“Good to meet you, too, Ellie.” Ahdi holds a hand up. “Remember, you are a maintainer. What you do either repairs the universe or breaks it. Up to you.”
Ellie has no idea how to respond. A honking car horn breaks the silence. Daniel waves from the driver’s seat. Ellie waves at Ahdi again, then gets in the car, and they leave.
Daniel turns the car onto the road. A bright light fills the driveway and he immediately slams the brakes. Ellie stifles a cry. The only reason she thinks Ahdi might still be alive is that there wasn’t any noise or a compression wave.
She and Daniel both look out the passenger window. A large glowing vortex looms over Ahdi. He spreads his arms wide. The light dims, the vortex shrinks, and its swirling slows. Only a few seconds pass before it becomes a dark, inert rock, falling harmlessly to the ground. Ahdi spots the car and waves goodbye atEllie and Daniel, backlit by the light from the house. Daniel zooms down the street.
“I feel like I just took a surprise exam.” Ellie sinks into her seat. “Did I pass? I did pass, didn’t I?”
“I don’t think that was intentional, at least not on his part. The bomb isn’t tidy enough to be Ahdi’s work. Like Aunt Vera, he can’t be anything but exquisite even if he tried.” Daniel checks his blind spot before he changes lanes. “That said, he somehow always manages to give me homework whenever I visit.”
“What you do either repairs the universe or breaks it.” Ellie echoes Ahdi’s solemn tone.
CHAPTER 12
Chris’s house is a massive, multi-gabled hulk set by itself in a cul-de-sac. Even by the standards of a neighborhood filled with big, expensive houses, this is a big, expensive house. Ellie has always wondered why there isn’t a perimeter and a gate.
The house is already dark when Daniel pulls into the driveway. Ellie’s seat belt retracts to the passenger-side door.
“I can walk you in?” Daniel unclips his seat belt in turn.
“No, that’s OK.” She opens the passenger-side door. “I’ll be fine.”
“I should give my condolences to Chris.”
As excuses go, from Daniel, this one is particularly unconvincing. Ellie can’t remember the last time Daniel volunteered to talk to Chris.
“Daniel, it’s literally midnight. She’s probably asleep.” Ellie steps out of the car. “I’ll be fine. See you tomorrow.”
She closes the door behind her. Pavers laid in an intricate pattern create a walkway that arcs from the driveway to the stoop and front door. It’s no longer hot, but the air is still thick and heavy. Each step feels like pushing through a slurry.
The high, vaulted atrium still takes her by surprise. Anyone walking in is immediately confronted with an ostentatiously high ceiling and a long sweeping staircase that curves up to the second floor on her right. Before she can acclimate to the grandeur, an emptiness takes its place. It’s not that the house is cold, but a chill grips her. Something has sucked the air out of the house. Thesense of phantom structures that should exist, but don’t, screams in her mind.
When she arrived from the train station this morning, she noticed it the instant she walked in. It was the first time she’d been in the house since Mom died, and she thought she imagined it at first. When she extends her senses, she feels the structure surrounding her. The house, of course, is exactly like it always has been. Without Mom, though, it is also nothing like what it was.
Chris’s home office is on the left. Like all the rooms, it has a substantial, carved hardwood door. Ellie doesn’t need to check to know it’s locked, and she suspects it’ll never be unlocked for her ever again. It’s the room where Chris stowed Mom once she became too weak to navigate the sweeping staircase, the room where she slept in her coma, and the room where she died.
They’d made arrangements for hospice care for Mom. Chris even made a point of it because, Ellie assumes, Chris felt Ellie wasn’t taking Mom dying with the appropriate level of gravitas. In the end, the idea that someone who knew what they were doing would take care of Mom in her final days was a pipe dream. The dutiful daughter wouldn’t let anyone else, especially the relatives in Taiwan, think she was shirking her duty. Ellie knows this for certain because she heard Chris saying it again and again.
Every time she walks past, she half expects to walk in and see Mom. Every time she remembers that, no, Mom cannot be in there. It’s like being told Mom has died all over again. It rends her heart every time the way it did the first time.
The atrium leads straight to the kitchen. Chris sits there, waiting. Gray light through a window splashes Chris’s shadow across the kitchen table. The expression on her face is taut and angry. Of course it is, because Chris is always angry at her and Ellie rarely knows why. Chris is still, as if trapped within a sliver of time, left to seethe at the kitchen table for hours, waiting for Ellie.
Ellie suppresses a sigh. Not only is this not her first rodeo, it’sthe latest in a circuit she wanted to retire from years ago. Her freshman year, when she came home for Thanksgiving break, she went to a party to catch up with her high school friends. Chris, by then, had already gone to university, gotten her degree, and been back for years. In a triumph of restraint, it took an entire half hour before Ellie’s friends became Chris telling her to come home right this moment. How dare Ellie worry Mom and Dad, who—not that it mattered—were not worried at all. They had given Ellie the car keys and told her to have fun.
Coming home to Chris patiently stoking her anger for hours has been an inevitable part of Ellie’s life. This is how Chris shows her love, Mom had once told Ellie. By the time she was certain no one else came home to someone inescapably waiting to take a piece out of them, she had not only moved to Boston but passed her qualifying exams and had her dissertation topic approved by her committee.
If she had a choice, Ellie would tear off her shoes and fly up the sweeping staircase. She’s tired and the last thing she wants is to have The Conversation again. However, a brother-in-law and a nephew are asleep upstairs, and a determined Chris is not to be denied. The clamor of Chris demanding Ellie come down to the kitchen is out of the question.
Instead, Ellie slowly pries off her shoes and sets them in the closet. She can’t escape the punishment coming to her anyway. Avoiding Chris now only makes it worse in the long run. Ellie has learned that the hard way. Never let yourself be dependent on Chris for food.
They will have The Conversation. It never changes.
Chris will tell her she’s a terrible daughter to their parents. She will do this in exhaustive detail. She will then exact retribution. Sometimes, it’s petty. Chris will force her to sleep on the floor or Chris will serve her rotten meat for dinner. Of course, only someone who loves Ellie would treat her this way. Anyone else wouldjust let Ellie be the horrible excuse for a human being that she is. Chris always insists this.
They’ve had The Conversation so many times that Ellie wonders what the point is. Honestly, she would avoid invoking The Conversation in the first place if she knew how. Maybe there is a right way to behave so that Chris doesn’t fume. Ellie hasn’t found it yet. She sighs and makes her “walk of shame” into the kitchen.
Chris sits up. Her arms rest on the table, her hands clasped together. The expression on her face is pleasantly neutral. She might be a news anchor waiting for her cue. Ellie’s not fooled.
