Gaze Upon My Works And Emote

Jon grinned ear to ear as the third car drew up and he caught sight of a familiar profile. She caught sight of him, too, and pressed her face and hands against the glass. He waved, then began keeping pace, a light jog slowing to a walk until the train rocked to a stop. The instant she disappeared from the window, he hurried towards the door at one end of the car, where a uniformed conductor was stepping down to help people off. A second later, there she was, swinging her luggage to use its momentum to aid her exit. She took three steps, dropped suitcase and trunk, and flung herself into Jon’s outstretched arms. He swung her around in a circle before setting her back on her feet, hugging her tightly.

Everything righted itself and settled firmly into place. Now he was home.

“I missed you,” Melanie said in his ear. He’d grown over term—something he hadn’t known until he’d got home and measured himself against the door frame—but so had she, evidently, since she was still his height. “We really need to talk more often this term.”

“Once a week?” Jon suggested. “I missed you, too. Come on, Dad let me take the Harlequin.”

Melanie eased back and picked up her trunk; Jon hefted the suitcase and looped his free arm through hers. “How is he? Really?”

“Seems to be holding pretty steady,” Jon said. “He’s still able to work, anyway. And his hands are all right for now. He’s not supposed to drive anymore, though, so that’s a bit of a worry.”

“Cats doing okay?”

“Paddiwack has arthritis, I think. He’s keeping low to the ground and he’s a lot less tolerant of Skimbleshanks trying to wrestle, and Cosy spends a lot of her time sitting with him.”

Melanie paused as she waited for Jon to open the boot. “Like she did with Mum?”

Jon winced. “Yeah.”

Melanie took a slow, deep breath. “But she’s okay? For now, anyway?”

“For now,” Jon echoed. “She’s getting really fat, though. I think Dad’s feeding her too much.”

“Do you know if he’s taken them for their shots?”

“Haven’t asked. We might need to call and check behind him on that one.” Jon sighed and slammed the lid of the boot down. “I hate not trusting him, but…”

“Yeah, I think that’s just going to be our life now.” Melanie frowned as Jon dangled the keys in front of her. “What?”

“You have a license, too,” Jon reminded her. “Thought you might want to drive.”

“For a whole five minutes?”

“You act like I’ve been tooling around Greater Manchester this whole week. I’ve barely left the house, and when I did, I walked.”

“Fine.” Melanie claimed the keys. “We’re going on a long drive later.”

Jon grinned. “Damn right we are.”

The mix tape Melanie had made for Jon right before they left, which he’d listened to every night and had almost worried would wear out completely, started playing as soon as she turned the car on. She laughed at him, but she also turned the volume up, and they sang along with the songs they were able to get through. Their favorite Terry Lin song was just wrapping up as they pulled into the driveway, which was perfect timing, especially since Jon knew it was the end of that side of the tape. He popped it out of the deck and tucked it into the case before hopping out of the car to retrieve Melanie’s trunk.

“How did you get your stuff home on your own?” Melanie asked curiously as she hauled out her suitcase.

Jon shrugged. “Didn’t. I took a longer lease, so I can leave my things during the holidays. I brought back what I cared about and what I needed. Come on.”

The THORN VALLEY sign still hung over the porch. Melanie automatically reached up to smack it, then paused, staring up at it before staring at Jon. “Is it hanging lower?”

“No, we’ve grown. I can prove it by the marks on the door frame later.” Jon opened the door. “Dad! We’re home!”

“There you are!” Antony rose from the sofa, all smiles, a book dangling from his hand; he dropped it onto the coffee table before coming around to catch Melanie as she threw herself at him. He’d lost some weight since they had been gone, not enough to be worrying but some, but other than that, he looked good—his eyes still clear, his hair still thick and full, his smile still the same as it always was. He clasped her shoulders and pulled back to study Melanie, just like he had Jon when he’d first come home. “Let me look at you. Have you grown taller while you’ve been gone?”

