by Meli Raine
“What if they hate me? I killed their father!”
“Well, technically, Hokes–I mean, Galt–is Lindsay's father. We only killed Jane's father.”
“He raised Lindsay,” she says stiffly. “He was her dad.”
“That's true.” This concept of parenthood is still hard for me to wrap my head around. “They wouldn't come here if they hated you.”
“How do you know? Maybe they want revenge. Retribution.”
“It doesn't work that way out here, Kina. They want to talk about what happened. Ask questions.” I give her a sympathetic look. “Process emotions.”
“I can't tell them the truth about the vice president!” She takes a small towel from the kitchen countertop and wipes her brow. “I mean, the president, now.”
“No. You can't. Even Drew doesn't know.” Hokes made it clear that this was all beyond confidential. One slip and we're eliminated.
Even having a mother who is president of the United States has its limits.
Two weeks ago, an enormous Kennedy-esque funeral for Harwell Bosworth took place in DC, with Lindsay and Emma on display. Drew wasn't happy about that. Jane mourned in private. Their relationship with their father was as complicated as mine–Lindsay's even more so, as the president had raised her since birth.
Alicia Ludame was an exemplar of grace, her speeches filled with words designed to heal a shocked nation. The transition of power was smooth.
“They're very good at keeping secrets.”
“It's their job, Kina.”
“I still–”
There’s a knock and the door opens. Lindsay and Drew walk in, followed by Jane and Silas.
Everyone freezes.
Lindsay looks right at Kina, her eyes filled with an alert compassion that instantly puts me at ease for reasons I don't understand.
And then she says: “We don't hate you, Kina.”
A long inhale, a gasp that whistles the air like a tea kettle, makes Kina stand even taller, wide eyes watching Lindsay, then Jane, who nods.
“Thank you,” Kina says, fighting tears. We've been here for a week, living in the rooms not under renovation, and while a week alone in our new home has been helpful for recovering from what happened to us, it's not nearly enough.
“I know you've been through so much, but we really need to talk to you. To understand what really happened,” Jane says, squeezing Silas' hand.
Kina goes blank. “Of course.”
Blank, but not elevated.
We direct them to the enormous kitchen, which has an eight-flame commercial gas stove that dominates the room. Coffee's already been set by me; unlike Kina, I knew they were coming. Not telling her in advance was a deliberate choice.
I didn't want more nightmares to take over her nights.
“Coffee?” she asks, pointing to the pot. “Let me find the milk.” A stiff hand reaches for the refrigerator door. Drew looks at me, one eyebrow up, as if to ask how she's doing.
I shrug.
He glares and walks to me, hissing in my ear. “They have a lot of talking to do. So do we.”
“Yes.” He pulls me aside.
“You already know the official story. Glen killed Harry in a crime of passion and took the cyanide. Murder-suicide involving the president of the United States. Ludame ascended and the Senate quickly confirmed some moderate Ohio senator as VP. Washington is a mess over this. Unexpected power vacuums never turn out well,” he says, jaw set.
And then he waits.
“Right.”
He waits some more as Lindsay, Jane, and Kina stand in a huddle with their coffees. Silas comes over, Drew making room for him.
“What's up?” he asks.
“Callum was just telling me what really happened at The Grove.”
“And?”
“I told you before. Glen tried to kill Kina. I killed Glen. The president somehow figured out Kina was impersonating Glen. He started having sex with her and then tried to choke her to death. I saved her but had to kill him.”
“That's exactly what Kina told us.”
“Then you know.”
“Those may be the facts,” Drew says, “but here's what I want to know: How the hell did you get out of there without being caught? And who came up with that cover story?”
“Hokes helped us get out.”
“Who gave him those orders?” This is where he thinks he has me. But I'm ready for him.
“You.”
“Me?” Drew's face shakes with outrage. “I didn't give that order!”
“You didn't tell him to help us?”
“No!”
His volume is loud enough to make the women turn and look at us.
“Let's move into the living room,” Jane says smoothly, shooting Silas a look that says, Control your friend.
He snorts.
As we walk into the living room, I get a glimpse of the back of Kina's neck, exposed by the short haircut I gave her at the compound. Faded bruises are still there. Immediately after the attack, the individual fingers from Bosworth's hand were visible on the back of her neck.
The sooner her body heals and erases every trace of that son of a bitch, the better.
Once we've all taken seats on various pieces of comfortable furniture left by the previous owners, an uneasy silence takes over, a fog that makes it hard to see everyone.
Makes it hard to breathe.
It’s hard to imagine a more tense situation, even when people don't hate you for hurting those they love.
But this is a game for which there's no playbook.
“I am very sorry for killing your father,” Kina begins with Lindsay and Jane, looking to me. We're seated next to each other on a loveseat, separate from the rest, the physical space intentional. In our training, we were taught that apologies are only necessary when dealing with weak people, those in mass society who nurture being slighted because it gives them some sense of power over you.
Nine years in The Field taught me that there is more to an apology than that.
“I’m sorry, too,” I say, knowing it's culturally expected.
