This time Gavin and I manned the barbeque pit, and not me by myself. Rob volunteered to stay back at the in-law unit with Dad. I hated to leave him alone for too long, but we needed to do this as a family, for Mom. I decided I’d make the most of it and try not to think about Dad. Besides, Rob had my phone and promised to call Gavin’s if anything went wrong.

“So you really fought the Banshee on the roof?”

I eyed the house. “Yep. Right up there.”

Inside the house Charice helped my mom prepare mashed potatoes and salad. I was nervous about my girlfriend meeting my mom. I wanted both of them to like each other. Inside I heard them giggling about something and eyeing me. It seemed like they were off to a good start at my expense. Whatever works.

“So what happened to you this morning, Gavin? When you kneed the Dearg Due in the face. She crumpled like an Antifa member.”

“Tapped into my powers.”

“Is it hard?”

Gavin eyed me for a moment as if rolling words over in his mouth, trying them out before letting them loose. “It’s too easy. I’m practically fighting to keep them in check any time a dangerous situation arises.”

“That’s where the migraines come from then? You holding back?”

He nodded, grunting.

“Geez. Wish I had that problem. It seems like I’m always struggling just to gather enough power to stand toe to toe with these freaks and monsters.”

“This much power…sometimes I…”

“What?”

He shook his head, at a loss for words. “Sometimes it feels like I’m the monster. A predator waiting to be unchained.”

His eyes bore into me, pleading me to say something comforting, to tell him he wasn’t a monster.

“Maybe we are. We’re freaks at the least. I shoot green energy from my hands. Charice sprouts wings from her back. You...do your thing.”

I flipped over some slabs of meat. The grill sizzled the tender muscle while drops of liquid fat evaporated to steam, making my mouth water.

“What makes us any different than the things we put down then?”

An image of the Dearg Due burning alive ruined it all and made my stomach turn sour. I shook my head, clearing the thought.

“What makes us different,” I said, pointing the tongs from him to me, “is that you an I make choices with good intentions. We use our power for others. They use their power to corrupt, to warp, to dominate. We use ours for self-defense, protecting the weak, and for justice.”

His lips wavered, caught between a smirk and a sceptical frown.

“Don’t ever feel guilty about what you are if you’re making the right choices.”

He smiled. “You sound like Dad.”

---

We basically killed all of the barbeque. I thought we had enough for dinner and leftovers, but when me and Gavin are at the table together, we can really put down.

Ending up on the couch, I leaned back and let the ultra-soft cushions envelope me. Charice eased up to my side and I let out a content sigh. “That was good.”

“Mmm. Yes it was,” she agreed.

“Haven’t changed a bit, Sean,” said Mom. “He’s done this ever since he was a kid. Gorges himself on barbeque and then collapses on the couch in a food coma.”

“Ah, little kid Sean. I’m sad I didn’t know you when we were little,” said Charice.

Mom’s finger shot up. “You just gave me an idea, Charice. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

“Oh no. What’s Mom doing?” I shifted on the couch. It felt more like quicksand now, trying to drown me if I didn’t move. But I ate too much.

To my dismay, Mom brought out the old family photo albums. Yeah, before computers and the cloud, you actually had to print out and store your photos in a folder, a scrapbook of memories. And don’t even get me started on scrapbooks.

I was surprised Mom even wanted to look at it, even wanted to reflect on the past. I wasn’t sure she could handle the photos of Anna and Dad. I wasn’t sure if I could handle them either.

“Mom. Come on.” I grabbed the album from her and held it over my head. “We’re not doing this.”

“What? You were cute when you were little.”

I made up a reason, going for the low hanging fruit. “No. I looked stupid. And nerdy.”

“So what?”

“Nice,” said Gavin. “Mom just admitted you looked nerdy and stupid.”

Mom didn’t even object.

Charice snatched the album from my hands.

“Hey.” I tried to grab it but she turned her back to me and started thumbing through it.

“Ahh,” she said, stifling a laugh.

“You laughing at me?”

“No. Just your haircut.”

The photo she found was of me and Gavin and Anna. I flashed a big toothy grin and was missing a few teeth actually. Huge wads of my hair were missing. If you looked close enough Anna could be seen palming a pair of scissors.

Mom looked over our shoulders and laughed. “That was the day Sean asked Anna to cut his hair. Do you remember that Sean?”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course I remember it. That was terrible.”

“You didn’t think so at the time.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I was a dumb kid.”

“At least I wasn’t dumb,” said Gavin.

“No. I caught your sister throwing away Sean’s hair before she could start on you. You wanted a haircut too.”

“That’s not the way I remember it,” said Gavin, raising his nose in defiance.

“You always wanted to do everything the same like your big brother.”

