Dreams of the Golden Age

NINE

WHEN Anna came home and told Celia that Teia and Lew hadn’t been at school the last couple of days and were likely withdrawing from Elmwood, Celia wasn’t surprised. It was what she’d have done, finding out her children had this shadow life that her best friend had been manipulating behind the scenes.

What she had to do now was figure out a way to change Analise’s mind. To recruit her to the cause.

She called Mark. He’d left her three messages about the latest vigilante news story. She hadn’t gotten back to him because she’d been distracted with Analise, the doctor’s appointment, a burgeoning hypochondria spurred by the doctor’s appointment, and so on. The vacation was sounding better and better. Surely the city wouldn’t crumble to pieces if she left it alone for a week. After the development plan was settled.

“Finally. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day,” he said, flustered, and she worried about his heart.

“I know, I’m sorry, I’ve had a lot on my plate.”

“Well, I’ve got another one for you. We arrested Jonathan Scarzen based on an anonymous tip. Good information, the DA thinks she’s got a case, we’re moving forward.”

She had to remind herself who that was, what it meant. Crime lord who’d kept himself very underground. Right. “That’s great, isn’t it?”

“I’m pretty sure the tip came from a team of vigilantes. A different team of vigilantes than the kids at the fire.”

Oh. Oh, dear. “How do you know?”

“We got a call from a cabby about some suspicious activity in the area. He picked up a fare, a couple of kids dressed in black. He thought they might have been cat burglars or something. The timing puts them a few blocks away from where we arrested Scarzen. Frankly, I don’t know whether to be amused that they’re taking cabs around town because they can’t fly or pissed off that they’re putting themselves in so much danger.”

Teddy Donaldson was one of them, she’d bet. He hadn’t been part of the first group, Teia and company. “What are their descriptions?” Celia asked.

“I don’t think I’m going to tell you,” Mark said, sounding entirely too gleeful. “You’ve been holding out on me, now I’m holding out on you.”

She did not have time for this. “I’m just trying to keep you from pulling up to these kids’ houses and arresting them on some trumped-up curfew charge or whatever the hell you’re planning.”

“Celia, it’s for their own good. They’re running around Hell’s Alley in the middle of the night, they’re going to get hurt.”

He was right, of course. It was the same reason Analise was so angry about it. He kept on, “I’ve got two brand-new superhero teams hitting the streets now, and neither of them knows what the hell they’re doing. They’re kids playing with dynamite, and it has to stop before one of them gets killed. You know who they are, you have to stop them.”

“You know how I can tell you don’t have teenage kids?” Celia asked.

“I get teen delinquents in here every damn day. Don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about,” he said, sharp as a razor.

She’d cut too close. Mark didn’t have kids of his own, not because he didn’t want them but because he’d made a responsible choice not to inflict his genes on the next generation. Guy ought to get a medal, not her sarcasm. Backing up, she tried again. “It’s not a matter of making them stop. You’ve been dealing with supers as long as I have. It’s a compulsion with them.”

Mark understood the compulsion, because along with the powers came a need—a need to protect, to act, to control. It was why he’d become a cop when he could have been anything he wanted. Sometimes the Leyden descendants were born without powers, but still they felt the compulsion.

When she was younger, people used to ask Celia why she didn’t just leave Commerce City if she wanted to get away from her parents’ shadow. She could never adequately explain why she had to stay. It was her city, she always said, vaguely, earnestly. She couldn’t leave.

Maybe Arthur was right. She was trying to do too much. Maybe it was time to delegate. Mark was already half on her side. He might be able to help her get Analise on their side, too.

“Mark, I want you to meet someone. Can you pick me up and go on an errand with me?”

She was grateful when he agreed.

Celia was even more grateful that Analise didn’t slam the door in her face when she and Mark showed up. It was early evening, when Analise was home from work at her job managing the downtown rec center.

“I’ll tell you everything, I swear,” Celia said, before hello even, and Analise paused. She and Mark must have looked very serious, standing there together, both of them still in their business suits from their workday.

Analise glanced over her shoulder to the staircase and, by extension, the kids’ bedrooms above them. “All right, but let’s go somewhere the kids can’t eavesdrop.”

A block from the town house, a small park occupied an empty lot between cross streets. After dark, the place was empty, and they gathered on a secluded bench.

