Carrie Vaughn - Dreams of the Golden Age

“An unexpected round two, I take it,” he said. His smile was maybe meant to be sympathetic. Or smug. Or both.

She smugged back. “I’m sorry, I can’t comment until I’ve spoken with West Corp’s lawyers.”

“Ah. Of course. Well then, until round three, Mrs. West.”

Mrs. West was her mother, not her. She saved her ire for a more important argument and left the room.

Reporters were waiting in the lobby. Tipped off by Superior Construction, no doubt. Maybe this was all a stupid publicity stunt. She wouldn’t put that kind of thing past anyone.

She spent a stunned moment standing frozen in the elevator after the door opened, confronted by a crowd of photographers snapping pictures and reporters holding out recorders. Maybe only five or six of them, but the group seemed immense when they were all standing in front of her. Shades of days gone by, when they’d shout questions about her joining the Destructor and expect her to say something coherent.

Then she smiled and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t comment until I’ve spoken with West Corp’s lawyers.” Marched straight through the middle of them to the car waiting outside, where Tom ran interference, blocking the way while she escaped into the back.

She never understood it, but she’d come to appreciate it over the years. Warren West’s grave had started as a simple granite block at the edge of the family plot, where his own parents were buried. A square gray headstone read:

WARREN WEST

CAPTAIN OLYMPUS

HUSBAND, FATHER, HERO

Green lawn covered the space and sloped down a hill to the rest of the cemetery, rows and rows of headstones dating back a hundred years. But his grave had acquired additions: a couple of extra blocks announcing “in honor of”; tributes from the city and other organizations; a statue of a heroic, stylized figure standing tall and looking skyward—not exactly Captain Olympus but certainly meant to recall him. After twenty years, the grave site had become a shrine. It was always covered with flowers.

Usually when Celia went to visit, she did so early in the morning to make sure she didn’t have to share the space with any of the hundreds—maybe even thousands—of Captain Olympus’s admirers trooping through to pay their respects. She stopped by a couple of times a year. Sometimes on his birthday, sometimes on the anniversary of his death. Sometimes, like this afternoon, just because. A couple was already there, standing before the headstone, snapping pictures. Celia waited some distance away until they were finished before approaching and settling on the lawn, legs folded to the side.

“Hey, Dad.” She didn’t like to think about how much easier he was to talk to now than he had been when he was alive. He was in a box, six feet under, rotted. She didn’t like to think of that, either. “I’ve got a lot of stuff going on right now. I know I always say that. But this time … I don’t know. I want to walk away from it all. Grab Arthur and the kids and just go. But I can’t. I keep wondering if you ever felt like that. Like throwing out the suit and just being you. I know you’d never say it out loud. Maybe I should ask Arthur if you ever thought it.

“The kids … well, they’re teenagers, they just have to get through it. I can’t make it any easier for them, but God, I wish I could. Anna—you know what I keep thinking? That Anna would talk to you. She won’t talk to any of us, not even Mom. But maybe, if you were still here, she could talk to you. It wouldn’t even bother me, because then at least she’d have someone. Isn’t it crazy? That I just keep thinking how much easier this would all be if you were here? And I know that isn’t right, because you weren’t really like that, you never made anything easier, you would just keep telling me that I was doing everything wrong, and that I don’t know what I’m doing or what I’m talking about—”

She shook her head, wiping her eyes before tears could fall. Gazed at the heroic statue with the smooth features that wasn’t even supposed to look like her father and realized that that was what her memories of him had turned into: a featureless palette upon which she could map any emotion, assumption, supposition she wanted.

“That’s not fair, I know. I’m sorry. I just … you’d love the girls, Dad. I wish you could have met them. And I miss you. I miss what we all might have turned into. And … I have leukemia. Because of the radiation from Paulson’s device. I’m sick and I don’t know what to do.”

Her father didn’t say anything.

She pursed her lips, sighed. Got up from the grass, brushed herself off, and walked away.

Almost her whole life, people came up to her—at business meetings, symphony galas, museum fund-raisers, everywhere—and grabbed her hand, squeezing it with an emotional desperation, the look in their eyes sharp as needles, and thanked her. “Your father saved my life. I can’t thank him, so please, let me thank you. He saved my life.” They’d been on a school bus that caught fire, they’d been held hostage at the baseball stadium when the Destructor sealed it in his electrified force field, they’d fallen from a crashing airplane, and Captain Olympus had been there to catch them, to save them.

She would offer a sincere smile and tell them that she understood.

Once, exactly once in the last twenty years, at the ribbon cutting of a new hospital that West Corp had built, a woman with a teenage daughter approached Celia and thanked her. Not her parents, her. “You probably don’t remember us, it’s been so long and it was such a mess. But that day the bus was hijacked, and you stopped it from going into the river—we were there. I’m the one with the baby. This is my baby.” She put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, gripping her like a prize.

Of course Celia remembered, and just the mention of the baby brought the scene back: the overheated bus, the baby screaming loud enough to rattle glass, the horrific moment when they all believed they were going to die, the bus launched into the harbor by a homicidal driver. Celia had stopped him. Killed him, actually, but no one seemed to mind that part. The faint scar on her forehead from her own injuries twinged at the memory.

The girl, a skinny thing who hadn’t grown into herself yet, smiled awkwardly and looked both embarrassed and awestruck. “You saved us,” the mother said, tearfully. “You saved us.”

Celia had hugged them both. The girl was just a few years older than Anna, and she was alive because of Celia. For a moment, she understood her father a little better.

When she got back to her office, she found a message waiting from Director Benitez at Elmwood. Please call back, no details. This was almost certainly about Anna. Celia checked the time—the kids should be getting home from school soon. Steeling herself, she called the director.

“Hello, Ms. West? Thank you so much for returning my call. I wanted to talk to you about Anna.”

“Yes, I expected that you would,” Celia said. “What’s the problem now?”

“She fell asleep in two different class periods today. If it had only happened once, I wouldn’t worry, I know how teens are. But this really isn’t like her. Ms. West, I’m sorry for asking this—but is everything all right at home?”

No, it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. Might not ever be again. But she couldn’t say that to this woman. “I appreciate your concern, Ms. Benetiz, really I do. I’ll talk to her, I promise.”

Celia could hear frustration in the director’s reply. “Yes, I’m sure you will, but there’s only so much a simple talk can do, if the underlying issues aren’t resolved.”

“What do you suggest then, Ms. Benitez?”