The Pacifist

by Elin Peer

  “Why didn’t you tell us this?” I asked him but he didn’t get a chance to answer before Anne spoke with her eyes welling up again.

  “He made me feel unloved and unwanted all over again. Just like he always does.”

  “Oh, honey.” We all turned to see Lilly with tears in her own eyes. “May I give my daughter a hug?” she asked Missy.

  “Yes, of course.”

  Lilly left her purse on the chair and walked over with open arms. Anne stood up and turned to her and the two women hugged.

  “Don’t you doubt for one second that you’re loved,” Lilly whispered to her and from Anne’s shoulders I could tell she was crying hard.

  “Here, let me pull a chair over for you.” Missy moved a chair between her and Anne and encouraged Lilly to keep holding Anne’s hand as they sat down.

  “I can understand how alone you must have felt for all those years and then to be rejected again…” Missy gave Anne a sympathetic smile. “But it doesn’t change the fact that your actions were reckless and harmful to others.”

  Anne used her sleeve to dry her eyes and took the tissue my mother gave her to blow her nose.

  “May I speak?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course, Jonah. I would love to know how you feel about this turn of events.”

  “I’m sorry that Anne felt rejected, but there are still holes in her story. You’ve given us your motive for coming to the house, and explained that it wasn’t your intention to burn down the storage building. You even claim that you intended to wake us up and only left when you saw lights being turned on inside the house. But what about all the interviews with your accusations? You’ve done far more than hurt Cole. There’s a big chance that you’ve destroyed my future on the Council and Emanuela’s career as a professional soccer player. What did we ever do to you?”

  “You took his side.” Anne couldn’t look at me.

  “Anne, do you hear yourself?” I kept my gaze locked on her and leaned forward, placing my elbows on my thighs. “I can forgive your immature and inconsiderate actions as a teenager, but you’re twenty-two now, and you still think everything is about you.”

  In a small voice, she gave a meek “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes, I never meant to hurt anyone but Cole.”

  Cole stretched his legs and moved in his seat.

  Missy said, “Since we have now established that the root of this conflict is really between Anne and Cole, let me ask you this, Lilly. Can you love them both?”

  Lilly brushed a lock of Anne’s hair behind her ear. “I’ve always loved them both. And I’ve reached out over the years.”

  “That’s why I responded,” Anne cried.

  “All right, I’m going to ask the same question of all of you. Can you find forgiveness and love in your heart?”

  I thought about it. “It’s not my natural state to feel resentment, and I can empathize with your pain. Right now, I just have to focus on saving my seat on the Council. I owe that to all the voters who put me there.”

  “I voted for you,” Anne said in a low voice.

  “So you don’t wish to see Jonah excluded from the council?" Missy asked.

  “No.” She gave me a pleading look. “I shouldn’t have said the things I said in the media. But after the fire, I was scared and confused and I didn’t think very far.”

  Cole shook his head. “So basically, nothing has changed.”

  With the temper of a hormonal teenager, Anne shot back, “I guess not. You still hate me. I don’t expect that to change.”

  Everyone was quiet. We were Motlanders and even in our unconventional family a conflict including the word hate was unheard of.

  “I don’t hate you,” Cole muttered. “I just don’t understand you. And I wish you had talked to me instead of ruining our lives.”

  Lilly was holding Anne in her arms, making soothing sounds to calm her crying.

  “What’s going to happen now?” I asked Missy.

  “Well, ideally, I’d love you all to forgive each other.”

  “No, I meant with Anne. Arson is a crime.”

  Missy frowned. “Ohh. Yes, I suppose it is. Anne, what are your thoughts on that? How do you plan to clean up this mess?”

  Anne pulled back in her own chair and collected herself. “I don’t have time to stay in a place of reflection.”

  “You think I do?” Cole asked with his eyebrows arched. “At least take some responsibility for what you did.”

  “Why? It’s not like you have taken any responsibility for burning my stuff.”

  Pushing his hands through his hair, Cole puffed out air. “You’re right. I’m sorry I didn’t handle that situation better.”

  “Do you recognize that you should have talked to Anne about it instead of burning her things?” Missy asked him.

  “Yes. But how do you talk to someone who ignores you?”

  “You use a middleman or you wait until there isn’t a whole audience looking at me,” Anne exclaimed.

  Cole’s palms flew up. “As I said, I didn’t handle it well and for that I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you and I’m sorry too.” For the first time Anne and Cole were looking at each other. “I know I made things hard for you back then, and that I overreacted when you rejected me again. I wanted to annoy you by destroying the brewery, but I never meant to burn down the whole building. I truly wish I could take back all the stupid things I said in the media.”

  “Cole, now that Anne has apologized, can you forgive her?”

  Cole broke eye contact. “I think what is the hardest for me to forgive is that suicide note.” His head fell forward. “I still have it.”

  We were all watching him in silence. I reached out to touch his arm when his shoulders began to bob and his hands went to his face.

  “It’s okay to cry,” Missy assured him.

  “I thought my baby sister had killed herself because of me.” Cole’s voice broke and I teared up too, remembering how destroyed I’d felt for the twenty-seven hours we’d thought Anne was dead. Every one of us had been ripped apart with grief and self-blame, but no one more than Cole, whom she had named in the letter.

