Ken Walker, looking at me, but looking past me, but looking through me, is beginning to creep me out a bit. I broaden the old smile, so much that I feel my lip split open again, so much that I feel my face becoming the mask I sometimes assume on patrols: the flat grimace, the dead leer, the don’t fuck with.
“I suppose I could do that,” he says softly. “Or not.”
He lets that one sit between us for a moment, during which all Pop and I can do is stand dumbstruck and fish-mouth at him. The fuck is this guy trying to pull?
Ken’s head tilts to one side, and he looks to Sophie. “I wonder,” he says, still soft, “do you think Fredda wants to see anyone right now?”
“She asked for us, Kenneth,” Pop says firmly.
“But she’s very upset. Very unstable.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Pop insists. “For her. She’s my daughter. I—”
“I just think that anything . . . stressful, or painful, to her, might make her worse. Might make the situation worse. I wouldn’t want to put her through that.” Ken smiles faintly.
Pop and I are just staring at him. “Are you saying you—” Pop begins, but Ken interrupts him again, in his nervy way.
“I’m saying I wouldn’t want to make things any worse.”
“You’re making them worse right now,” I say, stepping closer to him, “every second that you stand in my way.”
“I’m just trying to protect her.”
“Fine. Great.” I take another step into the space between us. It’s a little like walking off a roof into a tall column of empty air. “But if you think you know what’s best for my sister, if you really think that you speak for her when it comes to her own family, well then. Ken. Try to keep us from seeing her. I’m begging you.” Now I’m smiling down at him, I’m right on top of him, and his clear gray eyes are searching out the corners of the room, looking for backup. I am not harmless, will you look at that. And here come the flowers, thick, sick, sudden, in my mouth and my chest. My breathing narrows to a constricted wheeze, sweet and thin.
Ken visibly swallows. Then the guy croaks, right into my face, his pulse clear in his throat, “You don’t get anywhere near her without my okay.”
“Because we’re in your house. I know. That’s the only reason you’re not in a chokehold right now.”
“Stand down, Carter,” Pop says quietly behind me. He comes around my side, gently moves me by the shoulder, gets between me and Ken. “Kenneth, for whatever reason, Fredericka only listens to her brother. No one else. Not me, not you. If you want someone to talk to her about all this, then Carter’s the one. We can have Sophie direct us to wherever she is. That’s your only real next step. I suggest you take it.”
Ken looks to Pop, measures, finds something that fits. Nods once. I hear Sophie, across the room, exhale hugely and swish her way toward us. Me, I’m still watching the Intended, I won’t take my eyes off him. We’re so close. I could lift him up right by the throat without so much as having to reposition my boots. Ken’s eyes flicker toward me and quickly back to Sophie. She has my elbow, she’s murmuring something about coffee, about a sani, but I can hardly hear her. There’s a roaring and a hissing in my ears, and I’m breathing nothing but high hot flowers. The guy’s good-looking face is disappearing into a halo of gray.
“Good luck,” Ken Walker says, in that white voice. Then we’re dismissed, and Pop and Sophie are sailing me out of there.
GARDNER QUINN
2556 ASHLAND NORTH, APT. B
NEW CHICAGO 0606030301
NEW STATES
PFC C. P. QUINN 2276766
MCC 167 1ST MAW
FPO NEW CHICAGO 06040309
April 29, 6:36 a.m.
Hi, CQ.
I hope you’re taking care of yourself over there. I sent you some stuff, I hope you got it.
We’re all doing good here. I suppose you might have heard from Fred that Pop had to take early retirement from the VA hospital. I think it’s because of his physical condition, which is not great, but he’s not saying anything. Typical. Anyway, I stop by to check in on him as much as I can. Gentle pressure, relentlessly applied. He’s looking a little worn-out. God, I want him to live forever.
I want you to live forever, too, little brother. I’ll send another package in a couple of weeks. I’m not sure what makes it over the mountains these days, they’re saying a lot of what we’re sending to the troops—the supplies, the food, the stuff from home—it’s mostly getting intercepted or blown up. Those poor people. They call them terrorists now but the fact is we just abandoned them. No wonder they’re trying to blow up the supply routes, I mean, who can blame them?
