My father.
I gave Owen Malone the greeting I should’ve bestowed on my mother. I opened my arms and flung myself into him, inhaling his aftershave and imprinting it in my memory. I might want to remember that scent later, if things didn’t go well with him.
I brushed the thought aside. Of course they would go well. He was my father and he was hugging me. He was real. Not dead, not buried in a cemetery. He stood right here, in front of me.
When we finally parted, Owen said, “Blissful, I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. I blinked them back. “Me too.”
We spent nearly two hours talking and catching up. The gist of it went this way—when my mother discovered she was pregnant with me, my father found her a place to stay where she wouldn’t be judged. She gave birth and then returned to her sisters.
The entire situation nearly destroyed my father. He wanted to be with my mother, but the pull of his faith demanded otherwise.
Seriously, y’all, this was some stuff likeThe Thornbirds.
After I was given over for adoption, my father separated all ties to my mother and left the priesthood. He couldn’t do it anymore. It was no longer in him to serve God in that manner.
He felt like a failure, which I totally understood. He then became a freelance demonologist, giving lectures and helping those in need. He often aided the church in exorcisms and with freelancers on questionable hauntings. My father earned money by teaching what he knew to others—people haunted by the supernatural and who feared, for whatever reason, spiritual attack.
I told him everything about me, and he immediately noticed my ghost gifts, those tokens given by spirits. The first was my hair, and the second the mark on my hand.
Kindness ringed Owen’s eyes. “But you came here looking for me.”
I slowly nodded. “I came for a favor, but I didn’t know you were here.”
“Ask, my child. What do you require?”
To get the last twenty years of my life back with you,is what I wanted to say, but I released that coin of bitterness from my heart.
“My boyfriend is an untrained demonologist. He needs help learning how to harness and use his gift. Can you help him?”
Owen’s gaze drifted to Tart. They studied each other. An entire conversation went unspoken between them.
“Your mother told you about our…difficulties.”
“She did.” I wanted to shrink into myself at the mention of it, but instead I thrust back my shoulders. “There has to be a way around it. Light and dark exist for a reason. Surely they can come together.”
“Not that we found.” The pain in his voice broke my heart. In that moment I knew in front of me were two people who had desperately wanted to be together but were trapped by their own talents, cursed to be apart.
I fisted my hand and dropped it in my thigh. “There must be a way.”
He ignored my statement. “I’ll help this young man of yours.”
I beamed. My smiled stretched so far my face hurt. “Great. Because there’s an evil spirit trapped in his basement. He could use all the help he can get.”
I spentanother hour with my family, learning as much about them as I could. It was surreal, having both my mother and my father in my life at the same time. I came to understand the depth of their love for me and how it had shredded their hearts to give me up.
I understood, and my heart pinged with forgiveness. It was what I needed to do. It wasn’t right to hold on to anger. My parents believed their decisions had been the correct ones.
Who was I to question that?
If I’d been in the same situation, what choices would I have made?
Hopefully I would never know.
I drove Tart and Owen to Roan’s bed-and-breakfast. I texted him before we left but didn’t get an answer. As much as I hated to pop in unannounced, I figured since I had my father with me, it would be okay.
Roan was in the kitchen when we arrived. He had a towel slung over one shoulder and had just placed a tray of rolled-up dough in the oven.
