Critical Point
Page 36
I let out a quiet breath. I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge how much I needed to hear him say that. As if for weeks we’d been balanced on some invisible inflection point, and with those four words, he’d finally slipped us past.
“On that note,” I said, trying to sound normal, “your ex-husband does these, um, Sunday dinner things. You know what I’m talking about?”
Arthur shrank a bit, his shoulders sloping in. Apparently giving up on the food, he limped back to the table and joined me, sinking into one of the other chairs and staring at the floor. “I did ’em. He kept going with it.”
“Okay, well, Tabitha invited me for tomorrow,” I said.
He swallowed.
“I told her I would only come if her dad said okay,” I said.
“And, uh.” Arthur’s voice was very soft. “Did he?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m asking him now.”
Arthur took a shuddering breath, and then his head jerked in a very small nod.
“I also pointed out it would be super awkward to have me and Checker and Pilar all there without you,” I said.
“Russell, don’t…”
“Whatever sort of weird self-flagellation thing you’ve got going, you don’t need to,” I said.
“It’s not that. It’s—I don’t want to make things awkward for anyone.”
By anyone he meant Diego and Elisa.
“But why do you always have to be the person who gets shafted?” I said. “Why can’t they grit their teeth and smile for two hours so you can come to one goddamn Sunday dinner?”
He raised his head to look at me. His cheeks were wet again. “Because … because I’m happier, doing this for them.”
I punched him lightly in the shoulder. “Christ. You’re such a fucking martyr.”
“Yeah.” He touched my arm. “Go. Have a good time. We’ll do another dinner sometime, us and Tabitha and Juwon and the twins, and Checker and Pilar. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said.
I left him there, sitting melancholy at his kitchen table, and called Checker as soon as I was out of the apartment.
The next day we came back at 4:00 p.m. precisely. Armed and ready.
“What is this?” Arthur said, when he pulled open the door to Checker’s rapid knocking.
“We thought we’d bring Sunday dinner to you,” Roy said, pushing past us to troop in with an armload of groceries.
“Yeah, and because we’re young college men and therefore have the stunning culinary ineptitude of bachelors, you’re doing the cooking,” added Matti, following with more bags. “Don’t say we never did nothing for you, Pop.”
“I promise not to grow up like them!” Juwon piped up, only to be tackled by his brothers on the floor of Arthur’s apartment. Tabitha ran to grab a pillow from the couch to start hitting them all with.
Checker, Pilar, and I hung by the door.
“You…” Arthur’s eyes searched our faces. “You all did this? But what about…”
Checker gave him a half smile. “Elisa and Diego aren’t monsters, you know. It’s one Sunday. Of course they said it was fine.”
Arthur glanced back and forth between us and his family, and his whole body seemed to relax in a way I’d never seen in him before.
“Well,” he said. “Come on in, then. Guess I’m cooking dinner.”
acknowledgments
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ARE both easy and hard to write—easy, because I feel so much gratitude to the other people who have put such care and sweat into supporting these books, and hard, because I don’t know how to find words of adequate appreciation.
Once again, my editor, Diana Gill, and her sharp editing eye have improved this book drastically from first draft to last. I am terrifically indebted for how she always manages to push my work up another level! She is joined at Tor by a team of incredible, hardworking talents, including her assistant, Kristin Temple; my cover artist, Jamie Stafford-Hill; my publicist, Lauren Levite; and countless others on the editing, production, and publicity teams who always go above and beyond in making my books as polished and successful as humanly possible. It’s a joy to work with them and I am impressed and humbled by their skill.
My first readers for this book turned some feedback around for me on an embarrassingly short timeline, and I am once again so grateful to Maddox Hahn, Kevan O’Meara, Jesse Sutanto, and Layla Lawlor, who have been with me since the beginning and once more were so generous with their time for this book. Additional thanks on this one go to Tilly Latimer, who gave me support on the first few chapters early on in the process.
Finally, there are two people I continue to feel intense gratitude to not only for these books but throughout every aspect of this often-difficult career. More thanks than I can say go to my agent, Russell Galen, who championed this series, is a tireless advisor, and opens doors for me at every opportunity. And to my sister, who has been my first and original cheerleader, partner, and first reader in all things writing—I hope you know exactly how much you’ve mattered in helping create the writer I am today.
To list everyone else in my life who supports me in either my personal life or my writing would take the length of another novel. I am so lucky in not only my family, but in my friendships that have the strength of family, and in my web of personal and professional communities beyond that. I can only hope I can pay some of that gratitude forward, and that you know who you all are when I say: thank you so much.
ALSO BY S. L. HUANG
Zero Sum Game
Null Set
About the Author
S. L. HUANG has a math degree from MIT and is a professional stuntwoman and armorer who has worked in Hollywood on Battlestar Galactica and a number of other productions. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Nature, and The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016. She is the author of the Cas Russell series, which includes Zero Sum Game, Null Set, and Critical Point, along with Burning Roses, a stand-alone fantasy novella.
Visit her Online at www.slhuang.com, or sign up for email updates here.
Twitter: @sl_huang
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Acknowledgments
Also by S. L. Huang
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
CRITICAL POINT
Copyright © 2020 by
S. L. Huang
All rights reserved.
Cover photograph by Michael Zduniak/Shutterstock.com
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-18036-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-18037-7 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250180377
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First Edition: April 2020