by Aaron Hubble
Luana leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table. “I apologize for what we did, but our situation had spun out of control. The port authorities were looking for us and our girls were getting further away.”
Malone hung his head. “I’m sorry too, but if you understood what it was like to lose something so precious—”
“Who says I don’t?”
Malone looked up into the face of the pilot. His lips were pressed into a thin line, his eyes staring into his glass. After a moment of silence, Abram shifted, the stool creaked under him. He looked at them from under bushy white eyebrows.
“What are their names?”
Luana sat up straighter. “Galila and Safiya.”
“Pretty names.”
“Almost as pretty as they are.”
“They’re your only ones, aren’t they?”
Luana nodded. “We…we couldn’t have our own children. Then a sickness swept through an area on Carrefour and wiped out a third of its population.”
“The Coastal Fever?”
“That’s the one,” Malone said. He took a long drink, the liquor burning his throat.
“Their birth parents died, and there was no other family. We took them in, and they’ve been with us the last couple of years. They were like a ray of sunshine in our lives.” Luana looked down and then over at Malone. Her face held the softness of pleasant memories. “Even when things are hard, they make everything better.”
Malone wished they could.
He wished that two beautiful little girls could fix a broken marriage and magically make bank accounts flush with cash to prevent what had happened.
Malone gripped the edge of the table. Galila and Safiya were innocent of any of the problems they’d gotten caught up in. They hadn’t caused any of it, yet they were the ones paying the heaviest price. He clenched his fists and slammed them down on the table.
The glasses rattled. Luana jumped in surprise. Abram sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. That off center grin creased his face.
“It’s my fault they’re gone,” Malone said, his voice shaking. “I should’ve been hustling for more work, but I rested on my reputation and thought the work would just come to me again. I did a lot of things wrong, but I want to do this right. I don’t trust you, I think you might be a little psychotic—”
“A little?” Abram said.
“But we need you and your ship. Most likely, one or all of us will end up dead—”
“I like those odds.”
“I don’t have any money to pay you.”
“You’re selling this quite well.”
Malone shrugged and turned his palms up toward the metal paneled ceiling. “So, do you want to sign up to take on the Europa Collective with great risk to yourself and your property for little to no pay?”
“Do I?” Abram said, rubbing his hands together.
Malone stared slack jawed at Abram. How had they ended up hijacking the ship of the only person in the galaxy willing to face the Collective head on?
“You’re serious?”
Abram leaned forward. “To be honest with you, death and money don’t mean jack to me. I know where I’m going when I leave this galaxy behind, and I have more money stashed away then I know what to do with. I just keep working because I don’t have anything else to do. I wouldn’t mind getting a little revenge on the Collective. I had a run in with them a couple years ago and they took something from me as well. I have a long memory and before I die, I want to see them brought down. If it starts with getting your little girls back, then let’s start there.”
The pilot stood up and slammed the rest of his drink before reaching over and grabbing Malone’s and doing the same.
“Damn, they know how to make good whiskey on Amargosa.” He set the glass in the sink. “So, where are we going?”
“Retem Station,” Malone said, still a bit stunned.
“Retem?” Abram smiled with what look like giddy excitement. “My home away from home.”
“It’s a nice place?” Luana asked.
Abram left the little kitchen and moved back into the cockpit, his voice drifting behind him.
“Hell, no,” Abram barked. “It’s one of the most disgusting places this side of the Kuiper Belt, but there’s a lot of fun to be had. You guys will love it.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Luana’s laughter filled the little kitchen. She covered her face with her hands and then peaked out from behind her fingers.
“Can you believe that just happened?”
“No, not really.” He rested his forearms against the table. “It’s like drowning and then being thrown a life line out of nowhere.”
“It’s grace,” Luana said.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
Silence filled the little kitchen. Malone studied the woman in front of him. She looked like his wife, same long black hair, same dark skin, same dimples when she smiled, but he wasn’t sure she was the same person he’d lived with for years.
“I have a lot of questions,” he finally said.
She avoided his eyes and ignored his statement. Luana got up. “There must be a first aid kit around here somewhere.”
Cabinet doors opened and closed. “Aha,” she said. “Found it. Let’s take care of some of those cuts.”
She wet a towel and started to wipe the dried blood off his face. He winced and placed a hand on her wrist. “I can do it.”
Luana stopped and gazed at him. He could feel her eyes searching his as if looking for something.
She sighed. “I know you can, but just once, let me help you. Technically, we’re still married, and this is what married people do for each other.”
Being around Luana confused things. He tried to untangle the feelings writhing in his mind. It was one thing to work with her to get their children back, but should he let her in, let her get this close to him? Whenever he had let that happen in the past, he’d always been disappointed. Still, being around her, being close to her…it was nice. It was something he missed.
