Chapter 12 #2
“Grace,” Earnest said, giving me an unusually guarded look. His skin was a deeper brown than mine, partially covered by the silvery gray beard he’d only grown in recent years, his hair shaved short. Like many agathos, he worked among humans. He and Creed were both attorneys.
Earnest, Valor, and Mother were quite similar. They were all strict, legalistic, and agreed on most things. Creed was gentler, and Chance had a mostly well-hidden rebellious streak that supported my theory that he was my biological father.
“Where did your mother go?” he asked, looking past me into the foyer. “And what happened to your eye?”
“She’s getting Mercy and the boys. And bad luck,” I replied, immediately going to the sink to wash my hands so I could do salad prep.
Valor strode into the kitchen, his gaze sweeping imperiously over the dinner preparations.
He was a very serious-looking man—tall and wiry, with salt and pepper hair slicked to the side and heavy rimmed glasses.
He taught science at the small agathos private school in Auburn that myself and everyone I’d grown up with attended, and was always dressed like a science teacher in his slacks, collared shirts, and wool jumpers.
“Grace,” he said sharply. “Your mother is very distressed that you were sitting in the car outside, being so inconsiderate of your hosts.”
I tried to force out an apology, but I couldn’t lie and I wasn’t sorry. I’d been sitting there three minutes tops, and it was my parents’ house .
“You really should be more conscious of your mother’s feelings,” Valor continued. “Your situation is so hard for her. It’s been worse since you moved away.”
“Are you still happy in Milton?” Earnest asked dubiously, pulling the garlic bread out of the oven.
“Very much so.”
All three of them looked at me with matching stunned expressions. It was definitely my most effusive answer to that question since I’d moved to Milton. Sugar , I needed to work on my poker face.
“Well,” Chance said with a clap, pulling out wine glasses. “Your happiness is what matters most.”
Valor huffed like he didn’t agree with that assessment, but said nothing.
Mother swept in with Mercy’s arm linked through hers in a vice-like grip, my grimacing cousin rushing to keep pace. Tobin and Leon were still on the stairs, Creed’s gentle voice cajoling them down.
Sometimes I wondered if I’d have turned out differently if my fathers had been more hands on raising me, and if that’s why they were more involved with Tobin and Leon. To avoid another me .
“Mercy,” I greeted her, pulling her gently out of Mother’s hold. We weren’t an overly affectionate family—I had almost shoved Mercy away in a panic the first time she’d launched herself at me. Now, I’d grown grateful for her hugs.
“Cousin,” she exhaled gratefully, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I have missed you,” she whispered dramatically, which was code for she’d been having a tough time at the house recently.
“I missed you too,” I replied quietly, squeezing her shoulders as I pushed her unruly curls out of my face.
“Dinner,” Mother commanded curtly. I’d wondered before if the hugs between Mercy and I made her uncomfortable because that wasn’t how our family was, but I was beginning to think she was envious.
Mother didn’t have that kind of easy affection outside of her soul bonds, not even with her own children.
Leon and Tobin waved as they skipped past me to the table, and I followed them feeling a little sad that I didn’t feel particularly close to my much younger brothers. They looked at me like a fun aunt who dropped in occasionally. They’d looked at me like that even when I’d lived here.
At least the food was good at family dinners—I could endure almost anything for lasagna.
I almost regretted the amount of snacks I’d consumed today, but then I remembered how fun it had been to have Riot hand-feeding me popcorn while I bopped along to We’re All In This Together and decided I had no regrets at all.
“So, about Constance,” Mother began as we all sat down at the more informal dining table in the kitchen. My lasagna-fuelled balloon of hope sank like lead.
“I asked if there was any hope for you moving up from a Monitor role sometime soon,” Earnest volunteered, finishing Mother’s train of thought. “She didn’t seem optimistic. We’ve been wondering for a long time if this job is the right fit for you.”
My hands tightened around my cutlery to the point of pain, and I forced myself to relax before Mother noticed.
