6
Nosey’s interviews with people who had suffered accidents were starting to show him a pattern, one he wasn’t at all comfortable with. He’d talked with numerous accident victims since Paschel Trendane and Jake Simpson, and published many of their accounts, especially when he felt there was a human interest angle.
Some information about just how those accidents had come to happen, though, he’d deliberately suppressed. He didn’t think it was his place to add insult to injury—in the most precise and literal sense of the phrase—when someone was recovering from damage that could be seen as being caused by being just plain dumb. And a lot of it had been just that. Even if he didn’t call it that, those Commenting on an article would surely do so. He could moderate those Comments posted to his article, but he could do little about what people chose to say on their own feeds, and so he had avoided mentioning the victims’ more…questionable decisions.
Besides, there was something about those decisions. Something they all seemed to have in common.
Nosey had decided that the thing to do was look for a pattern, then see if he could confirm what he was coming to suspect. After that, he could take his suspicions to the appropriate authorities…Whoever that might be.
It was in pursuit of that larger pattern, as well as of a potentially touching news story, that Nosey headed off to his next interview. This one had tied in neatly with one of his courier jobs. The accident victim was recovering at home, and Nosey was bringing medical supplies, including some nano-tailored painkillers.
He knew the Yazzie family slightly. As with Jake Simpson, the eldest daughter was a noted athlete, specializing in dance and gymnastics, rather than team sports. Like Jake, Eldora Yazzie’s accident seemed highly unlikely for anyone who had followed her career. Nosey’s excuse for talking with her was that he wanted to do a piece about when her next recital would be held, but his goal was getting some information about just how she had come to be so badly hurt.
Eldora’s family were relatively new colonists, but both parents possessed specialties that Sphinx needed, and they’d been actively recruited for their skill sets. Her father was a biomechanical engineer, specializing in prosthetic devices but with a broad background that lent itself to a wide spectrum of needs, and her mom’s background in IT applications—especially biomechanical control systems—made them a formidably effective team, so they were doing very well.
When he rang the bell, there was a pause, then Oliffe Yazzie answered the door. She was a tall, slim woman with straight, dark hair blunt-cut right at her jawline. On many women, the style would have looked terrible, but on Oliffe it looked fantastic.
“Sorry,” Nosey said. “I think I’m a little early. The pharmacy was ahead of schedule for once.”
Oliffe smiled warmly. Wiping her hands on her apron, she motioned for him to come in. “Thanks for bringing the painkillers and lung therapy gear. Pirney is off-planet at meetings, and I don’t like to leave Eldora with only the little ones. They’re good kids, but they’re kids…They forget that their big sister needs looking after. Usually, it’s the other way around.”
Oliffe made as if to take the container from him, but Nosey held onto it.
“It’s awkward to carry. Let me take it into the kitchen, maybe? The contents should be kept in a cool area with a regulated temperature.”
“Kitchen would be fine,” Oliffe said, turning and leading the way. “Forgive the mess. I’ve been baking. I find there’s nothing like handwork to free up my mind when I get stuck on some project. Happily, the kids never get tired of cookies.”
“Those smell terrific,” Nosey said, honestly. He hoped Oliffe didn’t think he was hinting, but it seemed ruder not to comment. “How’s Eldora doing?”
“Honestly, not as well as I hoped she’d be by now.”
Nosey had put the cooler on the counter and Oliffe started unpacking it without really looking at what she was doing.
“She’s still having breathing issues. Her lungs were damaged in the fall, because several of her ribs splintered. The surgeons say they got all the fragments, but lung damage can be serious in high-gee. Eldora’s morale is low. She’s never liked living on a high-gee planet, because she needs to use a counter-grav unit. Now that using one is not merely a matter of moving more easily, but is a medical necessity, she’s become decidedly grim.”
“Are you sure Eldora wants to see me?” Nosey asked, but he was good enough at reading people to tell that Oliffe—if not Eldora—had been looking forward to his visit.
