try to corner me, I can be polite to her. Maybe when we meet face to face, I might feel different about talking to her.”

“Thank you,” she said and left the barn. I turned back toward the bales of hay and realized that during that whole conversation, the hay had been floating mid-air, waiting for me to direct it to its destination. I stacked it neatly back in position, feeling the true meaning of having a weight lifted from my mind as I set it down.

As I entered the kitchen, Ness came to me with a tray, holding several sandwiches and a drink.

“Here,” she said. “You get hungry when you have been training, and it’s at least a couple of hours until dinner.”

“You’ll make someone a lovely wife someday,” I quipped at her, and she smiled.

“One day,” she said, “I’m going to remind you that you said that.” She left me to my snack.

The mood wasn’t exactly somber for the rest of the day, but everyone seemed a little subdued. As we sat on the deck in the evening after dinner, I thought about my parents coming up the next day, and what I was going to say. When I went to bed, I lay staring at the ceiling for a long time. I was still awake when the girls came to bed a few hours later, and later still when they were all asleep. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

I dragged myself out of bed at four, feeling both restless and tired. I supposed I must have slept some, but it had been one of those nights where you’d see every hour in. I decided to give up on the idea of getting any more sleep.

I knew I was in the wrong frame of mind to do martial arts, so I decided to run. The dogs were happy to come along and before I knew it, I was out in the fields. I hadn’t really had a destination in mind, but I found myself in the north field, near the site of Jonas’s accident.

I went over to where the tractor was still lying, upside-down in the ditch. The ground around it had been churned up where they had tried to get a backhoe to pull the fifteen-thousand-pound machine out of the mud. They had not been successful because the backhoe didn’t have the brute force required to pull it free. Dean had inquired about getting heavy lifting gear, and someone was coming Monday to survey the site.

I looked at the tractor. I had been training my TK, lifting twelve thousand pounds of hay for an hour at a time. I looked around before setting my mind to pulling the machine out of the mud.

It was heavy. It felt much heavier than the hay. I guessed that as well as its own weight, there was still water in the cab, and it was also kind of stuck in the mud. I tried rocking it backward and forwards to break the seal and it made some rather disgusting noises as it came free.

I pulled again and the tractor started to move. I wouldn’t try to lift it into the air, just slide it further up until the side of the machine was further onto solid ground, then tilt it up once there was enough room, such that the roof would no longer snag on the opposite wall of the ditch.

I did feel my nose start to bleed again, and I wiped the blood away as I pushed harder. There was no pain, though. I decided I would stop if I got the pain again. Finally, I thought that the tractor was far enough up that I could rotate it back onto its wheels. For some reason that was actually easier. I wasn’t trying to lift the entire machine, just rotate it against the lip of the ditch. The lip did give way some, but I held the tractor from sliding back, and within a few minutes, I had it on its wheels. I pushed it a good ten feet from the ditch.

I heaved a sigh of relief. “That’s another weight off my mind,” I quipped to myself, grinning. After checking my nose had stopped bleeding, I started my run back toward the house. I was starting to feel more than a little hungry.

I felt cold wash over my back almost as soon as I got into the shower, and I turned to find Jules, naked, behind me.

“Here,” she said, “let me help.”

She began to wash me, top to toe.

“You have blood on your face,” she said. “What happened?”

“Just got a little carried away training,” I said. “I was fine; it didn’t hurt at all.”

“You need to be careful,” she said. “At least have someone with you when you try stuff like that. What would have happened if you’d passed out again?”

“I had someone with me,” I said. “I had all four dogs with me. It would have been like an episode of Lassie.”

She smiled. “Still,” she said. “Please, if you are going to do something you haven’t done before, at least let us know what you are doing.”

I nodded.

She completed my wash, head to toe, including all my ‘important little places.’ I thought back to something she had said a few weeks ago: that my body would stop reacting to her once it figured out it wasn’t worth wasting the resources. She had been right. Even though she had washed me everywhere, I had not become aroused at all. It was just pleasant, loving attention.

I returned the favor, and when we were both clean, we went down for breakfast. I cleared my plate for a second time.

“Wow!” said Ness. “Hungry much?” She smiled at me. Both she and Cheryl were used to my much-increased appetite by then, and so made allowances. I must have been a very expensive guest to feed.

