Date Point: 15y7m3d AV
ESNN Offices, Folctha, Cimbrean, the Far Reaches
Ava Ríos
–released a joint statement from Great Father Daar and Mother-Supreme Yulna condemning the APA, whom they called ‘mindless psychotics.’ Although APA terrorists attacked the Commune of Females in Folctha’s Alien Quarter, the compound was quickly locked down and one of the human attackers was killed by the guard-sisters–
Ava paused in her typing as another user selected her most recent section of text and highl ighted it in orange. Jason wanted her to keep writing and come back to re-write that bit once she was finished.
She found that she liked his editing system. It wasn’t pushy, it didn’t interrupt her flow. She didn’t even feel like he was reading over her shoulder, even though he technically was. And she had to admit, as caustic as he could sometimes be, his input never failed to improve her articles.
She took a sip of her coffee and kept typing rather than wondering what, exactly, it was that Jason wanted her to change. She wasn’t thinking about a lot of anything at the moment except her work.
Work was her sword. When she had a camera in her hands or her fingers on the keyboard, she was fighting. She could make the world better, if only she took enough photos or typed enough words. Not in big ways, but in a thousand small ways.
It was that or… curl up, somewhere. Give up. And she knew how that would end.
So her options were fight or die.
God fucking damn them.
Jason tapped her on the shoulder, and she yelped. She’d completely drifted away thinking, and being yanked back to reality like that was jarring. Hannah sat up and immediately tried to lick her hand.
“You okay? You just drifted off there.”
“Sorry.”
“Take a break,” he advised.
“I’m fine, I don’t need–” Ava began. She stopped when she saw Jason’s expression.
“Ava… for crying out loud, you’re allowed to be shaken up,” he said. “Take a break. Take the rest of the bloody day if you need it. Your head’s obviously no good right now.”
Ava sighed and pushed her chair away from her desk. “…That’s what I’m afraid of,” she admitted.
“…Tell you what. If you absolutely have to work right now, then grab your camera and head down the Quarter. Take some pictures, shake some…paws or whatever. Get some interviews. Maybe a turn in the fresh air will help.”
It was good advice, so Ava sighed, nodded, and stood up. “I’ll… see if I can talk with Myun,” she said.
“Sounds good. You’ll be okay out there?”
“Yeah. Probably.” Actually, Ava would bet her teeth that somebody was keeping an eye on her. The Lads looked out for each other, and that meant looking out for their Brothers’ near-and-dear.
As it happened, Murray wasn’t even trying. He was sitting on a street litter bin across from the office as Ava left, and nodded at her.
Folctha’s litter bins were thick-walled steel things that looked like they were designed to handle a bomb blast. Maybe they were: Folctha had inherited a lot from Britain after all, and the Brits had spent decades fending off the IRA, barely getting a moment’s peace before other organisations like Al-Qaeda, the so-called Islamic State and now the Alien Protection Army had come along. They knew how to handle bomb scares, and litter bins that could direct a blast harmlessly upwards if a device was dropped inside them were part of the plan.
In any case, they were sturdy enough for a HEAT operator to sit on. Many park benches couldn’t boast that.
“…Hey, Murray.”
“‘Sup.”
“Following me?”
He shrugged. “It’ll be Allison next.”
“Allison?”
“Buehler.”
“…I’m going to have an astronaut following me around?”
He gave her a slightly offended look. “I’m a bloody astronaut.”
…Of course. HEAT were all fully qualified astronauts, and spacewalking was part of the job. Hell, the EV-MASS was a spacesuit. Ava felt a little ashamed rush of heat to her face and changed the subject.
“Well… thanks. Is this a courtesy, or…?”
He hopped off his perch and managed to ask which way she was going with nothing more than a tick-tock gesture of his hand. She pointed toward the Alien Quarter, and he fell in alongside her.
“Aye.”
“I thought you don’t like me?”
He shrugged.
“…Should I just pretend you aren’t there?”
He shook his head.
“You aren’t exactly the easiest conversationalist in the world.”
“Nope.”
“…Now you’re just trolling me.”
“Could be.”
“Murray…”
He chuckled and shrugged. “You’re alright.”
That was a gratifying surprise. So much so that Ava had to check. “You mean it?”
“You crawled into a collapsing building to rescue a bairn. And you saved Coombes’ life. So, aye. You’re alright.” He shot her a sideways look that had some amused warmth in it. “…A wee bit of a fuckin’ clanger sometimes, though.”