“Absolutely! You want to interview her about dance and that’s her favorite topic—one that, if I may be honest, the rest of us are talked out about. You’ll be doing more than just her a favor. She’s on the sunporch. Let me show you the way.”
Eldora didn’t look exactly thrilled when Oliffe announced Nosey’s arrival. She was a dramatically lovely young woman, with hair like wet ink and long, dark, almond-shaped eyes. Semi-reclined as she was on a daybed heaped with cushions, she looked more like a painter’s idea of an invalid, rather than an actual invalid: lips slightly pouting, eyes half-shut to display the curve of her lashes.
As they went through the usual greetings, Nosey searched through his mental thesaurus looking for the right word to describe Eldora’s affect: Bored? Apathetic? Indifferent? He decided that “impassive” fit best.
He had a faint sense that Eldora had been hoping for a visitor and, while she wasn’t unhappy to see Nosey, her impassivity was at least partially meant to hide that he wasn’t the person she’d hoped to see. Nosey tried to remember who her friends were, and realized with a start that he couldn’t place any. The type of dance she did certainly had team elements, but from the start Eldora had wanted to be a soloist. Did she have a romantic interest? There was something about how she’d displayed herself so carefully that made him wonder if Eldora had anticipated the arrival of a sweetheart. If so, Oliffe hadn’t been told. She had clearly expected Nosey’s arrival to be a treat.
Nosey settled onto the chair next to the daybed, and turned on his charm. “How’re you doing, Eldora?”
“Is this ‘on the record’?” she sniped, trying to sound as if she was making a joke, but failing.
Oliffe had been on her way back to the kitchen, but now she paused and stiffened. “Eldora!”
Nosey dismissed Oliffe’s protest with a wave of one hand. “No worries. I get that all the time.” He smiled at Eldora, dropping her the slightest wink. “Anything you say will be off the record unless you say so. Otherwise, I’m just here to talk about dance.”
Possibly embarrassed into good behavior by Oliffe’s reaction, Eldora produced an almost convincing smile. “Thanks. That’s nice of you. Sitting around by myself gets old fast.”
Oliffe resumed her retreat. “I have some cookies in the oven. Excuse me.”
As her footsteps retreated, tapping lightly on the hardwood floor, Eldora rolled her eyes theatrically.
“Cookies in the oven!” she mimicked. “I swear! Sometimes the culture on this planet is so retro I could just scream. It’s like we’re all supposed to forget we live in the age of space voyages, and instead play Happy Pioneers. My dad’s taken up wood carving, if you can believe it, with a steel knife and everything. And he’s a biomechanical engineer! He could probably grow wood carvings if he put his mind to it.”
“So, you don’t like living on Sphinx?”
“Off the record?”
“Sure.”
“I hate it.” The way she bit off the three words left no doubt she meant them. “Back on Thule, I’d been involved in dance and theater since I could walk, practically. I did ballet until I was twelve. Then I decided that a wider emphasis on theater and dance suited me better. Then, just as I was getting to the age where the really good ingénue roles would be opening up for me, my parents move me to a planet where I feel like a rock all the time.”
“There’re counter-grav units,” Nosey said mildly, indicating the one he wore, rather than the one that encircled Eldora’s trim waist.
“It’s not the same. Even if I set it for Thule normal, I know it’s a cheat. Anyhow, even if I did manage to keep up with my practice, what would it matter? Everything on Sphinx is, frankly, bush league. Even Manticore is bush league. You know what I’m hoping?”
“What?”
“I’m hoping this accident will provide me my excuse to go home. High-grav planets and damaged lungs aren’t a great mix. Anyhow, I’m nineteen. Legally, I could have skipped out a year ago, but my parents won’t come up with a ticket and the jobs I could get here aren’t going to earn me a ticket home.”
She trailed off, despair etching every line of her face. For the first time, she looked genuinely unwell.
Nosey asked a question to which he already knew the answer. “Your family has been here, what? Two T-years?”
