"I'm her only niece on mom's side of the family." Olivia did her best to hide the frisson of fear which sometimes followed one of Valori's pronouncements. "How did you know about—"
The front door opened with a rush of wind and slammed shut with a long bang. "Whew! Sorry about that, but the wind is starting to kick it up a notch."
Olivia's Uncle Biff and Aunt Martha came into the living room after they'd divested their outer wear. "Oh, hello. I'm Biff Johnston, Olivia's uncle, and this is my wife." He doffed his baseball cap and shook out his auburn curls before shaking their hands. "Friends of Olivia's from...the other place?"
"It's called BloodDark, sir," Hernando said.
Please don't launch into one of your history or cultural talks. Olivia smiled and tapped her boyfriend three times on the arm, her signal for him to stop flashing his fangs whenever it was too much for the humans in the room.
"I'm Martha, her mom's sister." The fair-haired woman offered her hand to the three guests, nodding as she took in their names. "Hernando. It's nice to meet you in person, Mr. Ambassador. I saw your interview on the news the other day. Annara—what a pretty name, and Valori, not spelled the usual way Olivia tells me. I take it you're not from these parts?"
"No, we're not." Valori smiled. "You are looking quite well for being with child again, Martha."
Olivia bit her lip and drove her nails into her palms, but said nothing. Not now, Valori. Don't weird out my aunt and uncle. I want them to think I hang with normal people, not circus freaks.
Martha laughed and blushed. "Don't be silly. Not going to happen at my age. I had enough trouble conceiving the twins. It was quite a rough pregnancy as Olivia can tell you, and I'm more than content to have two little whirlwinds."
Biff looked askance at his wife and then at Valori. "You think she's pregnant? I thought so, too, the other day when she told me she was feeling nauseous in the morning."
Annara shook her head and laughed. "I would take her to your closest medic and confirm it." Annara's predilection was for drawing conclusions once concrete details were at hand. Annara had come to know Valori after their defeat of the Pure Bloods, and she had informed Olivia then she didn't believe in the BloodDark myths of the coming future predictors.
"Well, no wine for you, Mrs. Johnston," Biff said. "Just in case." The hopeful look in his eyes spoke for itself. Martha furrowed her brow and frowned.
Olivia sighed. Great. Mom and her sister will argue all through dinner about who makes the best stuffing if they're not both drinking.
There was no time to brood as the doorbell rang, and Martha excused herself to answer it. "Happy Thanksgiving. It's wonderful to see you again, Mr. and Mrs. Brown."
Olivia sprang to her feet. Her paternal grandparents had arrived. They hadn't met Hernando before, and she wasn't sure what her parents had told them about her boyfriend from another world.
"Grammy and Granddad!" She ran into the entry hall to embrace them both while her aunt took their coats. "I'm glad you decided to come. I hope you had a smooth trip."
"The highways are full of idiots," Bertram Brown grumbled. "I'm too old to deal with them, but too poor to afford an airline ticket." He kissed Olivia's forehead. "How's my space traveler?"
"Good, Granddaddy." Olivia loved his warm arms around her, squeezing her. He had never given up hope of her return and had been a pillar of strength for her parents during their ordeal.
"I do believe you've grown since we saw you a few months back," Nina Brown said as she accepted a less strenuous hug from her granddaughter. Olivia worried about her grandmother since she had knee surgery a month ago.
"Oh, you're such a tease, Grammy. I stopped growing years ago. I'm already three inches taller than Mom, too." She took her grandparents by the hand and led them into the living room. "Come. I want you to meet my friends from BloodDark."
Biff settled Martha into a chair and put an ottoman under her feet. Her aunt looked daggers at him but accepted the coddling since it was better than arguing in front of guests. Hernando stood, grinning at the domestic exchange while Valori and Annara sat on the sofa and did their best not to laugh at Martha's obvious discomfort at being the center of her husband's attention.
"Will you please leave me alone now, Biff?" Martha said under her breath. "I won't break. Promise."
"Of course you won't. How far along are you now, Martha?" Nina winked as she shook Biff's hand. "Congratulations, Dad."