Celia started, “Analise, I don’t know if you remember Mark Paulson—”

“We met briefly,” Mark said. “I don’t know if you remember, that stint Celia pulled in the hospital after the bus crash.”

Celia had forgotten that they’d both been in her room when everyone came to visit at once. Not that she’d been thinking too straight then, drugged up and suffering from a concussion.

“How can I forget the cute detective you ditched for the freaky telepath? I remember,” Analise said.

They both blushed at that one, how could they not? Didn’t help that Mark was still awfully cute. But with his serious calm and salt-and-pepper hair he also resembled his father, onetime mayor and Commerce City’s last serious supervillain. Kind of weird.

“Um. Yeah. Mark, Lady Snow and Stormbringer are her kids. I thought she should be in on the conversation about what to do about them.”

Analise’s gaze burned fierce. “You are not going to arrest them—”

“No, not at all,” Mark said. “This is entirely off the record. This … this all has to be off the record.” He looked to Celia to explain. She gathered herself and did so, carefully.

“There’s a genetic component to superhuman powers. It has to do with an accident that happened at a laboratory run by Simon Sito, the Destructor, that was funded by my grandfather and where your father worked. They were both there during the accident, along with a dozen workers. The powers originate there, and they’re passed down from parent to child. Not always.” She and Mark exchanged a glance there, because they’d never been entirely sure how much of their makeup came from that accident—they didn’t have powers, but they both had a love for and loyalty to the city that was almost superhuman. Was that part of the Leyden Labs inheritance, or a coincidence? “But sometimes, yes. I found this out by accident, but I’ve been tracking the lineages ever since. With our kids hitting puberty, along with about a dozen others, I wanted to get the potential inheritors into one place, so they’d be safer. So we could watch them.”

Analise glared at Celia. Wondering how much she’d told Mark, no doubt—or if Mark had guessed. It wasn’t hard, once you put all the pieces down on the same surface.

Mark made a peace offering. “Since we’re sharing secrets, I’ll tell you mine: Simon Sito, the Destructor, was my grandfather. I didn’t inherit anything, but I could have. That’s why I’m working with Celia, to try to prevent another Destructor from happening to the city.”

Celia expected shock, even horror from Analise, processing that information. But it was old history now. Abstract, irrelevant. Then, her friend’s brow furrowed as she decided if her own history was old enough to reveal.

But Analise shook her head. “As much as I’d like to go public some days, there’s still a warrant out, and no statute of limitations. I can’t say anything.” It was as much an offering as Analise could give, and it was enough.

“I understand,” Mark said.

Somehow, moving on after that became easier. They all knew where they stood now, even if the words hadn’t been spoken.

“I’ve been thinking,” Celia continued. “We know we’re not going to stop them from trying to be heroes. The powers come with the need to use them. Our choices are to lock them in their rooms until they’re eighty, and have them bust out anyway and do something crazy. Or we give them an outlet, and we supervise them.” Like keeping the secret elevator open. At least they would know where their kids were.

She looked at Mark. “I can give you my files—but only you. None of this gets recorded. And you have to keep the police off their backs. Watch them, supervise them, keep them out of serious trouble—hell, give them missions if you want. But keep it secret. Give them the freedom to figure this out on their own. It’s not like they’d actually listen to us. Analise, you know what they’re going through. Let them go back to Elmwood and be with their friends. They can help each other.”

Analise sat on the park bench, a little apart. She closed her eyes, put her face in her hands—thinking. And if she said no, absolutely not, and kept the kids out of Elmwood and told Celia and Mark to stay the hell away, would Celia stay away? No, she realized, she probably wouldn’t.

“Single parenthood’s been hard enough,” she said finally. “And now you slam this on me?”

“This is supposed to help them, Analise. To help you. It’ll be better, with more of us looking out for them.”

“You’re not doing this to try to manipulate them into creating a second Olympiad.”

“That’s an unintended side effect. Honest.” She wasn’t sure Analise or Mark believed that one, the way they were looking at her.

Analise said, “I just want to keep my kids safe. Whatever it takes.”

“Me, too,” Celia said. “And I have some ideas about how to do that.”

For a stretch of time in her teens and early twenties, Celia had been the object of about a dozen kidnappings. Her parents’ secret identities had been revealed, the Olympiad’s cover blown, and she became the ultimate target for villains and supervillains who thought they could attack the heroes by holding her hostage. The scheme never worked, and the Olympiad rescued her every time. She’d never been seriously hurt, and only a little traumatized. Okay, maybe a lot traumatized.

