>>5278769>>5278799>>5278843>>5278844>>5278869>>5278887>>5278978>>5279050>>5279145>>5279210>>5280092“I don’t think Jean would like it if I was here,” you answer quietly.
It isn’t just the impropriety of staying at a married woman’s behest. In a vacuum, that would be wrong enough. But this is Caroline and Jean. The former happens to attend a church with pewmates and busybody housewives who love nothing more to gossip. God only knows how bad the rumors would get if they saw you coming out of the house. The latter is your best friend in the entire Flooded World that isn’t Reggie.
Although that’s a relationship that’s tenuous at best, and non-existent at the worst. Beyond the fact that you haven’t spoken in three years, Jean taken your debt-slavery harder than Caroline. So hard that on the first day of Tom’s treatment, he’d stumbled out of his hospital room, high as a kite on a cocktail of painkillers. Then slugged you in the jaw with a metallic prosthesis he’d MacGyvered out of a box of scraps to replace his right hand.
<span class="mu-i">“Damn you, Sinleq…why did you have to do it?!”</span>
He’d said some other things, but between the near concussion you got, the shouts of orderlies trying to restrain him, and Caroline’s screams for him to stop…most of it’s lost to the ages. And the fog of head trauma.
In truth, you had undersold it to dream-Tom. The mass and weight of his father’s prosthetic dislocated your jaw and knocked a tooth loose. Stolze’s doctors had been able to pop it both back into place, but the old man hadn’t been happy about the delay in your services. It had taken some wheeling and dealing on your part to convince the crank not to press charges.
But Caroline flinches. Her teacup hits the paired saucer harder than one might expect.
“…something wrong?” you ask hesitantly.
She doesn’t answer immediately. Her lip quivers, and her mouth moves as if she’s struggling to find the proper words. The apartment is silent, save for whatever’s been left on low heat on the stove, the dry hiss of the air-conditioning unit, and the distant, muffled sound of Babylonia just outside the windows.
“I didn’t tell you this in the letters, but Jean and I are…” The line of her mouth thins, wobbling uncertainly with her uneven voice. She has to swallow twice before continuing: “We’re not…living together at the moment. Four months after Tom’s treatment started, he got an apartment closer to Saltside. And he’s been there ever since. So, there’s nothing for you to worry about.”
…a gunshot could’ve gone off in the silence that followed, and you wouldn’t have cared in the slightest. You stare, wide-eyed and utterly agog. And, much to your guilt, a disgustingly desperate hope churns within your guts. You aren’t completely able to reign it in, as a strangled word escapes your throat: “What?”
(cont.)
