Aftermath - Ann Aguirre [62]
I do. The actual conversation doesn’t take long. He just needs some banking information to be sure I can afford his help. When he realizes who I am and whose fortune I inherited, his manner shifts toward the obsequious. Yeah, my instinctive antipathy was spot on . . . but then, it usually is. Thinking and planning may not be my strong suit, but I have reflex down to a fine art. He doesn’t care about the trial or what I’ve done; he only cares that I have a big bank balance. The mortality manager tries to sell me bells and whistles: a host of mourners to add consequence, a choir of angelic children, and a night black hovercar to convey us to the ceremony. Stubbornly, I refuse it all because Adele asked for simplicity, and I will do as she requested. He’s annoyed when he cuts the call.
The technicians come and go, removing the body with utmost discretion, then they leave a bot to scrub away every last trace that someone died here. That seems wrong somehow, so soon, but I don’t protest. Better to have it done.
Hours pass as I use her contacts to notify people as she requested. By the time Vel returns, it’s nearly evening, though on Gehenna, the sky always looks the same. One can only mark passage of time by artificial means, by the way the seconds tick away. I’m standing at the window, gazing up at a tangerine dream of a sky, when I hear his steps outside. The door recognizes him, too, even after all these turns. That twists me up inside.
Oh, Adele. You never really said good-bye to him, did you? Not in your heart.
“Where is she?” he asks, but as I turn, I see he already knows.
He saw the whisper of death in her tired eyes and her sallow skin, the hands that trembled in her lap. And so he ran from it. He told me that was what he did best; he ran from Ithiss-Tor, and his life with Trapper permitted him to hunt as he ran. He only ever stayed once—with Adele—until she told him to go. I make up my mind, here and now, that I never will. That’s the one thing I’ll never ask him to do.
“At the center, being prepped.”
“There will be a ritual?”
I suppose he’s attended a few such services, Trapper and Smitty, at least. Before now, I never considered what it meant for him, living among us. He must be so tired of losing people, and yet he goes on. He does not return to his own people because he cannot. He is a changed being, not wholly Ithtorian in spirit, and their ways chafe him now.
“Yes, tomorrow. I handled all the arrangements according to the vid she left. Would you like to watch it?”
“No, I think not. When I see her like this, it is harder for me to remember her as she was, before.”
Before she got old.
“That’s why she sent you away, you know. Not because she didn’t love you. Because she did.”
Vel stands so very still, but such pain lives in that stillness. “It should not be so sharp after all this time. I should have reached some acceptance.”
This is an area in which I have some experience. “I’d like to say you forget the pain, that it fades, and you only remember the sweet moments, but that would be a lie. Sometimes, with Kai, I go along without thinking of him for days or weeks at a time, then something sets it off—a smell, a man’s laugh—and then the knowledge drowns me. That he’s gone. I’ll never see or touch him again. And it is brand-new, all over again.”
“How do you bear it?”
“Because they’re worth it. So you ride out the rough days.”
“I . . . loved her, for all I said we do not bond as humans do. She taught me.”
“Love,” I correct gently. “And you always will.”
He turns away to gaze out her window, as he must’ve done with her at his side, so often before. And then he strides into her bedroom, which he might have shared, turns past. At first, I think there’s nothing here of him to speak of their time together, then he picks up a framed image. It’s not a simple still. This is Adele with a tall, thin, and average-looking man. Brown hair, brown eyes. Not special, except it’s Vel. It is. They’re at the market—she’s bright with joy—and some random art photographer has