“Apparently.” Melanie smiled up at their dad. “Have you been bored without us?”

Antony laughed. “Extremely. Go put your things away and we’ll have lunch. I’ve held off on asking Jon about his term so he could tell us both at once, but I’m dying to hear how things are going.”

Melanie stooped to pet the cats, who were all swarming her ankles demanding attention, even Skimbleshanks, before following Jon into their bedroom. “S’pose I’ll have to get used to sharing a bed again,” she teased him.

Jon laughed ruefully. “Want the truth? I haven’t been sleeping in here.”

“Go on, seriously?”

“Hand to God. I tried, the first night I came home, but I couldn’t drop off. It was worse than my first night in Cambridge. In the end I came out and slept on the sofa.” Jon sighed. “I know Dad’s noticed, but he’s been good enough not to say anything.”

Melanie bumped her hip against his. “You should’ve slept on the day bed in the office. But…I’d probably do the same thing. Thank God we won’t have an extra week apart at Easter. Let’s go. I’m starving.”

They fell into an easy rhythm in the kitchen, like they always did, and in no time at all lunch was ready to eat. Jon checked the cats’ water dish before taking his seat and nudging Melanie’s ankle with his foot under the table. “So. How was your first term?”

“In terms of studies or in terms of social life?” was Melanie’s immediate retort.

“Either. Both.” Jon picked up his sandwich. “Tell me everything. Make me feel like I was there.”

Melanie rolled her eyes. “Well…in the first place, my professor for the Screen Narrative lecture is a big fan of Xena: Warrior Princess, and when I asked her about Hex she was even more enthusiastic, so I’ve been fighting a crush on her most of the term.”

It was obvious, after a few moments, that Melanie was suffering the same problem Jon had—that she’d spent the entire term trying to restrain herself from being too, well, too Melanie to be liked, especially since she didn’t have Jon to back her up. Since Jon desperately wanted permission to be able to ramble at her like normal himself and knew he would have to restrain himself if she managed it, he poked, prodded, and pushed until he found a weak spot in the dam and the floodgates opened. He sat back with a satisfied smile and listened as she told them about her papers, babbled about the things she’d found interesting, complained about the things she hadn’t but had been forced to focus on instead, and even told them a little about the people in her study group. From the relieved look in Antony’s eyes, Jon guessed he’d been worried that Melanie wasn’t acting like herself.

“—and he’s got ambitions of being the next Quentin Tarantino, so I’m not sure how we’re going to get on,” Melanie concluded at last. “Toni seems pretty cool, though. How about you? How was your term?”

“Exhausting,” Jon said honestly. “I wasn’t prepared for how intense some of these papers are. And there’s definitely a part of me that wishes I’d gone in for English or something instead.”

He didn’t wait to be prompted further, merely launched into his own rambling description of what he’d been up to over the course of the term. The papers were interesting, not so simple that he was bored out of his skull but not so challenging that he was genuinely considering trying to change his course of study, and while he wasn’t interested in any of the secret societies he admitted that there were a couple of organizations he’d been eying up as a possibility to get him out of his books once in a while, which served to make Antony look less worried about him. Even so, he’d found plenty of things on his solitary rambles about the town that he was eager to share with Melanie, if she could ever make it there to visit. For the time being, he would settle for sharing the descriptions.

“What about friends?” Melanie asked shrewdly. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you didn’t mention anyone other than your teachers. Have you spoken to anyone your age?”

“I’ve talked to my floormates,” Jon said, a little defensively. “At least some of them. They’re…fine.”

“Uh-huh. And what are their names? No—” Melanie held up a hand to stop him. “Never mind, you’ve always been good with names, you’d remember them if you only found out when you shook hands when you moved in. What are they studying? What do they do outside of classes? Have you done any of it with any of them?”

“Yes, Mother,” Jon grumbled. “I have. Robin heard there was a campus radio station and wanted someone to check it out with him, so I went along. He’s a Medieval and Modern Languages major, by the way.”