“Okay,” he said, releasing her wrist. “But you can’t avoid the questions forever.”
Luana was silent as she finished wiping the blood from his face and then applied antiseptic. He winced.
“Oh, quit being such a baby.”
“It hurts.”
With a light touch, she covered a cut on his forehead with a bandage. “Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For taking charge when I was falling apart at the space port.”
“I just did what needed to be done. All I was thinking about was the girls. It probably wasn’t the best thought out plan, but it seems to have worked out for the better. Well,” he looked toward the cockpit. “We’ll see. I still think the guy’s nuttier than a fruitcake.”
“It certainly does seem that way.”
She finished up on his face. “How about your ribs? You said that Ekene’s men kicked you on the ground.”
“It hurts when I breathe.”
“Okay. You might have cracked a rib. I’m going to push slightly on your ribs to see if there’s anything broken. Ready?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You never really have.”
He nodded and then groaned as she put slight pressure against his ribs. “Is there pain in one certain area or is it kind of an all over hurt?”
“Kind of my whole left side.”
Luana dug around in the medical kit. “I think you’re just bruised. There might be a crack, but it’s hard to tell and, frankly, it doesn’t make much of a difference.” She held an instant cold pack in her hand and an elastic bandage. “Take off your shirt and I’ll wrap ice on the ribs. There’s pain meds in here that should help with the pain.”
He pulled the shirt over his head and set it on the table. Luana had been working with her back turned to him, preparing the cold pack. She faced him and he saw her hesitate. Her breath seemed to catch and then she quickly looked to the side once
again. It made him feel self-conscious.
“This is going to be cold,” she said.
The touch of the ice pack on his skin made him draw in a sharp breath. Goose bumps erupted over his chest and arms. She grabbed the elastic bandage and began to wrap it around him.
“Hold your arms up so I can wrap this around you.”
He did as she said and her arms reached around him and to his back as she passed the bandage from one hand to the next and then around his chest. She’d taken off her jacket and was wearing a sleeveless shirt. Her bare arms brushed against his skin. The warmth, and the familiarity of the feeling, made him hold his breath.
The old feelings for her bubbled to the surface, and he fought to shove them back under. He’d worked hard to build stout walls around his emotions after swearing he’d never let her inside again. He told himself he never could trust her again, but just being near her made him want to take a sledge hammer to the walls and turn them into dust.
Then the image of three public safety officers lying unconscious amid a pile of broken furniture flashed through his mind. The long distance shot she’d made to take down the EC man in the space port, the weapons, the stolen credit cards.
Who was this woman?
He stiffened. The emotions were clouding his mind, making it hard to remember what had happened. He needed answers. No more tap dancing around the difficult conversation.
She taped the end of the wrap and then began to inspect a few cuts and scrapes on his arms. “We should take care of these as well. If we don’t—”
Malone grasped her shoulder. “Stop. You can’t keep dodging this. I need the truth.”
Her eyes went to the floor, but she nodded and sat down on the folding stool vacated by Abram. He pulled his shirt back on and slid back into the bench across from her.
“Where did the weapons come from?”
Luana’s hands played with the roll of medical taped. She spun it around before it rolled away and onto the floor. She clasped them in front of her and shrugged.
“Not much to tell. I had the pistols with me before we married. You know where I came from. That bar I worked in, the one you met me in, and where I lived, it was dangerous. People were murdered every day for bread. They were just for protection. I’d never used them before. I knew how you felt about guns after what you had to do to get off Earth. You hated them, but I wasn’t ready to give them up because there was always this little part of me that said I would need them again. You know, the cynical part, the part that’s a little irrational, but I guess I wasn’t so wrong after all. I always thought it would be me they came after.”
“What about the jail? How did you get me out? That wasn’t just some luck. How do you take on four armed men and single-handedly disarm and leave them unconscious on the floor?”
“They’re barely trained officers. Really. They’re just all friends of the judge. He gave them badges and a title as a favor to their parents for campaign contributions. I surprised them.”
“But,” Malone scratched his head. “I saw them, lying all over the floor. They were unconscious. How’d you do that?”
She crossed her arms, but continued to avoid making eye contact. “Self-defense training before I came to Carrefour.”
He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. There was something off. He didn’t have a good reason not to believe her other than he had a hard time trusting people. But still, something wasn’t adding up and it made him uneasy. He sighed.
“Are you mad about the guns? That I didn’t tell you?” Luana asked.
“It’s not about the guns, Lu. They helped get us here. I guess I’m thankful you had them.”
Malone searched for the right words to convey the turmoil he’d been going through. He needed her to see how living without trust had destroyed his heart. Was she hiding anything else? He laced his fingers together. His voice came out low, the months of hurt leaking into it.
“Why do you do this? Why do you always keep things from me?”
