Page 39 of Paradise

“He was very busy,” Cody defended. “He was always working or planning or helping me with my schoolwork. Daddy said he wasn’t sleeping enough.”

“I’m sure he wasn’t. The last time this happened, he’d been awake for twelve days straight before he went in for treatment.” The doors of the infirmaryswooshedopen for them, and Miles walked straight back to a private room.

“Why did he stay awake for so long?”

“Because his brain was sick,” Miles said. Then they were with Garrett. Miles put Cody down, and he ran over to the bed and stared.

The surface of the bed had retracted beneath Garrett’s body, submerging him in stasis gel. He wore a small respirator, and his eyes were closed. A thin film rested over the gel, white and opaque, so they couldn’t see any of his body except for his face and his hands, which were elevated out of the gel on little pads. Numbers kept popping up on the surface of the film over his chest, too fast for Cody to make out. BP? HR? He looked confusedly at Miles.

“They let the doctors know how Garrett’s doing,” Miles told him. “He’s mostly fine, but he’s going to have to sleep for a while.”

“So his brain gets better?”

“Exactly.” Miles sat in one of the chairs to the side of the bed and took one of Garrett’s hands. “You can touch him,” he told Cody. Cody nodded and took the other hand, which was warm, not cold like it had been the last time Garrett had touched him.

“He feels better.”

“Good.” Miles smiled at him, and it was like Cody could finally recognize him again. “Then he’s improving already.”

Cody sat in the other chair and kept holding Garrett’s hand. “How did his brain get sick?”

“He was just born that way.”

Cody hadn’t known that. “Just like me.”

“Exactly,” Miles said.

“And you couldn’t fix it?”

“Oh, it used to be much worse. We fixed a lot of it, but we always knew that Garrett would have to be careful for the rest of his life,” Miles told him. “It was very hard for him for a while.Eventually, we got to the point where he was mostly better, and he stayed better after that for a long time.”

“Until he met me.”

“This isn’t your fault,” Miles said, so firmly that Cody couldn’t drop his eyes. “Not at all. Garrett’s been responsible for himself for a long time now, and he knew what he needed to do. He either forgot to do it, or he deliberately put it off and didn’t tell anyone, but that isn’t your fault or your daddy’s.”

“Is he gonna get in trouble?”

“No.” Miles looked down at Garrett now, and Cody recognized that expression. He’d seen his own daddy look like that when he was with Cody, and even Garrett had looked that way a few times. It was somewhere between love and stubborn. “He’s not going to get in trouble. Not the kind we can’t handle, at least. I’ve got plenty to say to him about taking proper care of himself, though.”

“Don’t yell at him, though,” Cody begged because he knew Garrett hated that.

“No yelling,” Miles swore. “I wouldn’t yell at my boy, not even when he’s being dumb.”

Cody looked down as he tapped his toes lightly against the rounded base of the bed. “Are you glad that he’s your boy? Even though he was born like this?”

Miles reached across the bed and tilted Cody’s chin up. His eyes were just like Garrett’s, bright and blue. “I wouldn’t trade him for anything.”

A little of the knot in Cody’s tummy dissolved. “Me neither.”

Chapter twenty

Jonah

If he’d been asked afterward, Jonah wouldn’t have been able to repeat back any of what was said for the rest of the meeting before their lawyers finally called it quits. His mind was spinning with too many possibilities and fears, and it didn’t help that Jack just sat there silently, his arm fixed up in a sling once the doctor was done, and stared at him with a considering look on his face.

Jonah was very familiar with that look; it was the harbinger of big things, and not many of them had turned out well in the past. Jack had worn that look when he bought his first ship, a clunker calledBeulahthat he never was able to get into useable shape for spaceflight and eventually ended up selling to a small shipping company that only did planet-side traffic, getting only half what he had paid for it. He had worn that look when he’d agreed to them having Cody as well, and the best that Jonah could say about that decision was that it had ended with him having a beautiful child even while everything else fell apart.

And now … Jonah wasn’t quite sure what Jack was thinking about, but he didn’t really have the energy to care as much as he probably should.

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