Melanie scowled. “Mm. And the others?”

“We’ve all got busy schedules, and I don’t know all of them that well.”

“You don’t know any of them that well. You’ve been locking yourself away with your books and your papers and ignoring everyone around you.”

“I wish it was that simple,” Jon blurted.

Melanie’s eyebrows shot up, then her eyes narrowed. “Is someone being a dick to you?”

“No. Kind of. Not me specifically.” Jon threw up his hands in surrender. “Look. There are a few in my year who did actually go to Eton—they’re sister schools—and a couple of them remembered me. They were a bit…stiff and awkward around me. I mean, like I said when I told you I wasn’t going, I don’t exactly look like the sort of person who goes to Eton, but there’s also the fact that I applied and, they thought, didn’t get in. They got a bit less stuffy when I explained the situation, and it helps that I can put on enough of the accent that I sound more like them, but we’re not exactly going to be friends or anything. Adam is stressed literally all the time and takes it out on whoever’s closest, and I admit I got into a bit of a tussle with him a couple weeks into terms, but he’s been a lot nicer with me since then. And then…there’s Georgie.”

“Georgie?” Melanie echoed.

“She’s…I’ve run into her a couple of times,” Jon said slowly. “She’s in the same building, so she’s a Year One student, but she seems…I dunno, a bit older maybe? Like maybe she took a gap year.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. That’s not the problem. I met her at a party around half term, and she’s—God, she’s annoying,” Jon finally burst out. “Made it perfectly clear she doesn’t think I should be speaking in public, because I swear she’d argue with me if I said the sky was blue, and what’s worse, she’d probably provoke me to the point that she’d get everyone else in the room on her side just on principle. Bloody dismissive of everything. Obnoxiously pragmatic. I know she apparently has a sense of humor because I’ve heard her laugh, but God knows she’s never deployed it around me. And yet she keeps turning up everywhere I try to go that isn’t class…and somehow thinks I’d be interested in her?”

Melanie puffed up, obviously about to launch into a rant of her own, but before she could say a word, Antony started laughing—a fond, light laugh that nevertheless caught Jon’s attention. “Ah, memories.”

“Memories?” Jon repeated. “Memories of what?”

“Did we not ever tell you how we all met?” Antony asked. “I know you know your mum and your mama were friends growing up, and I know you know your mama and I met at Cambridge—but did we ever tell you the details?”

“No,” Jon and Melanie said in unison.

Antony sighed fondly and picked up his cup, cradling it between his hands but not taking a sip. His eyes went slightly vacant as he seemingly slipped into the past. “You know about Cambridge, and that I went to Eton before that, but, well, you’ve met my family, you know where I came from. I wasn’t ashamed of them by any means, but Mum and Da had always given me to understand that our background, and our accents, didn’t belong in the kind of world I was aiming to get into. I was already a bit on thin ice because it had somehow got around Eton that I was a pansy, even though I’d been careful not to let on as much as I could, so I leaned hard into being the perfect representation of the Old School Tie, as it were. Judicious use of a side part, careful attention to keeping the West Riding out my voice, and all the time I’d spent studying my classmates to learn the sorts of things they talked about and how to make it convincing, and I did a pretty good job of fooling people that I was an absolute wanker.”

Melanie snorted and covered her mouth with her hand. Jon’s lips twitched up in a smile, but he said nothing, letting Antony continue. “Your mama, on the other hand, well, she couldn’t very well hide who she was or where she came from. She could talk as proper as she liked, but she couldn’t change the color of her skin and she wasn’t interested in changing her gender, so that would always be two strikes against her. She knew more about the law than anyone else in that class, but the other fellows talked about her behind their hands. I was feeling a bit insecure, so I decided the best way to cement my reputation and raise my esteem with the other law students was to take on this upstart ‘gel’ who thought she could play with the big boys. So I would—well, like you say, Little Flame, I would argue with her if she said the sky was blue. Wouldn’t have been hard to get the other fellows on my side, or at least against hers, but even any fair minded listeners would probably have come to my side. Our Susan was never one to hold her tongue if she didn’t see a good reason to, and I very quickly became not a good reason.

