Immutable

by Cidney Swanson

  “I’m taking these,” said Matteo, loading several of Bridget Li’s famous chocolate chip cookies onto a robin’s egg blue paper plate with lace-scalloped edging. “Where are we going?”

  “The park,” replied Martina.

  It was time to have a serious conversation with Matteo.

  It was time to decide what she wanted and what she couldn’t live without.

  49

  IMMUTABLE

  Las Abuelitas, California

  The willow trees in Murrieta Park whispered noisily in the breeze.

  “Storm’s coming,” said Matteo, craning his neck to peer at the patches of sky between the trees.

  A storm was coming. How apt.

  Martina wandered to a set of children’s swings, taking one of them. Automatically, she kicked off, sending herself backward, forward, backward, forward. Matteo took the next swing over, twisting his round and round until his feet no longer reached the ground. He spun, swiftly at first, as the swing unwound, and then lazily as it changed directions.

  Martina continued swinging normally.

  “Do you remember the year the foster mothers helped us make those swings from tires that washed up on the beach?” asked Matteo.

  “I remember falling on my butt when the first one cracked,” said Martina.

  Matteo laughed. “I’d forgotten about that part. I guess salt water is hard on whatever tires are made of.”

  Martina didn’t respond. As her swing changed direction, rushing forward, she dragged her feet along the ground, bringing herself to a stop.

  “We have to talk,” she said.

  Matteo had just wound his swing to where he couldn’t go any tighter. He pulled up his feet and released himself into the spin. Martina watched as his face flew past, then the back of his head, then his face again. She saw a glint of six-year-old Matteo, crowing with glee that he didn’t have to go to school while all the Angels did. Then twelve-year-old Matteo zoomed past, white teeth flashing as he held out the fish he’d caught: you’re my girl now. She saw sixteen-year-old Matteo, sporting a sad excuse for a beard as he murmured to her come away with me.

  And she saw the boy who’d lied to her a week ago.

  All these Matteo’s flashed past: front-back-front-back.

  Which was the true one?

  “I know,” said Matteo.

  It took Martina a moment to realize this was his response to “We have to talk.”

  His swing settled to a slow twist-twist-twist and then halted. He rose, leaving the swing, and seated himself on the rising ground in front of Martina’s swing.

  “Before you say anything, I want to tell you how sorry I am that I lied to you about my job. And how sorry I am for the misery I caused.” He brought his hands to his head, elbows resting on his bent knees. “Pfeffer said he could help me set it up so the widow gets the proceeds from the sale of Mutti’s house.”

  “You told Pfeffer about … all that?”

  Matteo nodded. “He’s a good man.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you love me, Martina? After all this?”

  A gust shivered the willows, making the branches rub together in a chorus.

  Shoosh, shoosh, shoosh.

  Martina balanced the weight of her legs on the toes of her shoes and swung her knees left-right-left. The swing followed suit. “Of course I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “But I don’t know if love is enough.”

  Pfeffer’s words on the plane came back to her: There are two kinds of good you can be sure of: love is one; forgiveness the other.

  “You don’t know if you can trust me,” said Matteo. His voice was a low whisper. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  Well, it was true, wasn’t it? She wasn’t sure if she could trust him. She loved him; Mon Dieu, but she loved him. She would never feel this way about anyone else. No one else would ever know her the way Matteo knew her. No one would understand her crazed upbringing or how badly it hurt knowing the world wasn’t what she’d thought it was and wouldn’t become what she’d thought it would become.

  There was only Matteo.

  And she didn’t know if she could trust him.

  She had trusted Hansel. Her throat tightened and she swallowed it back. She’d trusted Georg. Look how that ended. She’d trusted Girard Helmann, for goodness’ sake. At least she’d never trusted Uncle Fritz. But if you went by the numbers, her record wasn’t looking too good.

  On the other hand, what child didn’t trust the adults in their life, so long as they didn’t blatantly abuse or antagonize you? And she thought she could be forgiven for trusting Hansel. She’d changed her mind about him as soon as he’d gone along with Georg’s scheme to join Uncle Fritz. And changed it back when he’d made his final, fatal choice. A tear escaped and she brushed it away.

  The wind gusted again, making the empty swings nearby twist on their chains; the willow branches shooshed even more dramatically. In front of the swing set, a pair of plastic bags chased one another across the grassy play area. She should grab those. She should recycle them.

  She should. She should. She should.

  Her life had been composed of shoulds and musts. All handed down from authorities who had her in their charge. None of those shoulds or musts were useful now though, were they?

  You don’t know if you can trust me.

  That was the truth, right there.

  Another tear.

  “Don’t cry, Martina. I’ll go. You don’t have to make the choice. I’ll leave.”

  More tears.

  Matteo stood. A crack of thunder sounded in the distance.

  “Don’t go.” Martina dried her eyes. She had to figure this out. And she didn’t want to figure it out alone. “Sit,” she said, getting up out of the swing. She sat on the rising ground where Matteo had been seated. She patted the ground beside her. “Please. Sit down. Stay.”

  Matteo sighed heavily, echoing the soughing of the wind.

  “You can’t just … go,” she said. Which was ridiculous, considering she’d taken off last week when Matteo had pleaded with her to stay.

  Matteo sat beside her.

  “I haven’t even told you what Pfeffer said about the inoculations,” Martina murmured.

  “You talked to him?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “About … not taking Neuroprine anymore?”

  “Uh-huh. Well, sort of. You were sleeping, so I decided to tell him how it was that I could ripple even though he had given me that shot, thinking it was Neuroprine. I mean, obviously he knew something was up, and I knew he was going to ask me eventually, so I decided to be the one to bring it up.”

