She said it so utterly matter-of-factly that it took a moment for Cal to really hear her.
He knew that Teri’s mother had called the police on Zach after Teri had moved out of this house and in with him. He’d heard thirdhand from Grey, another one of his rangers, that there had been something of an embarrassing scene where Teri had had to explain to the officers that no, she hadn’t been kidnapped, she was living with Zach of her own free will and her mother was simply overprotective.
Mrs. Lowell had pulled something similar when Teri had come to the Park last spring while in the last stages of recovery from a car accident, and Cal had been peripherally involved, and heard a similar embarrassed explanation.
It looked like Mrs. Lowell had told everyone a story where the shifters had kidnapped her daughter against her will. Maybe she’d even started to believe it herself. And now she was suspicious of Cal.
“Teri’s fine, Mom,” Lillian said, hefting her bag over her shoulder.
That set her mother off. Cal wondered if it had been calculated to do so, because while Mrs. Lowell went off on a rant about how her younger daughter was absolutely not fine, and the shifters had stolen her away and turned her into an awful monster and et cetera, Lillian started down the hall toward the stairs.
Cal followed. It certainly was a good distraction against any further interrogation about him and what he was doing there.
Although he wasn’t sure he liked the idea that Lillian might be protecting him from her mother’s questioning. Because more and more, he was starting to feel as though someone should be protecting her. Since her parents obviously never had.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Lillian let her mother grandly go take up a position in the living room, ready to rant some more, while she leaned in to say to Cal, “Can you step outside and check to see if the mountain lions have been around? I’ll be out in a minute.”
Cal hesitated. “I don’t want to leave you here like this.”
Lillian gave him an exasperated look. “Cal. I live here. Please.”
“Just because you’re used to it doesn’t mean you should have to put up with it for one more minute,” Cal said, in a fierce undertone. “But all right. One minute.”
Lillian’s mouth quirked up in a tiny smile. “Starting now.”
Cal automatically began counting in his head as he headed for the door, to the echoes of, “What were you just saying to him? Where is he going?” from the living room.
Lillian said calmly, “Just telling him to leave, Mom, it’s clear he’s not welcome here,” and Cal had to shake his head again at how good she was at deflecting the subject.
He stepped outside into the warm sun, took a second to take a deep and quiet breath, and then ducked around the side of the house and shifted.
By the time Lillian came out—fifty-nine seconds later—he was human again and waiting by the car.
“They’ve been here,” he said to her. “But not for a day or two; the scent’s old. I’d say that staying away is the right thing to do. It looks like they haven’t bothered to keep an eye on the place while you’ve been gone. There was no trace of them inside the house—in an enclosed space like that, I would’ve been able to catch some kind of hint even in human form.”
Lillian nodded. “Good.” She tossed her bag in the backseat and got in the car just as the door to the house opened again. Cal took his place in the passenger’s seat and they drove off, leaving Mrs. Lowell silhouetted furiously in the doorway.
***
Lillian was so embarrassed. She wished she could’ve had Cal stay in the car. But he’d had to come out to see if the mountain lions were watching the house, and there was no way her mother would’ve allowed him to just hang out on the lawn. She would’ve come outside to interrogate him about what he was doing there.
So the best thing to do had been to bring him inside, let her mother get angry and want him back outside, and then send him out to shift very discreetly and do his sniffing around. Besides, she really had wanted to know if somehow the mountain lions had come in, so Cal had had to be in the house to see if he could scent them there.
Her parents made her crazy, but that didn’t mean she wanted them to be in danger.
But it meant that Cal had witnessed her mother in full form...and Lillian just bowing her head and accepting it.
She was ashamed, sometimes, of how she acted at home. The way she folded up any backbone she might’ve ever possessed and meekly nodded her head to her mother’s dictates. Said, All right, and That sounds best, and Of course.
But normally it was a private shame. It was something she was doing so that she could put her life back together—although she’d probably be in her late thirties by the time she managed it, and any dreams of a better marriage and maybe even children out the window by then. But still. She was working quietly to get her freedom back.
This was the first time anyone outside the family had witnessed it. And it made her just want to hide her face forever.
Especially considering who Cal was. A Marine veteran, an experienced park ranger, and a shapeshifter. A snow leopard. A fierce wild cat.
Whereas Lillian was more like a scared mouse.
Cal broke the silence in the car suddenly, his deep voice seeming to spread through the space and...warm it up somehow. “I don’t know how much you know about snow leopards.”