She’s getting good at hurling herself into a messy roundoff.Lachlan likes teaching her about balance because it always ends with her wanting to playpunchiesand he can’t help but encourage it, uses his hands as pads for her increasingly well-formed little blows.He imagines her as a young woman just absolutelyflatteningsome creep one day.It makes him smile.
Mimi Penhalyx hasn’t been raised on rainbows and sunshine, which is maybe why she loves them so much, but it also gives her a morbidly pragmatic approach towards the things she doesn’t like.If Mimi is scared of a shadow in her room, she tells Lachlan to shoot it.If she has bad dreams, she’ll climb into his lap and whisper, ‘Kill the bad dreams dead,’ and he promises he will, even pretends to grab them out of thin air and break necks.‘Bones gocrunch,’ he says and she giggles when he does that, sleeps better after.
He hopes she forgets all about Belkin.
Sometimes when she’s angry at the invisible wall between the things she wants and can’t have, she scowls so hard it dents her brow and whispers veryquietly, ‘KillFarfarfor me, Daddy.’
Farfar is probably the worst of all Mimi’s little names because it’s the most dangerous.Alistair Penhalyx might tolerate his daughter calling Lachlan Daddy, but Lachlan doubts he’d react nearly as well to Farfar.He can usually pass it off as her mispronouncing father, but the truth is stranger than that.She picked it up from her storybooks, all those repeated lines about things happening “far, far away”, and turned a version of it into a name for the man who is almost never here.
She’ll say,‘Kill farfar for me, Daddy,’because she knows Penhalyx is the reason she can’t get what she wants nine times out of ten.Lachlan has to gently correct her, all the while promising in total silence that he will one day, he’ll get her free and safe.Sometimes, though, when she says that, they share a secret smile and rub noses.
She’s his little girl.
His daughter who draws his gun in lovely shades of crayon black, who always chooses a small, sturdy stick for a sword and loves animals more than the waking day.A worm in the sun is anemergency.An iridescent beetle is a new friend.A butterfly will make her whole day.The crows are curious about her, often watch from a distance.She’s the kind who could befriend them.
Lachlan is far less talented at making and keeping friends.
Carrigan considers his failure a betrayal, and Lachlan can’t even argue with her because it is.He brought people into this place before he understood they would never truly leave it, before he realised he would come to love this child enough to let it warp the shape of his entire world.
Lachlan still recruits people even now.Estate security continues to expand, but he insists on interviewing every candidate personally and deliberately selects the ones he thinks already have something rotten living inside them.Men with mean eyes and redacted files.Service histories that read suspiciously vague.Those are the ones he doesn’t mind dragging down into the lower rungs of hell with him, keeping them out on the outer edges of the world he’s built around the children.
Everyone’s patience wears thin in the heat trapped inside the Estate, but nobody more so than Jules, who decides to make Lachlan his personal whipping boy whenever they interact, and act out in new ways.
Overall, Jules possesses decent manners.
Lachlan has always observed that while he’s categorically a spoiled brat, he never forgets apleaseorthank youwith the staff, but this is the summer that his attitude curdles hideously, slouching towards pure, deliberate insolence.
Jules takes to telling people who aren’t Mimi toget outwhenever he likes, to, ‘Shut up,’whenever he feels like it, to ‘Fuck off,’when he’s angry and to ‘Just do it,’when he wants something done.Lachlan, who knows very well Jules is trying to provoke him, can’t help worrying Mimi will be the one punished when Alistair Penhalyx hears that his son is fast becoming a rude little bitch.
A nightmare to be around.
A stain on the name.
It’s not like Lachlan blames him.Jules is likely depressed, hormonal and frustrated.The heat makes everyone irritable and air-conditioning does less than nothing due to the size of the Estate, but rudeness like this makes Lachlan’s organs itch.
One day, Jules slides his plate off the edge of the table just to let it shatter across the floor, soup gone everywhere.Lachlan stands watching as people come to clean it up and Jules pays them no mind.
He’s pushingLachlan, not the plate.
Seeking weakness.Measuring.
He must know Lachlan hates this kind of treatment, but it’s becoming tangled up with the creeping edge of sexuality that he’s pushing for in their more private interactions.New ways to torment Lachlan, who has to stay calm and do his job.He won’t lash out.
He cannot be provoked.
But Alistair Penhalyx, apparently, can.
?
The old man calls a meeting when he arrives.
He says he wants to speak privately with his son.
Lachlan is secretly relieved there’s no mention of Mimi, though he doesn’t let himself relax just yet.He escorts Jules to the West Wing.
The boy is silent and sullen, says nothing.
When he gives permission to enter, they find Alistair alone inside, which already doesn’t bode well.He’s writing by hand, working on something.
