Page 21 of Jacob Michaels is Not Crazy

“Oh, Robbie.” She sighed.

“It doesn’t matter.” I swatted my hand in the air over my shoulder. “That’s stupid.”

“Your father—even though he was a dumbass—was smart enough to be proud of you. And your mother—even though she was a triflin’ tramp—was proud of you, too. As long as they were around, anyway.”

I laughed. “You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Talk crap about them.”

“Doesn’t it make it easier to not miss them?”

“No.” I sighed. “It makes me wish I could argue with you about your opinion of them. But I can’t. Because I don’t know them. I have nothing I can use to argue. Other than my feelings. And I don’t even know if those are real.”

“Robbie.” I felt her scoot forward in the chair and then her hand was petting my hair. “Them feelings is real. We can have dumbass, triflin’, trampy parents and still love ‘em. I’m mean as a Pitbull with his balls in a vice and you still love me, right? And you ran off without a word ten years ago and I still love you. Facts don’t factor into feelings.”

“I suppose.” I sat there and let her pat my hair.

It was a kindness, a loving gesture, that we hadn’t shared since before I was in junior high. Though it wasn’t exactly comfortable, seeing that we hadn’t shared affection like that in so long, it was still comforting.

“Maybe you don’t know who are ‘cause you didn’t stick around long enough to find out?”

I just listened.

“Ya’ ran off when you was still figuring all that out and, well, that part of your growing up got stopped right at sixteen.” She said gently, her fingers running through my hair. “Can’t really keep figuring out who you’re going to grow up to be if you’re running all over God’s damn creation and pretending to be anything but yourself, can you?”

“I guess not.”

“And, well,” she sighed, obviously having some internal struggle, “even if you are a goddamn shithead, I’m proud of you. And that’s just gonna have to be enough, isn’t it?”

That settled on the air between us. I let it linger for a few moments as I felt her fingers sliding through my hair.

“What’s Lucas, Oma?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” I said at a whisper. “Andrew’s a werewolf. You’re…Oma. What’s Lucas?”

Her fingers froze in my hair for just a split second then continued their path downwards before starting up near the crown of my head again.

“I don’t know, Robbie.”

“But…he’s something, isn’t he?”

“I would say so. Yes.”

“Have you been trying to figure him out like you were trying to figure out Andrew before the other night?”

Oma’s hand left my head. When it didn’t return, I shifted on the ottoman so that I could turn and look at her. She looked troubled, but not concerned. Deep in a difficult thought was the only way to describe it.

“He knows things.”

“What’s that mean?”

“He saw you coming, Robbie.”

“What does that mean?”