Gavin blushed. “No I didn’t.”

“Stop objecting,” I said. “That’s still true even until this day.” I took control of the album, thumbing through it. “Watch,” I said to Charice. “Let’s go through year by year and see how Gavin copies my style and haircuts.”

I flipped through one album intent on finding images of two dorks with bad haircuts and terrible t-shirts, but I ended up noticing something else entirely, something lacking. In all of the pictures of the front yard, the Oak tree was missing. “Aiden, hand me the next year’s photo album.”

My kid brother groaned but got it for me. I thumbed through the book eyeing all of the pictures of the front yard. There were not a lot. Only a handful. But in each and every one of them there it was, a nearly full grown Oak tree.

“Mom, are these labeled correctly?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Seems like there’s a few years missing.”

My mom thumbed through both albums quickly then shook her head. “Now you’re making me second guess myself. No, these are back to back, two years in a row. What makes you think that?”

I frowned. “It’s just that there’s a full grown Oak tree in the front yard in this album, but the year before it’s not even there. I don’t remember that.”

My mom eyed the earlier photos and a frown crossed her face too. I watched her eyes closely. At a certain point a look came across her face that gave me the chills.

“Oh, I remember,” she said with a giggle. “Your dad surprised me one weekend. Had some friends help him plant the tree early in the morning. They brought it over in a truck bed. Your dad thought it was a good practical joke. He tried to convince me that it had grown there overnight. Your father was crazy sometimes.”

Mom walked back to the kitchen to get a drink and giggled about it the whole way.

I leaned over to Gavin and whispered. “That’s not true. Dad was never a practical joker.”

“Why are you making such a big deal about the tree?”

“Like Mom said, one day it wasn’t there, and the next it was. Like magic.”

“So?”

“When Mom eyed the photo book she had the same look in her eyes, like the night that Nehemiah wiped her and Aiden’s memory. She’s forgotten about how the tree really got here because she was made to forget. Look at me and you. Even we don’t remember a time when the tree wasn’t planted in the front yard. But the pictures clearly show otherwise.”

Gavin and Charice looked at me like I was crazy. “Come on Gavin. When you were here last and we went to Lake Herman to try and get my hands healed. What happened?”

“The Kelpie killed the Gwyllgi.”

“No. Not that part. I couldn’t draw power from any of the other oak trees remember. They were all dead inside. They had no magic. They weren’t alive like the tree outside.” I took a moment to gaze out the front window at the Oak tree.

“So you’re saying Dad brought a tree here, planted it, and like Jack and the Beanstalk, it shot up the next day?”

“I don’t know. I guess.”

Gavin’s mouth went lopsided. It did that when he got skeptical. “But for what reason? It’s not like Dad could have known that you’d have magic and need it one day. This was years ago. When we were little.”

Dang it. He was right. And I was so excited, so sure that I was onto something, I lost my train of thought.

“Maybe your dad didn’t know it would react to Sean in the future. Maybe he planted it out front for a different reason,” said Charice. “Maybe it offers some sort of protection.”

“Pshhh. Yeah right. It did nothing to protect us from the Banshee at the last barbecue.”

“No, you told me you hit the tree,” said Charice, “and that you realized later that it had lent you power. Maybe the tree doesn’t protect so much as it empowers protectors.”

“Yeah. Okay. And our dad planted it there for himself to use. Me getting to tap into it is just an added bonus. What about you, Gavin? Have you ever had an experience with the Oak?”

Gavin looked out at the tree, then back at the album. “Just these childhood memories. That’s it. And from the way I get migraines from my powers, I don’t think it’s ever healed me. You’ve never been in pain from using your Good Luck right, Sean?”

“No. The only thing close to pain is when Asen Scáth had control over me. When I tried to draw power, the tree rejected me and shot me across the yard.”

Mom came back in the room, so we had to drop the conversation. I really wanted to break away and talk to Gavin alone. I was just about to suggest that we go out into the back yard and talk while Mom and Charice chatted, when Mom sprang a surprise on us.

“So it’s been awhile since we were all together. I thought it would be fun for us all to go to Fright Fest together.”

Mom held her hand up. In it were six tickets to Six Flags amusement park.

Aiden stopped his Minecraft long enough to whoop, “Really mom? Am I old enough for Fright Fest?”

“When?” I asked.

“As soon as the sun goes down,’’ she said with a big smile.

“Tonight?” asked Gavin.

“No, next week silly. Of course tonight.”

Gavin and I shared a look which puzzled my mom.

Charice filled the void. “Thanks Mrs. O’Farrell. That’s so sweet of you.”

“Who’s the last ticket for?” Gavin asked.

“Nancy is going to come to. She’s on her way over now.”