Chapter 5
Gillian
I've been walking on eggshells since we got home from an emergency trip to the lab for the kids to get a proper exam from a doctor their mother trusts. All of them, not just Marina, just to be sure. My sister refuses to even talk to me and my stomach is in knots at what that might mean.
Trudy is so angry her human skin keeps pulsing with scarlet that makes her resemble a lobster the way it's swirling with undercurrents of murky sludge green terror.
That ragey red swirls brighter every time she looks at me though.
I wish I could just leave. Go home to a place that isn't under her roof when she's so mad at me.
If she can’t stand to look at me, is she going to kick me out? I don’t dare to even ask, and the implications have me spiraling back to when mom kicked me out.
I mean, logic tells me Trudy isn't really angry so much as terrified of what could have happened to Marina.
It's clear even if her chromatophores didn't broadcast the message in glaring technicolor.
I was scared too. And a huge part of why I want to hide is how ashamed I am that Marina could have been seriously hurt on my watch.
I’m vacillating between memories of the last time I lost everything and reliving those tense moments at the pool on a loop, inventorying all the ways I should have protected Marina better.
The kids are so darn fast in the pool though, and they'd been playing a hide and hunt game.
When it doesn't result in accidental mastication, it's the sort of instinct-driven play Trudy encourages the kids to engage with in their octopus forms.
Marina didn't realize the toy she'd been copying as a way to blend in was the target for the bear cub's game. It was all an accident that could have been so much worse.
For her part, Marina spent the entire evening delighted with her place in the spotlight with both parents fussing as she recounted her adventure and Nadine pouted and railed about how unfair it was that she didn't get to trick a bear cub too, and if she had, she'd have poisoned the cub with venom that she’s still years from maturing enough to produce, thank the tides.
Vengeful little mite. I'm glad we aren't the deadly type of venomous, that's not something I'd have wanted to explain to the little cub's family after I scared the daylights out of them.
It's late by the time I finally get my nephews to sleep. Normally their parents put all four kids to bed, but tonight is exactly the sort of exception to that rule we’ve always made.
Both boys needed extra reassurances that the incident at the pool was an accident and their sister is fine.
The girls seem less cognizant of how much peril Marina was in, but they're so little that only makes sense.
As I ease the boys' door closed to avoid waking them, I still hear Trudy still singing lullabies to the girls in their room across the hall.
I kind of wanted to peek in and reassure myself Marina is in one piece for the thousandth time since the accident.
But I know she's fine and Trudy needs space.
We don't have to speak for me to understand that Trudy is hurt and upset, and she needs to forgive herself as much as me before we can move past this.
I could read a thousand shades of meaning in the scarlet of impotent, terror-driven rage and the sick greenish-gray of worry and guilt over anything happening to Marina when she couldn't be with her child. It’s a reflection of my own shame, guilt, and regret over every tiny choice that led to the accident.
We should still probably lance the boil of resentment that could easily fester and sour the closeness I've built with Trudy and her family. Just not tonight. Not when the kids are finally asleep.
I pad as silently as I can manage down the hallway where all of the bedrooms except mine are and retreat down to my cozy little basement suite.
For all that I've longed to move into my own space, I've never wanted to be able to lock the little door at the top of the steps before.
I've never felt quite so much like an exile leaving the family quarters as I do tonight either.
The stairs reinforce my sense of alienation in their current state.
Trudy tore up the carpet months ago to redo it after Nadine had an incident with glitter and lingering traces of carpet cleaner left my skin blotchy and aching.
But we never quite got around to finishing the project, leaving bare unfinished wood leading down to the cozy family area furnished in a hodge-podge of mismatched furniture chosen for comfort over aesthetics.
The upholstery down here is stained from four toddlers learning how to function in two forms and none too careful with their transitions from water time to dry surfaces.
Piles of blankets make it welcoming and easier to clean, but from the top of the stairs the shabby space drives home my sense of being cut adrift.
Trudy insisted on replacing the carpet because she loves me. I know that. But facing the bare wood of the steps leading down to my room now feels like it's an intentional line demarcating the perfectly put together family part of the house from the basement where I'm retreating.
The sight hurts in a way that has my fingers turning a pale, lonely blue and my human limbs feeling like jelly.
I pull the door to the stairs shut then shift myself mostly boneless to ooze down the smooth railing of the stairs trusting my suckers to keep my balance even in an ungainly midway shape between my two forms. The partial shift lets me keep just enough of my human shape so that I don't destroy my pants and lose my phone from the pocket.
When I reach the indoor/outdoor carpet at the foot of the stairs that stands up well to both our aquatic and terrestrial forms, I pause to gather my resolve.
The open expanse of the family room floor resembles nothing so much as a minefield of children's toys and books littering the path to my room.
Most of the time, the kids leaving their stuff strewn around my space feels like a warm promise that I belong here, an integral part of the family.
Tonight it makes me feel like an invader traversing territory not my own.
My octopus side hates how exposed and vulnerable that framing feels as I slump my way across the floor.
She wants me to find a nice safe place to hide.
I don't fight the instinct, heading straight into my bedroom.
That door I do lock, but it isn't enough to assuage the aching need for safety inside me.
I still need to find a smaller cozier refuge to tuck myself into so I head straight for the ensuite to lock myself behind a second door.
Inside, I lean against it, sliding down to sit with my back pressed to the painted wood and my feet, along with several of my octopus limbs, braced on the glossy beige tiles.
Knees tucked to my chest, I've effectively barricaded myself inside before it feels safe enough to check my phone.
No new messages. There's no denying the surge of disappointment that sends my chromatophores swirling with grayish ochre tones. I sigh, shaking my head at how foolish I'm being. It's pointless to think about the gorgeous woman who asked me if I was alright after everything that happened earlier.
It's not like we have anything real in common just because we shared in the horrific moments where we both failed to protect a beloved sibling's kids. Winny isn't going to call me. Not once she has a moment to realize that the other thing we share is how that moment of terror is my fault.
I put both Marina and Winny's--what was the raven shifter word for it?
nibling!--nibling in danger. Tides, the only danger to the cub was being half drowned by a panicking octopus shifter adult who should have known better than to put both kids at greater risk by startling the cub who had Marina in their mouth.
No, I need to forget about Winny, because the best case scenario here is that she doesn't blame me for what happened. It’s all too easy to imagine the entire raven shifter flock holding what happened against me.
My class is full of little corvid shifters and their parents are among the most involved.
My more immediate concern should be opening communication with my sister.
As much as I don't want to re-open the wounds of the text thread with Trudy and Lincoln from earlier, I don't have the funds to move out right now so I really need to figure out just how pissed my sister actually is and if she would actually fire me from the family. She wouldn't. I know she wouldn’t, but I can’t make that feel true.
She's the one who invited me to move in with her after our mom washed all eight of her limbs of me once I graduated from high school.
She helped True with university, but True didn't disappoint or confuse her the way I do.
My sister is the only tenuous connection to family I have left.
The idea of being cut off from her terrifies me, but the thought of her casting me out of the kids' lives is physically painful.
I brace for the pain of re-reading the implicit threat that she left hanging in our chat history earlier, as we were racing toward the lab in the medical transport with Marina in her bucket of water.
Words that almost broke me when I read them in the parking lot outside her work after she took her kids inside.
True: I believe that you're sorry Gillian. I just don't know if I can forgive you for this. If you were any other nanny, you'd be fired. I can't believe you let this happen.
When I first read them, those words knocked the wind from my body worse than any gut punch from a bully back in high school. Not just because Trudy said them, but also because they so closely mirror how our mother used to blame me for any and everything that went wrong growing up.