Was it too much for someone to say ‘ Grace, how are you?’ or perhaps ask what I’d been doing lately, or how the changes I’d been making to the apartment were coming along, or any open-ended question that demonstrated a genuine interest in my life?
They didn’t even seem that concerned about the black eye, and honestly it stung. Agathos women were meant to be cherished, and they were . Just not me. I’d been a weird, difficult kid who’d emerged with a gift no one respected, and then never felt the call to my soul bonds like I should have.
My mother had worked so hard to raise our reputations when people in Auburn had looked down on her as tacky and nouveau riche, and I was the black mark against the name she’d been trying to build.
Creed and Chance shot me sympathetic smiles, but I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t speak up. Their passive natures seemed to be designed by Anesidora to balance out the three more domineering ones.
“I enjoy my work,” I said evenly. “Of course, it would be nice to move up to a role with more responsibility, but everyone at the shelter is helping the people who stay there, no matter what role they are in.”
“Hear, hear,” Chance replied, winking at me from across the table.
For a while, we ate in awkward silence. My parents seemed to be having a silent conversation with their eyes, and I bit my tongue so I didn’t make the situation worse for myself.
Even Tobin and Leon were quietly eating their dinner, sensing the tension in the room.
I got the feeling my parents had never worked out what to do with me when I didn’t immediately comply with their wishes, because it was such an un-agathos thing to do.
My friends certainly didn’t push back on their parents’ wishes.
I couldn’t tell if my parents were unduly harsh, or if I was unduly rebellious.
Mercy discreetly gave me a supportive nudge from her spot next to me, and I shot her a grateful smile in return. She was the one person who made me feel like I wasn’t a total alien within my own family or the community as a whole.
Mercy wasn’t very good at being sweet either.
I dropped my napkin on the floor so I’d have a reason to bend down and discreetly rub my aching chest. The aching hollowness that came with being apart from Riot was creeping up faster than usual.
Probably because I was wishing more than anything that he was here with me, offering me his unending support like he always did.
I never felt judged or unworthy with him, even when I was doing things that I judged myself for.
“The Elders have proposed a new outreach trip, leaving in a month,” Valor said with forced casualness.
I glanced up to find all of my parents wearing matching expressions of grim determination.
There was a heavy sense of resignation at the table, with the exception of my oblivious brothers and a suddenly alert Mercy.
This was definitely not a spontaneous choice of topic.
“Oh?” I managed to ask, bumping my elbow hard on the edge of the table and trying to hide my wince as foreboding creeped like spiders up my spine.
I’d never been fond of outreach trips. Agathos were all over the world, but we were drawn to densely populated areas where we were best able to serve.
Outreach trips were always in rural areas that agathos didn’t want to live in, designed to give the humans there a chance to experience our gifts.
They sweetened the deal by choosing beautiful locations, which most agathos would never get to see because we mostly only traveled to find our soul bonds in other cities.
Those were the official lines, at least.
I’d always thought of them as a convenient way to put single agathos men somewhere.
Those whose soul bond hadn’t made it to adulthood and had never felt the call.
There weren’t a lot of them, but when it happened, they were inevitably moved along.
The structure of our society, the social events, even the housing in agathos communities was all designed around a specific type of family unit, and singles were surplus to requirements.
It was exile by a prettier name.
“To Indonesia,” Valor continued. “A small community in Sumatra where you can see orangutans right across the river. Wouldn’t that be something?” he asked as if he’d ever had an interest in animal life before now.
I looked between him and my tight-lipped mother, trying to figure out if I risked their wrath by just demanding they tell me where they were going with this.
Be sweet. Think about chubby babies and rainbows and happy things .
“The Elders would like you to go, Grace,” Mother said eventually, lifting one shoulder like I wasn’t being essentially banished from my community.
“What?” Mercy interjected. “No. Girls don’t go on outreach trips. What about her soul bonds—”
“If Grace hasn’t felt the call by now, the Elders do not believe she ever will,” Valor cut in, giving Mercy a warning look. “If she were a man, she would have already been assigned somewhere.”
I already knew that, but I’d never considered that I would go, given that women were never sent on outreach trips.