25. Jaxson
25
Jaxson
N o sooner than I’ve given Lauressa the address is she typing away on her phone. I don’t know for what reason until she starts to set the table in the dining room, directing J and Serenity to bring in chairs from the kitchen table so there are enough chairs.
“Enough chairs for who?” I ask.
“For the people I invited for dinner,” she says.
“Who did you invite for dinner?” I ask.
“Magdalene, Landon, Caleb, Lilah, Adah, Ruth—she’s my Sentry—and um… You said you sent Shelly back to Chicago to take care of your businesses, so… I texted to see if she was free.”
“You invited seven people over for an impromptu dinner party?” I ask.
She shrugs. “We have to get rid of the food somehow.”
A sigh escapes my lips before I can restrain it.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
Not until I was separated from her, and I’ve been in South Carolina and expected to perform in a way that’s befitting of the son of the Oracle like I have been for my entire life did I realize how exhausting it was. Not until I was separated from her through no choice of my own did I realize how much I had grown to relax around Lauressa. Nothing is ever a performance with her. Even when I try to put on a performance, she sees right through it. I was hoping for a couple of days with her where I wouldn’t have to do that. But with her inviting people into our bubble, I’ll be expected to perform the part.
“Just wasn’t in the mood for company,” I say instead of voicing all that. If Lauressa wants to invite people for dinner, I can put up with it.
Lauressa, as always, sees right through me.
“You know, for all that you act like you’re the all perfect son of the Oracle, they all know you’re not. They know you hate people. They all know behind that kind, reserved veneer you try to hide behind, you’re actually a huge asshole. And none of them hate you for it. They laugh about it. They love you for it,” she explains. She adds, “And all of them know that we’re involved. So you can relax. You don’t have to pretend around them. You can trust them.”
Trust. It’s not trusting people that’s the reason I’ve gotten so far in the Sovereignty. It’s the last lesson that my sister left me before she died. Trust no one. If she hadn’t trusted our mother, my father wouldn’t have ordered my mother to kill her. If she hadn’t trusted our mother, she would have been living out in Portugal or the Netherlands somewhere. And I would have been with her. Maybe Magdalene and Jessie too. Because her crime wasn’t just being the daughter of the Oracle and wanting to leave. It was wanting to leave and take three children of the Sovereignty with her.
I can’t stop it. Lauressa has already invited who she’s invited .
“Have room for two more?” I ask. “Three, really. But one is a toddler.”
“Sure,” Lauressa says, brightening. “The more, the merrier.”
I take out my phone and send a quick text to Jessie, inviting her and her son to dinner with the address. I’m not shocked when she immediately replies that she’ll be here. She’s been mostly confined to the house with her son, and who the hell knows where her husband is. The next person I text is Abner, but he doesn’t immediately reply, which isn’t out of the ordinary. He may even be on a flight back to LA now.
Two hours later, our guests begin to trickle in.
First are Lilah, Adah, Landon, and Caleb.
“It smells delicious in here,” Lilah says when she comes in. She looks to Lauressa. “Did you cook all this?”
“Yes,” Lauressa says, sounding way too pleased for someone who I know generally does not like cooking and hosting people.
“Can’t wait. You texted just in time. Adah and I were just debating if we wanted to ask the cooks to cook us something or if we were going to go out and drag Landon and Caleb,” Lilah says.
Adah greets everyone as she’s expected, taciturn as she usually is unless in very controlled, intimate circles. But when she greets me, she pauses.
I wait expectantly for her to talk. Adah and I hardly ever interact. She’s just another one of my father’s conduits and is out of the country more often than not or visiting her daughters at the expensive, private boarding school she manipulated my father into sending them to so they don’t have to deal with Sovereignty bullshit.
Finally, she says, “I’ll let you both have tonight. But try not to drag out her heartbreak, alright? Lauressa’s a nice girl. She’s going to be your father’s conduit. You’re going to be the Oracle one day. Best be upfront with her now.”
She walks away without waiting for me to reply.
“You don’t know how happy I was to get your text, Jaxson,” Jessie says as she comes into the house with Shelly behind her.
“Where’s my nephew?” I ask.
“With his grandmother, thank the Supreme Force. No way I’d enjoy myself with him,” she says.
A little ways away, Shelly is receiving what looks like a chilly reception from Lauressa.
“No more secretly spying on me for your boss?” Lauressa asks.
“I don’t use the same tactics twice, Snow White,” I say. “You’re too intelligent for that.”
Lauressa raises her middle finger in my direction, causing Shelly to laugh.
“I’m not sorry. It helped to bring you where you belong. With us. In the Sovereignty,” Shelly adds. Then, “But the sisterhood comes before any man, and now that you’re part of it, I’ll spy on him for you.”
Lauressa grins. “Oh? And what do you have to report?”
Before I can remind Shelly that she still works for me, Magdalene calls my name.
“Jaxson… whose children did you kidnap, or is there something you need to tell us?” Magdalene asks, standing with a woman who I assume to be Ruth based on how much her profile matches Lauressa’s.
“Oh, please, Blair,” Jessie says. “They look nothing like him.”
“They could look like their mother,” Landon says, with Caleb standing next to him. I ignore how the back of their hands just brush against each other.
“Serenity is a friend of J’s. J is my foster son,” I answer, thinking nothing of the cover I’ve been using to explain J’s presence.