“Back then they assigned study groups rather than trust you to work on your papers on your own, and Susan and I got put in the same one, along with two others. They were pretty dismissive of both of us, so—I admit it—I was harsh on Susan so they might go easier on me. They didn’t, mind you, at least when she wasn’t around, and I was getting rather fed up with it anyway, but I hadn’t worked up the nerve to apologize. And then she grabbed the wrong bag on her way out the door one morning, and Gillian—your mum—realized it. She was off that day, so she chased after her and got to campus just as Susan was settling down at our table. I was the only one who’d turned up, and I saw her coming towards us—dressed to the nines, hair back in a bun, kitten heels and all, clutching a bag—and I turned on the charm and asked if she was joining our group or looking for a good time.”

“Dad!” Jon cried, covering his mouth with his hand. He wasn’t sure if he was amused or horrified or both. Melanie’s expression looked the same.

Antony nodded. “All right, yes, not my proudest moment. Or my best line. But…well, cut me some slack. Seeing your mum was literally the first moment in my life I’d realized I was attracted to ladies as well as to lads, and I didn’t have much practice in flirting. Anyway, Gillian didn’t bat a lash. She gave me a, ah, rather detailed and crude response of what I could do with my suggestion, stomped on my foot, and left. Susan almost fell off the bench laughing, and I certainly deserved it.”

He took a sip of his tea. “I tried to behave better after that, honestly I did. I stood up to the other two when they started sneering at Susan, first time I’d ever done that, and I did eventually apologize to her. Thank God she forgave me, and we did get to be friends…I’d started to realize maybe I was falling for her, too, but I thought I had well and truly burned my bridges there, so I kept going the Lord Peter Wimsey route with Gillian, and eventually I wore her down into agreeing to try a date with me.” He set down the cup and spread out his hands, palms up. “And the rest is history.”

Melanie raised an eyebrow at him. “So you pestered a girl into agreeing to go out with you to shut you up? Not a great look, Dad.”

“No, that wouldn’t have been,” Antony agreed. “I also didn’t see her again for some time, although once I’d apologized and asked Susan to pass on my apologies as well, I kept passing little messages along. I don’t know if they ever went through or not, certainly Susan never came back with a response, but I’d had my ego stepped on hard enough that I didn’t ask. And then I went home at end of term and had to face my mother, seven aunts, and two cousins, all of whom explained to me in no uncertain terms that I was extremely fortunate not to have been stripped naked and tied upside down to the supports of a bridge at low tide. My da dragged me out of there and I though he was rescuing me, but all he did was take me out back and demand to know what was wrong with me. Said he’d wanted to give me a chance to grow up better than he had but if that was what ‘better’ looked like I’d do well to make like a bottle of wine and go down a dark hole for a few years until I turned into something a lady would want to have dinner with.” He smiled at Jon. “And your mama was the one who finally invited me over to dinner with her and your mum. I found out later that once I’d left, they’d had a whole talk about how I’d been substantially less of a prick since our first encounter, but the first I knew of it was when Susan caught up to me next day and said that if I was looking for a date for Valentine’s Day, Gillian would be willing to give it a go.”

Jon smiled back. “So you’re saying the way to Mum’s heart was through Mama?”

Melanie bit her lip hard and buried her face in the crook of Jon’s neck. It was…stupid. They were grown—well, nearly grown—well, they at least counted as adults when it came to things like making their own medical decisions and buying beer. They were siblings, they were twins, but even if the same blood, or some of it anyway, ran through their veins, they were still separate people.

But the undeniable fact remained that they hadn’t slept in separate beds in almost sixteen years.

