Michael Kube-McDowell - The Quiet Pools

There was never any formal declaration, no doors slammed. But silence was its own message.

That was the gap he had to bridge. And all he had to throw across it were words. Two words.

“Hello, Annie.”

It was a jolt to see how she had aged. The picture he carried frozen in his mind was of her at the rail of the Toronto harbor ferry, pointing out the sights, or standing on the balcony of her 94th Street high rise, watching the two-mile-long shadow of Columbus Tower sweep across the city—a brave-eyed wry-mouthed woman in her twenties, living what seemed then like an adventure.

But fifteen years had taken the courage from her eyes and twisted her mouth into a cynical pout. She looked at him won-deringly for a long moment before she spoke.

“Christopher,” she said. “God, but you’re looking worn.”

That was the second jolt. The picture he carried of himself was also frozen, locked in the first time he looked in the mirror and no longer saw a boy, with no allowance made for further aging.

“It’s been that kind of year,” he said ruefully.

Lynn-Anne passed on the opportunity to invite him to explain. “So, you’ve joined the real world at last,” she said. “Life is the great leveler. You don’t know how much comfort I take in that.”

“I wanted to wish you happy holidays,” he said. “Are you going to do anything special?”

“I don’t celebrate a winter holiday anymore, Christopher,” she said with a politely tolerant smile. “I didn’t believe in most of it, and the rest has been a disappointment. It’s rained for Solstice Moon three years running, Santa Claus is just a nice old man with whiskers, and I’m still waiting for Jesus to decide he wants me. Hardly any point, wouldn’t you say?”

“I had my doubts about Santa Claus early on,” Christopher said with a gentle smile. “But it’s still a good excuse for catching up with people you’ve been neglecting.”

Though she was only forty-two, Lynn-Anne had mastered the dowager’s raised-eyebrow look of skeptical disdain. “This may come as a surprise, but I don’t feel neglected,” she said. “It isn’t an accident that I moved here, you know. And I do know where you are and how to use the link. Besides, I hardly think that’s why you called.”

He frowned. “Why do you think I called, then?”

Leaning forward, Lynn-Anne collected the cup on the table before her. “Based on past experience, you either want something from me or you’re going to apologize for something you’ve already done to me,” she said, and raised the cup to her lips.

It was an attack, and yet said so quietly, so gently, that he hardly knew how to respond. “I need your help,” he said. “I need your help understanding what happened to our family.”

Her laugh was unpleasant. “We don’t have a family, Christopher. We only have relatives.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “Maybe that’s right,” he said. “But if it is, I don’t know why.”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because I’m trying to build a new family,” he said. “And I seem to keep tripping over pieces of the old one.”

“Give it up for a loss,” she said shortly. “McCutcheons don’t know how to love. It’s a birth defect. Their hearts are too small.”

“I don’t want to believe that.”

“Of course not,” said his sister. “You think you can have what you want, just because you’re you and you want it. You always have.”

“Why are you angry at me?” he asked beseechingly. “I don’t understand what I did to you.”

Frowning, she shook her head. “Be careful what you wish for. I might tell you.” She set the cup down before her. “Thank you for the holiday wishes, Christopher. And the same to you, just as sincerely meant. Good night.”

And the screen brightened to white.

“Damn you!” Christopher exclaimed, bouncing up from the couch, jangling with frustration. Satisfying Meyfarth’s conditions was no longer uppermost in his mind. Lynn-Anne had seen to that, with her genteel sniping and infuriating dismissal.

He waited five minutes, composing himself, composing his words, and then called back. As he half expected, this time her AIP answered over the simple blue and black identifier screen.

“I’d like to leave a message,” he said resignedly.

“Ready.”

“Surprise, surprise,” Christopher said. “It looks like you’re just as good at avoiding the past as I am, Annie. I thought you stayed out there because you didn’t like us. I never thought it was because you were afraid of us.

“We were a family once, on B Street. You were part of it. I was part of it. Maybe it didn’t last very long, but it was important. You’re a witness to my life. I need your memories to help me sort it out and put it in order. And if there’s some grudge you’re holding because of something I don’t even remember, I need to know that, too.

“You used to tell me stories about our mother, and that was important to me. You knew her. I never had that chance. Buck and Annie didn’t even consider me a relative. But I needed to know what part of her is in me. I needed her to be real—”

Unexpectedly, the display brightened, and Lynn-Anne’s face appeared. “You don’t have any right to call Sharron ‘Mother,’ ” she said, her eyes flashing angrily.

“You thought I did then.”

“I’ve learned things since then,” she said. “Hard things.”

“I know that in most ways Deryn was to me what Sharron was to you. But Sharron gave me life. She made half of me. I’ve always felt that I had a father and two mothers.”

“Wrong,” Lynn-Anne said curtly. “You had a father and a keeper. That’s all.”

“Look—”

“You really don’t know your own history very well, do you, brother dear? I ran away the day you were born. I spent five weeks on the coast, Cannon Beach, Nehalem, Tillamook, before they found me.”

“Why?” Christopher asked, brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

“Hurt feelings. While Deryn was pregnant with you, it seemed like I didn’t exist. William fussed and fretted and hovered and dictated every detail of what she did, so you’d be healthy. You were such a big production it was pretty obvious that he wanted you because I wasn’t good enough, that he wanted you a lot more than he wanted me. So guess what—I was rooting for you to die. Then Deryn would go away and everything would be the way it was.”

Christopher blinked. “I never heard anything about that.”

“Who would tell you?” she asked. “But you went and survived, even came two weeks early. As far as I could see, it was only going to get worse once you were actually born, so I left. I was just two months short of majority when they dragged me back.”

“But then you stayed for five years .”

“Yes,” she said, and glanced down at her folded hands. “And you even lived through them.” She looked up. “Does that shock you? That I thought about killing you?”

He swallowed. “Yes.”

“Just remember, this was your idea,” she said, and settled back in her chair. “I had never been around a baby. I didn’t expect you to be cute. Deryn let me hold you, and I felt—protective. You were so tiny, so helpless. And then Deryn told me that I was the closest connection you had to your mother— to Sharron—and that you needed me. That Sharron—that my mother would have expected me to help.” Lynn-Anne fought off a tear with an angry shake of the head. “Stupid me, I believed her.”

“She wasn’t wrong,” said Christopher. “I looked up to you. I loved you.”

She was silent for a moment. “Past tense,” she said finally. “Or didn’t you notice?”

“I do love you—”