Full Moon Fiancé

The Westerly Way of Things

This time, when Diana went downstairs into the Westerly kitchen, she was prepared. Anna, Thomas, and Joshua were all dressed sharply for sure a casual event. That was the Westerly way of things. Diana smiled gently when she remembered how excited Joshua was when they went to college and he began going to the dining hall in sweatpants.

For her part, Diana had done her best to dress the same. She’d managed to cobble together a respectably fashionable outfit from the odds and ends of clothing she had left at the manor a year ago. She was wearing a pearl necklace that she had assumed was lost, black slacks, and a pink satin-y sweater. Diana had always hated the sweater, which had been a gift from Anna when Diana and Joshua were in high school. She’d left it in the Westerly home to remind herself to wear it, from time to time, so as not to appear ungrateful.

She thought with a bit of a smirk that if there had been one upside to not seeing Joshua’s family, it had been that the deluge of unwanted gifts had stopped.

“That’s their love language,” Joshua had always said when Diana had grit her teeth and smiled through another round of impromptu gift giving.

“Morning,” she chirped brightly as she walked into the kitchen, trying not to seem as nervous as she truly was. “What’s for lunch?”

“James wasn’t supposed to let you out of your room,” Anna said, quirking an eyebrow at Diana. Thomas barely looked up. Lunch appeared to be a salad with grilled salmon on top. Joshua hadn’t touched his. He was sitting with his arms folded, grinning, watching Diana.

“I was hungry,” Diana replied. “And I wasn’t aware that the terms of my confinement had changed such that I wasn’t even allowed to go to the kitchen.” This was the argument she had made to James, who was alone outside her door when she had asked. James had hemmed and hawed, at first not wanting to let her go. But he had agreed after Diana had pointed out that the other alternative was that he abandon his post to go get her lunch, leaving her unsupervised.

“You aren’t being confined, don’t be dramatic,” Thomas said. Underneath his reproach was a bit of laughter. Next to him, Anna rolled her eyes.

“We are just being cautious,” Anna said. “Surely you can understand.”

“Oh, I do,” Diana replied. “I’d be cautious too, if I had a big secret I didn’t want the world to know.”

Anna glanced nervously at Thomas, who looked over at Joshua, who was simply staring at Diana as if she was the most fascinating thing he had ever seen.

“Secret? I–” Anna started, but Diana cut her off.

“I assume it’s a secret, right? I take it you aren’t going around telling everyone in town that you’re werewolves?”

For a second, there was nothing but silence. Diana tried not to look at Joshua, afraid that making eye contact with him would break the cool, collected persona she was working so hard to convey. After a second, Thomas snorted a laugh that sounded a bit too large to be truthful.

“Werewolves? Dear, are you all right?” Anna asked, fake concern in her voice.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Diana said. Still smiling so brightly that she felt as if she was stretching skin overmuch, as if her elasticity might prevent movement, as if her face might snap in half at any moment, Diana reached into the little pink tote bag she had chosen for the day. It looked innocuously like a purse, but there were no cosmetics or money inside. Instead, she’d filled it with papers she had found upstairs. Joshua had been right. Behind the chest in which she had found his old diary, she had found a box filled with information. Most of it she didn’t quite understand, but she didn’t think she needed to. She started with the newspaper articles. There were several on Vernon Torell, a coincidence that Diana didn’t miss. There were also a few articles from old, nearly crumbling newspapers about missing persons. Diana didn’t know who they were or why the Westerlys had kept these articles, but she knew they mattered.

Also in the bag were books. Not many. Diana had chosen to take just a few. One of them was the only place she found the actual English word ‘wolves’, a leatherbound and ancient looking tome which bore the title ‘On Wolves and Worship’ and which she could not read much of at all. But she didn’t need to. She was trying to corner the Westerlys into giving her information, not gather it herself.

She included Joshua’s diary. She took it out of the bag last, laying it on top of the other, larger books with a flourish. It was the finishing touch.

“Where did you find these?” Thomas asked, his voice strained.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does!” Anna’s voice sounded shrill. “You were not to leave… you shouldn’t have been… how did you find these?” Anna’s hand nearly slammed down onto the table. It made barely a noise at all, Anna remaining dainty even in anger, but to Diana, it made an impression all the same.

“No one let me leave my room, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Diana said, keeping her own voice calm. “I’m resourceful, you know.”

Anna looked sharply up at her son. Joshua was laughing silently, one hand on his brow to cover his amusement.

“Don’t look at me,” he choked out over his laughter. “I told you it was a bad idea to keep Diana Tremaine, investigative reporter, locked up in your house without any answers. She’s not a ‘sit quietly and wait’ type of girl, mother.”

“You’re the one who brought her here,” Anna said, her voice practically a snarl.

“Enough,” Thomas said. He had remained remarkably calm. “Diana,” his voice was level and cool. “Even if you had found these books, we both know you can’t read them. The articles are mostly meaningless. So you’ve come to this conclusion… how, exactly?”

