“Then I’ll heal her, just like I always do every year during flu season.” Pamela’s voice was still firm but turning tense at the edges. “Let’s just see what this is first before we start panicking, okay?”
Growling, Steve turned and stomped off.
Pamela sighed. “Hayden, can you call your grandma and see if this could be a reaction to the sedatives? We won’t give him any more just in case, but there might also be something we can give him to counter the reaction, if that’s what this is.”
“Yep, I’m on it.” I’d left my phone in my truck, so I headed through the house towards the front door now. But what I found in the living room made me instantly change direction.
“Steve, stop,” Tarah said, keeping her voice low as she stood behind Cassie, holding onto the little girl’s shoulders. “You know her mother doesn’t want her to go.”
“What do you know about my family’s business?” Steve snarled. “And she’s my kid. I’ll take her wherever I want! Now let her go.” He wasn’t dumb enough to touch Tarah yet, settling for tugging at one of his daughter’s hands.
“Pamela,” I called out, crossing over to stand at Tarah’s side and add my hand to Cassie’s other shoulder so we both had a hold on her. The kid was shaking, but she made no attempt to be free. Instead, she’d actually grabbed Tarah’s shirt tail with her free hand and was leaning back against us as if for support or comfort.
“Steve, what do you think you’re doing?” Pamela cried out as she entered the living room.
“I’ve got to get her out of here,” Steve said. “Can’t you see how dangerous this place is for her? Don’t you want her to be safe?”
“She is safe, Steve,” Pamela said, moving to stand in front of her daughter. She reached out, and I thought she was going to try and tear Cassie’s hand free from Steve’s grasp. But Pamela simply laid her hand on top of theirs. “Please calm down and think about this logically.”
Several people poked their heads out through their doorways, then came all the way out into the hallway to watch. Part of me worried that our new audience would cause more trouble. The other part of me hoped they might serve as backup if Steve resorted to Clann abilities I might have never seen before.
“Logic? There’s nothing illogical about my thinking here,” Steve said. “That man is sick in there, and now you want all of us to get sick too.”
“It’s probably just the sedatives,” I said, working to keep my voice calm and reasonable when all I really wanted to do was punch the crap out of this man then kick him out of the village before he started a group wide panic.
“Exactly,” Pamela said. “Too much sedatives, and he just needs to sleep them off. Worst case scenario, it’s the flu, and he’ll be sick for a few days then right as rain afterward, and I can detox anyone else who gets it in a matter of hours. There’s no more danger to any of us here than if we were back home and one of Cassie’s classmates or our coworkers came down with it.”
“The flu?” someone murmured in the hallway.
“Yeah, the flu,” I barked, fast losing my patience. “Everyone gets it every year. You feel like crap for a few hours while Pamela detoxes you, then you’re back to normal. It wouldn’t be the end of the world here, people.” Geez, they acted like we had no healers and were incapable of reaching the town a few miles away if necessary.
“But the flu’s really contagious,” someone else said. “And people die from it every year.”
“If they’re already weak and don’t get help,” Pamela countered. “I’m not the only healer in this group, and the city’s got a good hospital just a few miles away if needed. I’ve treated the flu in my family every year. There’s really no need to panic. Steve, you know I can handle healing someone with the flu. How many times have I taken care of you when you came down with it?”
Steve shook his head. “But that was when we lived in town—”
That was it. I’d had enough. “Steve, cut the crap. You know this is really just about you wanting to take your family away from here. Tell the truth and quit trying to scare everyone.”
Silence in the hallway as the attention shifted back to Steve.
His eyes narrowed as his scowl deepened. “Yeah, I want my family out of here. Why wouldn’t I? You think I should be happy having to share a house with other families? And now we’re probably going to be quarantined in here too.”
“That’s true about the quarantine,” I said, figuring we might as well get this issue out in the open as a household now. “That’s just to keep the flu, if it’s even that, from spreading to the other houses. Why risk getting other people sick if we can avoid it? It’d be no different than if each of us was back home and someone in our family got sick. Except here our family’s a little bigger, right?” I looked at the people in the hallway, deliberately making eye contact with everyone. Debate class was finally starting to prove useful after all.
I saw the few worried faces in the hall relax and a couple of heads nod. They were starting to see reason again instead of panicking.
Taking a deep breath, I turned back to Steve. “Now as for taking your family away, I think it’s obvious that your wife wants to stay. Cassie, what do you want to do?” I knew I was putting the kid in an awful position, but I wanted everyone in this house to be real clear on what could seem a muddy issue of parental rights.
“Daddy, please can we stay?” Cassie’s voice was shaky with tears. “I like it here. And in the spring you can build us our own house with a yard and flowers and everything.”
I saw Steve flinch, his eyebrows drawing together.
“How about it, Steve?” I murmured. “She’s right about building your own house. These mobile homes are just temporary. Come spring time, everybody’s going to be free to build their own homes here. Heck, you can get started right now if you want to brave the cold and deal with the snow and frozen ground.”
“Can we stay, Daddy? Please?” Cassie whispered, pulling away from Tarah and me so she could grab her father’s hand with both of hers.
Steve crouched down in front of her. “But sweetie, don’t you miss your school and your friends?”