Unconventional as the insult was, Ava understood his meaning and laughed. “I promise, I’m doing my best to put that behind me.”
“Fair enough.”
They didn’t even make it to the end of the street before the question itching the whole of Ava’s brain overcame her self-control.
“…Seriously Allison Buehler though? What’s she doing following the likes of me around?”
“There’s not many others allowed to carry a weapon in this town.”
“What’s she like?”
Murray thought about it for a second. “I would’nae ask her for an interview. Nice lass, but she likes her privacy.”
“Thanks.”
He nodded, and resumed his trademark silence.
“…Thanks for going to my apartment, by the way,” Ava said to fill in the silence. He shrugged it off.
Ava sighed and gave up on getting a conversation out of this. Instead she dug her phone out of her purse and checked how her apartment listing was doing. She’d spent the insurance money on hiring professional cleaners rather than replacing her personal belongings, and on their advice had then brought in some decorators to replace the carpets and the worst of the ruined furnishings. The photos they’d emailed her didn’t look like her apartment any longer. Oh sure, some of the furniture and fittings were the same, but the APA thugs had trashed most of it.
It was a weird kind of silver lining, knowing that between the new furnishings and the fact that a midtown apartment in Folctha was fifty percent more valuable now than it had been three years ago, she was actually going to make a decent profit off having masked terrorists break into her home with intent to murder her. In fact, it was mostly cloud and not much lining. But if she’d learned one thing over the last ten years, it had been how important it was to focus on the silver lining, however pathetic it might be.
Once she’d sold the old place, she’d be able to afford a low-end place in Lakeside if she was feeling thrifty, a really good place on Delaney Row if she wanted to be frugal, or even a two-story house out in New Belfast and she’d still have plenty left over. And in a few years, the new place would have ballooned in value too.
Living in a boom town could be strange sometimes.
“Alright. This is where I leave ye.”
“Wh-?” Ava turned, but Murray was already walking away. He traded a high-five with a woman in a plaid shirt, a patrol cap and Oakleys, and was gone.
It took Ava a second to recognize Allison Buehler behind the shades. She was a lot taller in real life than she looked on TV, and at that exact moment she reminded Ava a heck of a lot of Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2. She was actually pretty intimidating.
“…Oh. Uh… Hi.”
“Hi.”
“It’s, uh… nice to meet you.”
Buehler had a firm handshake and tough palms. Everything about her seemed severe at first glance, but there were little… hints. Like the fact that she still offered a small smile to go with the handshake, and the fact that her nails, though short and practical, were still well-manicured. She came off more like a badass big sister than a battleaxe.
“Nice to meet you too. Sorry about your apartment.”
Ava tried to shrug it off, unconvincingly. “Hey. The way property in this town works, my new place will probably be an upgrade,” she said. The joke put an amused quirk in Buehler’s lip.
“Still. I know if somebody broke in our place, I’d be… upset about it.”
“Oh yeah,” Ava agreed. “I’m upset about it alright.”
The amused quirk turned into a half-smile. “So, I guess my job is to follow you around and make sure you get home safe. What’s the itinerary?”
“We’re going over to the Alien Quarter so I can get some pictures and interviews. After that, uh… Hannah needs walkies…” the dog perked up on hearing her name and one of her favorite words. “…And I need to go clothes shopping, get groceries…”
“For both our sakes, I hope you’re not gonna ask for my input on fashion.”
“Are you kidding?” Ava asked. “I saw you on That Show, that dress was perfect for you!”
“Thanks! I’ll let Xiù know. She chose it.”
“…Right.”
Buehler’s half-smile finally graduated into the real thing. “Lead the way.”
“Uh… okay! Walkies first, I guess…”
“Sure.”
In fact, Buehler left Ava and Hannah alone, and hung back a little way. Even when Ava jogged with the dog she kept up easily thanks to her longer legs.
They stopped for water at the east end of the park, and Ava noticed to her mild chagrin that while she was puffing, Allison wasn’t breathing any faster at all. Clearly, less time in the office and more time in the gym was needed.
“I don’t want to pry, but-” she began, then trailed off at the subtle shift in Allison’s body language. It was subtle, but she seemed to be… annoyed? Tense?
“No interview,” she said bluntly.
Now it was Ava’s turn to be annoyed. She straightened up and glared at her own reflection in Allison’s Oakleys. “…You don’t know me, Miss Buehler, so I’ll make something clear. I’m not some two-bit muckraker who’d sell her soul for a headline. I’m a member of EJN.”
