Love is Always Write Anthology Bonus Volume

knew that wouldn't be happening. "I'll make extra coffee."
    "Please."
    In the shower I decided that once again, honesty was my best course of action. No, it wasn't my story to tell, but I had class and work and a dozen other things scheduled for the day. I had two choices— wake Alan up and take him to that ugly apartment and abandon him there, or leave him asleep in Lilia's care. If I did that, she had to know why he needed care. Not to mention it was part of our agreement— no overnight guests. She wasn't likely to make a stink about Alan, but I still needed her to know why I'd flouted that rule again.
    Over breakfast I told her what had happened. I left out the part about Alan's so-called parents, but I gave her the doctor's official diagnosis of clinical depression.
    Her lips thinned. "I didn't think he was that dramatic."
    I took a deep breath. "It's not something he's doing for attention, Lilia." Like many who had never had intimate dealings with a mental disorder, Aunt Lilia didn't get the disorder part. We'd had the discussion before. "If he just wanted attention, wouldn't he have told you? Or me? Or Mallory? Instead he tried to hide it. If Mallory had decided she was overreacting to the clues she caught— if I had decided she was overreacting— we might have lost him because he was trying to avoid attention. Trying not to look weak. For fear we'd judge him."
    "Lost him…" she repeated, her eyes on the door to the living room and the guest bedroom beyond it. "I know it's real," she said slowly. "After all you and your mother have been through, I ought to know. You're no fool to put up with unnecessary drama, and neither's Marcia. It's just— hard to wrap a knot around. I always figured folks could snap themselves out of it. I mean, it's just in his head, right?"
    "It's a chemical imbalance in his brain. Expecting him to 'snap out of it' is like expecting a ship to go to the left because you tell it to, while the wheel is stuck to the right."
    "Starboard," Lilia corrected. "Ships go to starboard or port, not right or left. You're begging for a wallop, swabbie."
    I sipped my coffee and waited. Lilia tossed her short hair and slapped her legs lightly.
    "So then. Poor thing's already treated like shit for being different, and he's got something in his brain that tells him all the pissants are right." She lifted her chin. "How do we help?"
    "We keep an eye on him until his medicine has a chance to work. It takes days for it to reach the proper levels in his system. I don't know exactly how we'll do that, since I practically had to shanghai him to get him here last night—"
    "That's because you get his hackles up, and then the two of you land in another pissing contest." Lilia winked. "Me? Well, I'm just an old lady who feeds him cookies, and won't he help me with this one thing? Hate to bother Lukas; he's so busy all the time, and there's this one other thing, and won't you read to me, lad, my eyes get so tired…"
    I snickered. "I love you, Aunt Lilia."
    "You'd better, boy. And speaking of better, hadn't you better get moving?"
    The clock said it was past time for me to be moving. I grabbed a piece of scrap paper and made a list. "If he hasn't checked in with his job, he might be in trouble there. He can get the health center to fax a doctor's note with no information except that it was medically necessary that he miss work. He needs to pick up his prescriptions. He needs to take his medication when he gets up. If he hasn't—"
    "Bah, that's plenty. You can butt heads with him tonight over anything else needing doing. Assholes and elbows, boy."
    I stood and planted a kiss on top of her head then got myself moving, not nearly as fast as "assholes and elbows" was supposed to be.
    ****
    Alan was sitting at the kitchen table when I got home that night, and something on the stove smelled warm and spicy and delicious. He bounced up when I stopped in the doorway and took my backpack off my shoulder, shooed the dogs away and pushed me at a chair before I had time to recognize the scent as chili.
    I almost asked how he was feeling, but thought better of it. "Lilia didn't make that," I blurted instead, dropping into the chair. Alan chuckled.
    "Apparently she has issues with taking direction. I, however, can follow a recipe like Javert on a cookie hunt." He set my backpack in an empty chair and moved to the dish cupboard. "Lilia said you'd want to eat when you got home. I slept till noon and had a ton of work to