The reaction was underwhelming, at least from Austin, who at fifteen had perfected the teenage art of being exasperated by everything.
“It’s great, Dad,” he said in a tone that suggested it was one step up from a cardboard box under the river bridge. “Really ... great.”
Nine-year-old Lissy was more openly interested. “There’s a lot of yard,” she said, peering around.
“Four acres,” Tyr said. “Lots of room for shifting.”
Lissy’s head whipped around, and even Austin’s eyes widened a little. The kids had thoroughly absorbed from their mom—Tyr’s human ex—that they had to hide their shifting at all times. It was clear that they found it strange to be able to talk openly about it.
Tyr understood the necessity of their secrecy, but he felt a deep, aching wistfulness that the kids would never have what he’d had—a place to grow up where he could be fully himself,learning to fly with other griffin kids, shifting openly and never having to hide their true selves.
Of course, Griffin Island hadn’t worked out so well for him in the long run. It was just as well the kids would probably never go there. He didn’t resent Paula for teaching them to hide their true selves. He just wished they didn’t have to.
“Here?” Lissy asked in a loud whisper. “We can do ithere?”
“You absolutely can,” Tyr said. “That’s part of why I chose this place. As long as there are no humans around.”
“Except Mom,” Lissy said. She giggled.
“That’s right. Mom’s fine.” Another sharp twist under his ribs. He hadn’t told Paula the truth about himself, back when it mattered, and he’d lost her because of it.
“Can we put up a tire swing?” Lissy asked.
“Sure can,” Tyr said, ruffling her hair. “And there’s room in the house for each of you to have your own bedroom when you come to visit.”
“If you don’t mind mold and bugs,” Austin muttered.
Lissy spun around toward her brother, eyes big. “There’s mold? And bugs?”
“There is no mold and no bugs,” Tyr said, hoping it was true. He definitely needed to do a top to bottom cleaning on the house, considering some of the problems the home inspection had turned up. “There will be bugs in the greenhouse, hopefully, but they’re nice bugs, ladybugs and butterflies.”
The three of them turned to look toward the row of ruined greenhouses.
Tyr’s decision to settle in Autumn Grove to be near his kids was complicated because he really couldn’t afford much of a down payment on anything decent, even at small town prices. And rentals were scarce due to the town’s small size. He’d had a horrible vision of having to move in with his ex and her new husband, which would undoubtedly have gottenhim mauled by a bear—Paula’s new husband—within the first week.
But through luck, fate, or whatever looked out for wayward griffin exiles, the town’s one small real estate office had found him an incredibly cheap commercial greenhouse business on four acres with an associated house.
He should have known it was too good to be true.
The property was located on the highway a couple miles out of town. The dilapidated state of the greenhouses made it very clear that no one had done anything with them in years. A peeling sign reading THE TENDER SPROUT leaned drunkenly against the steel frame where one greenhouse’s plastic cover had collapsed under the weight of a previous winter’s snow.
The house itself was in better shape. And it was plenty big enough for each of the kids to have their own room when they were staying with their dad. The inspection had turned up a host of minor problems—plumbing issues, peeling paint, railings in need of replacement, that sort of thing—but the roof and foundation were solid, and the house was livable.
Tyr was grimly resigned to make a go of it. He couldn’t afford anything else. The greenhouse business hadbetterwork out for the sake of his mortgage, or else he might end up living in Paula and Dan’s basement after all.
“Why don’t we go look for a good branch for a tire swing?” he asked Lissy. “And you can check out the backyard. There’s agreatbackyard.”
As Lissy skipped across the unmowed spring grass toward the back of the house, Tyr and Austin followed more slowly.
“I know what you’re doing, Dad,” Austin said in a voice pitched too low to carry to his sister.
“Moving closer so I can spend more time with you kids,that’s what I’m doing. I missed a huge part of your childhoods, and I can never make up for that, but I plan to do my best.”
Austin shook his head. “You’re trying to one-up Mom and Dan,” he said seriously. “I’m not stupid, and I’m not a kid like Lissy. YouknowMom has a little house in town, so you figure you can buy our affection with a big place you can’t afford, so we have space for shifting and woods to run in.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” Tyr said, shocked and appalled. He really wasn’t.
At least—not on purpose. The kids did deserve a nice place to shift and run! He couldn’t offer them Griffin Island, which should have been their heritage. But he could give them the next best thing, a decent-sized piece of land that backed onto woods where they could shift and roam.