Now, sitting in a nondescript, inoffensive doctor’s office waiting to hear the results of a barrage of tests felt a little like being kidnapped. Time had slowed, her future had become fuzzy. But she couldn’t see her captors, and she had no bindings to struggle against. To ground her. She felt like she was floating, and her heart raced. She had been kidnapped in a sense, hadn’t she? It was enough to make her nostalgic.

But this time, she couldn’t look her captor in the eye, there’d be no pompous monologue about his nefarious plans. And the Olympiad wasn’t on the way to save her.

She took Arthur’s hand, held it a little more tightly than she meant to.

The checkup three days ago hadn’t gone the way Celia expected. She expected the doctor to tell her she had a cold or some other virus. Mono, maybe. That she needed to rest, take a vacation like Arthur said. She’d have her temperature and blood pressure taken, her heart would race a little, the doctor would tsk at her and send her home with anti-anxiety medication.

No, be honest: That was what Celia had hoped would happen. She had hoped very hard for something simple and nondisruptive. Something she could laugh about in a week, while teasing Arthur for being overprotective.

But then the clinic had called. “We have your results. We’d like you to come in to discuss them,” they’d said, which meant bad news. Not just bad, but the worst. They wanted to see you only when it was bad. She hadn’t been able to focus, so Arthur had had to call the town car and guide her down the elevator and to the garage.

Arthur didn’t say a word the whole time. Just kept hold of her and grimly took charge of the situation until they were sitting in the clinic waiting room. Waiting. Anyone else would have muttered vague, untrue reassurances the whole time, but not him. He knew exactly what she was thinking and that there was nothing he could say to comfort her. He was there, and that was enough.

If he was angry, upset, or scared, he couldn’t show it. He controlled his emotions because they’d impact the people around him, and she’d long since gotten used to him reacting like a stone to the most chaotic situations. But just this once, she wanted to know what he was feeling. The tension in his face had become constant.

A receptionist called them in and locked them away in the quiet of a doctor’s office. Not an exam room but an unassuming office with a plain desk and uncomfortable padded chairs. Diplomas on the wall, family pictures on the bookshelves.

When the door opened, Celia flinched, and Arthur squeezed her hand.

Dr. Valdez approached, full of pleasantries, shaking their hands before setting down a manila folder, then sitting behind her desk like it was a shield. Celia didn’t hear a word of it, and when Valdez stopped moving and she finally got a good look at her, the doctor’s smile seemed stricken.

“As you might have gathered from my call, the results of the blood work weren’t normal. In fact, it’s rather more serious than was initially expected, which is why you were asked to come in.”

That switch to business passive voice grated on Celia’s nerves. The woman really didn’t want to talk about this, and Celia was trying to figure out how to interrupt the awkward introduction to get to the actual diagnosis when Arthur did it for her.

“Leukemia,” he said. “It’s leukemia.”

Having a word made it somehow less nerve-racking. Celia could breathe again. She couldn’t think, but she could breathe.

The doctor appeared to deflate, unable even to fake a smile. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

Celia kept repeating the word to herself. It was bad, okay. But how bad? And how had it happened in the first place? It wasn’t like catching a cold, was it?

“Do you know what could have caused it?” Arthur said, voicing her question before she could formulate it herself.

“We’re not really sure. A variety of causes have been shown to have an impact in some cases. Particularly if you’ve ever been exposed to powerful radiation—”

A wave of vertigo shook her and she clung to the arm of the chair. A flashback, a visceral smell of a secret laboratory in the process of burning, and her father coming to save her … The Psychostasis Device exploded, and he’d hunched over her, shielding her from a massive burst of radiation. “You’re safe,” he’d whispered, his dying words.

The feeling was so strong she wanted to run. Instead, she put her hand over her mouth to stifle laughter. Oh, God.

The radiation from the psychostasis ray that her father had died to protect her from. He’d died thinking he’d saved her, that she was safe, but she wasn’t, the radiation had just taken twenty years to kill her.

She swallowed back the scream that came next. Calmed herself.

“Celia,” Arthur whispered. His expression was taut, scared. His fear pressed out, against her mind. She squeezed his hand back. She was okay. She was going to be okay. She decided, right there, that she had to be.