“I'm not,” Lindsay says, chin jutting up, as Jane's eyes light up in surprise. “If Daddy was trying to kill you, Kina, it was self-defense.”
“I'm sad Harry is gone, but in a detached way,” Jane admits. “I think I'm in mourning for the father I never had. Not the one who was really there.”
Tap tap tap.
We look up to see Duff in the doorway, face slack.
“Come in,” Lindsay urges. Duff takes a seat on a single chair near the window, silent but taking in every detail, the scar on his eye making him look more sinister than he's capable of being.
“Nonetheless, his last minutes were lived in front of us, and we took his life.” Kina's careful, slow wording is a confession. Ownership of a truth. Honorable words meant to give his death the gravitas it deserves.
“I can't believe you were able to leave The Grove,” Lindsay says with some suspicion. I'm certain she and Foster have talked extensively about this. “How did you get out? I was still there with Drew when Alicia began screaming for help. We all rushed to Glen's office but the Secret Service locked it up fast. Alicia was taken immediately into a safe place. She said she arrived for a meeting with Glen and went into her office to find Daddy dead on the floor, and Glen in the bathroom.”
“Hokes got us out,” Kina explains.
“So you killed one of my fathers and were rescued by... the other?” Lindsay chokes out.
“That's one way to put it,” Drew says with a frown. “A grisly way.”
“Why would Hokes–Galt–do that?”
All eyes are suddenly on us.
“I have no idea,” Kina and I say in unison.
Tap tap tap.
Saved by the interruption.
“Hello?” Philippa and Sela stand in the doorway, one in front of the other, faces set with determination. Sela's arm is still in a cast from her bullet wound.
“Come
in,” Kina says with an inviting gesture.
They sit. Introductions aren't needed.
“We were talking about what happened at The Grove,” she explains to them.
“Oh! We thought you would be watching the news. There's coverage of the children on right now.”
Duff stands, going to the large television in the corner, picking up three remotes.
“Which one turns this thing on?”
Sela walks over and quietly plucks the correct one, gliding her thumb over a black section of the device. The news instantly comes on.
“–questions continue over the finding of fourteen children at a remote campground. The foster parents fled and may have left the country, leaving behind children with various special needs. Doug Schumland of Pennsylvania Children's Services talked to WDC–”
“Special needs?” Philippa scrunches up her nose. “Why did he say special needs? None of the children are weak.”
Jane does a double take.
“In mass society, you don't use words like that to describe children with special needs,” Kina starts to explain.
“Why not? It's true.”
“Um… it's considered rude,” Kina stumbles, trying to explain.
“And it's a cover story,” Drew interjects. “We have to use some kind of cover story to keep all of you together. This is an easy one.”
“Ah,” Philippa says as Sela looks at us, confused.
We have so much to teach them.
So much to unteach them.
“In mass society,” Philippa asks, tentative but determined, “why do people hug so much?”
“Because it's a social nicety,” I explain.
She gives me a flat look.
“Because people like it. It creates a sense of connectedness.”
“Oh!” She brightens with understand. “So you can exploit the other person.”
“No, that's not what I meant.”
“So you can touch their body and put a tracking bug on them?” Sela asks, hopeful she has the right answer.
Lindsay and Jane look at each other in subdued horror.
“Callum? Kina? That offer to pay for whatever therapy everyone needs is still on the table,” Jane says softly, looking at Philippa with a gentle compassion.
“Mmmm,” is all Kina says. None of us believe in mass society's reasons for therapy. Within Stateless, the idea that you would explore emotions attached to experiences is anathema. A massive violation of all our norms and values.
We're shifting into this new world, but not that fast.
“What were his last words?” Lindsay suddenly asks Kina, who swallows hard, looking like she's in pain.
“Um, he said something like, 'Now you understand how it all works, Kina.'”
“He said your name?” Jane jumps in. “He definitely knew it was you impersonating Glen?”
“Yes. My sister had a birthmark. He knew exactly how to tell the difference.”
And I suspect Glen knew, somehow, that I was coming.
I don't say that last part.
“I never thought he had it in him,” Lindsay fumes, face red with shockingly swift anger. “I took a goddamned bullet for him! Drew killed my mother to save Daddy. And after all that, he was–oh.” Burying her face in Drew's shoulder, she shudders, letting emotion turn her mute.
“We turn to our DC reporter, Mike Lewinstone, for more on the transition of power as newly sworn-in President Alicia Ludame takes on the task of rebuilding after the murder-suicide scandal involving President Bosworth. Two key Cabinet members have called for a special...”
“Smith always said she was part of Stateless,” Philippa announces, voice wistful, eyes unfocused. “He went on and on about how that's why Romeo hated her.”
“That so?” Duff asks crisply, each word clipped, the unreality of her words making him hesitate.
Philippa nods. “He really hated women in general, so I never believed it. Smith told me so many lies over the years.” Her eyes jump to the television, where President Ludame stands at a press conference. Sela has muted the volume.
No one stopped her.
