Daughters of Men: Chapter 10
Reasons to Believe
This speculative women’s fiction novel is Book 1 in the Daughters Saga. Paid subscribers have access to the entire book. The prequel and sequel are also on Substack.
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Reasons to Believe
I WAS SCRUBBING THE SKILLET when a shrill jangle startled me. Eileen was asleep on the couch, so I grabbed a dish towel and ran to grab the cordless handset from my bedroom.
“Hello?” I answered as quietly as possible, though Eileen seemed dead to the world.
“Lila?”
I kept my voice low. “Who’s calling?”
“It’s Adam. Can you hear me? I think we have a bad connection….”
Adam? “Hang on a second.” I hurried to the back door and eased out onto the porch. “Sorry ‘bout that,” speaking at normal volume, “My daughter’s taking a nap.” Why was he calling me? “Is Cara alright?”
“Yeah, she’s asleep.”
“Good.” I held the phone in the crook of my neck and dried my hands while I waited for him say why he’d called.
“Were you at Sugar Shack last night? There’s a story in the news, and it looked like your Bronco in the footage…?”
“Oh? Yeah, but—”
“God, are you okay?”
“Fine! We—”
“Sal was with you?”
“Yeah. We were in the truck when—”
“Jesus, Lila.”
“We were fine! It really wasn’t a big deal—for us, anyway. Scary for the people inside, but…” Wasn’t it more of a girl thing to check up on someone? “So, Cara’s okay?”
He sighed. “As okay as she can be.”
“What can I do?”
His answer came slowly, “I don’t think there’s anything that anyone can do.”
“Oh, Adam, I—”
“Would it be alright if I came over?”
What? “Why?”
“To talk?”
“We’re talking now.” My words sounded too sharp. “When Cara wakes up, would you both like to come visit?”
“Of course. That would be…I just wanted to talk. About what she’s going through.” He sounded embarrassed and my face heated.
“You’re welcome to come! If you think she won’t mind…?”
“She won’t mind. After we left, all she could talk about was how you believed her. She trusts you.” There was a pause, and then he cleared his throat. “Is now okay?”
“Um, sure. Are you familiar with River Road?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“Are you coming down Sanders or off—”
“I’ll pull up directions online.”
“It’s—”
“Lila, I got it.”
It took me another second. The phone. I’d only kept the stupid landline so we’d have backup service in case all hell broke loose in a hurricane or something. It’d been so long since I’d seen a printed phone book that I’d forgotten listings included addresses.
“Property records are online, too. And there’s this thing called Google….” He made a noise like he was trying to swallow a laugh.
“Good to know. Hanging up now.” Was it really that easy to find people? No wonder my junk mail was mostly from security companies.
Exactly fifteen minutes later, I was sitting on the steps with two mugs of coffee beside me and a purring cat in my lap. Pebbles was an outdoor cat, too feisty for indoor living, though she did enjoy a good cheek rub. An elegant, slinky little black cat, no one would ever guess she was quite the lethal hunter. Copperheads, water moccasins—once she’d even cornered a three-foot alligator under a bush. I’d had to scootch her out of harm’s way before the confused ‘gator could figure out she wasn’t lethal to him—no matter what she thought.
Her purring ramped up a notch. Then, without warning, her ears pricked, and she leapt from my lap to skitter off into the woods. A second later, I heard Adam’s truck, too. The big Ford bounced into my driveway and he got out grinning.
“Amazing!” he called up to me. “If it wasn’t for the internet and the miracle of satellites, I wouldn’t know anyone lived down here!”
“Did it take you the whole drive to come up with that?” My attempt at a glare lasted all of a second before I gestured for him to join me. “Eileen’s still asleep. Hope you don’t mind sitting out here.”
He climbed the stairs and accepted the mug I offered, settling himself at the other side of the steps but angled so we could talk. We sipped our coffee amicably for a minute and then he spoke.
“Why do you believe her?”
Shit. I studied my coffee before I answered, “I thought we were going to talk about what she’s going through.”
He grunted, and leaned forward to plunk his forearms on his knees, the mug choked in his big hands.
“Does it matter why?” I asked. “You believe her. Don’t you?”
“Of course I do!”
“So why do you?”
He twisted, pulling one leg up and leaning back against the railing to face me. His eyes were considering, weighing. I mimicked his pose against the opposite railing and raised my eyebrow. I don’t know how long we might’ve sat like that, each too stubborn to talk, when I was distracted by an extraordinarily radiant angel appearing between us. As tiny as it was, it glinted like a mirror catching the sun, and I wondered if all the others were there too. The morning was bright in my eyes; maybe I just couldn’t see them in the direct light.
“We need to trust each other.”
My eyes flicked up to meet his. “I didn’t say I didn’t trust you.”
“You’re missing my point.”
“I…” My head was shaking side-to-side, even as I tried to find the words to explain.
He gestured a surrender. “Fine. I’ll go first.”
“You don’t have to ‘go first’. This isn’t a game.”
“You think I don’t know that? Cara needs people she can count on, and that means we need to trust each other.” He leaned toward me and the sun caught green flecks in his eyes, making them as electric and vivid as my angels. “Something’s going on here, and each of us needs to see all the pieces so we can put this puzzle together.”