  Matteo nodded, encouraging her to go on.

  “So I told him how I tricked him, using the tetanus toxoid instead.” Martina frowned remembering Pfeffer’s odd reaction. She still wasn’t sure, but she could almost swear his first impulse had been to laugh. “Anyway, he just nodded and said it was understandable I objected to the Neuroprine.”

  “He said it was understandable? Really?”

  “Yeah,” replied Martina. “But that’s not all he said. He told me that he and Sir Walter and Mickie had been talking and they all agreed my doses of Neuroprine should no longer be mandatory.”

  Matteo inhaled sharply. “But … that’s … that’s fantastic, Martina.”

  “And completely unexpected. And weird. Considering I tricked him.”

  Huh.

  That was interesting.

  Martina had been dishonest with Pfeffer because … why, exactly? Because she didn’t trust him? No. That wasn’t the root of the reason why. She’d dissembled because she was afraid that was the only way to get what she wanted. She didn’t want to live without invisibility any more than she wanted to live without Matteo.

  Mon Dieu.

  She was being such a hypocrite.

  When she spoke again, her voice was soft. And so was her heart.

  “I think I get it. Why you lied to me. A
bout the drug deliveries.”

  “Because I was an idiot.”

  “You lied because you were afraid of what I would do if you told the truth.”

  “Like I said, I was an idiot.”

  “Matteo, don’t you see? That is exactly why I was dishonest with Pfeffer. I didn’t want to risk losing something I didn’t think I could live without.”

  Matteo’s voice was low, husky. “I don’t know how to live without you, Martina. Now that I’ve seen you again.”

  “Exactly. And that was why you lied to me. It was wrong, but I get it.”

  And then, even more quietly, Matteo responded. “Can you forgive me?”

  Martina paused. Her forehead wrinkled tightly. How could she not offer forgiveness to Matteo, after the way Pfeffer had forgiven her? She heard Pfeffer’s words again: There are two kinds of good you can be sure of: love is one; forgiveness the other.

  Pfeffer was right.

  Martina was sure of the goodness of love and forgiveness.

  Turning to Matteo, she answered him with a kiss. The wind roared through the park, shaking the branches, tugging at Martina’s hair, blowing wisps of Matteo’s hair so they tickled her cheeks. He was kissing her back, hard. And he smelled like Sir Walter’s lavender soaps—smelled like her Matteo. Something cracked loudly, on the far side of the park and the two pulled apart, looking over their shoulders.

  “That branch,” said Matteo. “Will you look at that?”

  A branch had cracked off one of the willows and was now rolling, rolling down a slight slope.

  “Was it lightning?” Martina asked, looking up nervously.

  “No,” said Matteo. “Just the wind. Some of these trees are really old, Sir Walter told me. It was just the wind.”

  A gust caught at Martina’s hair again. Matteo smoothed it back, tucking the dark blonde strands behind her ear. Then he kissed that ear. Her neck. Her jaw.

  “So,” he whispered beside her ear, “does kissing mean you forgive me, or was that your way of saying goodbye?”

  “Oh, Matteo. You’ve seen how I say goodbye.” She smiled. “That was me saying all is forgiven.”

  He reached an arm around her waist and pulled her closer. “Good.” A kiss. A nip on her ear. “Because I was totally more at fault lying to you than you were at fault for tricking Pfeffer. I might not have mentioned this yet, but I was an idiot.”

  Martina laughed softly.

  “Hey,” said Matteo, nuzzling her cheek with his forehead. “What do you say we go flying?”

  “I thought you hated flying in storms. Have you forgotten how terrified you were the last time we tried it?”

  Matteo pulled a few centimeters away, so he could look Martina in the eyes. “I don’t remember the fear. I just remember how you kept me safe.”

  “You’re in all my best memories,” murmured Martina, meeting his gaze.

  “I’m in your worst ones, too.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I’m sorry. I know what you mean.” He kissed her on the cheek. Like they’d done when they were children. “You’re the constant thread that runs through my life. Unchanging. Unchangeable.”

  “Set in stone,” murmured Martina.

  “Immutable.”

  “Immu-what?”

  “It’s a word I got from Pfeffer. Something to do with that gene therapy drug.”

  “Immutin.”

  “Yeah. That’s the one. But I like ‘immutable’ better, as words go.”

  Martina laughed.

  Matteo continued. “As in: my love for you is a thing immutable.”

  “Okay.” She paused to kiss both his eyes. “I think I can live with that.”

  “Come on,” said Matteo. “Let’s fly.”

  Martina kissed him one more time on the mouth. Soft. Warm. Immutable.

  And then, together, they vanished, soaring to meet the storm.

  THE END

  Thanks for reading IMMUTABLE. If you have a moment, please consider leaving a brief review at Kobo Thank you!

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  Acknowledgements

  At this point, I know I would write even without readers, but I'm so grateful I don't have to. It is a joy to head in to “work” every day, knowing that some ridiculous thing Chrétien said will bring a smile to more faces than just mine. I am especially thankful for the questions my readers send to me. You’ve stirred my curiosity, given me paths to follow, and helped me to ask those important questions: What if? and What then?

  I’m also blessed by two communities of writers who support me in a million ways great and small. All the gratitudinousness to my SCBWI and indie writer buddies!

  Chris, Toby, and Nathalia, thanks for making my book pretty (in very different ways!)

  To my family, who tolerate entirely too much writer drama, I can never thank you enough or love you in proportion to what you deserve. But I’ll keep trying.