by C. S. Starr
Her friend’s understanding of her psyche freaked Lucy out sometimes.
Tal was curled up on the couch when she walked by, and she paused, her fingers lingering on the arm.
“Tal,” she whispered, and he rolled over and sat up, his hair a mess.
“What?” he grumbled.
“Come to bed with me. The kids get up early here, and you need it as much as I do.” She cleared her throat, realizing her words could be misleading. “To get a good night’s sleep, I mean. It’s a big bed.”
Tal sat up and pulled his shirt on. Lucy figured he slept in his pants in case he had any early morning visitors.
“I’m fine down here.”
“Then stay down here,” she whispered sharply. “I just thought I’d try and make things more comfortable for you.”
“Where’s Bull?”
“On the pull-out in the basement.” She raised her eyebrows, amused that Tal thought Bull was going to kill him at every turn. “Far, far away.”
“He seems like the punch-first-ask-questions-later type, is all.” Tal replied, once they were in the attic space that Cara and Paul set aside for adults, making it decidedly different from the rest of the house. Paul had a giant TV and an excessive DVD collection, and Cara had a writing desk. There was a Murphy bed, already pulled out from the wall and made. The entire space was spotless, free of stains, and full of nice things, scavenged from Paul’s various adventures through America when he was young. The photos were from later, when Cara had joined him, and they lined one wall; a series of landscapes, self-portraits, and tiny fascinating things that most people would have missed. The lady of the house had always had a good eye for photography.
Tal looked nervous as Lucy sat on the bed. This was no different from when they’d shared a bed days before, she told herself. It was nice that she asked him, she thought to herself, as he tugged his shirt off and climbed in on the side of the bed not occupied by her.
“When you’re young, you never think your actions are going to have consequences,” Lucy whispered. “If I’d known this would be the result, there’s a big part of me that would have just left my grandfather hanging up there a while longer, until someone else took the lead.”
The room was plunged into darkness as she turned the bedside lamp off.
“It’s hard to say what that would have changed, good or bad.”
“I know.”
Tal flinched as Lucy wrapped an arm around his waist and lay her head on his shoulder. Her hair rested against his face, and she focused on the rise and fall of his chest.
Things would change tomorrow. They’d become themselves again, and the rough friendship they’d begun to carve out wouldn’t mean the same things as it did that night. He’d have to deal with the mess he’d left behind, and she’d have to cope with a war she was goaded into. It wasn’t a place for fragile beginnings to flourish, not when, for all intents and purposes, they weren’t on the same side of anything.
She’d never felt closer to reaching out and touching the life she wished she was living, with a stranger she barely knew.
“What do you need?” he whispered against her dark hair. “Tell me.”
Lucy closed her eyes, her lashes brushing against his shoulder. “I want to hear about your family.”
It took him a minute to decide where to start, but once he started talking, she felt her tired body relax. “My parents met at law school out east. Dad was a year ahead, and his parents lived in California, so he came back and got a job while Mom was still at school. He said that year was when he stopped seeing time as a friend. I never understood what he meant by that until he was gone. Mom got pregnant with my oldest brother that year on a visit, so she wrote the bar exam sick as a dog. Dad never heard the end of that. By the time she was ready to move, she was too pregnant to fly, so he had to go across the country and get her in his car. He proposed when he got there, because he wasn’t sure he’d still be able to be as enthusiastic about it after spending a week in a car together, and he was never very good at hiding his feelings.”
Lucy let out a giggle. “Your poor mother.”
“It never got any better for her. A house with three disgusting boys—”
“I bet she liked it. I always liked being the only girl.”
“She did like it,” Tal affirmed. “We were pretty sweet to her. We’d take turns signing the card on the flowers Dad would buy her. He taught us well.”
Lucy felt her heart swell, imagining Tal scribbling his name for his mom. “What did you do together?”
“As a family?”
“Yeah.”
“We used to go to the movies, maybe every other week. Maybe it was less than that. It was always a challenge finding something everyone liked. Usually on Saturday afternoons. Dinners on Friday. We’d all go watch Rob’s rugby games sometimes.”
“Andrew used to play soccer sometimes, when we lived in Toronto. I think he was on a team,” Lucy recalled. “We’d go when my mom had the day off, otherwise the neighbor took him. I always wanted to play, but I think Mom thought he needed it more.”
“Why didn’t you play too?”
Lucy looked at him curiously until she once again realized what different worlds they’d come from. “We didn’t have the money.”
“Oh,” he replied uncomfortably. “I…didn’t think of that. Why did he need it more?”
“Because he’s a psychopath,” Lucy replied, breaking from her whisper. She didn’t call her brother that often, and never around people she didn’t trust completely. “Even when he was a kid. He was really hard to handle.”
Tal opted to change the subject, and she was grateful for that, relieved to put off discussion of her brother for one more day. “Dad used to take me to work sometimes, when he’d have to work late, and I’d sit at his secretary’s desk when he’d send her home and imagine it was mine.”
Lucy had a hilarious flash of Tal in a sensible dress. “That you were the secretary?”
