By the time Sheriff Taylor pulled into our driveway, the dads, minus Babe, had somehow managed to gather up all the children and escape.
Chav smacked my hand. "Get your fingernail out of your mouth."
"Uhhhng," I whined. "I can't help it."
Sheriff Taylor got out first then opened the back door of his patrol car.
"Poor guy," Ruth said as a nice-looking young man slid out and stood up. He had brown hair, the color of mine before I met Miss Clairol, and he was wearing jeans, a tan bomber jacket, and a pair of blue canvas shoes.
"Nope. That is no child of Jerry and Rhonda Haddock." I waved my hand. "Too normal."
Babe rubbed my shoulders. "You got this."
When the young man locked gazes with me, I recognized my dad in the slight downturn at the outer edges of his eyes. It had been so long since I'd seen my father, the resemblance hit me harder than I expected. My lower lip started to tremble.
Babe massaged harder.
"I'm okay," I squeaked out. I put my hands over his before he wore holes in my muscles.
"Babe," the sheriff said when they approached the porch. "Sunny."
"Hey, Sid," I said.
He presented the newcomer. "This is Jonathan Haddock."
"Jack," the young man said. Even though he was on the thin side, and not overly tall, maybe five-feet-eleven inches, his voice was a deep baritone. "Wow." He shuffled nervously. "Mom and Dad had some pictures from when you were young. Except for your hair color, you haven't changed much.”
“Mom and Dad, huh?” I narrowed my gaze. I never got to call them Mom and Dad. They insisted on me using their first names because “parental monikers are manacles of the patriarchy.”
Jack held his hand out to me. "It's nice to finally meet you."
I felt my expression sour, but I took his hand for a quick shake. "Yeah, you too."
He laughed, and it sounded like my mom's laugh. Hurt that I hadn't expected to feel twisted in my stomach.
“You don’t believe a word I’m saying do you?”
“Nope.”
“I’m telling you the truth. You’re my sister.”
“Uh-huh. And you’re showing up out of the blue because…”
"I came to warn you."
"Warn her about what?" Babe asked. He moved from behind me to create a semi-barrier between me and Jack. My husband stands at six feet five inches, an intimidating height, even among therians.
Jack put up his hands. "Not from me," he said. He narrowed his eyes at me. "This is going to sound weird and hard to believe, but I'm psychic."
My friends, the sheriff, and my husband all chuckled.
Jack sighed. “I get that reaction a lot.”
This young man was telling me he was the child of my parents and he was psychic? I decided to test him. "Sure, you're a psychic, and I'm a shapeshifter." I waved my arms with great exaggeration. "As a matter of fact, we're all shapeshifters."
To the credit of my therianthrope friends and family, none of them reacted.
Jack frowned. "I'm not lying."
Neither was I, but he didn't need to know that. "Prove it."
"Can I touch you? Your hand will do."
I stepped down from the porch and held out my hand.
"Nope," said Chav. She pulled me back. "Do me." She glanced back. "If he knows your parents, even if he isn't your brother, he might have information to read you with, but he doesn't know me."
I nodded. "Okay. Be careful."
"I'm not planning anything dangerous," Jack said.
"Better not be," I told him. "I'd hate for Chav to have to eat you for dinner." I'd seen her, in her gigantic Brother Wolf form, eat a whole serial killer. I chuckled like I was kidding, and everyone let out pensive breaths.
Chavvah held her hand out to the newcomer. "Just let the man do his thing."
Jack stretched his fingers toward Chav's palm. He flinched when his skin made contact with hers. If he was psychic, I could only guess at what her mojo as a spirit talker was doing to his mind.
"Close your eyes and think of a happy memory," Jack said. "One that you really connect with."
"Why happy?" Chav asked.
"Those are the most pleasant ones to live through." He smiled. "But try to pick something you wouldn't mind a stranger seeing."
Chav looked back at me, her frown matching my own. Then she shrugged. "No problem." She closed her eyes.
Jack's body jerked. His head flew back. He jerked again--his entire body animated except for the fingertip touching Chav's palm. Sid and Babe surged toward them, but Jack stilled.
