Page 63 of Bad Luck Vampire

“Cowards?” he echoed with confusion.

Sophie nodded and lowered her head to rest it against him again. “They were afraid of discussing what they called my ‘situation’ and possibly causing a setback. So, they kind of did it in increments. They informed me gently that my parents and Blue—my dog—had perished in the fire.” Her mouth twisted slightly. “As if I hadn’t figured that out from what I’d witnessed and the fact that I hadn’t seen any of them since that night.”

Shaking her head, she continued, “Then they spent weeks watching me like a hawk and making me talk about how that made me ‘feel,’ before dropping the next bit of info they feared might be triggering.”

“What was that?” Alasdair asked when she fell silent.

“That my father’s family wouldn’t take me in and wanted nothing to do with me,” Sophie admitted. “That was invariably followed by more talk sessions about how it made me feel before they moved on to telling me that my aunt, my mother’s sister, who lived in Nova Scotia and who I’d never met—was a single parent to several children and didn’t feel she could take me on.”

Sophie began to toy with the buttons on his shirt. “After several more talk sessions about how that made me feel, they then told me that, sadly, while they’d searched for foster families willing to take me in, my ‘issues’ were making it hard to find a placement and they feared they’d have to place me in a group home.”

Alasdair was peering down at Sophie and saw her roll her eyes before she added, “Of course, then it was weeks more of asking how I felt about no one wanting to take the kid from the loony bin. Mostly because they had trouble accepting that it didn’t bother me.”

“It didn’t?” Alasdair asked, unable to hide his surprise.

“See!” she exploded with exasperation, abruptly sitting upright to glare at him. “That’s exactly how all those doctors and counselors reacted,”

“Sorry,” Alasdair said quickly. “I just can’t imagine not being crushed if my parents had died when I was young, and Uncle Ludan and the others had all refused to take Colle and I in.”

Sophie relaxed at his explanation, and then nodded slowly. “Hmm. Well, that’s where you’re making your mistake. The same one they were making, I guess.”

Alasdair’s eyebrows drew together. “I don’t understand.”

Shifting to sit sideways on the end of the bed so that she faced him, Sophie crossed her legs and explained, “You know your uncle Ludan... and your uncles Connor, Inan, and Odart too, of course. You have history with them, and love them and they love you. Right?”

“Yeah,” he said slowly.

“Well, I didn’t know these relatives they were talking about. My father never spoke of his family, and while I think my mother mentioned that she had a much older sister living out East, that’s basically all I knew about her. I’d never met her, or even heard anything about her.” She raised her eyebrows. “Do you see? Like the unknown foster families, they were strangers who wouldn’t take me in, not family who wouldn’t take me in. My mom and dad were the only family I knew. So”—she shrugged—“it was kind of an ‘oh well’ situation to me.”

“But surely you didn’t want to go to a group home?” he asked, trying to understand.

“I was eleven years old,” she pointed out. “I’d never even heard of group homes, so had no idea how bad they could be. They were just another group of people I didn’t know. So, in my head, it was this stranger won’t take you, that stranger won’t take you, these strangers won’t foster you, but these strangers will take you in.”

“I see,” Alasdair murmured, nodding now because he did see. No matter where she’d ended up, it would have been with strangers. Because, related or not, even the members of her mother’s and father’s birth families had been strangers to her.

“Besides, I was sure anywhere had to be better than the psych hospital,” Sophie told him with amusement.

When he raised his eyebrows in question, she hesitated and then asked dryly, “Have you ever eaten hospital food?”

Alasdair smiled, but suspected that comment was just a deflection. He was sure time in the old psychiatric hospital hadn’t been fun. Sophie might have been there because of the trauma caused the night her parents died, but he knew there would have been patients in there with her who’d had more serious ailments than mutism and night terrors. Patients who had more than likely been terrifying to a young eleven-year-old girl who had just lost everything.

“Speaking of food,” Sophie said lightly, standing up. “We should go back out to the kitchen and see if your uncles have eaten ours.”

“Wait,” Alasdair said, getting up as well. When she paused and turned back to him, he examined her expression, and then sighed and said, “They’re going to want to talk about your parents’ deaths and what they found out.”

“You mean the arson they claim happened,” she said, her smile fading.

Alasdair nodded. “And probably about the other people in your life who have died, like your fiancés and your first love.”

Sophie gave a start at that, her gaze flying to his face. “What? Why?”

Alasdair took a moment to marshal his thoughts, and then spoke carefully. “Because their deaths were all... You’ve lost a lot of people in your life.”

“Yeah,” Sophie acknowledged. “Bobby calls me the Black Widow and teases me that I’m cursed,” she admitted with a bitter twist to her lips, and then noting his concern, she offered a brittle smile and said, “Don’t worry, you should be safe as long as you don’t give me a ring.”

Sophie turned toward the door again, but then immediately swung back, her eyes suddenly narrowed. “How do you guys know about my fiancés? I told you about my parents, Beverly, and Andrew, but I didn’t mention that I even had fiancés, let alone that they had died.”

Alasdair took a moment to acknowledge that Andrew had been her first love, and then realized she was glaring at him now with suspicion. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to explain how they’d known. He could hardly tell her that Marguerite had read her mind at the wedding and plucked out all this information, but he didn’t want to lie.

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