“EJN?”
“Ethical Journalism Network. So if I ever interview you, you’ll know it’s coming, you’ll have consented to it, and you’ll probably know what the questions are beforehand.”
They stared each other down for a second, then Allison sighed and took her shades off. “…Fair enough. Sorry. But, look, I’m supposed to be watching out for you right now. If you want to ask me questions, now isn’t the time. Fair?”
“…Yeah. Just one though?”
“Alright, shoot.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Allison shrugged. “A friend asked me to,” she said.
That was fair.
“Well… thank you.”
Allison smiled again, then cleared her throat. “…Clothes shopping?”
“I should probably head over to the Quarter first but honestly? These clothes are a couple of days old so… Sure.”
That got an honest-to-God grin.
“Awesome. Let’s be girly.”
Date Point: 15y7m1w AV
Yonkers, New York, USA, Earth
Daniel Hurt
For such a public figure, Steven Lawrence had kept his private life very close to his chest. The whole Lawrence family seemed to be like that: Steven’s kids and his wife Stacey, his father Ed and his brother and sister had politely requested that the funeral itself be a small private affair for immediate family and close friends only. Daniel was one of the few “professional” acquaintances who’d been invited.
But Steven’s life had affected far more people than just his family, and there were a lot of guests from his show, colleagues from the business and other celebrities who’d wanted to come pay their respects. Rather than disrespect the family’s wishes, they’d organized a wake in Steven’s home town.
It would have been quite the red carpet occasion, if anybody was dressed up for it. But the consensus had been clear: here and now wasn’t a time to peacock around for media attention. They were there to remember a life cut short too soon, so show up in your street clothes.
The cynical thought, probably learned from Allison, occurred to Daniel that that in itself might be a carefully calculated move in the great game of Celebrity Chess. That was the problem with fame: after a certain amount of it was accumulated, every action took on public significance. Especially the innocent ones.
And of course, wherever celebrities went there was the personal protection. Which in Daniel’s case, considering his sensitive role in the development of an inter-species alliance, meant he had three. Their codenames were Irish, Baseball, and Crank, and they made him feel like the man who’d showed up to a classic car show driving a tank.
They didn’t speak much, which was fine. Daniel wasn’t quite prepared to process the implications of…well, effectively human Given-Men shadowing his every move, albeit with earpieces and wearing ill-fitting tuxedos with strange whole-body armor underneath.
Probably, this was the most well-protected party in the history of Yonkers. There were others involved too, though he didn’t get to meet them. A couple of the supervising leads were somehow yet bigger men, and there was definitely a lot of people in the busy surrounding community who were quite obviously plainclothes officers.
It all drove home just how serious AEC were about the Ten’Gewek. And yet Daniel didn’t share more than a few words with his protection all night.
Good, really. He wanted to join in the jolly mourning.
There was a lot of that. By the time Daniel arrived (fashionably late for unfashionable reasons) the drinks had already been flowing for a while, and one of Steven’s most regular guests, the stand-up comic Chris Dye, was in full force and making ribs ache with an anecdote.
Daniel’s arrival resulted in a cheer going up, and a blizzard of invitations to join this group or that group. He danced demurely around the invitations using the excuse that he needed to get his hands on something to drink first and, once that mission was accomplished, allowed himself to settle in as the new orbital focus of a clique of writers and thinkers he counted as friends.
Diana Wimmer gave him a chaste, friendly kiss on the cheek as he sat down. She looked like she was putting on a game face rather than enjoying herself. “You made it,” she said, sounding relieved. “I kinda figured with the way you live on an alien planet these days that maybe you wouldn’t.”
“It took some doing,” Daniel admitted. “You should see the human tanks I have for bodyguards tonight.”
“I did see them. You know those guys have to be HEAT, right?”
“Yeah, they’re HEAT,” Daniel confirmed.
“Wow. AEC must really love you.”
“They love the Ten’Gewek,” Daniel said. “I just happen to be one of their most high-value assets in that relationship.”
“That sounds cold.”
“Right. What am I thinking. The military are a sunshine parade of fluffy-bunny sentimentalists.”
That got an earnest laugh from Diana, who sipped her drink and set it down, then glanced up at the little shrine to Steven at the far end of the room. “…When did you hear?”
“Not long after you did, I suspect. We had a scheduled jump that day, a few hours after the attacks. One of the JETS operators came through on it to share the news.”
“Is everything okay over there?”
