Chapter 5

We got home just after 8:30. The porch light was on, as was the one in the kitchen. The rest of the house appeared dark.

We went in through the kitchen door and saw there was nobody in there. I went to the refrigerator and got out a gallon of milk. Bev was setting three glasses down on the kitchen table as I closed the door.

"It'll be good to have something other than lemonade," I said.

"Don't be too hard on Grace, " Vicky said. "They were moving, after all."

"I'm not. I'm just saying its nice to have something different."

As soon as we sat down, Vicky pulled out her phone and started texting. "Kyle?" Bev asked.

"Yeah."

I said, "Somebody's in Loooove."

Bev punched me in the arm. "Knock it off."

"Yes, Dear," I answered.

Mom came into the kitchen, got a glass and sat down at the table. Bev poured her half a glass of milk and she held up her hand for her to stop.

She looked tired, but it was more than tired because it's night time or she was working hard in the garden. She looked as if she was battling Life and Life was winning. She had an old nightgown on under her robe and her hair was messed up. She'd been in bed, but probably not asleep.

She took a drink from her glass, then looked up. Her eyes were red.

"It doesn't look very good for your father," she said to me. "They did some tests to confirm it, but the doctor is pretty sure it's cancer."

The three of us drew in breaths at the same time.

"I didn't think it was that bad," I said.

"You can just fix it," said Vicky.

"I'm afraid it may not be that easy, Vick. I tried to fix whatever it was and I didn't get through."

"What do you mean, you didn't get through?"

"Every time I wish for something that I can't see happen immediately, I get a little signal that it's gone through. It's like a feeling, in my mind. There's an instant of wrongness, like two notes that clash. It's hard to explain but I know it when I feel it. If I don't get it, I know the wish won't come true. The same thing happened when those guys kidnapped you. I could feel there was something wrong with you. We found out later it was the drugs Houston gave you to keep you quiet."

"But you did make it work. You sent me that cell phone so I could text you guys."

"I know. I tried something else and that worked. And don't think I'm going to give up on Dad. It's just not as easy as wishing he was better. I don't know what it will take. Sooner or later, I'm going to run into something I can't fix. I hope this isn't it but you all need to know it could happen."

Mom was sitting there like a statue, staring into space, tears flowing down her face. I took her hand in mine and held it for a minute until she looked up at me.

"I hadn't faced it," she sniffed, "knowing you could fix it. You aren't God, though, are you?"

"No, Mom. I'm not God. I get to use some of his powers and I'm still learning all about them, but I'm not him."

She sobbed deeply, then said, "I don't know what to do. I don't think I could live without Burt."

Vicky was sitting next to her and wrapped her arms around her. Bev got up and went to the other side of the table so she could join in. I kept Mom's hand in mine.

She looked at me after a bit. "The doctor says it's gone pretty far and he doesn't think Dad has much longer. He did the tests to make sure but he can tell his stomach's got some tumors and he thinks it might have gone further. It bothered me but I kept thinking you could fix everything, Val."

"I haven't given up yet, Mom. I find it hard to believe I've got this gift and can't do anything about my own father."

"Well, it's not going to do any good to worry about it now. I'm going back to bed. I don't know if I'll sleep but at least I'll be with your father. He's been having a hard time staying asleep any length of time for the past few weeks and it seems to be getting worse."

She stood up and Bev moved out of her way. "Oh, Shit," she said.

"What?" said Mom.

"We invited the people who bought my old place over for breakfast tomorrow."

"Let them come. We have to go on with life; we can't just give up. You girls will probably need to do most of the work, though."

"We already planned on it," Vicky said. "They have an eight year old daughter I've already warned about being put to work."

Mom asked, "Are they nice people?"

"Seem to be," said Bev. Val really likes the mom's butt and Vicky is already messing around with the son."

"You little bitch. I am not!"

"Right. And your shirt just happened to fall out of your pants while you two were on the porch."

"You should talk -- sleeping with my brother every night."

"OK, alright. That's enough," Mom broke in. "Just remember to use a condom, Vicky. You're too young to be a mother and I know I'm way too young to be a grandmother."

Vicky sputtered as Mom went down the hall.

Mom was right. Life did go on. I just needed to figure out what I could do to make it go on a little better for us, Dad in particular.

Bev and I went into our room and Vicky slept by herself. I would have given the OK if she wanted to come in with us but she just went straight to bed.