They’d tried. Melanie still remembered how excited she’d been to get invited to Sophie’s slumber party for her sixth birthday, and how funny she’d felt when she found out there were no boys allowed, and how hard she’d cried at bedtime and begged to be allowed to go home. It hadn’t exactly helped her reputation, although she’d fared better than that one girl she’d forgotten the name of, who’d wet her sleeping bag and eventually been pulled to go to the Catholic school because Diana had led such a successful bullying campaign. She’d tried again a couple of years later, been horribly anxious and homesick again, and ended up staying awake all night; when she’d got home, she’d found out that Jon had sat up all night in their window seat waiting for her.

They hadn’t tried a third time. Boys didn’t do sleepovers and neither of them had ever been interested in Scouting, so it wasn’t like it would ever happen the other way around. And especially after…the incidents…neither of them had wanted to spend a night away from home without the other. There’d been about a six month period after that where Melanie hadn’t wanted to let Jon out of her sight, to the point that she’d had what had been classed at the time as a temper tantrum but she now recognized as a panic attack upon finding out they had initially been assigned to different classrooms. It had just been fortunate that her teacher had shamed her about it in front of their parents when they came to deal with the issue and their mum had indignantly taken Melanie’s side without asking further questions.

They’d never told their parents what had happened. They’d never told anyone what had happened. Melanie was one hundred percent certain their parents would have believed them, but that was kind of the problem. Their mum would have been just as likely to storm down to Bournemouth, find the door Andy Young had disappeared through, and gone in to do battle with Mister Spider herself. And while Melanie, at the age of eight, had believed Gillian Ng Sims-King to be the fiercest and bravest warrior in the history of the world, she had known that she wouldn’t win against something like that. They’d already lost their mama and their papa; they hadn’t been ready to lose their mum, too.

They hadn’t exactly been ready to lose her four years later, either, but at least it hadn’t been to a monster.

“Remember that stupid shirt Mum had?” she asked suddenly, her voice only slightly muffled by Jon’s pajama top. “The one that said something like ‘the only thing strong enough to kill me is me’?”

“The Team Immunodeficiency one. I remember.” Jon chuckled slightly. “Mama gave that to her when they were teenagers, she said.”

“Is that why she kept it?”

“Yeah. Well, it’s why she pulled it out after she started getting sick again, to wear to her dialysis appointments. She said it was like having Mama there.” Jon was quiet for a moment. “Okay, I give up, I can’t follow that one. What put that in your head?”

Melanie couldn’t help but laugh. Jon was usually good at following her leaps of logic and trains of thought—often better than she was—and it took a lot for him to admit that he couldn’t keep up. “I…started with how much I don’t want to sleep apart from you, and then I was thinking about the meltdown I had when I found out you’d been put in Mr Fitzroy’s class while I was in Ms Porter’s because I didn’t want you to go where I might lose you and then I thought about why I was so afraid then—”

“The nightmares, or the actual thing?” Jon interrupted.

“The actual thing. Although I am not looking forward to those coming back either,” Melanie muttered. “Anyway, I was remembering that we never told Mum or Dad because I was so sure she’d…”

“Go after Mister Spider armed with a blunt object and never be seen again?”

“Something like that, yeah. And I know it’s a stupid thing to be afraid of, but—”

“It isn’t,” Jon interrupted, quietly but firmly. “I had nightmares about the same thing for months.”

“You did?”

“Mm-hmm. Sometimes it was her breaking down the door and just hearing her scream, but when we went in after her, there was nothing. Other times I was reading the book, and I turned the page after the ‘Mister Spider wants more’ page, and there was another knock, and when he answered—” Jon broke off. “Never mind.”

Melanie pushed herself up and leaned her elbows on Jon’s chest, glaring down at him. There wasn’t a lot of light in their room with the curtains drawn, but there was enough for her to make out the outline of his face. “Uh-uh. Nope. You don’t get to ‘never mind’ me there, Jonathan Andrew Sims-King. ‘Knock, knock. Who is it, Mister Spider? It’s—’”

“‘Master Crane,’” Jon whispered, and even in the dark she could see the tears welling up in his eyes. “‘And he’s brought you his family.’”