“Two T’s, seven months.”
“Did you want to immigrate?”
“Not really, but I didn’t exactly have a choice. Parents.”
The final word comprised what Nosey felt certain was a wealth of arguments, compromises, and more. He didn’t ask if Eldora’s siblings felt the same way she did. He knew they didn’t. There were two, a brother and sister, both younger. Both were involved in various community activities, including sports. Doubtless their adjustment to Sphinx and its myriad challenges only made Eldora feel worse about her own situation.
Nosey deftly steered the conversation to dance. After a few questions that demonstrated both that Nosey had seen her performances and that he’d bothered to learn something about her art, Eldora loosened up amazingly and even became fun to interview. Several times, Nosey tried to work her around to exactly how she’d managed to take such a serious fall, but each time Eldora danced away from the issue.
The closest she came to saying anything substantial was an airy, “Oh, I was so caught up in the euphoria, the music, the memories, that I forgot that I was here in Lead Foot Land. I certainly can’t forget now—no matter how much I wish I could.”
By the time Oliffe arrived with a plate of fresh-from-the-oven oatmeal raisin cookies and a pot of oolong tea, Nosey had Eldora laughing. But he didn’t miss how her gaze kept straying to where an approaching air car would first be seen descending on the Yazzie property, and he wondered who she was waiting for—and why Oliffe seemed to have no idea Eldora was expecting a guest.
“I would rather,” Stephanie said to Lionheart, slicing through the thick, crusty loaf of sourdough bread with enough force to nick the cutting board, “fight a hexapuma armed only with this bread knife than have a ‘relationship chat’ with Jessica.”
“Bleek,” Lionheart replied agreeably from where he lolled on one of the designated cat platforms set around the Harringtons’ kitchen. Early on in the treecat’s residence, Marjorie had insisted that no matter how much she loved Lionheart and was grateful to him for saving Stephanie’s life, she was not going to have everything she ate liberally seasoned with gray and white fur. Long gray and white fur, at that.
Stephanie knew Lionheart didn’t understand what she was saying, but who else could she talk to? Her mom and dad were great, but what if they just gave her one of those “You really need to learn how to deal with interpersonal relationships, dear” lectures? Or worse, hinted that Stephanie’s problem was that she wasn’t really over Anders yet? After all, he’d only dumped her a few weeks before…
Astronomically awkward.
When Jessica’s air car began its descent, Stephanie had a moment of panic during which she considered locking all the doors and pretending she wasn’t home. Of course, that wouldn’t work, because Valiant and Lionheart would know perfectly well the other was there. They might even think Stephanie was inviting them to play some sort of hide-and-seek. That would seriously suck. And be seriously unfair to Jessica, who had seemed so happy to have time to hang out with Stephanie.
So Stephanie squared her shoulders and was ready when Jessica gave the kitchen door a pro forma tap and let herself in. Valiant slipped in before his human, bleeked at Stephanie, then sprang up to a platform adjacent to Lionheart’s. Then the two treecats sat up, straight and tall, nearly identical except for Lionheart’s scars and the greater number of rings on Valiant’s tail, two sets of leaf green eyes focused on the celery stalks that Stephanie had prepared earlier and put in a glass vase, like a peculiar bouquet.
Jessica gave Stephanie a quick enthusiastic hug, then rummaged in her shoulder bag and pulled out a large bottle full of some bright pink liquid. “Mom sent along a batch of her latest tea blend. You wouldn’t think spikethorn and spearmint would go well together, but with just a little honey to cut the sharpness, it’s great.”
“You want to set up a pitcher?” Stephanie asked, giving her an appreciative grin. “I’ll finish prepping the food. There’s all sorts of stuff for sandwiches. I just need to get out condiments and side dishes. Mom said she wouldn’t mind if we ate everything. She’s picking up the latest grocery order on her way back from the Eisenbergs’.”