Daniel thought about it as he swirled his whisky. “…Yeah. The Ten’Gewek are… There are times when they’re very alien. Sometimes they’re a lot more rational than us, sometimes a lot less. But they understand pain and loss and death, all too well. They don’t have immunisation, after all. A lot of their children die young.”
Diana nodded solemnly. They were both parents themselves, they could both imagine what that would be like. At times like these, the blessings of civilization were more acutely felt and appreciated.
“You seem pretty content,” she said. “I remember the last time we were on Steven’s show together, you were getting pretty weary of book signing and speaking tours. Now look at you! Living in the jungle seems to agree with you!”
“The higher gravity can be hell on my back and knees…” Daniel confessed. “But… yes. It’s fulfilling. But difficult sometimes. They’re asking about vaccines now.”
Diana pulled a face. “Owch. Running smack into that Prime Directive thing, huh?”
“Well, that decision was made for us when the Hierarchy decided to exterminate them. The only counter to alien interference is more alien interference, and once you’ve crossed that Rubicon…”
“Yeah. So, what, are they going to get vaccines now?”
It was Daniel’s turn to pull a face. He sipped his whisky to cover it. “…I can’t think of an ethical way to say no. After all, I’d have to tell parents that it’s for the greater good that their children die young of preventable illness. But if that was true, we wouldn’t vaccinate our own kids, would we?”
“It’s not exactly the same situation…” Diana pointed out.
“No. But the only functional difference is whose children are whose.”
“So much for the Prime Directive, then.”
“As if I was ever going to base real-world decisions on a hopelessly naive TV series,” Daniel scoffed.
“Don’t let my husband hear you say that. He loves Star Trek.” Diana raised her glass.
“…What are we toasting?”
“I don’t know. Steven. Star Trek. Vaccines. Any suggestions?”
Daniel chuckled. “…To life. It’s confusing and difficult, and it ends too quickly.”
“Cheers.”
They drank.
“And to the future,” Diana added.
“Don’t call it an undiscovered country, please.”
She laughed and shook her head. “No. To the future… and to all the confusing, difficult lives it contains. How’s that?”
Daniel nodded and smiled. “Cheers.”
They drank again, and that meant Daniel needed a refill. Fortunately, there were bottles everywhere.
Several toasts and drinks later, the conversation finally worked its way back around to the Ten’Gewek. They’d picked up a few other latecomer guests and figures who’d extracted themselves from one conversation to join the really interesting one about aliens.
Top of that list was Mike Coleman. Daniel knew of him, but had never met the man personally: Infamously a former NSA spook, and the best-selling author of books that blurred the line between fiction and non-fiction. He’d been busy in the aftermath of the APA ‘Day of Reckoning,’ appearing on practically every news channel and talk show going, getting a couple of miles of op-ed articles under his belt, and generally making his opinion about the terrorists vigorously known.
A shamelessly opportunistic glory hound, therefore, but at least he was on the right side of the fight. And he was doing something probably uncharacteristic in that he was hanging on Daniel’s every word.
“You’re going to start a post system?”
Daniel nodded. “Yes, we’ll have to I think. Yan has been, uh, encouraging the other Given-Men to learn Vemik’s writing. Since the Given-Men travel from village to village anyway, it makes sense they should carry letters, right?”
“Why?” Diana asked.
“They need to unify as a culture if they are to survive the world they find themselves in nowadays. There’s no better way than making their world a more connected village. This will also spread literacy and hopefully kickstart their own cultural advancement, all without us unduly influencing anything.”
“What about the Singers?”
“Well…they have developed their own system of writing, actually. Are developing. Sort of. It’s independent of and totally unrelated to Vemik’s, and it’s secret. I suspect this is so the Given-Men can’t read their mail. Well, no. We haven’t suggested the idea of mail yet, sorry. But I bet it will be a major reason their system flourishes.”
“That sounds like it would get in the way,” Coleman opined. “A segregated writing system, one for the males and one for the females?”
“It would hardly be the most alien thing we’ve ever encountered,” Daniel replied. “But no. More like the role Latin played in the church, medicine and academia for a long time, I think. The language of commerce versus the language of Higher Things. Lingua Vulgari versus Lingua Deorum.”
“What exactly do you see these people becoming?” Coleman asked.
Daniel shrugged. “Having been exposed to us… I imagine they’ll make leaps in fifty years that it took us five hundred to manage. Two hundred years from now it wouldn’t surprise me if we have the Ten’Gewek answers to the Wright Brothers, if not sooner.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Coleman said.
