Page 35 of Mongrels United
“Not Rim. He’s good at his job.” He could feel the urge to explain why he knew how good Rim was at his job, but that would get him into aspects of his business that the ship’s Chief of Staff didn’t need to know. He bit down on the need to talk. He was a garrulous drunk, which was why he always did his serious drinking alone.
“Anyway,” Grady said smoothly. “It is good to have the confirmation, even if it’s not the answer I was hoping it would be.”
He shrugged, keeping his teeth together.
She looked at him.
Here it comes, he told himself.
“I asked the medical institute to look into your father’s death. A full autopsy.”
Nash wanted to be impressed. First, because he hadn’t told her about his father, but she knew anyway. She was the Chief of Staff, so likely it had popped up in a report or something. But she knew.
Second, that she’d ordered an autopsy. He knew a little about autopsies, because the remains of Skinwalkers, when they died, had always been put through them. Working in vacuum and extended time in zero gee had strange effects upon the human body, which a full autopsy would reveal. Medical science had moved ahead in great leaps and bounds because of what they had learned from those examinations. But full autopsies that included radiation patterning, DNA breakdowns, molecular analysis, bone scans and a dozen more tests and diagnostic sequences were seldom conducted anymore. They were expensive in time, energy, resources and money, and a waste of time if the cause of death was obvious.
Nash reminded himself that Grady had ordered a full autopsy to give herself answers, not him. “And?” He kept his tone cool.
The chilliness didn’t seem to bother her. “They will continue to pull apart the results for days yet, but first analysis has been confirmed. Your father had been using Bellish for decades, Nash. They think for as long as seventy or eighty years.”
Eighty years!
The words echoed in his mind, while he assimilated what that would mean, apart from it being averylong time.
Grady was talking on, his silence encouraging her. Something about it being such a long time that the medical experts were astounded. But all Nash could think of was that Nason Wheelock had been using Bellishall Nash’s life.
He let out a breath, letting it slide out through his slightly parted lips, so he didn’t give away how truly floored he was. He put a hand to his temple, which had begun to throb.
All his life! For all the years Nash had been alive, Nason had been using Bellish. Was that what lay behind all the yelling? The shouting? Even the quiet moments had been marked by petty meanness—the smallest meal would end up on Nash’s plate, even when he grew taller than Nason. New clothes wouldn’t be printed for him until long after the kids in the Esquiline had grown bored of making fun of his exposed ankles and bony wrists.
Nash realized he was digging his fingers into both temples and that Grady was staring at him. When had she stopped speaking? It bothered him that he hadn’t noticed.
Straighten up. You’re telling her too much. The voice was dry and accusing. It was the voice that directed his behavior most days of his life.
Nash puts his hands down on the table. They made fists, but he couldn’t help that.
“Don’t you see, Nash?” Grady’s tone was very gentle. “Bellish never went away. It just went into hiding. And your father knew where to get it.”
It jolted him. Actually, physically, jerked at his limbs and made him flinch. His breath rasped out.
Grady’s eyes narrowed. “Nash?”
He straightened up. Made himself taller on the bench. Opened his mouth to tell her he was fine, that Nason Wheelock having hidden something like this from him for over forty years was about standard.
But what came out of his mouth was something utterly different. “I had two fathers. For a while, anyway. Nason, you know about. Hell, you probably know about the other one, too. Hyram. Hyram Stroud.”
She nodded, but he didn’t wait for her confirmation. “Only you might not have dug deep enough,” he told her. “Hyram disappeared when I was ten. He just didn’t come home one day. They turned the ship inside out. Mechanical engineers looked under every pipe and conduit for him. They even pulled down sections of interior wall. But he was just gone and everyone talked about it for years.”
He had to pause to take a breath, because he had completely run out of air.
Shut up, shut up, shut UP!the dry voice screamed in his mind.
“Only, no one ever said anything in front of me about Pa Hyram,” he continued. “They’d do that shushing thing to each other when I got close, you know? Of course you know, your staff probably do it to you. Thing is, life was okay, when Hyram was there. After he was gone, though, it was just me and Nason and it wasn’t okay, after that.”
Her big brown eyes were steady. She didn’t say a thing and Nash was grateful for her silence.
He thought he was done. He blew out his breath.
Then more words were suddenly justthere, and he had to speak them or choke on them. “It wasn’t the shitty life at home, though. You have to know that. For me, that was normal. I didn’t know any better and I didn’t know any other kids well enough to know what their normal was, to compare it to mine, you see?”