"I'd estimate she's between six to eight weeks," Valori informed them. All eyes turned to the petite silver-haired psychic. "It's about the usual time when I first sense the growing child."
Olivia's grandmother's dark brown eyes lit up. "Oh? I noticed her slight swelling in her face and hands, too." Nina came over to Valori to introduce herself. "Are you doctor or midwife by chance? I worked as a nurse for many years with a local obstetrician before my husband and I retired and moved south. I miss the work."
Valori smiled with genuine warmth. "I have assisted a midwife to deliver a child on occasion. They felt my sewing skills superior when it became necessary to take the child out through the mother's stomach."
Olivia paled. Not what I'd planned at all. "Fascinating, but let's talk about a less graphic topic. It's Thanksgiving, and we want to have good appetites, right?" Everyone nodded. She took Hernando by the arm and led him over to her grandfather. "Granddad, this is Hernando. I told you all about him, remember?"
"I'm not senile. I remember it well." Bertram slipped his reading glasses onto the tip of his long nose and gave Hernando a good look up and down before shaking his hand. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir. You've been in the news quite a lot. My Olivia looks quite happy whenever she's standing next to you on the screen. Is being a diplomat a good career with a chance of promotion if you pay your dues, you think?"
Hernando stood speechless for a moment and Olivia quickly filled in. "Granddad, he's not working as a shop steward in an auto parts factory like you did. Hernando is acting as an ambassador for his entire planet. It's an important job."
"Yes, but I want to know if he'll be president of his planet someday. My grandbaby deserves to work with the best."
"One day I could very well become president of the BloodDark ruling council." Hernando stood tall and put an arm around Olivia's shoulders. "But for now, I'm proud to be a representative of our people to the people of Earth. Olivia has been an effective assistant in this task."
A twinkle in her grandfather's eye indicated he understood Olivia's plan. "So, you think you'd take her back on to work in your office if she asked?"
Hernando nodded. "I would, sir, but her parents have stated they want her to attend higher education. I want her to reach her academic potential as well, and I'd never want to come in between Olivia and her family."
Bertram chuckled. "Heck, I have a technical degree as a tool and die maker myself. Book smarts will only take you so far, and there'll be time enough to go to law school later. Right now my Olivia can help you build bridges of understanding between our worlds."
I knew Granddad would take my side. Now to convince everyone else... Olivia felt a burden lifting from her shoulders. She squeezed Hernando's hand and smiled at the gathering, happy to see her relatives accepting of her friends from a distant planet.
"Can you really help us with our deer overgrazing problems on our farm, Annara?" her grandmother asked. "Taking them out with bow and arrow takes a lot of skill they say, but I'd rather use archers than have a bunch of old drunken coots with machine guns on our property."
"I'm skilled with the BloodDark crossbow, which is very similar to the ones I've learned about from Earth cultures." In spite of her outward humility, Annara's pride was more than evident in her tone. "I can hit a wampus from a hundred strides away with one arrow. I fed many of us in the caverns of the Mosaic Desert through my hunting. This jacket I'm wearing was made from the hide of one of my best kills, a long-nosed wildebeest."
Nina admired the leather work and sighed. "I
mpressive. Did Olivia ever tell you about her great-grandfather who won an archery contest? He was one of the best archers in all of the Smokies."
"You come from a long and industrious ancestry, Nina." Valori closed her eyes, staring into the mist of time. "They hunted and farmed the valleys in the mountains of smoke for many generations."
Olivia's grandmother accepted Valori's cryptic pronouncement with a polite smile and a nod.
Good. Grammy will be on my side when I break the news. I just hope dear Valori hasn't weirded folks out too much. She means well.
A knock on the door alerted Olivia to another group of her cousins and then another aunt and uncle and cousins. She took their coats and escorted her relatives inside the overflowing living room. The younger cousins ran off to join Peter and Paul playing with Julian's model trains, and the older ones sat cross-legged on the carpet. Everyone laughed and chatted and enjoyed the camaraderie until her mother entered from the dining room.
"Olivia, Martha, I could use some help with the food preparation."