“I found a tablet,” Diana shrugged. Anna rolled her eyes, looking both scandalized and put out by the turn of events. “I searched it. Vernon Torell,” she tapped one finger on a newspaper article, “is particularly famous, isn’t he? In certain circles. At first I thought you were in a cult,” she shrugged again, as if this was the most normal conversation in the world.

“But you pivoted to werewolves?”

“Well, Joshua’s old diary mentions werewolves. And I thought it was code at first, but, I guess things started to add up. Eventually I found all these conspiracy theory sites about modern day American werewolves. Kinda crazy… but one thing I just couldn’t shake. At the memorial stone where I saw you, Joshua,” she finally looked him in the eyes. “There was a dog. Or, I mean, I thought it was a dog. And at first I thought maybe you had a dog, somehow. But I asked, remember? The first day I was here. You said you hadn’t gotten a dog. I guess I put two and two together.”

Thomas sighed. It was the kind of deep, meaningful sigh that carried a lot of weight. Diana waited respectfully as he massaged his temples for a moment, then looked up at her.

“Fine,” he said. “Joshua was right. We should probably not have underestimated your… curiosity.”

“Now what?” Diana asked. She felt her throat dry up slightly as she asked the question. She knew Joshua would not harm her, or at least, she chose to believe he wouldn’t. But she was not so sure if she felt the same about his parents.

Anna’s eyes fluttered shut. “What ever do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean, now that I know? What do we– what are you going to do?”

To her surprise, Thomas laughed. “Is that what you’re worried about? My goodness, Diana. We aren’t savages. We won’t hurt you.”

“But, these articles. Missing persons. And Vernon Torell…” she looked over at her almost-ex-father-in-law. “I guess I thought…”

“I have no idea where to begin,” Thomas mused. “Vernon Torell was not… like most of us. He was, uh… well, the term we would use is Rogue. A madman, really.”

“Did you know him?”

“Not personally, he was a bit before my time. Anna’s father knew of him, though.” Thomas nodded. Anna had closed her eyes, her head tilted back against the chair. It was as if by closing her eyes she hoped she could simply pretend the conversation happening around her was not happening.

“Did the Westerly family really make their money finding gold? Or is it… was it something to do with… you know?”

“Our lycanthropy? Yes and no,” Thomas said. “It’s an old wives tale that wolves can be killed by silver, you know. Of course, we can be killed by a silver bullet, but we can be killed by a steel bullet too! It’s a bullet. That’s what happens. No, the origins of that particular rumor came about because wolves love gold. We love it. We can sense it from miles away.”

“I thought that was dragons.”

Halfway through a sip of his coffee, Joshua snorted, sending the beverage flying from his nose into his lap. “Sorry,” he muttered as he took a napkin to try to clean himself up.

Anna didn’t even open her eyes, still looking as though she was singularly focused on keeping the world at bay, and Thomas spared only a passing glance at his son. His face remained serious, but his muscles twitched slightly at the joke.

“Droll. Now, a gold ring here or a bit of gold there, we are used to that. Doesn’t phase us. But a gold mine, now, that’s harder to ignore. So, yes, when the Westerly family first settled on this land, we quickly found the only gold mine around. Most wolves are out in California, you know. That’s where the ancestors went. You’d be shocked at how many of the poor souls who fueled the Gold Rush were wolves.”

“You’d also be shocked at how many of those wolves managed to find gold that humans overlooked,” Anna said. She was nearly mumbling. Her eyes were still closed.

“Indeed.” Thomas nodded. “So, yes, our fortune was made in gold. It was also made off our… true selves, if you will.”

“But not your family,” Diana asked, curious, looking at Anna. Anna still didn’t open her eyes, but she must have felt Diana’s gaze.

“No,” said Anna. “Not my family. Though, of course, we have no need for gold.”

“Anna comes from one of the most highly respected wolf families in the world,” Thomas told Diana. “Her father is… a leader among us.”

“I thought he was a banker?”

“He is,” Joshua said. “It’s a cover. A cover he happened to be exceptionally good at, though.”

“Ah,” said Diana, as if she understood, though she did not understand at all. “So you, I mean, the Westerly family… are you all leaders?”

“Yes,” said Thomas. “Not Alphas, not yet,” he didn’t seem to register that she didn’t recognize the word. “Some day.”

“And Joshua?” Diana asked. This was her most burning question, the one that had fueled her to seek answers in the first place. “His, uh, ‘death’,” she made air quotes around the word, “it’s because of all this?”

“Yes,” this came from Joshua.

“Why didn’t you just tell me? Or, I mean, why get involved with me at all? Why–”

“Diana,” Thomas cut her off. “This was never meant to happen.”

Diana looked curiously over at Thomas.

“I’m not like other wolves,” Joshua said. “Or, I guess I am… now. I am. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t supposed to be.”

“What do you mean?” Diana asked. Finally, Anna opened her eyes. She fixed Diana with a piercing stare.

“We didn’t think my son was one of us. We didn’t think he was a wolf at all.”