A day’s absence was more than enough to have Mal rushing to get back to Jay’s, only pausing to scrub herself down in the bathroom before scooping her daughter into her arms. Clover seemed happy to see her too, babbling excitedly all the way back to the warehouse.
Once through the door, Mal dropped her bag and sped to the nearest table, determined to get the diaper change and associated screaming fit over with as soon as possible. Once started, it seemed that Clover was in an usually good mood — Mal glanced overhead and saw that she was distracted by the shelf carrying Goose’s HAM equipment, reaching up at the wires pouring over the ledge like hanging vines.
“Since when are you into radio?” she called in Goose’s general direction, moving quickly with the fresh diaper — it was only a matter of time before Clover remembered that she hated being changed.
“Since you left,” Goose called back. “I’m told that the Haudenosaunee have extremely robust communication arrays.”
She certainly missed her daughter above all else, but after running around the city all day, that radio network came in at a very close second. She bundled Clover into her new diaper and hefted her into arms, pressing her cheek to her hair as she kicked her bag along the floor. “So, you missed me?”
“Yes, obviously. The only people I talk to are 16th-generation Irish-Americans who wander through on their way back to the motherland — and they all think I'm faking the accent because they can’t conceive of Ireland having Black people.”
“That sucks.” She followed their voice back to their worktable. “Much luck, otherwise?”
They were buried up to their forearms inside the drone’s chest cavity. “No — besides Lehigh, all the radio towers around here were destroyed years ago, the pollution is clogging up all the best frequencies, and no one can find me a shortwave radio for love or money.” Something sparked; they yelped and cursed, shaking out their hands before diving back into their work. “That’s why I’m recommissioning war drones. Hammerheads are too stupid, but if I can program these ones to get to a high place and accept their lots as radio beacons, I’m thinking I can get the signal to reach to the other end of the city. Maybe farther.”
“Smart.” She knelt down to retrieve her bag. “Tai-Song has definitely gone missing, if you haven’t heard.”
“How unfortunate.” They made no attempts at sounding contrite. “You find any clues?”
“Maybe. You don’t know CPP, do you?”
“I’ll kill myself before learning CPP.”
“Thought so.” It was a moot point, since she couldn’t find the notebooks in her satchel — they were probably with Willow, accidentally passed along with the jacket. Instead, she pulled the toolbox out and placed it on their desk instead. “What’s missing from this?”
They were upending the box onto the table before she finished the question, sliding their magnifiers up their nose as they shifted through all the little and not-so-little parts. “Could use some circuitry-work, that’s easy enough to do here. Needs a 16-pin connector, and I’d want a higher-capacity motherboard — huh.” They pushed their magnifiers back onto their head with a frown. “I have all of that here.”
Her feet paced a slow, swaying circle as Clover began to boredly whine, a remnant of the days when waddling like a duck was the only way to soothe her colic. “Say you didn’t — how would you go about getting those things?”
“I guess I’d decommission a drone for the motherboard — one of the Hammerheads, since I have more than one — and I’d get someone to raid a tech shipment for the connector. Or do it myself, since I have both legs in this scenario.”
“Any reason to go to Newark for that?”
“Sure, if you have a death wish.” They abruptly looked up, brow furrowed in disbelief. “He didn’t.”
“It’s looking more and more like he did, actually.”
“And you’re sure he’s still alive?”
“Willow thinks so.” She had already decided that she wouldn't be telling Goose about her plans to go after him: they would only try to talk her out of it, or try to come along themself. She sat down in a once-plush armchair and put up her feet on the adjoining coffee table, all of the day’s tension leaving her in one great sigh; Clover sighed too, wanting to feel included despite her day of leisure. With another heaving sigh, Mal sat up and pulled off her shoe, inspecting the massive gash in the sole. “Why didn’t he come here for the parts?”
“You already know why.”
“I know why he came to your door that night, but you said you hadn’t talked to him in years.” She stood up and set Clover down on the seat before hopping on one foot to find the tube of ancient superglue Goose kept on hand for emergencies. “So, why not come here?”
They grunted noncommittally and returned to their work, avoiding the question. Their gloves pulsed, and something inside the drone’s chest sparked.
Armed with the glue and a thick square of canvas, she came back to the armchair, scooping Clover back into her lap. “What’d he do? Was he chewing too loud?" She tucked the glue-dotted canvas into the inside of the shoe to patch the hole, and turned her attention to welding the rubber sole back together again. "Mispronouncing the word salmon just to annoy you?”
“He blamed you for what happened to Gwenh.”
It wasn’t news to her, and yet the nozzle of the glue swiped across the back of her hand anyway — perhaps in surprise, that Goose considered the opinion so offensive that they were willing to cut Tai-Song out of their life over it. The stripe burned, both from chemical irritation and from the sting of waste, and she scrubbed the back of her hand against the leg of her chair, stalling for time. Goose’s hands had stilled, but they didn’t look up — they were waiting for her to respond. She set down the shoe and looked away, keeping her glued hand out of Clover’s reach as she tried to decide what they wanted to hear from her: betrayal, anger? She had nothing of that kind, not when Tai-Song had told her not to steal the scout’s directive from Yuen-Fa’s office, not when he had told her not to go, not when he was right to blame her for Gwenh’s death.