Jessica bustled over to where one of Irina Kisaevna’s pottery pitchers was displayed on a shelf. “Actually, this time I may actually give you honest competition. I grabbed a nutribar before my morning physiology class. I had questions for the teacher after, so I was almost late for my hospital shift—it’s been crazy there—and then I dove into the air car and came straight here. Archie must have found my secret stash of emergency snacks, so I’m seriously starved.”
“Help yourself,” Stephanie said, setting a basket of ice potato chips, along with a creamy dill dip, where both she and Jessica could reach them.
Then she got out individual bowls of mixed fruit salad and a covered plate of double dense chocolate cupcakes. Jessica poured them both tea, and for a brief while there was silence as they constructed their sandwiches. Stephanie concentrated on piling alternate slices of roast capricow, sharp “moon” cheese (so called because it was distinctly green and had holes that looked like craters), and arugula between thick slices of sourdough bread until the sandwich was a fair rival to the Dagwoods at the Red Letter Café. She took her first bite, and sighed with pleasure, largely because as long as her mouth was full, she couldn’t be expected to talk.
Through all of this, the two treecats watched patiently, but when Stephanie went for her next bite, Lionheart bleeked, then stood up on his rear set of paws, curling his one remaining upper true-hand and both hand-feet in mimicry of a cute gesture he’d seen a miniature poodle do when she and Karl had been putting up flyers at a popular eatery in Yawata Crossing. Stephanie suspected that Lionheart knew she found the pose completely nauseating and was doing it on purpose because she’d overlooked him and Valiant.
“The question is,” she said to Jessica, who was giggling uncontrollably at the sight, “do I reward annoying behavior? What do I do if Lionheart tries this in public? We have enough trouble convincing people that treecats may be fluffy but they’re not meant to be pets, without this sort of behavior. Imagine if Nosey Jones got a holo of it? We’d be doomed!”
“I will bet you my share of all future cupcakes,” Jessica said, handing each of the treecats one of the stalks of celery from the vase, “that Lionheart will never do that in public—especially since he’s got to know it annoys you. He’s jerking your chain because you were ignoring him and his guest. And, hey, you seem seriously distracted. Is anything wrong? Having trouble getting recruits for the SFS Explorers? Should I ask Melanie-Anne who else you might invite?”
Here it was: her opening—and her out. Stephanie waivered, then decided that if she could face a poacher, a hexapuma, forest fires, and muggers, surely she could talk honestly to her best friend.
“Uh-mmm.” Eloquent, Steph. Really, really eloquent. “So, how do you feel about Anders going back to Urako?”
Jessica ate a few bites of her sandwich, then several chips in a very thoughtful manner. She was quiet for so long that Stephanie finished her first sandwich and started to build a second. She was wondering if she should apologize for bringing up the subject when Jessica started talking.
“Honestly? I’ve been trying to figure that out. I mean, I knew he wouldn’t stay here on Sphinx forever. Don’t tell him this, but one of the reasons I was okay with dating him—because, I mean, we had gotten to be close, when you were off on Manticore, and I wanted to figure out if that was just because you were off on Manticore—was because I knew there was a natural break-up point. I’ve lived a lot of places, and knowing you’re going to move on makes it easier to try a relationship.”
“Not harder?” Stephanie blurted, honestly curious.
Even back on Meyerdahl, she hadn’t had a lot of friends her own age. She was still trying to figure what was normal or not. She tested how she’d feel if Buddy Pheriss announced his family was going to move again, and felt a sharp pang of loss.
But Jessica can’t leave, Stephanie thought, because of Valiant. And part of this conversation is to find out if she realizes that.
After crunching another chip, Jessica went on. “Not harder, not really, not unless someone becomes a really close friend. Like you are, I mean. I’d feel worse about leaving Sphinx than just about anywhere since I was five and had to leave my bestie from kindergarten.”
“So you agreed to date Anders because you knew that there would be a natural breakup?” Stephanie had to make sure she understood. When she’d fallen for Anders she’d thought this was It, the one, the true, just like in those serials that fade out with the dramatic declaration of love and never get into the details of mortgages or diapers or whatever.