Sorry. I guess that is a supremely stupid thing to say to you right now.
Sorry.
I just see it both ways, you know? And I know, I know, under your dumb-grunt act you’re smart enough to see it both ways, too. And that’s why you don’t write back to us. That’s why you don’t even tell Pop anything about what you’re doing over there. But, CQ, you should know, there’s a lot of people back here who get it, how wrong this war is, and we’re not going to stay quiet about it.
[message clipped]
TWELVE
Everything is beautiful—this I can tell even through the wretched state of whatever’s left of my fried-out sensory receptors, through the haze and the flowers. This room, my eldest sister’s sitting room, it’s beautiful. And there she is, beautiful and panicking, a queen trapped in a tower, right in the middle of it.
I’ve never been so happy to see a person in my whole dumb life.
Fred is trembling when she gets her arms around me, around Pop, in a staggering kind of pileup embrace. Her belly keeps her from crushing us against her too hard, but the effort, the strain, is all there in the long, wiry arm cranked around my neck. When did everybody in my family get so stringy? “Thank God. I’ve been going fucking crazy here.”
“Fredericka. Language.”
“Pop, I just fucking called off my own wedding. Right fucking now is the time for language.” As she pulls back, she gets her first hard look at the two of us. “Jesus Fucking Christ on Toast. CQ, you look even shittier than last night. Which should not be possible. And you! What the hell happened to you two?” she exclaims, staring at Pop, her hands gripping his skinny forearms. To my abject dismay, Fred actually sobs, looking at our father, at my handiwork.
Then, because she’s Fred, she pulls her shit together and pulls Pop over to a lamp where she can look at him closely. I’m left swaying in the center of the room, looking for a tuffet to collapse onto. I settle for a low squashy lounge chair in a tasteful shade of gray. My breathing is still forced, my sights are still limited to a pinhole in the center of a gray halo. And the chokehold of flowers is everywhere, although some of it may just be the ambient scent of Fred’s throne room.
“You poor, good old thing,” she murmurs, inspecting Pop’s face.
“Fredericka, don’t embarrass me,” Pop says gruffly. But he’s clearly loving it. “If it were anything to worry about I’d have had it taken care of by now. It’s just an old shiner.” He glances back across the room at me. I turn my head away so I don’t have to look at him. “That one right there’s the one we need to worry about.”
“Him? He’s young. He’s a goddamn Marine. You think this is the worst he’s ever felt?”
“I love my big sister, and I will fuck anybody’s shit up who tries to fuck with her,” I bellow meaningfully at the ceiling, which is painted blue, pale sky blue. The whole room is done up in insistently serene colors: gray, blue, creamy white, some silver winking here and there. There’s a bunch of chairs like this one, a few low tables, a huge window overlooking the streets of New Chicago. I can rest here. I’m just going to lie here and catch my breath, sink as deep into this absurdly comfortable couch-thing as the cushions will let me.
“Will the two of you please pull yourselves together?” Pop says mildly. But he’s delighted, I can tell. We’re together again.
Yes, Gard is missing; yes, the Intended is still out there, floating around like a stray hair; and yes Natalie is still missing and possibly under arrest, and I can’t decode the only message she’s seen fit to send me; and okay, yes, I’m dying, still, I guess, according to her and Rafiq both, but other than that: nothing can go wrong now. We’re together. It’s not just me, all three of us feel it. There’s a sudden pulse of power, of potential, in the room. Which I might have to sleep through because this couch, my God.
“We have to figure out what we’re going to do,” Pop continues.
Fred groans. I laugh.
“You set up a nice goat rodeo, Fredlet,” I say to the ceiling above. “This is a whooooole shit show you’ve got going on. I just met Ken, and I gotta say, I’m surprised you called it off. What an outstanding young man.”
“Fuck you, CQ.”