  “I’m sorry, Cole. I’m so sorry,” Anne kept repeating.

  Raising his eyes to meet hers, his face was red and his eyes puffy from the crying. His voice staggered as if he didn’t have breath enough to both talk and cry at the same time. “That day, you broke something inside me.” His hand was on his chest. “You broke my heart.”

  Anne moved down from her chair and kneeled in front of him, touching his arms. “If I could take it back, I would. It was cruel and I didn’t understand what I was doing to you.”

  With all of us watching them, Anne and Cole cried together and then finally they hugged.

  Missy passed around tissues and used several herself.

  “What I would like to do is somehow bring you back together again.” Missy looked to Lilly. “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “Yes.” Lilly sniffled, and hugged Anne again.

  “Then I suggest that those of you who can find forgiveness in your heart join us up here in a love circle.”

  One after another, we gathered around Anne. We didn’t sing the way children did in love circles, but we each quietly welcomed her back in the family.

  Missy had us holding hands as she finished the mediation meeting. “I’m proud of you all. Today, you took the first important step toward healing your family. What we did was clean a bleeding wound, but I’m asking you to be patient. Wounds take time to heal; they can be itchy at first, and they leave scar tissue. Still, I believe with all my heart that you can heal as a family if you show grace, tolerance, and forgiveness toward each other.

  Before we left, I hugged Anne, who whispered in my ear, “I’ll do whatever I can to clean up the mess I made for you. Just tell me how.”

  I pulled back to look at her. “Thank you, but it might be too late at this point.”

  CH
APTER 15

  Jonah’s Speech

  Mila

  I avoided talking with Jonah for two long weeks. The short texts between us were bad enough. They made me miss sharing every thought in my head with him.

  Despite the Northlands being in a messy and chaotic time itself, the country was still buzzing about the unfairness of what was happening in the Motherlands.

  On the day of Jonah’s hearing in the Council, Raven and Leo came over and we gathered in the entertainment room of the Manor with my family. It felt extra special because Magni was with us.

  Erika kept fussing over him. “Maybe we should open a window so you can get some fresh air. You’re always running hot… are you hot?”

  “Mom, I’m fine, just sit down and relax for a moment.”

  “You sure you don’t need anything to drink or eat? I don’t want you moving around too much.”

  Magni grunted. “I’m not some frail flower. The doctors told me not to overdo it. They didn’t tell me to stay still.”

  “But it’s only been a week since the operation.”

  “And I’m feeling good.” My dad looked deep in concentration as he lifted his new legs and placed them on the coffee table in front of him. “Ahh, see, you don’t know how good it feels to be able to put my feet up again.”

  Raven, who sat curled up with Leo in the large sectional sofa, chuckled. “At least no one can accuse you of having stinky feet.”

  “That’s right.” Magni grinned. “I’m thinking about what tattoos I want.”

  “Are you getting the same bear again?” I sat close to my dad and touched his new arm where he’d once had a large tattoo of a roaring bear on its hind legs showing claws and teeth.

  “Maybe.”

  I played with the fine hair on his arm. “It looks so much like your old arm. I mean your fingers… it’s incredible how real they look.”

  “We have Shelly to thank for it. Her pet project of designing natural-looking sex-bots took the robotic limbs industry to new heights. This is skin grown from my own tissue in a lab, and according to Shelly, the engineering that went into the machinery underneath is cutting edge.”

  Laura smiled and played with his hair. “You’ll be the sexiest sex-bot Shelly has ever created, and all mine.”

  My dad chuckled and whispered something in her ear that made Laura flush red.

  “I’m very impressed, Dad. I’ll have to call Shelly and compliment her.”

  My mom was glowing with love as she twirled her finger around a lock of her red hair. “Your father already did. Of course, he took Shelly down a notch when he told her a real genius would have figured out how to grow whole body parts in a lab by now.”

  “Ha, good one.” Raven grinned. “But seriously, when are you going to be ready to fight again? I wanna enjoy it while I can still beat you.”

  Magni gave Raven a cheeky smile. “I’ll let you know. It’ll be good for me with some easy training partners, you know, to start slow.”

  Raven puffed herself up and placed her hands on her hips. “I was going to go easy on you, but that’s not happening now.”

  The whole-hearted laugh that came from Magni was like sweet music filling the room. “I love how easy it is to rile you up, Raven.”

  Leo was grinning too and pulled Raven in to kiss her on the top of her hair. “That’s usually her talent.”

  “Shhh… You people are way too noisy with all your laughter,” Pearl complained and turned up the sound. “They are talking about Jonah and I can’t hear what they’re saying.”

  Magni groaned. “They’ve been talking about him all morning and they keep saying the same things over and over. When is his speech coming on?”

  My grandmother, Erika, expressed concern. “Magni, are you tired? Do you need to rest?”

  Before the accident, my dad would have rolled his eyes and resented that kind of comment, but this time, he leaned forward and took Erika’s hand with a warm smile. “Mom, I appreciate how much you care, but I’m fine.”