“Kinda,” Jessica said. “You probably don’t know this, but Anders started declaring how he felt right after we’d been through a really horrible experience together. Suddenly, he’s babbling about wanting to protect me and all…It was sweet. It was also intense. And I was having my own revelations, and honestly, they had nothing to do with Anders.”
“That’s when you decided to become a doctor,” Stephanie said. It was hard to believe how little time had actually passed. Jessica’s decision was such a natural fit that it seemed as if she’d announced it at their first meeting.
But then, we haven’t been friends very long, really, have we? It wasn’t until my fifteenth birthday party that I realized Jessica wasn’t a complete zork. And I won’t be sixteen for a few more T-weeks.
Stephanie spoke her next thought aloud, without really thinking. “Funny. It’s really more like you’ve been dating future med-school than Anders, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Jessica finished her sandwich, looked at the makings, then shook her head. “You win the eating contest again. I want to save room for a cupcake—or two.”
The manner in which Jessica had taken the subject of Anders had relaxed Stephanie. She’d expected resentment or—horrors!—tears, but this calm, even calculated, response put her at her ease.
“Anders doesn’t feel that way,” Stephanie went on. “He actually snagged me, asked me to sound you out on an idea he’d had. I promised I would, do you mind?”
“Go ahead, but I’ll tell you right now, I’m not taking any promise ring and waiting for him to finish college and come back.”
“Oh, it’s not that.” Quickly, Stephanie sketched out Anders’s plan to take Jessica with him to Urako.
Jessica frowned. “Oh, so that’s why he keeps mentioning all the neat things on Urako. He’s trying to get me interested in advance.”
Stephanie nodded. “He’s even talked with his mother. He thinks she could get you a scholarship to finish school, even to med school. Do you want me to be the one to tell him that it won’t work or do you?”
Jessica was staring at Stephanie. Her hazel-green eyes had gotten wider and wider as Stephanie had detailed Anders’s plan. Now she froze.
“Won’t work? Because it would be leading him on to take the scholarship, but not be sure I wanted to be a couple?”
Stephanie felt her heart start racing. Uh-oh.
“Won’t work, because of Valiant. You can’t leave him, and you can’t take him. For now, I think the farthest any of us who’ve been adopted can go is someplace in-system. Maybe later we can go out-system but, even if Urako would let you take Valiant there—and Anders’s mom didn’t think that would be possible—it’s not likely the Star Kingdom would clear a ’cat for export, not now, not while their status is so uncertain.”
She kept talking, even though she saw that tears were flooding Jessica’s eyes, then spilling down her cheeks. Valiant leapt down from his perch and raced to her, making small worried sounds, similar to those Stephanie had heard mother treecats use to soothe their very tiny kittens. For a terrible moment, Stephanie thought Jessica might fling him away, but the bond was true. Jessica opened her arms and hugged Valiant to her, crying into his thick, soft fur while he patted her with whichever of his true-hands he could get free.
Eventually, Jessica choked out, “He saved me. I’d be dead without him. But I never asked for this. I never asked for my life to be lived in prison. But…”
She started sobbing again. To give her a moment, Stephanie rose and put on the kettle for what her father would jokingly call “a nice cup of tea.” She was rattling the cups onto a tray when she heard Jessica say, her voice muffled by the thickness of Valiant’s coat:
“I guess what I feel for Valiant must be real love because, while I could leave Anders in a heartbeat, I could never, never, never leave Valiant. And I wouldn’t want to.” Jessica laughed, a funny, strangled sound. “Add this to the list of things the Great Treecat Conspiracy is going to need to figure out—how to explain why we can’t travel without each other, without giving away the ’cats’ secret before its time.”
Stephanie understood. She’d already dealt with that issue once, but then it had been an internal SFS thing. “Explaining’s going to be rough on Anders because we can’t tell him all the details of the bond. We just can’t risk Dr. Whittaker learning about it and publishing what he’d surely view as important scientific information.”