“How do you know she isn't Stateless?” Drew asks, the obvious question a piece of low-hanging fruit.
“Her speech at Daddy's funeral was very healing. She went on about domestic terrorism,” Lindsay says uncertainly.
“If she were, wouldn't more children be dying? All of that stopped as soon as the president died,” Philippa notes.
“That’s right,” Kina pipes up.
“But what if she's on a different side than our father, within Stateless?” Jane asks. “Maybe she plotted his death.”
“Glen killed him and then used cyanide to kill herself,” I say evenly, the lie rolling out of my mouth like blowing a bubble. “Just like Romeo.”
“That connection is clear,” Sela says.
“And suspicious,” Jane adds.
More silence.
Drew, Silas, and Duff stare me down.
I become a stone.
“Excuse me, Mr. Foster?” Philippa asks.
Drew lets out a low chuckle. “Call me Drew.”
“Drew? When do the children come back? And which ones are coming first? And what about the five to nine year olds?”
“We're learning that now. Making a schedule. It'll be oldest to youngest, as far as we know. You and Sela are over eighteen, so you’re adults. It was easy to get you here. The rest will be more complicated, but over the next month or so, they'll all come.”
“But not Thomas?” she asks, sad.
“No. Not Thomas. He's being adopted by a wonderful, loving couple who have experience with medically fragile children.”
Kina closes her eyes. I can tell she's fighting tears.
Tears that would have been absolutely unacceptable at the compound.
Tears that are easily shed by Lindsay and Jane, who have openly, though silently, started to cry.
“And the five to nine year olds?” Philippa persists.
He smiles. It's freaky. I'm not sure I like what Drew Foster looks when he's happy. “We have a win on that. There are seven coming.”
“Seven?” Kina squeals. “Debbie’s alive?”
“Someone got her out.”
“Who?”
“I can't say. She sustained a gunshot wound to the head, but it was a graze. By the time we got her, the skin was infected. She's in a hospital now, expected to make a full recovery, and we have a team that's working on getting her to your new place.”
“Thank you,” Kina says, gratitude infusing her emotional words. “Whoever saved her, thank you.”
Her shaky outbreath is like a freight train.
“Kina?” Lindsay asks.
“Yes?” Kina's single syllable is shaky.
“Can I give you a hug?”
“A what?”
“A hug. You know. In, uh, mass society,” Lindsay says, one corner of her mouth going up, “we do this thing where–”
Kina jumps up, crosses the room, and bends over Lindsay, wrapping her arms around her.
“I'm sorry,” they say in unison.
Jane joins the hug, the three of them sniffling together.
Philippa turns to me. “Shouldn't we leave? This is very... emotional.”
“Is it difficult to watch?”
“It's so weird. Who hugs an adult?”
I stand, moving behind the loveseat, leaning against it as I ponder her question.
Duff stands, too, and looks at me with a question in his eyes.
“You both damn near died at The Grove. I didn't lose you once just to lose you again. And certainly not to Stateless.”
I frown.
He comes closer.
Who hugs an adult?
I guess Duff does.
I do, too.
Chapter 24
One month later
Kina
Coffee smells better than ever when it comes out of a machine in a kitchen I got to decorate myself.
/> Callum is upstairs, still asleep. We sleep together, but we don't “sleep together.” I wake up with his arms around me, the heat of him comforting. He tells me I have nightmares. Night terrors, because I never remember them. My body does, though.
He says I spend some of them on my stomach, bucking against a ghost that presses into me.
Hot caffeine banishes some of the chill on my skin as I take a seat in front of the window and enjoy my peace before the children begin to wake up. The little ones aren't here yet, but we have four so far: Mary and Jocelyn, Tim, and Candace. Sela and Philippa don't count as children any longer.
Emotionally, none of them do. They've been raised to be adult-like in their emotional self-possession. Learning to just be a kid is part of our goal for them.
How can I teach something I never learned myself?
Parenting the children was instinctual for me, something Stateless leaders noticed about me when I was a tween. Being a mother figure is different from being a mother.
I had a mother.
Technically, I have a mother.
Alicia Ludame has not contacted me since that day at The Grove. Not once.
But she's given me this house. These children. A cover story.
And more than that, hope.
Glen's words that day haunt me.
Our mother can't stop talking about you. It’s sickening. Sickening.
I have so many questions.
And then there's my biological father. Dr. Svetnu? Really? I'm the product of two Stateless leaders who split ideologically.
Which one is right?
Did Svetnu really order the destruction of the compounds? Over time, I've processed all I've been told. The coffee burns the roof of my mouth but I sip it fast anyhow, needing to feel grounded. My mind races, looping through the facts of my genealogy, but when push comes to shove, all that matters is this:
I am alive.
Callum is alive.
Nearly all of the children are alive.
And we have some protection.
“Kina?” Callum's soft voice still makes me startle, a splash of coffee hitting my pinkie, dripping down it.
“Mmm?”
“Sorry.” He grabs a towel and pats my hand. I take over for him, glancing up into blue eyes that look troubled.