“Both of you. Knock it off. This is serious.”
“Hang on. I gotta go over there and punch his lights out,” Fred says.
“His lights,” Pop says, “are pretty close to out already, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“He’s been drinking.”
“All day. And he won’t take a dose of the medication I humped all the way over to the VA to get for him.” My heart galumphs a little bit at the reminder, I admit: there’s something here, right here, as close as Pop’s pocket, that could make all this, the physical shit, go away. The symptoms. What Carter Is Experiencing. I grit my teeth.
“CQ? Why don’t you just take it?” Fred calls from across the room. “You look like shit. You look like you feel like shit.”
“Can we please,” I say tightly, “talk about your problems, Fred?”
“Oh. Those.” I hear her moving closer. “Shove over.” She sits heavily on the lounge near me, then pulls my head onto her knee so that my pounding skull is sharing Fred’s lap with her belly, the rounded warmth that contains the next member of this family, this monster tribe. I keep my eyes closed and focus on the feeling of that belly against the back of my head. Hello in there, I think at it. It’s gonna be okay. My heart feels huge in my chest. Fred announces, “I’d really rather not.”
“Fredericka,” Pop says after a short, delicate pause, “you’ve got to tell me what you want to have happen here. We want to help you.”
Fred drops a tear onto my temple, and I feel it trickle down into my collar. “I just want to put off this fucking wedding until we find Gard, that’s all.”
Pop says angrily, “This bullshit again.” I never, hardly ever, hear him curse. It makes me open my eyes, although my eyelids are so heavy, so heavy. I could sleep here, on Fred’s couch, but the thunder on Pop’s face, it’s making me want to try to stay awake.
“We’re close. Pop, we’re so close,” Fred pleads. “I wish you’d just help us.”
“Help you?” Pop explodes, incredulous again.
“Yes! Help us! Pop, for God’s sake! CQ told me last night that one of Gard’s work friends says you might actually know where she is! What the fuck? If it’s true— It’s not true, is it?” He doesn’t respond right away. Fred’s belly pushes against the back of my neck, her breath coming fast. “Is it?”
Pop is quiet for a bit longer. When he speaks again his words are like concrete blocks, one dropping onto the other in a crashing pile. “I can tell you something right now that will help you both more than you know, and I want the two of you to listen to me carefully. You are not close. You will not find her. She is not coming back.”
“How can you say that?” Fred shouts. “You don’t know that!”
“I know it because I know your sister. If she wanted us to find her, if it were possible . . . Gardner would have made it possible,” Pop says. “I’m asking you, Fredericka. Stop with this. You can’t ruin your whole life for this—think about what’s at stake.”
“Are you seriously suggesting that I just forget all about her and go through with it? When we don’t even know if she’s alive, if she’s hurt, if she—”
“Fredericka. I’m not just suggesting. I’m begging you. Please. Don’t throw away your life, your chance at happiness, at security—”
“It is not. Happening.”
“Never happen,” I mumble, from within a half-awake dream.
“You’re strong enough. You’re more than strong enough, God knows.” Pop pauses. “And you’ve got to let her go. We all have to.”
“I will never,” Fred chokes. I’m keeping my eyes closed, my head down. I can’t bear to look at either of them. “And neither will CQ. And you can go to hell.”
“Fredericka,” Pop says. “Look at him. Look at your brother. Look at what’s been happening to him since you put him on this . . . this hunt. My God, look at him now.”
“I’m fine, sir,” I say. My eyes want to open. It’s so hard, though. I’m really tired.
“Whatever the two of you think you’re doing, it’s not good for him. It’s not good for either of you. Can you see that?”
“Are you fucking kidding me with this?” Fred’s voice is creaky.
Pop has had enough. “Carter isn’t going to find anything Security hasn’t already found. He’s not going to get anyone to talk to him that they haven’t already questioned. It’s pointless. It’s just leading him to a . . . a dark place. If you really need someone to point that out to you I guess I’m going to have to be the one to do it. This is killing him.”
