“I plan to.”
“Good.” A tiny pause. “And bring practical shoes.”
The holo disappears.
I stare at my comm.
Fenn slides a plate toward me. “That sounded ominous.”
“It did, didn’t it?”
“Practical shoes is never the end of a comforting conversation.”
“No.”
Jesse drops the grape, points at me, and announces, “Mama fight shoes.”
I laugh helplessly. “Apparently.”
After Fenn leaves, the apartment shrinks into evening.
Jesse gets a bath, which involves negotiations, splashing, one minor flood, and a passionate argument from him that soap inthe hair is oppression. Then pajamas. Then the nightly demand for the same story about the cargo moon fox and the rude comet.
I sit on the edge of his little bed nook and tell it with my best dramatic voices while he curls under the blanket, scales catching the low light in copper glints.
When I finish, he blinks up at me. “Mama go soon?”
My throat tightens.
“Yes.”
He thinks about that with the solemnity of a very small judge. “I go too.”
“Yes.”
“You come back always?”
That one nearly breaks me open.
I smooth his hair away from his brow. “Always.”
He accepts that with total faith, because children are reckless enough to believe the people who love them can do impossible things.
“Okay,” he says, and yawns. “Need yellow ship.”
“The yellow shuttle toy?”
He nods sleepily.
I retrieve the battered little shuttle from under the bed and tuck it into his hand. He closes his fingers around it, already drifting.
I stay there longer than I need to, listening to his breath even out. The room smells faintly of soap and warm fabric and the lavender packet Mrs. Keth insisted would “keep bad dreams from nesting.” Out in the main space, traffic hums beyond the window. The apartment creaks. Pipes knock somewhere in the walls like a distant, irritable ghost.
When I finally stand, the world feels too sharp.
I make tea I don’t really want and sit at the table with my comm, the contract, and the GXC prep packet Director Pell shoved into my file.
Contestant Departure Instructions.
