Roxane looked from one to the other, her eyes still wide and shocked.
“I come to you,” Oriane declared. “Send me the plane ticket.”
“What?” Wendy said, eyes turning to Alejo, at the same time that Alejo turned to her. “What do you think, Wendy?”
He was asking her. He was not telling her what to do. Or to think. Though this was his mother’s house, not hers.
Roxane gave a little shrug. “I cannot fix this, me.”
Alejo send another questioning glance at Wendy, who made little shooing motions, encouraging him. Her instinct, ever, was to protect kids, because she knew what being alone and bewildered felt like. And though she did not understand what she had just seen on that phone, she did understand a hurting young teen. Oh, did she ever.
“There is plenty of room here,” she whispered to Alejo. “I’d be glad to help as much as I can.”
He gave her his sudden, brilliant smile. “Thank you,” he whispered, and, “I adore you.”
Lightning thrilled through her at his utter sincerity, and she watched, giddy with delight and wonder, and yes, questions—somany questions—as he picked up the phone and moved off, now talking in a low voice. His dinner sat on the plate rapidly cooling.
Wendy turned to Sam, who was watching her with his shoulders up under his ears. “You knew about this?” she said to him, trying not to scare him by shrieking all the questions piling up behind her eyeballs.
“My friends found out,” Sam said in a small voice.
“Friends? What friends?”
“Animals. Squeak and Rocky and Ratty.”
Wendy blinked, trying to put together the shattered pieces of the world she understood.Thoughtshe understood. “Aren’t those imaginary friends?”
“No,” Sam said. “Granny Godiva knows about them. Sorta.”
“But you couldn’t tell me?”
“Alejo wanted me to tell you,” Sam said his eyes pinking around the edges as his voice trembled. “But I was scared you would have to tellhim. Pater. On account of being fair.Hesaid animal friends are for babies and sissies.” The tears began to gather.
Wendy closed her eyes and counted to five. Once again, Bill had created a wedge between her and their son, this time targeting her weakest spot: her struggle to be fair, when he didn’t see any reason to. Because he was always right, and the rest of the world wrong.
She was hurt. She was bewildered. She was also thrilled, and still walking in that sunlit mental world of discovery of Alejo’s...could she dare the L word? Not yet, not yet. Even so, she had that weird sense that she had stepped into another world entirely.
But right now she needed to put nine-year-old Sam first, and he was hunching up, looking more worried with every breath.
She put out a hand and ruffled his hair. “It’s okay, Sam. It’s okay. Kinda weird, I have to admit. I think, in this particular case, there is no reason to share your friends, or, the, uh…what did you say?”
“Chimera. Alejo is a chimera. He’sso cool,” Sam whispered. “And he’s nice. He’s nice to Squeak and Rocky and Ratty, not just to me.”
“I know Alejo is nice. And I guess I’m going to be learning some new things about the … the chimera, and the rest, eh? And here is an idea. Since you know that Granny Godiva doesn’t allow Pater to visit here, there isn’t any reason we should ever talk about these things to him, okay? You can talk to your father about the things he’s interested in. Do you think that’s fair?”
Sam’s head bobbed, his Adam’s apple working in his skinny neck. Relief nearly poured off him, and Wendy felt certain that at least for now, this was the right decision.
“Go ahead and eat your tacos. We’ll let Alejo explain everything when he’s ready. Does that sound like a good plan?” She took a big bite of a cold taco that she had no appetite for, but her reward was to see Sam tackle his dinner with happy appetite.
Alejo had yet to come out. Occasionally they could hear the sound of his voice, but not what he said.
Wendy let Sam choose whatever he wanted to watch on TV since they were alone in the living room, and of course he picked anime. Later, when he was out of the bath and they’d had story time, he said, “Mom, what’s a simurgh like? I couldn’t really see her, except she kind of looked like a giant bird, a blue one.”
“Well, this is what I learned a long time ago about simurghs,” she said slowly. “I don’t know how true it is because I didn’t know that they are, um, real. The legends I read about came from Persia a long time ago. Simurghs could fly around healing the land, and sometimes healing creatures.”
“Humans or animals?”
“Both, I think.”
