feels like he’s made a mistake. Thanksgiving belongs in an old English colonial house with repairs visible to the baseboards and the ceiling, if you know where to look. There should be signs of wear and tear on the wallpaper, not this pristine showroom shine.
Dodger glances at him, grimaces sympathetically, and says, “My folks were afraid we might have to sell and move when I was a kid. Daddy had tenure, but there were budget cuts, and tenure doesn’t keep you employed if your department goes away. They inherited the house from Mom’s grandparents. I never met them, but Great-Grandpa was some sort of apple baron or something, and they had a lot of money back in the day. So I always knew if I wanted to make a mess, I should either make it in my room or go outside and make it there.”
Roger thinks of blood sinking into the ground, of messes made in ways and in places that can never be cleaned. He doesn’t say anything. It wouldn’t change anything. The past is set in stone, and he’s not a sculptor; he doesn’t get to go back and make something like that not happen.
Something about that thought nags at him, like a mosquito buzzing around his head. It’s such a strange way to frame things. He’s not a sculptor. But that opens the possibility that someone else could be; that such sculptors could exist in this world.
Clearly he needs more coffee. He gulps it as Dodger burbles about renovations, about how some of the prize money from the various mathematical puzzles she’s solved over the years has gone back into the house, always with her consent, sometimes with her insistence, shoring up the foundations that kept her safe. There’s a door at the end of the hallway; she opens it, and they’re looking out on the backyard, and the roses, he sees the roses, the ones she showed him when they were children, the ones that always seemed so bright and beautiful to him, like roses grown in the Up-and-Under.
Their colors are as faded as any other roses. He sighs. Dodger glances at him and he closes his eyes, hiding the gesture behind a yawn as he looks through her eyes, looks out and sees the roses, as bright and as beautiful as ever.
He wonders what she gets when she looks through his eyes that she doesn’t see through her own.
“Did you not sleep last night?” asks Erin.
He opens his eyes, but not before Dodger looks in her direction and he sees her through a different perspective: sees that her hair is strawberry blonde, not ashy, as he’d always assumed; sees her cheeks are flushed, even though it’s not that warm, even though they haven’t been doing anything to leave her in that state. It’s strange. It’s attractive, even. She’s still dangerous, but it’s a pretty sort of danger, the kind he could get used to.
Then his eyes are open, and the color is gone, one more layer of meaning removed from the world. “Not enough,” he says, with a smile and a shrug. “I was excited about the idea of eating a real meal for a change. Sue me if there’s something wrong with that.”
“If grad students wanting to eat properly is something worth litigating, we’re doomed,” says Dodger, and drags him into the backyard. There’s her father, standing near the fence—so much higher and sturdier than it was when they were kids, when Dodger’s fascination with the gully was safe, and not the disaster it became—and fiddling with the barbecue, where he’s grilling asparagus and corn to go with the turkey. He raises a hand in a wave. All four of them wave back but don’t approach. It’s better to let the people who enjoy playing with fire to finish before getting too close, at least if the goal is continuing to have hair that’s not burning.
There’s a table set up on the patio where they’ll be eating dinner, and a pair of sliding glass doors lead into the kitchen where Heather is working. They must have taken the long way through the house to avoid disturbing her. It’s an easy conclusion to reach, and is reinforced when Dodger steers them to a smaller table off to one side and says, brightly, “I’ll be right back.”
She’s gone before any of them can object. Roger exchanges a look with Erin and says, “We’re about to get covered in glitter.”