I stiffened. “Is that what this is to you? A puzzle?”
“You don’t think that.” He pulled back, and the angel flitted over to glimmer near his shoulder.
It hurt to breathe around the ache that had formed in my chest, but I made myself, expanding my lungs with the cool morning air so I could push out what needed to be said.
“You and Cara have been dealing with…this…for however long. You’ve talked about it, researched it—whatever. But for me, it’s new.
“And yes, I believe her. And I have my reasons, and I get that this is a puzzle you want to solve, but I’m not a piece of it. I’m just somebody who met a woman with a secret she has to keep from—well, from everyone—except for some reason she told me. I do believe her, and that should be enough.”
Instead of helping, my words were heavy in the air between us; and when the angel moved to his throat, mine tightened.
“Mom?”
Eileen was behind the screen door, her blonde curls tousled around her face, t-shirt and sweatpants rumpled from sleeping.
“Well, hey there!” My forced cheerfulness was shrill, “All rested?”
“I could hear you talking.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. My teeth grabbed the inside of my cheek as I glanced at Adam. What exactly had we said?
“Hi, I’m Adam.” Clearly, he’d decided being nonchalant was the way to go.
“I’m Eileen.” She walked out and crossed her ankles, fluidly folding herself into a seated position above us on the porch. We’d lived alone her whole life. It would never occur to her that she might not be included in our conversation.
“Leeni, Mr. Mason is one of Phil’s friends. He and his wife, Cara, were at the party last night.” Her big brown eyes connected with mine for half a second before she focused on Adam.
“What’s wrong with Cara?”
“Mrs. Mason is expecting. She’s having a rough pregnancy.”
Eileen wasn’t fazed by my reminder of how to address her elders. In fact, she didn’t even look at me.
“Has my mom told you how she knows Phil?”
Oh, God.
“No. She hasn’t.” Adam seemed amused, but I definitely wasn’t. If she’d heard the last part of our conversation, then I knew where this was headed.
“Sweetie, I’m sorry we woke you. Why don’t you go splash some water on your face and get something to drink?” My attempt at distraction earned me nothing but frustrated looks from both of them. My only option was to pull rank and send her away, but that would obviously make her story out to be a bigger deal than it was.
“She was a teller at Coastal First….”
I relaxed a bit. Maybe she was going to do the edited version.
“You worked at a bank?”
“Yeah, counting other people’s money all day. Fun times!”
“And Phil…Mr. Stowe…” she stressed for my benefit, “…was a client. He came in with—”
“Honey,” I interrupted gently this time, “Mr. Stowe’s banking habits aren’t for conversation.” Although Eileen knew the whole story—Maureen and Phil had both joked about it often enough in front of her—it wasn’t right for us to tell Adam. She flushed, and I gave her knee a quick squeeze.
“Let’s just say I was new and overzealous. There were so many rules and regulations, and I’d been told that if I screwed up, I could get in trouble—maybe even fired. Eileen was only five, and I needed the job, so…short version is, I hassled Phil on a technicality without realizing that—”
“That he was one of the bank’s best clients,” Adam finished.
“Something like that.” Even after all this time, I cringed, remembering how I’d put a Reg CC hold on one of his deposits because it was so large—without thinking to check if he had other accounts to offset a possible loss. Of course he had, and the branch manager had chewed me out, but Phil had seemed to find the whole thing funny. Thank God.
“And then she saved him from being robbed.”
“Eileen!” She’d submarined me!
“Mom. Chill. You can tell him.”
I blinked. If I hadn’t overreacted, I could’ve blown off her little surprise—but it was too late now. He wasn’t even looking at me; he was grinning at Eileen like she was the coolest kid he’d ever met. Which she was. When she wasn’t being a complete and total pain in the—
“So are you going to tell the story, or do you want me to?”
I shot her a look, but couldn’t be angry. Well, maybe a little. But not enough to work at keeping it up. “Phil helped me get a job away from the teller line, opening accounts and stuff. One day he was walking through the lobby, and when he waved at me…I just knew he needed to be in my office.
“I called out, and he came in, but I didn’t know what to say—or even why I had to keep him in there—I just knew he shouldn’t be in the lobby. I babbled about getting an equity line, I think, and he was looking at me like I was nuts, but then we heard screams, and a man yelling. It was over so fast. The teller gave the guy everything she had, and he ran out the door. No one was hurt or anything, but the guy had waved his gun around and the poor people in the lobby were terrified.”
I lifted my shoulders as if to say “that’s all”, but I was sure it was far from all. I braced myself for the incredulity and questions, the typical reactions that normal people had whenever presented with something they couldn’t comprehend with their own senses. What I didn’t expect was Adam’s exaggerated side-wink at my daughter.
“Phil has told me that story. I just wanted to hear it from you.”
Eileen giggled.
“He tells it like you were his guardian angel. A good luck charm or something. But given other things…”
“What things?” Eileen leaned back on her elbows as if we were chatting about nothing more important than books. “Has Mom seen angels around Cara?”
And there it was. Just thrown out there and out of my control, thanks to my own flesh and blood and her I’m-an-adult-too attitude. After giving her a look that made her blush again, I steeled myself for Adam’s reaction—but he didn’t even look at me.