Clover began to fuss, and heedless of her missing shoe Mal stood up to resume her pacing, humming another old lullaby as she let their answer sit in dead air. It gave her no insight into what Tai-Song might be looking for, and while she had plenty other questions that they wouldn’t be able to answer, she could not wring one more ounce of concern over their mutual annoyance from her exhausted body.
Her bare foot connected painfully with a grungy yellow jerrycan sitting on the floor, half-full of some viscous fluid that didn’t smell like gasoline; she had wandered far into the warehouse without noticing, so lost in thought. Tears sprung in her eyes from the sharp-then-dull ache in her big toe.
“Don’t spill that,” Goose told her as they wheeled past, heading for a tarp-covered shape still farther into the warehouse’s northernmost corner.
“Don’t leave it on the floor, then.” She counted six jugs before following behind them — the scent she was picking up was burnt kitchen grease. "What do you need grease for?"
Goose waited for her to catch up, before locking their wheels and dramatically pulling back the tarp from the maroon body of a car that looked almost operable. They leaned back and gestured grandly at their work. “You may now lavish me with praise.”
She snorted, trailing her fingers over the un-buffed exterior as she walked around the car, watching carefully where she stepped. When she’d last seen Ibiza, it was in possibly the worst shape she had ever seen of any car, before or since — its only saving grace was that it was already in the warehouse when Goose and the Del siblings had moved in. She shifted Clover onto her other hip as she slid into the driver’s seat, running her fingers over the cracked vinyl cushions, the array of funny dials and knobs, the hard plastic steering wheel. There were no pedals in the ragged footwell, only a throttle-lever wrapped in a bird’s nest of trailing wires and stick-on buttons. Her eyes glided over the spiny initials carved into the dashboard: SD, RD, GD, GD. Second from last, Gwenh’s initials were the deepest, carved with the most fervour: she had been obsessed with Ibiza from the start.
Inside the car, it felt as though Mal’s grief was safely locked outside, giving her just the barest taste of how it would feel to finally leave all this pain behind her. Suddenly, twenty-one days seemed an interminably long time to wait for that future to come to pass.
Goose folded their arms over the door, pinning her down with their serious eyes. They had both done well so far, avoiding the unavoidable, but she sensed that they would soon broach the topics best left buried.
“Does it ever get lonely, up here?” The question left her lips in a rush, desperate to distract them — she wouldn’t be able to bear it if Goose no longer entertained her sanctuary from emotionally fraught conversations.
They shrugged. “A little. Sometimes I draw faces on the doorknobs.”
“What are you going to do, when everyone’s gone?”
“Some people are staying.” They didn’t sound very optimistic. “I can get to Nebraska with the fuel I have, and I have stuff I can trade in Winnebago if I decide to go further.”
“You should go to north. You could probably find an empty place to stay in Cornwall.” Clover leaned her head against her neck and started to suck her thumb. “You barely have to wear your snorkel outside anymore, the air is so clean.”
They half-smiled. “Having regrets?”
“Some.” She glanced once more at the radio, reaching out to despondently fiddle with the dial. “You’d like it there, is all I’m saying — and Dad and Baba will have some grease to trade, if you want to keep moving.”
They reached out to touch her elbow uncertainly, just the barest brush before awkwardly pulling back. “You know you don’t have to leave.” Their eyes were serious again, worry tempered with steel now that she had no way of dodging their inquiries.
“You make it sound like I’m going against my will.” In trying for humour, her tone fell into flat defeat. “I have my daughter to think about.”
“So I keep hearing. I also keep hearing that the air is clean, up north, and the water is almost drinkable.”
“It’s also full of people who know that I was too weak to protect you two.”
They straightened up slightly with a furrowed brow. “We’re responsible for our own decisions, Mal — Gwenh had you beat by a year, and she took care of herself just fine before we came to America.”
“I'm not going to be mad if you agree that it was my fault, you know.” She leaned back and sighed. "Age doesn't matter here. I should have known better than to take either of you into the city."
Their brow furrowed harder, and they took a deep breath as they turned their head to stare mournfully at the carved initials. “I just think you’re trying to carry a torch, Mal. I know it’s your choice, but I want to make sure you’re making it for you, not because you think she would have wanted you to go.”
“She wanted to go.” Her reply was sharp and short, clipped syllables that couldn’t beat around the bush if they tried. “She wanted to go, and now she can’t. The least I can do is make sure one of us makes it out of here — and it has to be me, since you won’t.”
Their eyes snapped to her with angry precision. “Don’t be a dick, Mal.”
“Am I wrong?”
They scoffed and turned away in disgust — she didn’t feel as though she had won the argument, fresh shame mixing with her aged guilt like a rancid cocktail. She couldn’t understand why Goose had to press and prod when they knew her pain, when they shared the same suffering — the first time they had ever exchanged words was over Sulien’s dead body, after all.
But the differences were stark and bare: she had lost one, Goose had lost three. They had somehow managed to grow and age beyond their loss, while she could only lash out like a wounded animal. They didn’t remember what it was like to always be two words from spoiling the conversation, and she would never grow out of the habit.
“Hey,” she called into the chasm she had wedged between them, trying to inject some sincerity into her bitter voice. “I’m sorry. Can we start over?”
They gave her no answer beyond an angry scoff; a cold front was rolling in, and forgiveness was nowhere on the horizon. Mal absently stroked Clover’s hair as she got out of the car and gathered up her things; hopefully Jay wouldn’t mind her turning up at such a late hour. Her shoe was still tacky on the sole, and the glue stuck mercilessly to the floor with every step.