“Poor Anders,” Jessica managed between sobs and giggles. “I’ll try and find a way to break it to him gently. I think I’d better just tell him I don’t care for him like he does me and leave Valiant out of it.”
“Yeah,” Stephanie said, “probably best, but Anders is smart. He’s going to suspect. You know he’s going to suspect.”
The skimmer park was as noisy as usual, so that Karl had to raise his voice slightly to be heard over the music that accompanied the skriders as they rode over the curves and convolutions of the complicated course.
It should be raw cacophony, Cordelia thought. I wonder what the base programming is, because no matter how many skriders, no matter where they are on the course, it never is.
“So where is Dia?” Karl asked. His tone was completely reasonable, but there was steel under it.
Cordelia, standing a few steps behind Karl, noticed that Survivor, perched on the pads set into Karl’s SFS uniform, was twitching his tail—not all of it, just the lower part, with its single ring. She thought that if Karl’s younger sister, Anastasia, could have seen the treecat’s reaction, she might have read her brother’s mood better than she did. Then again, maybe not. Staysa was something like thirteen and a half, an age when a lot of kids thought they were smarter they were.
“Dia? Nadia?” Anastasia said, looking side to side as if she’d just noticed that her older sister was not in the skimmer park. “She must be around here. Maybe she’s in the bathroom? I wasn’t really paying attention. Nadia’s so good on her skimmer, you know. I have to concentrate to keep up with her when we’re skimming.”
“Hmm…” Karl said, tapping his uni-link. “I’ll message her. If Dia’s not here before Cordelia and I come back from getting a frozen custard, she’s going to have to figure out if she’s good enough on her skimmer to get home on it—that or tell the folks why she wandered off, leaving you younger kids on your own.”
Cordelia’s sister, Natalie, piped up. “I’m almost Nadia’s age, only eight months younger.”
“Hmm…” was Karl’s only reply as he began to walk toward the concession stand at the far side of the park, motioning for Cordelia to join him. She noticed how he kept from breaking into his usual long stride out of consideration for her still-healing ankle. The passage of time had made a difference, but after being careful for so long, Cordelia sometimes felt as if she was learning to walk again—or not so much to walk as to trust that stepping wrong wasn’t going to send shooting pains up her leg.
“Do we get custard, too?” Anastasia called after them hopefully.
“Nope. You knew the rules for your and Dia’s coming to the skimmer park. I’m not going to reward breaking the rules.” Karl grinned back at his little sister, an easy, almost impish expression. “Besides, I’m betting you’ve already had at least one. There’s a spot on your shirt.”
Cordelia glanced over her shoulder and saw Anastasia scrubbing at her shirt. What caught her attention, though, was how Natalie was looking after them, her expression guarded and thoughtful.
Nat knows something, but she doesn’t want to rat out her new friend. Later, if it’s important I’ll push but, for now…
Once the younger girls couldn’t see his face, Karl let his annoyance seep into his expression. “Dia is becoming a problem. She’s fifteen now and boy crazy. I guess hormones turn on then or something. That’s when Stephanie went nuts for Anders, too. And Sumi…”
He stopped speaking abruptly, so Cordelia filled in before it could get awkward.
“Who’s the boy Dia’s crazy about?”
Karl’s frown deepened. “I don’t know. That bothers me a little. She’s had crushes before. Usually we could tell who the lucky person was because his name would come up every other sentence. Of course, most of those were ‘safe’ crushes—actors or music stars, not real people. But even the couple of times some ‘real’ person caught Dia’s eye, we weren’t kept in the dark.”
“Does she have a type?” Cordelia asked. “I mean, Mack always gets crushes on the same type: tall, dark, and handsome. He’d probably go for you in a moment.”
“Sorry,” Karl grinned, “he’s not my type. Nice guy and all, but…What’s Dia’s type? At least a few years older than her. A challenge in some way—maybe he has a girlfriend already or like that. Preference for the sophisticated sort, rather than your typical fifteen-year-old zork.”