“Oh.” Melanie swallowed against the lump in her throat, then collapsed onto Jon again and hugged him tight. “You know I know you’d never do that, right? You’d never be so scared of something like that that you would just…feed us to it to save your skin, right?”

“I know. And I know I’d never be so—so stupid that I would think it would actually save me. That never really made the nightmares easier.” Jon sighed. “There was only one thing that ever did that, really, and I think you know perfectly well what it was.”

“Yeah. Same for me.” Melanie groaned. “God, this is going to be the worst. Are you sure we can’t do like Mum and Mama did and find somewhere halfway between the two?”

“We could, but it would be two hours on a train and several changes each,” Jon said dryly. “Which might put a damper on our social lives. And would be fairly expensive. Would’ve probably been easier if we’d both gone to Saint Andrew’s, but…”

Melanie shuddered. “I’m not staying in school an extra year. Especially not without you. And letting you turn down three years at Cambridge would be madness.”

“I still think I only got in because of Mama.”

“If that was true, I’d have got in because of Dad. You got in on your own merits and you know it.”

Jon grunted, clearly not wanting to concede the point but conceding it anyway. “At least we don’t have to share a room with anyone else. God, that would be embarrassing.”

Melanie couldn’t help a small laugh. “Because of the nightmares, or because you might wake up in the middle of the night cuddling an unwilling stranger?”

“Genuine nightmare fuel. I’m not even joking,” Jon added, and Melanie frowned in the darkness, because she could tell from his tone of voice he was dead serious. “You’re different. I mean, you’re my sister, and you’re…safe. Not just…I mean, you make me feel safe. And, well, you’re my sister. Whatever That Fucking Woman thought, neither of us were ever going to…do anything. So sharing a bed with you, I don’t have to worry about any, ah, expectations.”

“You don’t want to?” Melanie asked, surprised. “Not with me, obviously, just—in general?”

“No. I really don’t. It’s not even an ‘I’m saving myself for the right person’ or a ‘come to your wedding night a virgin’ thing or anything like that. I just…the entire idea genuinely creeps me out. I am less interested in…that…than I am in quantum physics. It certainly made that game of Seven Minutes in Heaven we played at Sophie’s birthday party miserable.”

“You could have opted out.”

“Or I could have done what I did, which was pray to whatever gods might be listening that I would land on Sam on the grounds that he’s so straight you could use him as a plumb line and we could just sit in the closet and talk.” Jon huffed. “You’ll notice I never asked about your seven minutes. Either of them. It’s because I genuinely do not want to know.”

Melanie turned that information over in her mind. In a way, it was startling, because she hadn’t thought she and Jon had any secrets. On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly a secret. There were plenty of clues, if she’d ever bothered to pay attention to them, but, well, as he’d said, it wasn’t like they were ever going to do anything with each other, so why would she bother? It also wasn’t like she was in a hurry to set him up with someone.

“Well,” she said finally. “At least Dad won’t have to worry about you making him a grandfather before you have your degree.”

“Does he have to worry about you?” Jon asked pointedly. “Because I don’t know that I’m ready to be an uncle either.”

“No,” Melanie grumbled. “Arse. I’m taking at least one term off from dating anyway, but I’m going to be smart about it when I do start. I don’t really want to be a mum right now either.” She paused, then added, “Maybe not ever. I don’t want to pass Mum’s kidney problems on.”

“You don’t seem to have them.”

“Seem to, is the key phrase there.”

“Mum said she knew when she was a little kid. It’s how Mama knew when she got really sick that she had a chance to be a match. You’d know by now, Melanie.” Jon tucked his chin over Melanie’s head. “It’s not something we have to worry about now, anyway, since we’re not going to have kids any time soon. But you know if you do I’ll be right there with you, right?”

