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“Are you planning to drown me?”
I plant my hands on my hips and stare down at her. “Do you see any water in here?”
“No, I can’t.” She speaks each word with halting, dramatic emphasis.
“Never mind,” I say. “This was a stupid idea.”
“Your question was stupid.”
“Fine.” My fists ball up as they did when I was a sullen child. If she wants a real question, I have those, too. “How did you get to Earth?”
“Planning to return home?”
“Do you remember?” I ask, bypassing her question.
“Of course I do,” she says. “We took a loophole.”
“Were you running to a loophole on the night I was retrieved?” I ask, abandoning any hope of a casual conversation.
“Your parents really failed you that night,” she says, not answering my question.
“Do you remember?” I ask, unsure I want the answer.
“I know what happened,” she snaps. “The retrieval squad came and you were too stupid to warn your parents. They tried to run. There was a slub in Romen. You would have been safe there, but you didn’t warn them, so they couldn’t escape. You killed your parents.”
Her words sting.
“My parents aren’t dead,” I say. “Benn is. But you’re alive, and so is my biological father.”
“So Dante told you?” she asks. “I wondered if he would. I didn’t think he had the courage.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why would I tell you?”
It’s frustrating to sit here and talk with a woman who shares my history and holds the secrets to the past I can’t remember, but who doesn’t see herself as part of it. She looks at her memories from the outside.
“I don’t suppose I’ll be calling him Daddy anytime soon,” I say.
“That child couldn’t be a father,” she says. “He can’t see past himself. He didn’t even realize she was pregnant.”
“You were pregnant?” I prompt.
“Meria was pregnant.” The words are oozed venom on her tongue.
“You are Meria.”
“I am no one,” she says.
And I see the truth of it in the flat deadness of her eyes. I hear the resignation seeping through her voice. I feel it as the words hang between us. It’s true because she believes it.
“Where can I find a loophole?” I can’t keep talking circles around this subject. I can’t listen to my mother denounce me, my family, herself.
“Around,” she says with a shrug.
“That’s so helpful.”
“Don’t you think someone as powerful as your host would know the answer to that question?”