“Which probably explains why she likes the older guys,” Cordelia said. “She can at least imagine they’re sophisticated. Can you talk to Dia? Do the big brother act?”
“Not if she’s interested in someone she doesn’t think I’d approve of,” Karl said, “or if she’s head over heels. I tried probing once, and she just snapped at me, ‘What do you know? When you were my age, you were practically engaged!’”
He stopped, as if he’d said too much, then visibly pushed himself to continue. “It was a situation not all that different from yours with the Kemper boys. Sumiko’s family and ours were close. She came to live with us after they died in the Plague. Same age. She made up her mind we were destined for each other. I was, well, me. It didn’t mean the same thing to me. I mean, I was fond of her, loved her, even, but when she started pushing for us to get engaged young, even hinted about our getting married before we were done with college, I balked.”
“And…” Cordelia had noticed the past tense. She couldn’t remember anyone mentioning a Sumiko, and she’d been spending a lot of time with the Zivoniks lately.
“She died. An accident. For a long time I blamed myself. Lately, I’ve been trying to forgive myself, but…” He shrugged.
They’d reached the frozen custard stand. Choosing flavors and sizes gave breathing space. Cordelia noticed Survivor nuzzling against the side of Karl’s face, making that loud, thrumming purr that was so curiously soothing. Karl visibly relaxed, the shadow that had gathered over him as he talked about Sumiko vanishing.
Cordelia remembered what Stephanie had said about Karl and Survivor’s bond: “I still don’t know what brought them together like that, but whatever linked them, the bond has been terrific for them both.”
I bet Stephanie knew perfectly well what brought them together. The name Karl gave Survivor says it all: They’ve both survived tremendous grief and loss. And I’ll bet anything that they both had a fair share of survivor’s guilt to top it off. Karl’s admitted it, and who’s to say that a treecat isn’t capable of feeling something like that? Maybe they even feel it even more. If they can feel other people’s emotions, they’d have to be able to feel when those they’re close to are sick or starving.
But Stephanie couldn’t explain without talking about Karl’s past, and even if they’re buddies, she isn’t going to abuse that trust. There’s a lot to like about that kid. And about Karl, too…
Cordelia thought how relieved she’d been when, the day after Frank Câmara’s unwelcome visit, Karl had “just happened” to show up again. And he kept showing up. He always had a perfectly good excuse: patrol route in the area; getting her and Natalie’s opinion on some aspect of the SFS Explorers; offering to drop Natalie off after some event she’d been at with one or both of his sisters; bringing a treat Athos might like or a spare cat bed or sweater, or, like today, suggesting they pick up the girls together.
If they had lived in the same area, this might have seemed completely normal, but Karl’s family lived way out near Thunder River, while the Schardt-Cordova holding was pretty much in the opposite direction, on the other side of Twin Forks. Maybe as a ranger Karl was used to putting in the kilometers and the distance didn’t matter to him, but Cordelia couldn’t help but wonder.
Is there something going on, more than just protectiveness or because we’re both the newest members of the very exclusive Treecat Conspiracy?
She didn’t know what she thought about Karl maybe “liking” her. Unlike Dia, she’d never been boy crazy. Or girl crazy. She’d dated a little, but romance just wasn’t her thing.
Maybe I had too much of it from all of Mack’s crushes? He was always either over the moon or down in the dumps. It didn’t make falling in love seem like a lot of fun.
Karl handed her a chocolate and mint frozen custard piled high in a waffle cone. “Shall we amble back? My uni-link pinged, and Dia has returned. She says she was in the ladies’ room with an upset stomach and thanks me for my concern. Tartly. With appropriate emojis.”
“You’re not going to ask her where she was, are you?”
“Nope. Stupid as the day, that’s me.” He lifted his custard so Survivor could sniff it, then brought it down, unlicked. “But I won’t forget. I promise you. I won’t forget.”