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Jobek just stared back at her silently, his rugged features locked in an expressionless mask.
Not sure what else to say, she shifted her gaze to the male beside her. “Did you two know each other before that or is that how you met?”
“Napeth and my mother were best friends,” Tandor told her. “When Napeth was left to raise a young son on her own, my parents allowed her to move into a cottage on their land.”
“Then you two grew up together.”
“We did,” Tandor confirmed. “Napeth died four years later, so it seemed natural for Jobek to become part of our family.”
Emotion clogged Ansley’s throat and she blinked back tears. Jobek’s entire family had died one after the other leaving him alone and defenseless. She understood how that felt. Her family hadn’t died, but her reality had been shattered, leaving her adrift in an unfamiliar circumstance.
“Don’t pity me too much,” Jobek cautioned. “The story is not over yet.”
She acknowledged his statement with a nod and swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “How did your mother die?”
“She succumbed to a lung infection, but it was a common side effect of a drug she was abusing,” Jobek explained. His face was still expressionless as if the events were unimportant. He had either buried his emotions long ago or time had allowed him to accept all the loss in his childhood. She didn’t know him well enough to decide which was more likely. “She never recovered from my father’s death. He had sacrificed so much so they could be together. It just seemed unfair.”
“I wish you’d had a chance to know them. That seems unfair too.”
His head dipped once then he moved on. “My origins might have been tragic, but I lacked for nothing as a child. Tandor’s parents are wonderful. I was loved and supported through all of my defining years. They had five children of their own and they still opened their hearts and home to me. We might not share a bloodline, but we were a family. That is why Tandor and I often call each other brother.”
She smiled warmly then turned her attention to Tandor. “So what was life like in a family with five, or rather six children.”
Tandor took a moment to answer. His face was more expressive than Jobek’s. She’d noticed that Tandor’s eyes changed color when he was riled up. He was relatively calm now, so the red flecks in his dark irises were barely visible. “My family was loving and supportive, as Jobek said, but money was always a problem. My father was a fabricator. He made custom fittings for everything from skimmer engines to office towers.”
Ansley found the occupation surprising. “I figured any sort of manufacturing job would be automated in your star system. The automation trend has already begun on Earth.”
“Most of manufacturing is automated, but the custom nature of my father’s projects made it hard for a robot to replicate. My father didn’t stamp out thousands of pre-engineered parts. Everything he created was made to order and usually solved a complex problem.”
“Did your mother work outside the home?” Ansley felt relaxed and at ease for the first time since these two had zapped her off the mountain. It had been obvious from the start that they would not harm her, but the menacing tension she’d felt around them was finally easing.
Tandor chuckled. “With six children? It would have cost much more in childcare than she could hope to earn. Anyway, we always had a place to live, never went without food. and always had clothes on our backs, but that was as far as my father’s compensation stretched. Each customer paid very well, but his projects were few and far between.”
“Money isn’t everything,” Ansley insisted. “I worked from dawn until dusk and slept in a dormitory. Most would consider that incredibly poor, yet I was happy.” Or she had been until she’d found out that her entire life had been a lie.
“The story isn’t over,” Tandor cautioned. “My father was involved in an accident that crushed his arm and ruined his hand. The company he worked for covered his medical bills and a very basic prosthetic. However, he was unable to do his original job and the alternatives they offered him were insulting. He finally found a position teaching at a trade school, but the compensation was half of what he’d been making before.”
Her heart sank and her chest ached. Were there no happy stories in their star system? “What did your parents do? Were your siblings old enough that your mother could find a job?”
Tandor looked insulted by the suggestion. “It is the male’s responsibility to provide for his family. If the father is unable to meet their needs, the responsibility falls to the oldest son, not the female.”
She knew from her research that gender roles were more stringent in their star system than they were on Earth. Still, this seemed really old-fashioned for a society with spaceships. “Who is the oldest son and how old was he?”
“Neloff had just turned nineteen. Me and Jobek were thirteen, so all three of us found ways to help out.”
She managed to fight back a gasp but her eyes widened. “You went to work at thirteen?”
“We compiled information for Neloff, who started hunting bounties.”
Her jaw dropped. She couldn’t help it. “Neloff became a bounty hunterat nineteen?”
“We were his recon team, but yes, he and a friend did the actual hunting. They started with planet bound targets until they’d saved up enough money to buy a rusted-out ship. That ship was replaced by bigger and newer ships until Neloff was running a full crew in a state-of-the-art spaceship.”
She admired his entrepreneurial spirit, but hunting bounties was so dangerous. She hated to think about anyone that young interacting with dangerous criminals. “Does he still work with his original partner?”
Tandor shook his head. “He found a female and she insisted that he find a less dangerous job.”
“That’s understandable.” Her thoughts would have been much the same.
