Page 162 of Sky Song
“That’s right, mom. Someone does.”
Ruby started helping out at the clinic, and despite an occasional grumbling, she made an excellent nurse. It was a good distraction for Ruby who had a difficult time adjusting to so much change, most of it definitely welcome and some of it uncertainly so.
“I don’t know, dearest. An alien. If your father were alive, he would have thought I failed you,” Ruby had once confessed to Cricket about Lyle.
Cricket wasn’t upset by mama’s attitude. “If daddy were alive, who knows how our lives would have turned out?” she had said philosophically.
Ruby, ever the prosaic one, agreed. “Nothing sure can be done about it now.”
And so life went on, with Cricket acutely aware of how blessed she was to have Ruby for a mother.
The baby rustled inside her crib, gathering energy for a wail. Cricket got up and went to her. She had named her second baby Anna, striving for simplicity, for something to tie her to the place of her birth. Anna. Such a common name on Earth, such a clean one. Her little grace of God.
Picking her up, Cricket cooed to the perfectly formed baby-girl version of Lyle before settling to nurse her. Anna latched on, grasping a handful of Cricket’s breast in her strong chubby hand and keeping her brilliant snake eyes firmly on Cricket’s face.
Unlike her sister, Anna had typical Rix eyes that appeared to be fully functioning. But she was a fussy baby, and restless, prone to crying spells that indicated pain. Chalen suspected an internal organ incompatibility and was gearing up to run a series of tests to try and pinpoint an exact problem. Cricket prayed for it to turn out manageable.
When Anna finished nursing, Cricket changed her, listening to the sounds of the awakening house. Mireya’s childish unmodulated voice resonated loudly from the kitchen, with Ruby responding in a quieter voice, telling her to wash her hands. A quiet knock signaled Zaron’s arrival, just in time for breakfast he usually ate with their family.
With freshly changed Anna in her arms, Cricket made her way to the kitchen. As she passed the front of their house, she smiled at the painting on the wall.
No one had expected Zaron to sell Atticus and join them on Exter, least of all Zaron. But without Ren and Rosamma, his life on Meeus had suddenly gotten dull. Nothing was the samewithout them, and so he’d made a decision to join them on the asteroid.
And then he came to visit Exter. Having taken a good look around, Zaron had seen nothing but possibilities. He could set up a new club, larger and more diverse, with liquor and gambling and music, the whole nine yards. Exter wasn’t Meeus with its endless stifling regulations, so Zaron’s plans regarding his new establishment quickly reached grandiose proportions. Lyle already raised concerns based on what he’d heard Zaron describe, and more head butting was going to be inevitable.
When Zaron came, he didn’t bring Hipper with him. Hipper had died at home, on Meeus. Cattoons didn’t have a very long lifespan, and Hipper, because he lived in captivity, had lived out more than his fair share.
When Cricket found out, she had procured paints and painted Hipper as she remembered him best, peeking out from Mr. Sulys’ window, his furry body half-hidden by striped drapes. His ugly animal face was indistinct behind the window’s reflection, and his round, strangely human eyes were alight in wonder.
She hung the painting in their front room facing the door so Hipper could see them coming and going, and he forever smiled his tentative, goofy smile looking down on the life they put together from such angular, disparate parts.
