Page 80 of Taken By the Alien Killer
“Liar,” Star says, jogging up, hair sticking to her neck, face flushed from running and laughing. She slows without stopping and leans on my shoulder for a second, mouth near my ear, voice low. “You look like you swallowed the sun.”
“I might have,” I say, and it feels true. The garden is hot and sweet; the fountain’s breath is cool on the back of my neck; the citrus blossom is a choir you can taste. War smelled like oil and fear. Peace smells like this.
Our daughter pats the scar under my brow with the seriousness a medic reserves for a new patient. “Boo-boo?” she asks.
“Old boo-boo,” I tell her, pressing my forehead to hers, rough scales careful against soft skin. “All better.”
“Better,” she echoes, satisfied, then wriggles until I put her down so she can run at a flock of deliberately brave pigeons and make them perform for her.
Star watches her go, chest rising like she climbed a mountain she didn’t know she could own. She turns back to me without turning her body—some trick she learned standing at windows pretending not to wait for me—and mouths,come here.She doesn’t need to say it twice. I go like the world would be wrong if I didn’t.
We walk across the courtyard with the little one between us, her fists closed around two of our fingers like she’s towingsomething important. The stone is warm under my bare feet; the seams between slabs keep little pockets of cool that surprise my soles every six steps. Lemon and basil do their duet. Somewhere a horse sneezes, indignant and hopeful because there might be apples. Above us, the sky is a pale blaze, the ring-light quiet and thin like someone drew a white line with a careful hand.
She hops; I lift; Star pretends the hop was the biggest leap in history. Our daughter crows like a gull, then informs the air, “I big.”
“You are,” Star agrees, solemn. “But not too big to nap later.”
“No nap,” the little one declares.
“We will negotiate,” I say, and she eyes me like she knows exactly how most negotiations with me end.
Every stone we step on holds a memory the house bothers to keep. There’s the crack where CynJyn tried to drop a chandelier during a very tedious supper and Sneed re-routed gravity just in time with a noise only I heard. There’s the stain where Daddy spilled a whole bottle of a vintage he swore wasn’t that good and then mourned for a week with great dignity. There’s the scuff where Star dragged my cloak to bed because it smelled like me and lemon and safety and she refused to behave. The garden remembers. It hums with it.
“Do you ever miss the war?” Star asks, glancing at me sidelong like she’s checking for weather.
“Sometimes,” I admit, because lies rot a peace faster than mold. “There are days my blood asks for a reason to go fast.” I look at her and the small tyrant twisting our fingers like reins. “But I’d miss you more.”
She presses her mouth together like she’s trying to keep a smile from escaping and failing, and then she lets her head rest on my shoulder, the weight so perfect my knees decide to forgive the years I spent doing elsewise. “Good answer,” she murmurs. “Ten points.”
“Out of?” I ask.
“Nine,” she says, bumping my hip with hers. The little one squeals at the pigeons again and then takes a running, bowlegged leap that nearly dislocates at least three laws of physics. I swing her and she squeals louder and even the cypress look amused.
We reach the low wall at the edge of the garden where the view opens and the river is a long, lazy dragon uncoiling to the sea. The sun has made up its mind to start leaving; it pours violet into the low clouds and sets the water on fire where it can. Star shifts closer into me until her shoulder is tucked under my arm and I remember, with that quiet shock I hope never stops, that I am allowed to hold her like this in daylight while her mother looks out a window and rolls her eyes happily.
Our daughter climbs up on the wall and stands with her feet very far apart to convince the wind she is immovable. “Look,” she commands, pointing at everything at once. “Bird. Water. Tree. Big.”
“Very big,” Star says, kissing her curls, breathing me in because heat makes me smell like metal and soap and the lemon this house leaks. I swallow something that thinks it’s the last of my old self and turns into a laugh by accident.
We stay like that until the world remembers it has stars. The first pop into sight like shy things; then the sky decides we’ve earned a flourish and spills them out fast enough to make our little one clap her hands and hiccup on the intake.
“Up,” she orders, arms out, all imperiousness and sticky fingers. I lift her, settle her on my forearm, feel the heavy, lovely pull of her trust. She grabs my ear like a traveler hanging onto a rail. I point with my free hand and the old habit comes back without the metal taste it used to carry.
“That one,” I tell her, choosing a bright, steady spark near the ring seam, “is where I found your mother.”
She squints with the serious concentration of a general and then leans back to whisper, “Ship?”
“Ship,” I nod. “Bad ones. Loud ones. We made them quiet.”
“Shhh,” she says bossily to the entire concept of pirates, then leans forward again, checking my work. “More.”
“And this one,” I say, sliding my finger along the line the rings make until it lands on a bluish star that insists on being seen, “is where she saved me.”
Star slides her arms around us both—one over my ribs, one under our daughter’s knees—pulling us together into a knot that can’t be untied by anything that doesn’t have an opposable thumb and a court order. “Which time?” she asks softly, humor and heat braided into it.
“All of them,” I say, and on another day I would add a joke to keep the air from getting too thick. Tonight I let the truth sit like a stone on the windowsill of my mouth—simple, heavy, weathered and exactly the right shape to stay where it’s put.
Our daughter plants a kiss on my cheek with the accuracy of a bombardier and then pats Star’s face. “Mama,” she says. “Papa.” She looks triumphant as if she just invented us.