Dean’s phone rang, and Cheryl shot him a look. She wasn’t a fan of phones at the table. He tilted it to her to show her the caller ID: Billy.

“Hey Billy,” he said, connecting the call. “What’s up?”

“You were where?” he asked. “It’s out?” He glanced at me.

“Yes, sorry,” he said. “An old pal of mine showed up with some gear and helped me out yesterday. I meant to tell you. No, just get it towed to the shed. Let’s see if it is salvageable. Okay, yeah, sorry again. Can you call them and tell them we don’t need it now? Okay, thanks.”

He ended the call and turned his eyes to me. I held his gaze, doing my best to look innocent.

“Don’t give me that wide-eyed innocent look,” he growled. “I have two girls and they are both far better at it than you.”

“What?” asked Cheryl, looking from Dean to me.

“Billy just called to tell me that a certain tractor is no longer in a certain ditch,” he said, “but is sitting pretty, back on its wheels in the north field.”

Cheryl turned her eyes to me.

“Caleb?”

“What?” I asked.

“What did you do?”

“Me?” I asked. “Nothing! I was just training my TK is all. I got bored with moving hay bales, and while I was out on my run, I decided to see if I could pull It out.”

“A hay bale weighs six hundred pounds,” Dean snapped. “That thing is thirteen thousand pounds.”

“You think I have been moving one bale at a time?” I asked him.

He opened his mouth and then closed it.

I sent him the memory of my previous day’s training, where I had been doing countless ‘reps’ with twelve thousand pounds of hay for an hour.

“I thought...” he said.

“You heard Vince,” I said. “His TK in Iraq could lift an APC with a tenth of my power. I just needed to train up a little. I promise, other than a little nosebleed, and being hungry, it wasn’t a problem. There was no pain or dizziness or anything else.”

“I guess that explains the appetite,” said Cheryl, “but please don’t do stuff like that alone. If you had had a problem...”

“I already gave him that lecture while we were in the shower,” Jules said.

I saw Ness’s eyes widen. Strangely, neither Dean nor Cheryl reacted.

“Did he listen?” Cheryl asked.

Jules looked at me. “I don’t know,” she said. “Did you?”

The gazes of the entire table focused on me, and I blushed, then nodded sheepishly.

“Then we’ll call that done,” said Dean, “and say thank you. The cost of hiring the gear to lift it out was one thing, but all that heavy equipment would have been difficult to get out there, and it would have torn up the pastures. You saved us a ton of grief.”

We were just finishing up breakfast when Dean got a text.

“That’s Gerry,” he said. “They just landed; they’ll be here in half an hour.”

My stomach tensed, and all of a sudden, eating that massive breakfast didn’t seem like such a good idea. Amanda’s arm sneaked around me. I could feel love and comfort from her, but I could also tell she wasn’t using her powers. It was my own empathy just picking up what she was feeling for me, and I liked that. It somehow felt more honest - more genuine.

I relaxed and kissed her cheek. “Thanks,” I said.

“What for?” she asked.

“For just being there,” I said. “I know it has been difficult - for you, especially, because you just have so much love, and are just trying to make everything right.”

“We’ll always be there for you,” she said. “All of us.”

When we heard the car on the drive, we all went out front to meet them. Dean, Cheryl, and Ness stood together. Mary, Amanda, and Jules stood with me. I found it interesting that the dogs, who had also come out to meet the car, had all taken station around me. The biggest of them, a bitch called Terra, sat beside me and pushed her head under my hand.

The car pulled up, and Dianna and my parents got out. The driver unloaded some cases from the trunk, and then drove off.

Meanwhile, everyone went to meet the guests - everyone except me. I stayed with the dogs.

I heard Jules being introduced to my parents as my girlfriend but didn’t see any surprise. Obviously, Dianna had brought them up to speed on that score. Ness did manage to shake them a little when she introduced herself to them as my new little sister.

Finally, my parents were walking in my direction. Dianna lagged behind, talking to the twins. I really didn’t know what to do, or say. My mother looked as nervous as I felt. My dad also hung back a little, sensing that she should be the one to open the conversation.

“Caleb,” she said, a little tremor in her voice.

“Mom,” I replied.

“She didn’t tell me,” she said. “Maggie Forbes looked me straight in the eye and told me that until you were twenty-one there would be no way to know if you had power.”