"Don't," I said. "He's not hurting her. Look. He's barely touching her."
"Sunny, I've been privy to your kind of strange for a while now, but this is cuckoo even by your standards," Sid said.
"I agree with Sunny," Willy said. "Let it play out. I don't think Chav's, uhm, brother, and I'm not talking about Babe here, will let anything happen to his girl." Willy was talking about Chav's spirit guide, Brother Wolf. He had a protective streak when it came to my BFF.
"Sid has a point," Ruth interjected. "This is bizarre."
Nothing happened. Nada. Zip. Jack let go of Chav's hand and smiled as if to say, "Ta da!"
"Well?" I asked, less than impressed by the self-proclaimed Zoltar. "Will she fall in love? Will she win the lottery? Get that job she's been pining for?"
Jack grinned. "You're funny."
I crossed my arms over my chest. "And you've got about two seconds before I have the Sheriff here put you back into his patrol car and drive you to the next town."
Jack winked at me. Winked! The little shit. Then he turned to Chav and said, "Your wedding, just as the sun set and the moon rose over the lake was really beautiful. Thank you for taking me on that journey with you." He rubbed his shoulder. "The pre-wedding fight with your step-daughter was unusual, though."
Chav's eyes widened.
Everyone took a step back from Jack, putting distance between their bodies and his hands.
"It's a family tradition. It's good luck to fight on the wedding day, with, erm, family." I grimaced at my lie, but I was committed now. "I bet folks in northern California have wedding rituals that people around here would find different."
"They might." He frowned. "But I wouldn't know. I grew up in Arkansas.”
"Really? They moved the commune to Arkansas." Maybe Arkansas offered big tax breaks for "religious" communities. Even so, from what I knew of the state, it had some fairly conservative leanings. "Weird."
"No commune, Sunny. "
"Then you can't be my brother. My parents were dedicated to the Zen-wiccan-druidic-Hindu and whatever other philosophy or religion that suited their day to day cult-y whims."
"I know it’s been a long time, but I swear, they don't belong to a cult. Dad's an accountant. Mom's a kindergarten teacher."
"A-ha!” I pointed at him. “Jerry and Rhonda are pot farmers."
His brows furrowed in consternation. "Mom and Dad are the most strait-laced people I know. They didn't tell me much about their past before Arkansas, but whatever they did before I was born, they left it all behind after." He narrowed his gaze on me, his voice lowering to conspiracy levels. "They really grew marijuana?"
"They grew it, picked it, rolled it, and smoked it," I said.
Jack guffawed. "I can't wait to bring this up at Thanksgiving dinner." He clapped his hands together. "So much to be thankful for."
An aching twinge of jealousy pinched my gut. We'd never celebrated an intimate Thanksgiving as a family when I was growing up. Instead, the commune would commemorate a community wide harvest festival, complete with dried corn gathering, compost mixing, and other crappy activities, like using corn husks for basket weaving. I rarely saw my parents during the events.
Ruth, who always seemed to know the right thing to say, said, "Well, since the whole psychic thing seems to be true, maybe we should all go inside and have a chat over pie."
"I never say no to pie," Jack said.
Willy put her hand on my shoulder. "You guys are definitely related."
I rolled my eyes. "Liking pie is not a genetic trait."
Chav stopped me from going into the house. "You all go ahead. We'll be right in."
Sid tipped his hat. "I'm off. Call me if you need me to escort this young man out of town."
We waved at the sheriff as he pulled out of the drive, but Chav's deep frown lines worried me. "What is it?" I asked when we were finally alone.
"I relived my wedding," she said.
"You mean you were thinking about it, right?"
"No. I actually relived it. It was like I was there for the entire day from the end of the fight until the I do's. I could feel, smell, taste, and hear everything as if I was experiencing it all over again."
"Really?" My visions mostly felt dreamlike. Real but distant. "So Jack somehow tapped into your memory?"
"More than a memory, Sunny. I was there." She shook her head. "But that's not the weirdest part."
"I'm afraid to ask."
"Jack was there." She rubbed the creases between her eyes. "I swear."
"In your mind, like a presence?"
"No," she said. "He was actually there. At my wedding."