“Thank you, Sara. An excellent suggestion, one I must mull over.”
Night had completely fallen. Camarin and Scott were headed back this way, their voices growing louder as they emerged from the trees.
My time with Grant had almost run out. “Grant, is there any way for me to contact you?”
He tucked my hand into the bend of his arm. “The League discourages Beings from keeping in touch with their humans.”
“What about Kimberley?”
He urged me forward. We walked across the gazebo and stepped onto the lawn. “We’ve chosen to treat Kimberley as a special case. Her problems are indeterminate.”
“If I need you, maybe I’ll send the request through her.”
“An interesting loophole,” he said, his green eyes glittering through the darkness, “one you should feel free to exploit.”
“Sounds good.”
“What sounds good?” Scott asked as he and Camarin stopped beside us.
My smile held a promise. “Keeping in touch.”
TO: Counselor
FROM: Grant
DATE: 30 July
I enjoyed seeing the results of my efforts for Sara and her friend Scott. Thank you for permitting the visit.
There is a posting for a guardian in New Zealand. It has long been a goal of mine to seek cases outside this hemisphere. I shall request that challenge.
TO: The Elite Alliance
FROM: Camarin
DATE: 31 July
I wish to submit Grant’s name to the list of future candidates for the Alliance.
He has only been a principal for six months which, I acknowledge, is early. Yet he risked much to shield a mistress from the harm caused by emotional stress. He yielded to my leadership with hardly a hesitation. It is true that he has, on occasion, stretched the rules to their limits, but always with noble intentions and laudable outcomes.
Grant has shown all of the qualities we seek for the Alliance: courage, compassion, sacrifice, and trust. Please monitor his progress closely in the coming months.
34
Familiar and New
Today would be the second time in two weeks that I had moved, only this time it would be from the Harley House apartment to Newman College.
Dad and I carried my bags and boxes down the steps at the rear of the house to my SUV. It didn’t feel too overly sentimental. I wasn’t leaving the home I’d been raised in. There were no memories here to clog my throat. And all of the tears I’d needed to shed had happened ten days ago as I’d driven away from my childhood home.
Mom came down next, a cooler in each hand, her shoes making a metallic twang on the steel stairs.
She dropped the coolers on the backseat of Dad’s car and fussed to get them placed just so. Mom had been in charge of my food, of course. I’d said to pack enough for today. From the looks of it, I wouldn’t go hungry for a week. Fortunately, my new roommate had emailed and mentioned that she would have a dorm fridge already there. I could only hope it wasn’t full.
We were about to get in our vehicles when Scott’s truck pulled into the parking lot. My parents smiled at each other.
“Your young man has come to see you off,” Dad said.