Luana immediately bristled. “I just told you everything. Was I really keeping that much from you? Enough to warrant your constant second guessing? If I’d told you any of this while we were still together, you’d have shut down and given me a three-day dose of the silent treatment.”
“That’s not the point. The point is that anything other than complete openness isn’t a marriage. You’ve always held something back and all of this has only confirmed it. That’s not what a marriage is about and that’s why we’re not together anymore.”
Luana rolled her eyes “Yeah, because you’re so good at being open.”
The eye roll set him off. If she wanted to dredge up the past that was fine with him. They might as well have it out completely.
“The reason we’re not together is because I can’t trust you. The very foundation of what a marriage should be doesn’t exist because you refuse to accept that basic tenant of a strong relationship.”
She pointed a finger at his chest, her voice turned icy. “No. The reason we’re not living in the same house is because you won’t talk to me. You close yourself off and never let me in. We were never truly a partnership because of your trust issues. I haven’t given you reasons not to trust me, you’ve just chosen not to trust and come up with excuses not to let me all the way in. I get it. It’s because of your parents. They treated you horribly. But you’re an adult in control of your own emotions now. The choices you make are yours. So are the consequences of those choices.”
His fists clenched and he stared her down. She met his eyes with the same ferocity. It was the way they’d lived out most of their time together. Even now, in this most desperate situation, they couldn’t jump off the crazy cycle train of disrespect they’d chosen to punch their ticket on.
“Choices,” Malone spat. He felt the muscles in his shoulder tense. “Let’s talk about choices. How about the choice you made to abandon your family and move into an apartment in town instead of working with me to keep our family together.”
“Work with you?” she stammered. Her face flushed. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. There’s no working with you. It’s you and then everyone else. We just exist in your orbit. The girls and I are still on the outside no matter how much you want to delude yourself into thinking you’re the greatest father in the world, holding what’s left of our family together. Malone, the martyr.”
Her words hit him like a back handed slap to the face. “How dare you say I don’t care for the girls with all my heart.”
“That’s not what I said.” She stood up from the table and stepped toward him. “I said you still think of yourself as the poor, mistreated boy whose parents abandoned him. You carry it around like a chip on your shoulder and use it to keep people at arm’s length or farther. You’ve done that with the girls and me. The only reason I moved into an apartment was to give you the distance you, apparently, so desperately wanted. I knew you would use it against me, try to make me out to be the bad guy who abandoned everyone. I was hoping you would see I was doing it for us. How many times have I asked you to come to dinner with me so we could talk? How many times have I tried to get you to go to a counselor?”
It was his turn to roll his eyes. “Yeah, so the whole town can know our dirty laundry. You know as well as I do if you talk to that counselor everyone will know our problems. She can’t keep her mouth shut.”
Luana threw her arms out wide. “Who cares! I don’t. If it means we work things out, it doesn’t matter. Maybe it will help other couples if they know what we’ve gone through and survived.”
“How can we work anything out when you’re late for everything? I can’t even trust you to be on time to pick up the girls. That’s why we’re here and why we’re chasing them across the quadrant.”
He could see it in her eyes. The words that had just come out of his mouth were like a dagger he had thrust into her heart and buried to the hilt. Luana’s face twisted in pain, and her mouth worked around silent words. She pr
essed her hand to her lips and crossed the other over her midsection. Without a sound, she turned and walked down the hallway, opened the door to the cargo hold and disappeared.
Malone gripped the edge of the table and hung his head. Why couldn’t she see he was trying to do what was best?
It was because she never thought of anyone else but herself, that’s why. Even now, when they were in a desperate situation she wanted to blame him for everything.
He’d won this battle, but what did it mean for the war? Would it be worth it?
His hand shot out and he swept the medical supplies off the table. They scattered across the floor and rolled in different directions.
Kind of like all the important things in his life. His wife, his daughters, his business. It was all scattering and moving away from him. Malone felt like he was standing still in the eye of the storm trying to hold onto the most important things while forces beyond his control tried to rip them out of his hands.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I hope you’re going to pick that stuff up.”
Malone turned his head and saw Abram leaning against the doorway, his feet crossed at the ankles. A roll of tape and several bandages lay near the pilot’s booted feet.
“I know this hunk of junk might not look like much, but I do try to keep it tidy.” He reached out and ran his finger along the top of a picture frame fastened to the dull gray wall. The pilot examined the finger and wiped the dust on his dark pants.
“Guess I should get after the cleaning crew about dusting every once in a while.”
Malone noticed the picture for the first time. The digital screen faded to black and a new picture slowly formed out of the pixels. He looked closer and saw the image was of a much younger Abram Ginnis. His arm was around the shoulder of a short, blonde woman who smiled from a kind face. She was holding a small, sandy haired boy of about three. The picture disappeared and was replaced by the image of a boy, maybe eight or ten years old.