“I know.” Melanie stifled a yawn and snuggled a little closer to her brother. “Just like I’ll be right there with you if you have kids.”

Jon hummed. “You know you’re allowed to go to sleep, right?”

“If I go to sleep, tomorrow comes faster,” Melanie said. “And unlike when we were six and waiting for Christmas, or nine and waiting to come home from Bournemouth, I don’t want tomorrow to come.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jon said. “I don’t really want it to come, either. But…I mean, it’s not that long until Christmas. And you know we’ll be so busy we won’t even notice.”

“You’re a rotten liar.”

“I am a fantastic liar. You just know what I’m really thinking because you’re thinking it too,” Jon shot back.

Melanie sighed heavily. “I mean, it’s not like we’re going to the ends of the earth or anything. It’s only a couple of hours from Leeds to Cambridge, and, you know, phones exist. Email exists. We can keep in touch.” She reached up and touched Jon’s bicep. “And we have these.”

“We have these,” Jon echoed. He rubbed his thumb over the exact same spot on her other shoulder. They’d got the money for their eighteenth birthday, but held off on actually making the appointment until they’d finished their exams, which had also given them time to decide on a design—a floating red lantern of the kind they had always released with their mum on the New Year, inscribed with carefully drawn Chinese characters that, thankfully, the artist had traced exactly. He hadn’t asked for details and had probably assumed it was either some generic good luck thing or random characters that stupid people thought were special, but Melanie and Jon had kept up with their Cantonese. It did mean that they occasionally giggled behind their hands at people, largely white people, who did think they had tattoos reading “PEACE” or “BAD BOY” or whatever but actually had things like “STUPID FOREIGNER” or “SMELLY OLD MAN” or even just nonsense words. It also meant that they knew what their own tattoos said.

The characters, quite simply, were their names. Or, well, their nicknames. Xiao E and Xiao Hua, Little Moth and Little Flame. They’d been called that as long as either of them could remember, in English, in Cantonese, occasionally in French or Latin if their dad or their mama had been feeling particularly silly. In a way, it meant they would always have a little piece of one another with them, no matter where they went. And since neither of them were planning on serious academic careers, it wouldn’t hurt anything to have the ink.

In an effort to lighten the mood, Melanie added, “And we’ve probably got thirty pounds of cat hair each, whether we want to or not.”

As if on cue, the mattress dipped as Cosy heaved herself onto it, making both of them laugh. She made her way, slowly and painfully—she was going on sixteen and her weight hadn’t done her joints any favors—up the bed, then curled up on top of the two of them. A moment later, she began purring, still as strong as ever.

Jon stroked her head gently. “You’ll look after Dad while we’re gone, won’t you, old girl?”

Cosy purred louder. Melanie sighed. “At least he’s holding steady for now. And he’s got people looking in on him…and the systems seem to be helping. And we’ll be back at Christmas.”

“And like you said, we’re not that far away. Relatively,” Jon added. “Bit much for a day trip, but…you know, if we need to come back in a hurry, we can. It’s going to be okay.”

“I know,” Melanie murmured. She rubbed Cosy’s cheek briefly. “I still don’t like it.”

“Me, neither,” Jon confessed. “But we’ve got to go through with it now. It’s going to be all right. We just have to get through.”

“Yeah,” Melanie said. “We’ll make it. We always do. We’ve got each other.”

Jon tapped her tattoo quickly, one two three, charging it up, she supposed, just like the hand squeezes. Melanie tapped the same rhythm out over Jon’s tattoo and felt him sigh with silent relief.

And then, suddenly and abruptly, sunlight was filtering through the gap in the curtains and the alarm clock was ringing cheerfully across the room and it was time to her to face the fact that, for the first time in their lives, the deal wouldn’t hold and she couldn’t go where Jon went, nor he with her, and it was time to confront the adult world.