Tal chuckled and shook his head. “No, that I worked at his office. That I was a lawyer. I knew nothing about being a lawyer, but it felt very important. It’s funny thinking back on it, because he was an entertainment lawyer, and it really wasn’t important at all, not in the grand scheme of things. Mom did the pro bono stuff and the teaching, and could afford to because of his job, so I guess it was all important.”
“You think about them a lot. Your family.”
“I do.”
“And I try not to think about mine. You had eleven good years, and then I had eleven good years. It’s like together, we’re a whole functional person with a great past.”
***
That was it, Tal realized. The reason he found himself attracted to her. She wasn’t looking back, and he was exhausted from putting his efforts into shoving the future out of the way to make room for the past. A past there was no hope in returning to. There would be no one to chastise him for his relationship with Leah, no one to criticize his lifestyle or the choices he made. His brother’s mention of thinking about what his parents would have done in any given situation crossed his mind, and he knew it was time to move beyond that, because he hadn’t followed that rule for a very long time yet it was holding him back as he tried to walk in their old shoes. He wasn’t going to be an entertainment lawyer with a family that went to the movies on weekends. He could, however, be the kind of man his future kids would want to be. That was what he needed to hold onto.
Lucy fell asleep at some point while he was thinking and he found himself absentmindedly rubbing her back, small circles on the heavy cotton t-shirt she’d worn to bed. A plan began to formulate. He pulled out the dark thoughts he’d had over the years about seizing power and imagined how he’d apply them to his current world. It would never match Lucy’s vision exactly, but it would be his, and it would be a worthy alternative. One he hoped would be welcomed. One where there was room to excel and climb based on the merits of this generation instead of the last. It was lofty, but not im
possible.
When he woke the next morning, Lucy was where he’d left her, curled up against him, her arm firmly around his chest. The sun shone in the attic window and it danced across them, lines of light and shadow. She yawned and he waited for the nerves in his stomach to kick in about going home, but they didn’t. Instead, he felt energized from his unscheduled detour. It had had its terrible moments, but in a strange way he felt like it had given him a chance to get back to the basics, away from all the bureaucracy.
Back to the basics of surviving.
“Too hot,” Tal grumbled, pushing her hair away from his face. “Too much hair.”
“I’m glad we met, Tal Bauman,” Lucy said, sitting up and tucking her legs under her. “Not before. This time.”
“Me too, Lucy Campbell.” He reached for her and tucked her back in under his arm. “So I guess this is it.”
“No more bed sharing required.” She turned her face towards his. “I’m going to come see your books, once things are more settled with Cole. I’m still taking Seattle.”
He smiled at her, brushing the hair out of her face. “You can have Seattle, for now. Let’s see how I do, and maybe we’ll run elections in a few years.”
“That’s how you want to play it,” she said with a huge grin. “I see.”
“I believe you challenged me to come up with a better offer, the first night we met. I’m in.”
“Then I’ll look forward to a worthy adversary, for a change.” Her eyes gleamed. “I’ve never had one of those.”
If Bull knew they’d spent the night together in any capacity, he didn’t let on as they maneuvered around the delightful breakfast buffet Cara had prepared with the help of her child army. In fact, he seemed in better spirits than Tal had seen him since they’d met, joking and laughing with Paul, who had an infectious smile and a laugh that went for days.
“…Red Cloud and that sex party?” Paul shook his head, out of breath from laughing. “Remember when we first landed at that?”
“I think it was the first one. Genius plan,” Bull wheezed. “People ate it up though. You should see how many people he’s got now. I didn’t see any kids that looked like us, so I think we’re good.”
“They used to explore together,” Cara explained to Tal, as she shot her partner a mischievous look. “Wander off for months, seeing what was out there.”
“And?” Tal asked. “What did you find?”
“Lots of shit,” Paul replied. “It was a bad time, for a while. Hungry kids, just a lot of chaos. It’s settled out a bit now.”
They all had an unplanned moment of silence for the various people that weren’t there anymore.
“I lost a cousin early on,” Tal said quietly.
“A little brother for me,” Bull admitted. “Shouldn’t have happened.”
Bull rambled on during the drive back to Campbell, but Tal and Lucy were quiet, both of them deep in thought about their next moves. Tal needed to decide how he was going to seize control from Connor, because there was no way he was going to welcome the changes Tal had begun envisioning. It wasn’t going to be pretty, but he figured he knew enough about how the system worked to swing it in his favour.
He felt a pang of sadness thinking about Juan. He would have been a strong ally, especially since his relationship with Connor had declined recently.
“Where’s Juan? My pilot. I need to—”
“We cremated him. We cremate everyone. I’ll make sure you get him to take home.” Bull nudged a sleeping Lucy off his shoulder and she stirred, rubbing her eyes. “Did he have people?”
“A girl and two kids. I’ll take him to them.”
“I hope you’ll take care of them.”
Tal nodded, thinking forward to that conversation and how shitty it was going to be. “I will.”