That was the truth. I could see it in her mind. She was offering me a memory. I took it, and saw for myself the lie that they had been told. Even back then, Maggie hadn’t looked any different - perhaps a little less grey in her hair, but not much.

I still didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t being difficult; I just couldn’t move. My mind was full of all the terrible things I had said to her, and the worse things I had thought about her - about them both.

“Mom,” I choked, “I’m...”

And then we were hugging and crying. I felt my dad’s arms encircle the pair of us.

By the time it was over, we were alone - apart from Terra, who had apparently stayed to provide moral support. Everyone else had decided to give us space to reconcile, knowing that we would go find them when we were ready.

“We have a lot to talk about,” Mom said, “but we have time. Can we go find the others?”

I nodded and led them into the house. I figured everyone would be out on the deck, and I was right.

Dianna caught my eye as I came through the door, but otherwise made no attempt to speak to me. She had obviously decided to let me make the first move, which suited me. I wasn’t sure if I would speak to her, or just leave her and the twins to catch up.

I took my parents over to where Dean and Cheryl were sitting with Ness and Jules, and we sat.

My mom looked at Cheryl. “Thank you for looking after him,” she said. “I was so worried for him. So much has happened in his life recently; he hasn’t known which way to turn.”

“He’s a good man,” said Cheryl, “caught up in a very strange set of circumstances. Until we met him, I had no idea that the powers he has were real, and I’m struggling to get my head around it. I have no idea how it must be for him suddenly being thrust into the middle of it, with no warning - not to mention a four-way relationship with the twins and my daughter.”

My mom frowned. “Does that not bother you?” she asked. “The thought of your daughter being in a relationship with a boy who already has two other girlfriends?”

Cheryl smiled. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “if you had asked me that question a month ago, I guess it would have bothered me. But there are two things that make the difference. Firstly, your description of their relationship isn’t correct. You say that Jules is in a relationship with a boy who has two other girls, but she isn’t. Jules is in a relationship with each of them. She loves them individually, and each of them loves her. So, rather than it being a boy with three girlfriends, it is four people whom all love each other.

“And secondly, they saved her life - Caleb, multiple times. Jules was ready to step off a six-story building, and the three reasons she didn’t are sitting with us. They could have left it at that, handed her over to medical professionals who would have probably medicated her, and I would have ended up with a broken, confused shell of a daughter with a lifetime of struggles ahead. Don’t get me wrong; I would still have been eternally grateful that they had saved her, but that’s not what they did. They took her in, brought her into their lives, surrounded her with their love, and accepted her for who she is. I now have a strong, healthy, and happy daughter, whom I know is in a good place with good people. So, to answer your question, no, it doesn’t bother me, I’m grateful for it.”

“He saved her multiple times?” asked my dad.

Dean grinned, and I groaned. I knew he would have to tell the story. I saw Cheryl’s lip quirk.

I hid my face in my hands as my parents chuckled at my embarrassment, but I could see that under the amusement was pride - pride in the boy that they had brought up, and in the man he had become. Cheryl’s words rang true. They had been the ones to raise me, and, even though I believed that I would make some different decisions with my own children, I knew then that some of theirs had flowed from Maggie Forbes’ deception. Moreover, I remembered all the many, many times in the past few months that I’d second-guessed and criticized my own decisions. Granted that those decisions had been ones I’d made for myself, but kids are kids. Someone has to be in charge of them for some period of time.

I knew I needed to acknowledge all of that, but I also had to, very gently, let them know that their job was done. They needed to accept that I would be making all of my own decisions from now on.

It didn’t feel like the right time for that discussion, though. I decided it could wait – maybe an hour, or a day, or maybe even a few weeks. I wanted one night, at least, where we could all just enjoy being an even-larger family.

Mary came over, carrying a large, old-looking book. She passed it to Jules. “Dianna brought this for us,” she said. “It’s what you might call the family grimoire. All the rituals known to the Everson family are faithfully documented. As she told us before, most people think it’s a load of mumbo-jumbo, but since our bond, there is a renewed interest from some quarters. It’s not the only copy, but it’s one of only twelve in existence. They are quite valuable, if not in a cash sense, then in a historical and sentimental sense, so please be careful with it. She says we can hold onto it until we are done.”