The conversation hushed. Olivia sprang to her feet. "Sorry, Mom. We were just visiting."
"Let me help instead," Biff said, placing a hand on Martha's shoulder to keep her seated.
Moira Brown stopped at the archway between the rooms and looked cross-eyed at her sister reclining in the best chair with her feet up. "What happened to you? You twist your ankle?"
Before Olivia could whisk her mother back to the stove, Valori informed her, "Martha is with child, and her husband wishes her to rest and take it easy until the time comes for her to deliver. A healthy daughter will make their lives complete."
"It's a girl?" Martha's hazel-green eyes stood on stalks. Valori nodded. Martha smiled. "I guess you'd know the baby's gender if you knew how far along I am."
"A little girl for Daddy to spoil." Biff kissed his wife on the forehead. "We couldn't be happier."
The excited conversation and congratulations circled the room several times before Moira stepped into the middle of the party and cleared her throat. "Ahem! Would someone tell me what's going on? Olivia, you haven't introduced us properly." She nodded toward Valori and Annara. "These are your special guests?"
"They are." Olivia indicated for her BloodDark friends to stand. "You already know Hernando."
"Hello again." Moira nodded and wiped her hands on her apron. "It's good to see you looking well, Mr. Ambassador. It seems the other day I read you were in Moscow. You do get around."
Hernando gave a slight bow and a grin. "The peoples of Earth invite me to all sorts of events. I'm learning a lot about your world and its customs and traditions."
"I'm sure you are, as well as jet lag."
"It is difficult to grasp the idea of a world revolving on an axis faster than its star." Hernando shook his head in wonder. "To see night and day by turns from the same place on a world amazes me."
"BloodDark is tidally-locked," Olivia explained. "It means one side always faces the sun, the other is always in darkness."
"Fascinating." Olivia's mother took a step closer to Annara to shake hands, eyes narrowing as she took in Annara's paramilitary-styled leather outfit and short-cropped black hair. "I'm Moira Brown. Are you Hernando's bodyguard?"
"I can be if necessary. Today I am simply Annara—friend of Olivia and fighter for the liberation of the slaves of BloodDark." She bowed with a flourish of her hand. "At your service."
Moira raised an eyebrow. "Thank you. I'll keep that last part in mind when it comes to washing the dishes after dinner."
Olivia bit her lip and flashed a warning look. Very funny, Mom. Not. As Moira took a step toward Valori, Olivia felt her whole life flash before her.
"Who may you be, ma'am?" her mother asked, shaking hands. "Another embassy official?"
"I'm a seamstress and herbalist from BloodDark City," Valori replied without pretense. "I am not a rival for your daughter's affections as you fear. She loves you dearly, but she does not enjoy you embarrassing her in front of her other relatives."
Moira froze, her extended hand still in Valori's. The corners of her mouth turned down and a deep furrow appeared on her brow. She leaned back. "And how would you know how I feel or how my daughter feels about such things?"
"Because I can sense it quite strongly. It's all right. You are in safe company and well-loved, Moira."
Olivia blanched. The cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents muffled their giggles and grins the best they could. Valori's gentle tone and friendly smile did little to calm her mother down. She could see the smoke pouring out of her mother's ears as Moira withdrew her hand from Valori's grasp. Moira Brown didn't care much for being disrespected in her own home.
"Mom, why don't I help you finish the last few dishes so we can get dinner on the table?" Olivia took her mother by the shoulders and tried to steer her toward the kitchen, but Moira would have none of it.
"You didn't tell me you had a psychic friend, Olivia," she said in measured tones. "Do you do Tarot cards as well? Some of the committee members thought a gypsy fortune teller at the International Festival at the college in a few months would help raise money for our study abroad program."
Valori pursed her lip, thinking hard. "I don't know what a Tarot card is, but I could learn."
"Enough, Mom," Olivia said under her breath. She could tell where her mother was headed, and she didn't appreciate it. "We should get dinner ready to serve these hungry people."
"The turkey has at least another twenty minutes, and we can work on the side dishes while it's resting." Moira Brown wasn't going to be dissuaded. "Your costume and hairstyle are perfect for a fortune teller, Valori. Maybe you have a little gypsy blood in your human ancestry somewhere?"