—The girls, how am I going to tell the girls about this?—

—Wait.— Arthur urged calm without speaking.

She took a breath and settled. Looked straight across the desk to the doctor. “What do I do?”

The treatment plans were extensive and arduous. Her case would go through a panel review in the next few days, and the panel would likely recommend chemotherapy, which ought to be started as soon as possible. The doctor encouraged her to do as much research as she could in the meantime.

Oh, would she. She would kill that research. She’d started her career in forensic accounting; nothing would escape her hunt for information.

“How am I going to tell my mother?” she said abruptly as the car pulled onto the ramp that sloped down to West Plaza’s parking garage. “I don’t know how to tell my mother.” She didn’t want to tell anyone. She wanted to pretend this wasn’t happening, but she wasn’t that good an actress. “I don’t want to tell the girls. Not yet, not till I know what I’m doing next.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Is that the telepath or the psychiatrist talking?”

“It’s the man you’ve been living with for twenty years and the father of your children talking,” he said. “We’re already keeping so many secrets.” He actually sounded sad. Tired, maybe.

She leaned against him, snuggled under the crook of his arm, and let the warmth of his mind as well as his body envelop her. He could whisper hush directly into her panicking hindbrain. She’d never tried to keep secrets from him.

“We’ll wait until this city development deal is finalized. It should just be a couple of weeks, then I’ll tell. I’ve got sharks circling for me, and I don’t want them finding out about this. I can install equipment for treatment in West Plaza. No one will ever see me at the hospital, and I’ll tell people when I want them to know. I can do this.”

“We, Celia. We can do this. It’s going to involve all of us sooner or later.”

One day at a time. She had her plans, they were all in order, it would all work out. She just had to keep telling herself that.

Arthur held her hand in a gesture that seemed desperate.

Her mother was gone from the penthouse when they returned, so that was one decision Celia could put off until later. Suzanne had left a note about shopping at the Asian market on the north side for dinner ideas, and reminded her that she’d invited Robbie over for dinner and she hoped they could all be there because it had been quite awhile since they’d all gotten together, what with the girls being so busy with school, and so on.

It was like she was still in high school herself. Only back then, the notes Suzanne left were just as likely to be about some mysterious unnamed “errand,” which always meant that the Olympiad was off thwarting plots, and if she got hungry there was lasagna that she could put in the oven.

Celia stared at the note a long time until her eyes brimmed with tears, which she scrubbed away a moment later. She didn’t have time for that.

Sitting at her desk in her office seemed remarkably futile. She had the work she’d abandoned, the day’s task list, and the mental acuity needed to perform a simple task like open her e-mail folder seemed monstrously difficult. Arthur took one of the chairs and sat, legs stretched out.

“Are you going to be all right?”

She wondered sometimes why he bothered asking.

She didn’t have to say anything, but the silence was harsh, so she did. “I thought work would distract me. I don’t want to tell them, Arthur. I just don’t. I can already see the looks on their faces, and with Robbie coming over tonight…” The weight of all their stares, all their pity. Their fear for her. She just couldn’t.

“You may be right, for now,” he said. “We can at least enjoy tonight.”

She was surprised he agreed, and she stared at him for any nuance in his expression. He radiated only calm, with no indication of how hard he had to work for that calm.

“I love you,” she said.

That night, the kids roared home from school like a whirlwind. She didn’t need to check the cameras because it seemed she heard them all the way from the ground floor. They stormed into the penthouse, Bethy going on about two friends at school fighting over something ridiculous, and Anna grumbling at her about how there were more important things to worry about and could she please grow up, then Bethy insisting she was grown up, and Anna declaring she was going to take a nap and could everyone please leave her alone. They used to play together, Celia thought wistfully. They still had tubs of dolls and blocks in their bedrooms that they hadn’t touched in years.

From her office, Celia heard Suzanne call from the kitchen, “Don’t forget, we’re having company for dinner, so you can’t skip, okay?” Mumbled acknowledgments followed.

If Celia could just forget that she was sick, she’d be able to get through the next few hours without a problem.

She wrapped up her research, carefully purged her web browser of all medical links, and locked file folders in the safe. By the time she’d finished, washed up and changed into jeans and a blouse, and returned to the living room to crack open a bottle of wine, building security announced that Robbie Denton had arrived and was on his way up. She was at the front door to meet him when he emerged from the private elevator.