  It was another reminder of how much Magni had changed after the crash. Being forced to accept help from others had humbled him. I kept stroking his new hand and turned my attention back to the large interactive wall where a journalist was interviewing people on the street of Kingstown.

  “We managed to gather a couple of random people and it’ll be interesting to hear what the opinion on the street is.” The journalist had a red nose from the cold and his jacket was closed all the way up to his beard.

  The camera showed a group of five men and one woman.

  “How do you feel about the prospect of Jonah Cervici losing his seat on the Council?”

  The man who answered was in his sixties and wore a leather hat. “It’s stupid. Momsies are fucking crazy.”

  “Do you think it’s fair that Jonah is punished for his family’s organizing illegal races and serving beer and alcohol?”

  “Hell no. And they shouldn’t punish his family either. Doing those things should be fundamental human rights.”

  “If you could say one thing to the Council members what would it be?” The journalist nodded to a man with four beads in his beard.

  “I’m not much of a talker. I’d rather pull out the sticks they have up their asses. They need to get over themselves.”

  The camera swung to the woman, who was in her late thirties and stood close against a man her own age. “You told me before we began that you’re from the Motherlands and have lived here for almost six years. What are your thoughts on what’s happening with Jonah?”

  “Well…” Her lips disappeared and she gave a sideways glance to all the men in the group. “I’m a big fan of Jonah Cervici’s work and I think Nmen in general respect him. I mean they like to make fun of Motlander men, but Jonah is different somehow.”

  “Only because he doesn’t wear make-up and shit,” her husband interjected.

  The woman nodded. “Yes, and he has visited the North several times and shown a willingness to listen and understand the culture here. I just hope the Council understands that expelling the only man on it would be a major setback for the integration.”

  A younger man with his hands in his pockets threw a nod in her direction. “Yeah, what she said.”

  Khan was sitting on the soft armrest on the couch. “Why are they interviewing people on the street? Why aren’t they asking me what I think? I’m the one who knows Jonah the best.”

  Magni snorted. “We should have that guy from the street come pick out the stick you have up your ass. If anyone knows Jonah best it’s Mila, and we all know Jonah likes Pearl way more than he likes you.”

  Khan glanced back over his shoulder and threw a hand up in the air. “I just meant that I know Jonah better than those random people.”

  “But you made it sound like you were best friends with him.” Magni grinned and rolled his eyes at Khan. It was amazing to feel how amused and happy he seemed.

  “Don’t be stupid. I’m more like a mentor to Jonah.”

  My dad winked at me. “Good to know that Khan isn’t challenging you for your best friend, huh?”

  “Jonah isn’t Mila’s best friend. I am,” Raven corrected Magni.

  I smiled at her. “You’re more than a friend, Raven. You’re my soul sister.”

  “Ooh, I like that.” Raven elbowed Leo and spoke in a singsong voice. “I have a sister. I have a sister.”

  Leo smiled. “Yeah, the resemblance between you two is stunning.”

  I smiled since Raven was my opposite with her caramel-colored complexion and large brown eyes.

  “It’s starting… Jonah’s speech is starting.” Pearl was closest to the interactive wall and waved a finger, shushing us to silence. “Shhhh…”

  Raven giggled but received a raised eyebrow from Laura, who moved to the edge of the couch.

  Seeing Jonah made my stomach do a somersault. I loved how he looked like a Roman emperor from a lost time with his chiseled jawline, straight nose, and full lips. I even loved his
big ears that his short hair did nothing to hide. But the best part about Jonah was the kindness radiating from him.

  “He has such nice eyes.”

  “Laura, shhh…” Pearl shushed again.

  My dad squeezed my mom’s thigh and the two of them gave silent grins to each other with heated looks before turning their attention back to Jonah, who began to speak.

  “Nine days ago, my family and I woke up to find one of our buildings burning. Little did we know that long after the flames were put out, our world would still be on fire.

  “Our initial relief that no one got hurt changed to shock and sadness when the next day, accusations were made against us. I’m well aware that these allegations have the potential to ruin everything we have created as a family, including me losing my seat on this council.

  “Many of you have raised the question how someone like me could turn a blind eye to criminal behavior such as drinking alcohol, racing, and playing cards.

  “Several of you have expressed how disappointed you are with me, and how we as Council members should have a higher level of integrity than the rest of the population.

  “But since when did integrity mean to blindly follow every rule set up in front of us? I was taught in school that integrity is about being incorruptible, having a strong character, and standing up against injustice.

  “Isn’t that why all of us feel compelled to come in here day after day to argue against laws that we and our voters find rigid, harmful, and archaic?”

  Jonah looked to the right. “Just last month Selena Herman stood in front of us arguing about the unfairness of some rigid rules that her voters complained about. I felt proud when we came together and lifted the ban on snowball fighting and off-piste skiing. But why stop there?

  “Why not allow people to drink a beer if they want to? Or race a dirt bike if they so choose?

  “I’m here to advocate for more personal freedom, and to point out that there were no victims of the crimes my family and I are accused of.

  “From all our past discussions about lifting bans and modifying strict regulations, I know that the counter argument always revolves around safety.