“No, it isn’t. It’s not a question I feel I can even attempt to answer. There are a lot of forces pulling on them, from us, from inside. I’m certain the AEC would want some of them in a military capacity…HEAT operators certainly, and in fact they’re already looking to use an adapted version of their trials in a training capacity for JETS teams. You and I might have other wants we project onto them, intentionally or otherwise. Our words carry a hell of a lot of weight, too. Yan likes me, and more and more I’ve grown aware of just how much power that’s given me over their development. So I think the only safe answer is…it’s not for me to decide.”
“You can’t tell me you don’t speculate, though,” Diana pressed him. “We’re not asking you to decide here, just… if you had to bet on what they’re going to do next, where would you put your money?”
“…I think they have a bright future ahead of them. And that’s all I’m going to say—a bright future.”
“Fair enough,” Coleman said, letting it drop. “But when are you going to write a book about them?”
“I’m writing it. It’s just… every time I reach the point where I think ‘okay, I can wrap this up now’ something new comes along. Like the vaccines.”
“Sounds like mission creep, Danny.”
“Well, the problem with working in the jungle on an alien planet is my agent can’t pester me.”
“That’s a problem?” Diana asked. She got some laughs, including from Daniel.
“Apparently so,” he said.
“Well…” Coleman raised his glass for yet another in the night’s long litany of toasts. “To the Ten’Gewek then! Bright futures.”
That was one toast Daniel was more than happy to make.
Date Point: 15y7m1w AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Allison Buehler
“…Well? You gonna look at it?”
“I know, I’m just… I’m nervous. That’s all.”
“Babe, I love you very much, but why the fuck are you nervous about the result of my pregnancy test?” Allison asked.
Xiù gave her a Look. “You’re the one who chickened out and asked me to look at it for you!”
“I know, I know… I just…”
“…I know.”
A heavy, nervous silence fell between them before Allison made a disgusted noise at herself.
“…What the fuck are we so nervous about, anyway? I thought we want to have kids?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
More silence. Then, quite abruptly, Xiù plucked back the corner of the tissue around the test. She didn’t move for a long time.
“…Babe?”
Xiù jumped, then remembered where she was and gave Allison a weak smile.
“Well… It’s positive. You’re pregnant.”
Allison exhaled slowly. She’d kind of known, somehow. But having it in pink-and-white and hearing the words out loud were a different thing altogether.
“…Well…” she said slowly. “Here’s to doing it right, this time.”
“What happened last time wasn’t your fault,” Xiù comforted her.
“I know, I just… Never mind. What about yours?”
“I told you, I don’t think I am.”
“Humor me.”
Xiù sighed. Much more easily, she uncovered her own test and blinked at it.
“…Huh.”
“‘Huh?’ What does ‘huh’ mean?”
“It means, uh…” Xiù waved a hand at the test.
“…Oh. You, uh… you are, huh?”
Xiù gave her a wry version of her best troll-grin. “…Nope. It’s negative.”
Allison snarled at her, in a laughing way. “Ugh, don’t play around with me like that you butt!”
“Not sorry.” Xiù gave her a kiss, then tidied the two test kits away. “Guess we’ll just have to keep trying.”
“Oh no. What a chore,” Allison deadpanned. She was rewarded with a giggle. “…Y’know, I was seriously expecting you’d be first.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. Just… I dunno.”
Xiù gave her a patient look. “…I know you’ve been nervous.”
“Well it’s not like the first one worked out so great!” Allison sighed. “…But yeah. You made the decision, and you’ve been having fun trying to make it happen, and…”
“You seemed to be having fun too…”
“Well, yeah, I just… And it’s not that I don’t want this, I just…” Allison gave up. “…I take it back. I think I kinda do want you to have yours about the same time. I know it’ll be more work, but being pregnant while you’re not is just gonna be weird.”
“How weird could it be? You’ve already done it once.”
“Yeah, and it took me like eight months to even realize it. I just thought I was putting on weight!” Allison had to admit to some embarrassment there. She really had been pretty fucking dumb as a teenager. “Actually knowing for the next however long is gonna be… different. You’re sure it said pregnant?”
“I’m sure.”
“You’re absolutely double sure?”
Xiù rolled her eyes. “I mean, we’ll need an ultrasound to confirm it’s not actually, like, a pizza or something but…” She grinned when Allison snorted. “…It’s positive, dummy.”
“I mean, like… how reliable are these kits?”