Once upon a time, Robbie Denton could run faster than the eye could see. As the Bullet, he had joined the Olympiad and battled crime and defeated supervillains. He was legendary.

Now he walked with a cane, held discreetly at his side to prop up a weak leg. Arthritis in the hips, the degeneration of joints that had worked many times harder than they’d been designed to. When he finally retired a good eight or so years ago, he revealed that he’d been in pain for a long time. He’d been slowing down, hoping no one would notice, until he finally stopped. He’d had hip replacement surgery. There’d been complications—his mutated physiology rejected the implants. Further surgeries kept him on his feet and out of a wheelchair but hadn’t given him back his speed.

He was terribly good-natured about it, Celia thought. He smiled and made jokes about the rest of him holding up just fine, and how he was lucky to have survived long enough to have these problems. Which made her think about her father, who’d had so much of his identity wrapped up in his powers that he probably wouldn’t have survived losing them. At least not easily.

Celia let Robbie fold her into a squeezing one-armed hug while he leaned on his cane.

“How you doing, kid?”

She would always be the kid to Robbie, even though she had two kids of her own now. Her smile turned stricken, but she moved on quickly, hoping he didn’t notice the hesitation. “I’m fine. Busy, tired, the usual, but fine.” And she would be, as long as she kept declaring it.

“Your mom in the kitchen? Is that stir-fry?” Robbie took a long breath through his nose.

“Yup.” They could hear the sizzling all the way in the foyer, not to mention smell the spices and vegetables. If they went to look in on her, they’d find her, wok in hand, pan spitting hot, stove cold. Still using her powers to do something as simple as cook a meal. She hadn’t burned herself out, so to speak. Powers were so unpredictable, so chaotic. Celia didn’t like to think what would happen if Arthur ever lost his powers—or lost control of them.

She quickly tucked that thought away because Arthur came in then from the elevator. He’d retreated to his own office to wrap up the week’s paperwork—pretty much at the exact moment Celia decided she’d be okay on her own, with her computer and a project. He’d probably been listening—sensing, scanning, however he did it—and knew that Robbie had arrived. The two men shook hands. Standing next to his former teammate, Arthur looked older. Not old—he was ten years younger than the rest of the Olympiad. But the sheen in his hair had begun to go silver, noticeable next to Robbie’s icy gray.

They were all so much older.

The kids came out a moment later, and Robbie gushed over them. He was their Uncle Robbie, and even Anna smiled for him. They trekked to the dining room adjoining the kitchen, and the evening rolled along nicely after that. The kids set the table. Everyone asked Suzanne if she needed help, but the cook shooed them away.

Sitting at the table next to Arthur, across from her children, Celia regarded the pleasant chaos of her life, which suddenly seemed fragile.

The food arrived, stir-fried pork with an amazing array of vegetables and perfectly seasoned noodles, and everyone oohed and ahhed, then debated the merits of chopsticks, the skills required to use them, and commenced eating.

Conversation started innocuously enough with the perennial topic of school, and Bethy went off for five minutes about math and thinking about trying out for the school play and the stupidity of book reports because it was all just opinion anyway, and she finally took another bite of food, which slowed her down. Anna stared at her plate, industriously paying attention to her bites and not much else. She didn’t even roll her eyes at Bethy’s monologue, like usual. Teia and Lew were back in school, she reported. They didn’t know why they’d been taken out in the first place. Their mother was having a midlife crisis or something, was Teia’s opinion.

Everyone else reported on the state of their lives. Celia made what she hoped was an unassuming comment about too many meetings, hoping to avoid an interrogation. She did, and talk moved on.

Then Robbie said, “How about the news lately? That new super team? Looks like we might finally have that second Olympiad we’ve been waiting for.”

Suzanne lamented, “Oh, yes, that photo. They all look so young. We were never that young, were we?”

Robbie snorted. “Everybody looks young to me these days.”

They’re Anna’s age, Celia thought, clamping her jaw shut so she wouldn’t speak. They’re Anna’s friends. Children. What would he say if it were Anna under one of those masks? She glanced at her elder daughter, who was staring at her plate, but her fork was still.

Celia’s father, Warren West, the legendary Captain Olympus, had wanted more than anything for Celia to follow in his footsteps and become a superpowered hero. He hadn’t gotten that. What would he think of his granddaughter following in his footsteps? Celia couldn’t even guess. She was so young.

