Harvest of Holidays Read Online Free

you’d just say no.” His voice was strained.
    Tally shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. It is rough out there. You do have to depend upon each other. It builds up…extraordinary stresses. And knowing you have a short life expectancy…well, everyone deals with that in different ways. Carson parties. Hard.”
    “Not anymore,” Oscar said quickly. “I haven’t seen him drunk since you got pregnant.”
    Neither had Tally. She tried for another example. “Jimmy likes his booze. Miguel likes his drugs. Connie and Joy…well, they have their own private rituals. But that’s the point, Oscar. Everyone is different, but it’s part of the life.”
    “And that’s where it stays, right? Inside your little world.” He sounded very bitter.
    “I honestly don’t know what Donna does on her down time,” Tally said truthfully. It was more than she should have said and she shifted uncomfortably on her feet. “Why don’t you ask her directly?”
    Oscar shook his head. “I can’t. You don’t understand what it’s like, being married to one of you when you’re not one yourself. I knew, going in, what she was. Donna was frank about it. I think she wanted to scare me off, but it just made me more determined.” He smiled. It was a weak smile, but it was there. “I still think it’s one of the coolest things in the world, this realm of yours. Demons are real. Vampires are real. Ghosts aren’t just stories. It’s…exhilarating.”
    Tally grinned. “You sound like Carson does, sometimes.”
    Oscar’s smile faded. “But that’s just it. You’re both hunters. You’re both a part of your world, so neither of you has to stand to one side and let the other just…do what they’re good at. And Donna’s good. I know that. I wouldn’t take it away from her, and she does the very best she can with the girls and for me…but because I accepted her for what she was, I have to accept all of it. I can’t start crying uncle now, just because there’s a part of her life that I don’t like.”
    Tally touched his arm. “You’re a very decent man, Oscar. I think you do marvelously well as a straight human married to a hunter. It must make life a strain.” She pressed her lips together. “I didn’t want to end up with a normal human, even a normal human hunter. I thought, if I was to settle into any long term relationship it would be…I don’t know.”
    “With a vampire, perhaps?” Oscar asked gently.
    “Perhaps, in the far corners of my subconscious, yes,” Tally admitted frankly. “Vampires seemed more normal to me than humans, but I fell in love with a human that had been in the business only a few years. It has taken every day of the six years we’ve been married to figure it out, Oscar. It has taken arguments and compromises and exhausting discussions like this one this afternoon. But we do it because we want it to work.”
    Oscar blew out his breath. “I gotta go,” he said, digging keys out of his jeans pocket. He stood up. “Thanks.”
    Tally tried another smile, and this one came more easily. “Talk to her,” she encouraged him.
    “Maybe. I’ll think it through.”
    She watched him walk around the car and get behind the wheel, and waved as he drove off, moving at turtle speed in deference to the little kids hopped up on candy that were spilling out onto the road and racing to the next house without a care about their surroundings.
    Feeling a baffled sort of sadness, Tally walked slowly back into the house.
    * * * * *
    Carson was standing by the phone on the wall when she entered, talking into it. He glanced at Tally as she shut the door. “I don’t think Oscar is still here, Donna.”
    Tally shook her head.
    “No, he just left,” Carson added and frowned as Donna said something that sounded high and fast, even from across the room. “Where?” he said sharply. “We’ll be there in…forty minutes.” He hung up, leaving the white coil swinging against the wallpaper.
    Damian and Nick