Pulling into Lucy’s driveway at around nine was bittersweet for both Tal and Lucy, whose eyes darted around, presumably looking for her twin, probably out of habit. They were met with a distraught Zoey and her brother looking drawn and sad. Tal stood off to the side with Bull as Lucy had her reunions, first with Andrew, and then with Zoey, who was painfully unaware that anything had changed in the last week. She held her tight, kissed her. Tal found it hard to watch, and his head screamed for him to say something, anything that would make Lucy have a change of heart and cling to him like she had the night before, but came up short.
Dinner was on the table when they went inside; a huge roast with all the fall trimmings. He avoided Lucy’s eye contact and sat as far from her as he possibly could, unwilling to have to smile at Zoey’s hand wrapped tightly around hers on top of the table.
“This is something to celebrate,” Andrew said, giving Tal an unexpected smile. “What happened, it could have ended very differently.”
“I want to see the pictures,” Lucy said quietly, after she finished eating. An overwhelmed looked suddenly came across her face and the colour drained out, leaving her looking like she’d lost a lot of blood.
“They’re in your office, but you don’t want…” Zoey reached for her arm, but she pulled away. A minute later, she closed her office door behind her.
Tal’s eyes darted between Andrew, Zoey, Bull, and the door, and without a word, he went outside, desperate for some air.
It didn’t help. He wasn’t sure anything would.
Chapter 17
August 2002
Calgary, Campbell
“You jealous?” Cole whispered as they watched Bull across the room, talking to some girl neither of them knew, with a smile on his face that summed up what they imagined he was saying.
“You jealous?” Lucy countered, poking her twin in the ribs. “What do I care if he wants to throw himself at anything with a vagina?”
“He’s just doing it to make you jealous—”
“You don’t seriously think after six months of barely dating that he’s that into me, do you? That I’m the reason a thirteen-year-old boy is hitting on pretty girls? I know I’m your twin, and by default that makes you as awesome as I am, but give me a break.” Lucy rolled her eyes. “He’ll do what he does. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. We’re friends.” She looked down at her chest. “I’m not old enough for a boyfriend.”
“You’re telling me that if you were like ‘James, darling, I’d love to make out with you,’ that he’d turn you down?”
Lucy thought about that. “Probably not, but I’m sure he’s not sitting around waiting for the opportunity. He’s made out with lots of girls since we broke up, and I’m not always around to see it.”
Stories of Bull’s escapades weren’t hard to come by. He and Paul had vanished for a couple of months when it got warm and he’d spent quite some time regaling Lucy with the stories. Paul hadn’t returned, and was still enjoying adventures on his own. Bull had come back because he’d left his sister behind in Campbell, with Lucy, but really Cara. Lucy didn’t particularly like small children, although Chloe was very cute.
“I don’t you know why you don’t—”
Lucy started rambling, desperate to tell her twin everything that had been racing through her mind. “It’s easier too, if I don’t…with guys. They listen to me more when they’re not thinking about me getting them off. Things have been going much better since I broke up with Bull. There were these women, in the ancient world called Amazons. They’d only have sex to make Amazon babies, and they’d fight and win against men all the time. You know why?”
“Why?” Cole asked with genuine curiosity.
“Because women are smarter than men, but they get caught up in doing what they think they’re supposed to, which makes them weak and subservient.”
Cole rolled his eyes. “So what? You’re going to not have a boyfriend until you want a baby?”
“That’s not the only reason. You know exactly why I don’t want to…with guys. You know better than anyone,” Lucy replied quietly, sitting on a nearby folding chair. “Every time I think about it, it’s like he’s there.”
Cole leaned against the wall and sat down beside her. “He’s gone, you know. Gone forever. He’s never coming back, and no one is ever going to make us go with him again, and he’s never going to hurt you—”
“He already hurt me. I’m…I’m not…I’m damaged goods.”
“Wounds heal, Ce. He didn’t break you.” Cole’s blue eyes implored her. “You have to trust people eventually.”
“Maybe I will eventually. I don’t have to right now though.”
“No, you don’t.” He grinned up at her. “You’ll know when it feels right with someone, if it ever does. And if it doesn’t, we always have each other.”
“This is true,” Lucy agreed, before lowering her voice. “What if…it’s not a boy, that it feels right with?”
Cole’s eyes twinkled. “Cara.”
“Shut up,” Lucy whispered, as her face turned an alarming shade of red and she realized how obvious her crush probably was. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’d be pot-kettling you if I said anything right now,” he joked, using one of their mother’s expressions. When she really thought about it, and understood what it meant, Cole had been gay for as long as Lucy could remember knowing what it meant. He hadn’t had a boyfriend that Lucy knew about, but they’d had some very serious talks about how Cole felt over the past year they’d been on their own. He needed Lucy’s approval, she’d decided, to fully embrace himself and his feelings. As Lucy told him how she felt, she realized that she needed him in the same way.
With the adults gone, kids were a lot more accepting than they had once been.
October 2012
Campbell
Tal spent all morning on the phone between Leah and Connor, trying to make arrangements to get home. The challenge was that two pilots were needed, one to fly up and the other one to fly Connor’s plane home. It was exhausting trying to work out the details, and even more exhausting listening to Leah’s fragile pleas for Tal to get home as soon as possible.