We just held each other. After a while, I felt a tear fall on my chest.

"What's up?"

"Oh, there's just so much. I know my father was a shit but I can't believe he'd just disappear like that, thinking he could pay me off. And now there's a family I don't even know living in my house, on my ranch. I know I haven't had anything to do with it or Jimmy or my dad for a long time but it still feels like it's been taken away from me.

"And now it looks like my new dad could be taken, too. He and I got along good when I was just Vicky's friend. He always teased me because I was his daughter's best friend. But that night they took me to the hospital, when Jimmy attacked me, it all changed. He told me he'd take care of me and I didn't have to worry. And I wasn't the best friend any more. All of a sudden, I was the daughter. He still teases me, but it's different now. There's so much more love in it. I was welcome before; now I belong. I've been looking for that my whole life and now, it hasn't even been six months that I have it and it's about to disappear."

"Not if I have anything to do with it. He's been my father for a whole lot longer and I plan on having him stick around."

"But that's just it, Val. What if this is the one thing you can't fix? What if it's his time and there's nothing you can do about it? Maybe it wasn't your time in the mountains and that's why you came out."

"I don't know, Bev. I feel like there's something I can do and I just haven't figured it out yet. Somehow I know that if there was nothing I could do about it, I'd feel it. I'm so new at all this. I do know one thing, though."

"What's that?"

"I'm going to need your help to get me through this. It get the idea that the two of us are going to have to really work to make him better. You've been my conscience since this started and you've helped me find answers I couldn't find by myself. I need you to be here with me so we can come out of this OK."

"I know. Sometimes I think I've almost got as much responsibility keeping you on the straight and narrow as you do using your gifts wisely. You're right, though. I was all set to give up a few minutes ago. I'll do my best to help you with this. You know you can always slap me upside the head if I go off on a tangent again, don't you?"

"That's what I've been doing, Dear."

She held on tighter. "Oh, God, I love you, Val. I love you so much."

I stroked her hair. "I love you too, Bev."

I lay there, thinking. Just because I couldn't cure him in one shot, didn't mean I couldn't make things easier on him and Mom. I thought about him sleeping peacefully through the night and felt that little ping of wrongness. I felt the same thing when I wished his appetite would improve. I had a lot less on my mind when I finally dozed off.

I'd worked my body pretty hard, helping the Bells move in, but I also had it asleep before 10:00. I woke at 4:20, refreshed and ready to go.

I put on the coffee and took a shower. I was back in my room by 4:30, working on my blog.

The blog took off real well. I wasn't getting millions of hits but I had a core group of close to fifty who usually had something to say at least once a week. I gave up on counting the one-time commenters. It took a little over a month for the various conspiracy cliques to realize my comments page wasn't their soapbox and then they started to drift away.

Last week I put forth the opinion that one of the most reliable forms of energy we had is nuclear. I'd stipulated that I knew it needed stringent safeguards so there weren't any accidents, but also insisted it was something that could be done. I lamented that it was one solution we would never use because it was too big an apple to hold out in front of those who wanted to destroy us.

One of the comments I got was that there was inherently a problem with nuclear and that was there was waste and we needed to find something to do with it. Burying it, either in the desert or under the ocean weren't responsible solutions.

That brought about a discussion of the way all methods of energy developed by man had some kind of waste. We couldn't seem to come up with something that was efficient. Today's blog stated that if we couldn't find a form of energy that was 100% efficient, we should find one that put out desirable waste. For example, if water vapor came out of automobile tail pipes instead of the crap the current internal combustion engine spews, that would fix the energy problem and the at least help on the water problem. We were OK in Montana but I knew that California and Arizona and a few others were always making some kind of deal so one of them would have water. Take a look at Australia over the past few years. What would they give for a car that blew water out the tailpipe? Brand new, additional water that had never existed before.

I'm no chemist. I think when I went to school, hydrogen was the lightest element on the chart. Uranium was way the hell down at the other end somewhere. Uranium was used for the first atomic bombs. The new and improved bombs were made of hydrogen. All I'm saying is if both those elements could create enough energy to blow up cities, there ought to be something that had two oxygen and a hydrogen and some other stuff and somebody should be able to figure out how to power things with the other stuff and have the H2O left. Who knows, it could be locked up in some safe at Standard Oil.