This, I feel like I need to correct. “Actually.” I push myself off the couch in one giant surge and stand between the two of them. Everything feels like it’s toppling over. I make myself open my eyes, but my vision is doubled, so I shut them again. I’ve got to say this anyway: “I’m finding out plenty. I know plenty. Like that Gard was being followed, for one.”
“What?” Fred stares up at me.
“She was being followed,” I argue. “She told me. In a message she wrote me. Drones. Maybe more than once.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Yep. But she was being followed, Fredlet. From right around the time you moved in here.”
Fred says quietly, “How do you know that.”
“From your messages.” The whole room is pitching and yawing. “All I had to do was put the dates together. After your . . . your complications, back in September. Gard couldn’t get to you when you . . . needed her. Because she was at her night job and she couldn’t leave. So you called the Walkers, and they came and got you, and right after that you moved in here. But then Gard went and explained to you . . . everything. And then I think . . . someone must have read those messages. Between the two of you. Because that’s also around when you started playing around on the Walkers’ network, trying to fix your Care Hours. And after that’s when things got weird for Gard—she told me she was being followed home from work by drones. She told me. But she didn’t want to tell you. I don’t know why. I think she . . . was trying to keep her distance from you. Keep you out of trouble.”
“Carter,” Fred says wearily. “Sit, please. You—”
“No, no. I should tell you something else.” While I’m on my feet, swaying feels better, like I’m impersonating a flagpole in a stiff wind, so I do that. “I saw Natalie, Gard’s friend at work. And then Pop’s medical buddy. They told me something else. You should know. About me.”
I open my eyes. The whole room is swimming around me. Pop’s face below me is dark and sad. He already knows. He already knows. Rafiq must have told him this afternoon, when he got my dose. I look down at Fred, try to keep her face in my sight, even though the whole room is graying around the edges.
“Fredlet. Pop’s not entirely wrong about me. He’s half wrong, half right. I don’t know. Look. I am sick.” I try on a smile. “I got sick from one of the triggers we used. Over there. It’s bad, I guess. I’m probably not going to get better, or so they tell me. But I’m fine! I just want you to know it’s not your fault. I’m just like this. And I’ll be all right.”
Fred is crying. I don’t know what to do. She looks at Pop.
“And I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re sick, too.”
Pop says nothing.
“It’s obvious, you know. Both of you. I don’t know who the fuck you thought you were fooling. You’re both . . . fucking . . . messes. And as usual I’m the one who has to clean everything up.” Fred wipes at her cheeks with the heels of her hands. “You.” She looks up at me. “Whatever you’ve got. It—ah, Christ, I knew I was pushing you, but I kept thinking somehow it would help you, to have something to do, to help me find her before today. I was wrong, and I’m sorry, but fuck, Carter. And you.” She pushes herself up off the low couch with difficulty, and Pop approaches to try to help her up, but she steadies herself. Now the three of us are standing, me and Pop facing Fred, who is towering, gleaming with tears, rueful. “How much weight have you lost since this summer? You think I didn’t see it? How you never, ever eat, or sleep, or leave the house? How long have you been sick? Is this why you left the VA?”
Pop shakes his head, looks at the floor.
“Well?”
“You don’t need me to tell you anything,” he finally says. Which is how we know it’s true.
“Are you dying?” she demands.
“We’re all dying, Fredericka.”
“I sure am,” I say brightly. My knees choose that moment to do a little sideways maneuver but it’s cool, I’ve got this.
“Fucking FUCK!” Fred is on the march, kicking small footstools and smushy unresponsive chairs. “Fucking fuckety fuck fuck all of this!”
“Fred, I want one thing. One thing.” Pop’s eyes are following her around the room.
“You want her to give up looking for Gard,” I slur helpfully.
“Okay, two things,” Pop actually snorts, acknowledges me. “Son, sit down before you fall down.” He’s helping me back down onto my lounger as Fred is storming around the room. “Two things, then. Please. My girl. Please listen.”
The Completionist Page 24
