Bran Homer came flying out the door, watched the sheriff back up the driveway, and waved to me. “Morning. You rise like I do.”
I shook his offered hand. “Not normally, but I need this job. You think today I could get to work?”
He snorted. “My Emmy just wanted to have a nice dinner with our boy before he got to work. She’ll let him into the room today.”
“She still angry with me about the whole religion thing at dinner?” I had my principles, but Aunt Emelia shone with such a warm kindness, the decent thing to do was attempt to get along.
Bran sat down in the swing and brushed the leaves out so I could do the same. “I think the word you want is ‘confused.’ Faith’s such a key weapon against the meat-skins, it’d be like leaving half your bullets at home.”
“I didn’t mean to offend. We work to control the co-orgs every bit as much, we just do it with measurements and analysis. So it works for everyone.” I pulled the laptop from my messenger bag, opened it to the weekly briefings.
Bran nodded. “Don’t you worry. If our faith depended on your belief, it wouldn’t be our faith.”
“Can I ask a question?”
“Shoot, girl. Don’t mean I have to answer.”
“Why do you call Brynner ‘son’?”
He looked to the door first. “My Emmy and I had one beautiful daughter. She died two hours later. After that, Lara’s boy filled the empty spot in our home, what with his daddy being gone on missions and Lara busy in her lab at all hours. When Lara had the accident, he came to live with us.”
“What happened to Lara Carson?” I’d never seen it documented. Even Bran’s word ‘accident’ was more information than the ‘tell-all’ books contained.
Bran rose from the swing and opened the door. “Boy doesn’t like me talking about it. You ask him. Emmy might talk, or she might not, but if Brynner hasn’t told you, it ain’t my business.”
BRYNNER
I slept in for the first time in five and a half years. The clock said 11:30, my brain asked what year. If I had nightmares, I didn’t remember them. I stumbled out to the kitchen, where Aunt Emelia stood, a fry skillet in one hand and a spatula in the other.
The scent of fish fried with coconut oil filled the house. “That smells so good.” I took out a cereal bowl. Aunt Emelia pointed the spatula at me. “Brynner Carson, in this house, you miss breakfast, you eat at lunch. Go shower, young man. You’ll be hungry enough when lunch is ready.”
I was hungry already, but arguing with Emelia Homer was like playing tug-of-war with a monster truck. I’d still be arguing when lunchtime came. So I went to the bathroom, with its rusted sink and a drain that kept two inches of water in the shower at all times.
I dried off and dressed in BSI-issue fatigues. Resistant polymer, smooth so meat-skins had nothing to grapple on, tough enough to prevent road rash, and generally speaking, clothes that wouldn’t get a man laid unless the circus was in town and all the clowns were sick.
When I got back into the kitchen, it hit me who was missing. “I forgot to get Grace from the motel. She’ll be halfway to El Paso if she takes a wrong turn.”
Aunt Emilia let out a harrumph. “Unlike some people, she gets to work on time. She’s been translating since eight. Be a dear and tell her lunch is ready.”
I lumbered down the hall to the memorial room. When I was younger, it still held a crib and changing table. When Dad died, and I wanted everything burned, Aunt Emelia took it all. Refused the BSI’s offer to buy it. Refused my demands to turn it over.
I opened the door, and the smell took me back twelve years in one breath. Old leather, fountain pen, and shaving cologne. The scents of Dad. He’d come home with twelve-inch gashes, shave, shower, and then let Mom drive him to Aunt Emelia’s clinic to get sewn up.
And if one minute of his life passed without him making a record of it in one of those books, I didn’t know when it was.
“Morning.” Grace’s voice startled me from my reverie. She sat cross-legged on the floor, wearing an orange “Bentonville” T-shirt and black sweatpants. She didn’t wear a trace of makeup, letting me see every fine detail of her cheeks, which had freckles at the edges. She brushed