Arthur, eternally serene, said, “The real test will be if they stick around, or if they quit after a year when they realize how tough the job is.”

“They do seem to be more enamored of the publicity than is really good for them, don’t they?” Suzanne said.

“I don’t know,” Robbie said, spearing noodles with a fork. “There’s something about these guys. I think they may be in it for the long haul. They have some real hard-core powers. They aren’t going to sit on the sidelines. And you know that anonymous tip that took down Scarzen? I think that might have been them, too.”

Celia realized the awful, ironic truth: In his retirement, since he was no longer able to live the vigilante lifestyle himself, Robbie had become a superhero groupie.

She said, as gently as she could manage, “What you really want is to sit them down and dispense advice, isn’t it?”

“If I thought they’d actually listen to an old man like me. But no, the books are out there, let them read up on me if they want advice. It’s all on paper.”

“You think they can do it?” Anna asked, after her long and pointed silence. “I mean, do you really think they can be like the Olympiad?”

“I really think they’re crazy,” Robbie said. “But then again, we were crazy.” He chuckled like it was a good thing. “I’m looking forward to seeing what they do, that’s for sure.”

“It’ll certainly be interesting,” Suzanne added.

“Can we talk about something else?” Anna said. “This … it’s just sensationalism.”

“Sometimes I think that’s the point,” Robbie replied.

“Anna’s mad because she wishes she had superpowers,” Bethy observed.

“No, you’re the one who wants powers,” Anna shot back, more a reflexive argument than one that made sense.

“Girls,” Celia said in a warning tone that was rapidly losing its effectiveness. Soon, they’d stop listening to her entirely, and wouldn’t that be a fun day?

“It’s not even about the powers, isn’t that what you’re always saying?” Anna looked straight at Celia, a challenge or a warning. “It’s about doing good whether or not you have powers. Right?”

“Exactly,” Celia said, but without confidence, worried where this was going to go next.

Robbie shrugged. “It’s still the superpowers that make Commerce City what it is. It’s part of your family heritage.”

“See?” Bethy proclaimed.

Celia glared at Robbie, with a curl to her lip. “I don’t know. Not having them is a pretty big part of their heritage, too.”

“Can we please talk about something else?” Anna pleaded. She propped her head on her hand and was looking a bit green.

“God, you’re so touchy,” Bethy shot back, and Anna rounded on her.

“Girls,” Arthur said softly, and wonder of wonders, they shut up. Celia was pretty sure he wasn’t even using his powers on them. But when he looked at them, like he was looking through them, they were very aware that he was likely seeing more than they wanted him to. It would shut anyone up.

They focused quietly on their plates.

“I have dessert,” Suzanne said brightly, making her way to the kitchen. The old defense mechanism, not a bit rusty.

“I’m not really hungry. Thanks for dinner, Grandma,” Anna said, then shoved away from the table to stomp off, not looking back.

Celia was relieved that no one called after her. That left them all a little bit of dignity, at least. Anna was in a mood, pleading with her wouldn’t change it. She remembered what it was like, wanting nothing more than to be left alone. She wondered if the others remembered.

The fruit and sherbet tasted as wonderful as expected, but they were all distracted, and conversation stumbled. Bethy finished only half of hers before fleeing, claiming a mountain of homework. Then, oddly, Celia felt like the kid at the table. The evening ended quickly after that. Robbie said enthusiastic thank-yous and made farewells. Arthur walked with him to the elevators, leaving Celia to help her mother clear up.

Suzanne, who usually bustled through the kitchen cleaning up after meals, was slow to start. She sat straight in her chair, in her place at the head of the table, gazing over the remains of the meal. Mostly successful, despite the moodiness of teenage girls. But tonight, Suzanne seemed sad.

“Mom?”

“I miss your father,” she said.

Celia started crying. She couldn’t help it. All day long, all the reasons she’d had to cry and hadn’t, not once. She was saving it up, she told herself. She’d cry later. But then her mother said exactly what she’d been thinking and it all came out, tears streaming, her swallowing her own breaths to try to keep from making noise.

“Oh, honey, shh.” And just like that Suzanne came to her and held her tight, and Celia clung back. She almost told her mother everything. But she just cried until they pulled apart, and Suzanne smoothed back her hair and kissed her forehead, and they cleared away the dishes. Everything back to normal.