“I…” Adele shook her head, feeling muddled. “George, of course I’m happy you’re home, really I am. But really, you shouldn’t have shot that poor little bear. He wouldn’t have hurt Carl.”

“Oh, give me a break, Adele, it was a bear! A bear in springtime! You couldn’t know it wasn’t going to attack. Don’t hand me that crap!”

“But, George, I did know. I’ve always been able to know things like that. It’s a sort of gift I have, a… a power. And I’ve been teaching it to Carl, too. He wouldn’t have…”

That was when George exploded. He spun around and whacked Adele on the side of the head so hard it knocked her sideways onto the ground. Carl, already crying, began to shriek in true terror, and Scotty, nearly falling from his father’s grasp, let out a panicky wail.

Adele bit back her own tears, not wishing to frighten the children further. George had never hit her before this. Never! What was more, he had sworn to her that he never would. And the things he was saying! Her ears rang so she could barely hear him, but she could tell it was dreadful. His face was red and swollen; his neck muscles bulged frighteningly. He looked like he was about to have some sort of an attack. A distant, abstracted part of her worried for him.

Some of his words came through the ringing in her ears. “…never want to hear… superstitious BS… won’t have my children … real world and you’d better …”

When he ran out of steam, still breathing hard, eyes glinting like sun on steel, he said, very deliberately, “Adele, I have one more thing to say and you’d better believe I mean it. If you ever pull a stunt like this around my children again, if you ever put their lives at risk because you think some crazy-ass power is going to save you or them, and if you even say one more thing that leads me to believe you might do it again, I will leave you so fast it will make your head spin, and I will take my boys with me. Do you get it? Do you understand?”

She shook her head, confused. He couldn’t mean this. Not her affable and easygoing husband. “George, don’t say these things,” she pleaded brokenly. “Don’t be like this! This isn’t you!”

“Goddamn rights this is me!” he bellowed, shaking in her face the clenched fist that wasn’t gripping the terrified Scotty. “Believe it, woman! I won’t have this superstitious BS in my family! All I want to hear from you right now is ‘Yes, George,’ do you understand me?”

“I … yes, George,” she said meekly.

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