The entire room goes silent as everyone turns to me.
“You have a son now,” Jessie says in surprise. “And you didn’t tell anyone?”
“Foster son,” I say, not comprehending the big deal.
“But he is your son. If you’re fostering him, you’re going to adopt him, right?” Landon asks.
“I think that’s for Jaxson and J to discuss at a later time,” Lauressa cuts in as she begins to subtly guide everyone into the dining room.
“Who cares about legalities?” Lilah asks as she grabs J in a hug. “Welcome to the family, young man.” She then turns to the direction of Landon. “You have no excuses now.”
“Jaxson is still not married. So it doesn’t count,” Landon says as he hurriedly follows Lauressa into the dining room.
There’s a brief commotion over who’s going to sit where before finally it’s agreed that I sit at the head of the table, Lauressa sits next to me, J on my right with Serenity next to him, followed by Lilah, Adah, Magdalene, and Jessie. And next to Lauressa are Landon, Caleb, and Ruth.
“Who’s blessing the food?” Lilah asks .
Everyone looks expectantly at me. If I were putting on a performance before the rest of the Sovereignty, that would be the end of it. I’m the highest ranking, technically. The future Oracle, presumably. Aside from that, this is my house, and as such, I should take the lead.
I decide, for once, to at least forgo the performance even if trusting is too far for me.
“I would prefer not to,” I say. “Whoever wants to can.”
“Oh! I’ll do it,” Lilah volunteers.
“Nope,” Landon says. “I will. The food will be cold by the time Mom is done.”
The entire table snickers before it’s silenced as Landon says a very quick, very brief grace that has his mother glaring disapprovingly at him when he’s done. Not that he cares as he immediately takes the mashed potatoes for himself.
It’s not long before the table is chaos. Loud with competing conversations that sometimes end up intersecting, and interactions I wouldn’t otherwise notice if I weren’t sitting at the head of the table. Like the way Magdalene keeps making eyes at Ruth, which makes me take a closer look at her and realize that she’s the other woman in that sex video I have of Magdalene as blackmail. Suddenly her choosing Ruth as the Sentry for Lauressa makes sense. I also notice Landon taking a piece of squash off his plate onto his fork and feeding it to Caleb to let him taste. I’m not the only one to notice that as Adah masterfully directs Lilah’s attention away from the obvious to anyone who grew up with Landon and Caleb or spent more than five minutes observing the two together .
Jessie jumps from conversation to conversation, just happy to have company that’s adult and not a toddler and educational television all day.
“Any words of wisdom to share with the table, big brother?” Landon jokes.
I can’t help letting out a snicker at that. “Gods, no.”
“Thank you for sparing us,” Magdalene says.
“I have some words to say,” Lilah says.
Adah and Landon roll their eyes good-naturedly and say together, “Of course, you do.”
Lilah ignores them and says, “I know that being in Sovereignty isn’t easy. All of us have sacrificed something to be here, and if you haven’t, eventually you will. But we plan, and so does the Supreme Force through his Oracle. At the end of the day, we’re all here when we otherwise might not have ever met each other, and I, for one, am glad that we’re all here and hope that our family continues to expand.”
“You’re such a sap,” Jessie mutters, wiping at her eyes.
“Is this the part where we toast?” J asks.
“Oh, right,” Lauressa says, lifting up her glass of non-alcoholic sparkling cider.
Everyone follows suit, and the sound of glass clinking sounds across the table, and the conversations continue.
As they do, I can’t help but observe how much of a stark contrast this dinner is to all the ones I’ve ever had with my father. Dinners with him are quiet, solemn, and serious affairs. The only topic of discussion allowed is to do with Sovereignty doctrine, usually with him lecturing or giving advice with or without solicitation. There are no side conversations allowed, and, besides my father, no one does much talking.
Lilah’s words make me wonder about how much my father has sacrificed to get his power. His friends. His wife. His conduits. His children. All because he coveted the position of Oracle. Months ago, I would have understood it. Would have believed that nothing mattered except the power that came with becoming Oracle and how I would go about attaining it. Now?
Now I wonder how my father was willing to give up all this. How was he able to kill his daughter and order her own mother to do it? How was he willing to miss watching his children grow up to travel around the country and the world to lecture and give sermons about whatever doomsday message he preaches, trying to find the Supreme Force’s “chosen ones?” How was he willing to look at his son and take the woman he clearly cared for? How was he willing to stab in the back a man who he calls in his lectures closer to him than his actual, long-dead blood brother? That is, if the accounts of those Lauressa has interviewed are true.
It's like the adage goes, I suppose. What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?
“I hope there’s still some food left for me,” Abner says, walking into the dining room.
“Of course,” Lauressa says with a bright smile.
“Abner. It’s been a while,” Adah says.
“Move down so I can catch up with my best friend,” Abner says, gesturing for J to move down.
After a bit of shuffling and passing his plates and utensils over, everyone is settled again and falls back into their silos of conversation.
“I don’t know what the hell game you’re playing at, Jaxson,” Abner mutters to me as he fixes his plate. “But whatever it is, you have my support. Whatever you need, ask.”
“Depends on what you’re offering,” I say.
Abner smirks and leans over to whisper, “You think Raphael’s little followers are the only people your father has pissed off?” He pauses to laugh. “Boy, have I got an encyclopedia for you.”