55. Bertram #3
“What did he tell you it meant?” Bertram asked.
Helena blushed and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Bertram started to push harder, but the look on Helena’s face stopped him.
It probably took a lot for her to admit this.
As she had pointed out, they never even said they were officially dating.
They clearly were, though, and now he knew that they both felt it.
They had both felt the pull that this could be something larger, this could have been forever.
He wanted it so badly to have been forever.
Helena did as well, and if that were as much as she was willing to share about that facet of it, Bertram could respect that.
But there were other parts of the painful, beautiful story that he could not let go of so easily.
“What else did you talk about?” Bertram asked instead. “With my dad.”
Helena looked at him with some curiosity.
“I . . . it didn’t used to matter, you know?
” Bertram laughed and shook his head. “He and I talked all the time. About stupid stuff. But now that I’ll never talk with him again, it feels like any—any little piece of him I can gather, it’s just one more new moment I have with him, just when I think I’m all out of new moments. ”
Helena nodded, quietly, her lips in a tight, thin line.
Bertram wondered if even this was pushing her too far, if these moments between her and Urghk were too private for her to share. He had hoped they wouldn’t be, but he recognized that this whole conversation was taking place in delicate, uncharted territory for the two of them.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have pushed. Perhaps he should have been happy with the few glimpses of his father she had given him already.
Bertram swallowed. “It’s fine if you don’t want—”
“No, no! I’m just trying to remember.” Helena smiled.
“It’s like you said—at the time, it didn’t matter, it was just talk.
But now—now it all matters so much. I think that was when he told me a story about one of his first dates with your mom.
Not even ‘date,’ really, just the first afternoon they spent together.
When she was doing her flying fox study and he took her down the tunnels to his family’s turnip farm and they talked for hours.
He said that’s the important thing in a spouse—that you be able to talk.
He said money comes and goes. Youth and beauty fade.
But who a Person is, that’s who you’re marrying. ”
Helena laughed. “Of course, the irony is that with Dr. J, the money is from such a long, noble lineage that it’s not going anywhere, and her youth and beauty won’t fade, because she’s an immortal being .
. . but Urghk really, really didn’t care about any of that.
He loved her so much, Bertram. I know you know that.
But I wanted to say it again. The way he talked about her, it was the most beautiful thing. ”
Bertram swallowed. “It was, yeah.”
“I never had that at home,” Helena said.
“It wasn’t even like I witnessed a mediocre love; there just was no love to witness.
My mom didn’t want my dad. She didn’t even want me.
But seeing Urghk and Dr. J together, it gave me hope that there was such a thing as true love.
And not only the fairytale type of true love, where it exists on a kiss and a wish and everything’s perfect.
But the kind of true love that you create, that you plant and water and weed and tend and grow and never stop tending and growing.
If I find someone who loves me half as much as Jennie and Urghk loved each other, I would consider myself ridiculously lucky. ”
“That would mean a lot to him, I’m sure,” Bertram said, quietly.
Helena smiled. “Dr. J said the same thing.”
Bertram’s stomach flipped.
“You talked about that with my mom?” Bertram asked.
“Why?” said Helena, looking vaguely alarmed. “Should I not have?”
“No, it’s fine.” Bertram shook his head.
It wasn’t Helena’s fault that she and Jennie had a good relationship. Bertram wanted Helena and Jennie to have a good relationship. It just seemed like there was an ability the two of them had to talk that was effortless. They could share feelings with one another, share theories, share anything.
Bertram didn’t have that with Helena—at least not anymore.
And Bertram didn’t have that with Jennie, not really. Not the way Helena did. Because Helena was practically Jennie’s clone. And Bertram was just . . .
Her son.
But that wasn’t something he was going to discuss with Helena.
“What else did you and my dad talk about?” he said instead.
“Let’s see . . .” Helena sighed, then smiled.
“He tried to talk to me about baseball, and I nodded and pretended I followed, but he probably knew I didn’t.
He was mostly talking to hear himself talk, anyway; you know what he was like in the forge.
He was always talking or singing. He sang a few songs in old orcish that day.
I asked him to tell me what they meant in English.
He said I still wouldn’t understand it, because it was about baseball. ”
Bertram and Helena both laughed.
“I think he was messing with me,” Helena said.
“He was,” Bertram confirmed. “There are no songs about baseball in old orcish.”
“I figured.” Helena sighed. “He was funny, your dad. And just a really, really good guy.”
“Yours, too,” Bertram said. “When Mom was off doing all her famous scientist things and when Dad would go with her, Gerard really stepped up for me. I remember he drove me to one of my baseball games, and he sat in the stands and cheered for me, and when my team lost he took me out for sorbet and told me that it wasn’t about winning or losing, it was about having fun and trying my best.”
Helena smiled and rolled her eyes. “A truly original sentiment.”
“Maybe not,” Bertram admitted, “but he said that the thing I was really good at, the thing that showed out there on the field, is that I took care of my teammates. And he said—he said that you were my teammate, too, and that I was taking good care of you. That he appreciated me watching out for you, protecting you.”
Helena’s mouth fell slightly open. “You never told me that.”
“You must’ve been . . . twelve, thirteen at the time? I don’t think you wanted to hear that your dad didn’t think you could take care of yourself. Which isn’t how he meant it, but at that age, I bet that’s how you would’ve heard it.”
“You’re probably right. But. Thank you for telling me now.” Helena looked wistful. “I’d hug you, but I’m pretty sure I still have at least some owl-bear cyst material on me—”
Before Helena had even finished her sentence, Bertram had wrapped her in his arms.