"It is possible. My human side goes back many centuries into the dawn of BloodDark, so I have little knowledge of where my people came from on Earth originally." She cocked her head. "Why do you think my dress and hairstyle make me look like I am gypsy?"
"Well, you don't see many women wearing a long, black gown and granny sandals, and very few would pile their silver hair up in a tight bun nowadays—"
"Enough!" Olivia took her mother's arm and pulled her toward the kitchen. "We're cooking. Everyone else, entertain yourselves."
The loud murmur of the cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents accompanied them as Olivia half-dragged her mother back to the stove. She was grateful her father had been out of the living room with her young cousins, only to be startled upon finding him alone in the kitchen stirring the gravy.
"This is going to be even lumpier than usual if you don't keep checking on it, Moira." Julian Brown narrowed his eyes and considered his wife for a long moment. "What were you up to in there? I caught the tail end of the conversation with our special guests, and I didn't like it very much. In fact, I didn't like it at all."
Moira shrugged and picked up an oven mitt to check on the turkey's progress. "Nothing. I just thought Olivia's friend appeared to be a natural to help out at the mid-winter International Festival."
"I'm sure she'd love to help out, but not as an object of curiosity and covert bigotry." Julian sighed. Olivia started to back out of the kitchen when his gaze rested on her and held her in place. "And just where do you think you're going, young lady?"
"Out to check on the table settings?" Olivia bit her lip and flashed a crooked smile. "You know how Granddad likes to have both a water glass and a cup and saucer at his seat..." She was almost out the kitchen door before her father took a step toward her and blocked her exit.
"The table setting can wait. I need to talk to both of you."
Julian guided Olivia and Moira toward the oval kitchen table in the middle of the room. They sat down in their usual breakfast formation, Olivia's mom nearest the stove, her father at the opposite end and she in the middle with her back to the sink window that looked out over the herb garden. I'm always in the middle of things with my back against the wall. No wonder I feel trapped sometimes.
"Olivia," her father b
egan in a soft tone, "when you said you were inviting a couple of friends to Thanksgiving dinner, why didn't you inform us ahead of time of their identities?"
She frowned and crossed her arms across her chest. "I told you both earlier I invited Hernando and he accepted. Couldn't you figure out my friends would come from BloodDark as well?"
"I thought you'd perhaps invited those nice girls from Peru—Maria and Anita?" Her mother smiled at the memory. "They were so kind to you at the detention—uh, I mean the quarantine center." Moira was quick to correct herself. She glanced furtively around the room. The government-types in black suits had instilled enough fear into her parents that neither one would call it what it truly was, a prison for returned abductees.
"I spoke to Maria and Anita on Skype the other day, and they said they'd love to come to the U.S. for a visit sometime, but they're very busy in the spring in the Andes." Olivia placed her elbows on the table and folded her hands in front of herself, observing her parents' reactions closely as spoke. "Besides, now that travel to and from BloodDark has been opened to ordinary people, I thought it would be nice for Valori and Annara to see where I grew up."
Her mother nodded. "To show them all the wonderful things they've been missing?"
"Yeah, what they've been missing." Olivia refrained from rolling her eyes but it was tough not to. "For sure a visit to Earth gives them an idea of how a planet-full of human beings act." She sighed at her parents' blank looks. "After this experience, I think they'll be glad they haven't applied to immigrate."
"I don't think it's quite so bad, Ollie girl." Her father chuckled. "There's bound to be some cultural stumbles along the way as we get to know each other. Over all, I'd say humanity is coping well, considering we've just recently discovered we weren't alone in the universe."
"At least they resemble human beings and not movie monsters from outer space. Never did like the movie Alien." Moira shuddered. "To think, how would we get to know each other if they couldn't even fit around a dining table and use a fork and knife and drink from a cup..." She paused and crumpled her brow. "Hmm, your friends do know how to use tableware—right, Olivia? I noticed once how Hernando wasn't entirely comfortable with our table etiquette."
Olivia's Return Page 4