“They’re supposed to be able to detect a pregnancy within forty-eight hours of conception.”
“So… try again in a couple days just to make sure?”
“If you like,” Xiù sighed.
“Sorry, I just… It’s a big moment.”
Xiù gave her a hug, then rose to her feet in response to the doorbell. “I’ll go see who that is.”
Allison nodded, and tidied away the testing kits. Just to be on the safe side, she decided not to get Julian’s hopes up until after they’d tested a second time. Maybe she was being dumb and neurotic about it, but… well, it was a big moment. The last time this had happened, it had changed her life.
At least this time she was going into it aware, alert and willing. And at least when the baby arrived it would have a family rather than…
She bit the thought off. Her parents were the last thing she wanted to think of just then.
To judge from the Gaori floating through from the kitchen, their guest was from the Commune of Females. It wasn’t Myun, though: Myun had a deep, dusky alto by her species’ standards, while the visitor was almost squeaking.
Intrigued, Allison stuck her head through the door. The visitor was an adolescent female, maybe twelve years old. Old enough in Gaoian society to be running errands and odd-jobs like delivering a message. She was also managing the neat trick of apparently not being star-struck by Xiù. Apparently delivering a message to Sister Shoo was all in a day’s work for this one.
Whatever the message was, Xiù obviously didn’t much like it. Naturally she was nothing but smiles for the messenger, who was thanked with some broccoli from the fridge and departed while crunching happily on it.
Allison gave Xiù a few seconds before butting in. “Bad news?”
Xiù turned around. She gave Allison a complicated look, then shrugged and returned to the fridge to close it. “Message from Yulna. Apparently, the Great Father wants to see me.”
“…Okay? I mean, we know Daar. He’s a teddy bear. Almost literally.”
“Yeah, but the Great Father isn’t. And it’s the Great Father who wants to see me. It’s… the request was very formal.”
“…Huh.” Allison thought about that for a second, then indicated the cub by waving a hand toward the door. “…Did she say why?”
“Nope!” Xiù sighed and headed for the stairs. “I’d better pack. Book a me a ticket to the island?”
“Sure.”
“And don’t tell Julian about the baby until I’m back. I want to see his reaction.” Xiù grinned and headed upstairs.
Even in the face of a summons like that she was still irrepressibly cheerful. It put a glow in Allison’s chest to see that kind of effortless positivity. “No baby revelations until you’re back with camera in hand, I promise.”
“Xièxie!”
Booking a shuttle ticket over to the Grand Commune was trivial, and she finished summoning a cab at around the same time as her phone pinged with a new message from Ava Ríos.
It was… plaintive. All her friends were at work or otherwise busy and she didn’t feel secure on her own. Allison could sympathize, there. And, hell, she’d volunteered to look out for Ríos’ safety, so…
She sent a reply:
If I’m welcome, I’d love to visit.
Cab okay.
Thank you.
Well, at least she wasn’t going to be rattling around the house alone tonight, worrying about her brothers. They had some time with Amanda tonight, which inevitably meant Allison would be dealing with two confused, angry, mistreated boys when they came back in the morning. Hopefully the news that they’d soon be uncles would help them.
That whole situation was a giant knot of anxiety for everyone involved. Jacob had gone back to Earth where he was in control of things, and communicated with his children and wife via terse, formally worded letters on company letterhead. Amanda had found a job in Folctha and rented an apartment, from which she hovered over her sons as close as the court order would let her, always thirsty for details of what they were up to and always trying to mend a bridge with Allison that she’d smashed in the first place.
In any case, trying to adopt the boys or gain permanent custody of them was likely to be a migraine headache that lasted for months or even years. Between their unconventional home arrangement and the international nature of the battle… probably the boys would be old enough to make their own decisions before it all got worked out.
But still: Having somebody to look after helped distract from all that.
She looked down and found her hand was resting unconsciously on her tummy. Make that two somebodies to look after.
She looked up as Xiù trotted back down the stairs carrying her travel bag. They all had one, a little gym bag containing the essentials—clothing, toiletries, a small first aid kit—stashed in the bottom of their wardrobe. It showed its value in moments like this: Rather than spend half an hour packing, Xiù had just grabbed her travel bag, probably folded a couple of extras into it, grabbed her passport and now she was ready to depart.
They kissed. “See you in a couple days?”
“Yup!”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
And… there she went. Out the door and into one cab, which wasn’t even around the corner when another cab arrived. Allison chuckled to herself and grabbed a couple of pods for the coffee machine.
It never ended.