uniquely familiar

“No, honey. Just sit. Take a rest. You must be exhausted.” And the young girl looked up to her mother, Felicia, giving her a sly wink as the older woman moved around the kitchen to take care of this and that. Wafting through the air was the smell of fried lumpia, being pushed around by a sunny afternoon in Washington D.C. The family had opted to keep the windows open, heat emanating from the food frying, the rice cooking on the counter, and the warmth in Magdalena’s cheeks as she thought about the night before.

Being an only child can suck sometimes. Mags knows that her parents know that as a young woman of her age, attending college quite a distance away from them, away from their protectiveness...it was only normal to go to parties and drink.

And Beyonce’ was there, so if you asked Mags, there was no regret whatsoever. Even if she was as exhausted as her mother says she is.

“You know, your Lola had called me up this morning.” Miguel Romero had started to put the last of the lumpia on a bowl, ready to be served, as he went on. “She said she’ll be flying to the Philippines for two months. There’s some..family stuff that needs to be looked over.”

Felicia raised a brow, “Well, that’s the first I’ve heard of that. What kind of family stuff, my love?”

The older man shrugged. “It’s nothing too important. Well, that’s not true. Just..real estate. Some land that may or may not belong to us. Who knows? That’s the whole reason she needs to be there. And hey--” He set the bowl down on the table. “Maybe some of it does belong to our family and we’re lucky and we can say that we own land back there. And when I say ‘we’, I really mean my mom. But part of the family’s properties nonetheless.”

Mags could only nod, still scribbling away as she mentally notes to add some doodles and pictures to her journal pages after their late lunch was over. “I sure hope it’s ours. Otherwise, Lola would be wasting a trip. Also, at her age, I don’t think flying would be ideal. Especially flying commercial and cheap. It’s scary!” Cue the interesting times she had running from one terminal to another for her flights to the Berlin internship. “People can be rude too. Flying is not for the weak.”

“Mags, your grandmother is just pushing eighty. And your cousin Nikki is going with her, seeing as she has all those points saved up. I’m sure they’re as comfortable as they can be.” Miguel reassured her before taking his seat and sighing. “Of course, I would’ve loved to come. But there’s work to be done here. Your mom and I have a case that we need to tend to.”

Her ears perked up at that. She theorizes that the more time she spent at Gallagher, the more nosy she became. Though maybe she could class up the terminology just a bit. Nosy could be called observant. And easy as it came, she could put that down on her curriculum vitae and call it a day. “A case?”

Felicia sent her daughter a smile. Part comforting, part .. mystery, if you asked Mags. There were ways her mother could smile at her and she wouldn’t really know how to feel. “Nothing too big. But it is tedious, so we can’t spend as much time with you as we’d like, honey.”

Miguel grunted. “Part of me wishes I was retired so we could at least enjoy you during the summer. I mean, you might keep chugging along after you graduate from Gallagher and we wouldn’t even have spent a single month with you.” Though the older man knew that it is what it is; him and Felicia had things they needed to do while Mags could pretty much go wherever. Their only comfort was that, in the midst of all this, Mags could experience a normal life.

One without near-fatal home invasions, people her age being poisoned and having their lives cut short, or fellow students dying from organizations that hunted people like her down. That last one was a doozy; Felicia had broken some oaths in telling him that one. A necessity and just plain common sense, as the two were married and would continue to be for the rest of their lives. Felicia tells Miguel, Miguel tells Felicia, and sometimes Mags would be told things. Sometimes. That’s how it worked.

Before he could pick up a piece of food, Miguel eyed his wife as she sat down. Felicia responded by giving him a puzzled look; Mags being none the wiser as she finished up the paragraph she had been writing. Miguel gave one knowing grunt and gestured towards their daughter.

As the realization dawned upon her, Felicia cleared her throat and waited until Mags had her journal closed before she spoke. “Honey, since we can’t spend time with you this summer, your dad and I were thinking that you could..stay over at your grandma’s farm.”

Mags blinked before taking a glance at her parents. One on each side of her, with her brain only running through multiple possible responses before uttering a single: “Huh?”

“To be fair, there are still some keepers left at the farm. You know, there’s the people that tend to the lands and the cattle, and the house. Just .. I – W-we, don’t really know of any other place that we feel you’d be safe in. Your mom and I know each and every one of your Lola’s farm keepers. They’re like family as well.”

“Well..--” “And before you ask, no, my side of the family..no. I mean, you’ve met them and they’re nice, but ..I just don’t want you wrapped up in what they’ve got going on. It’s..too much. Your uncle is trying to run for mayor in their little town and I just don’t want you within their circle. Politics can be very dangerous.”

Mags looked down at her journal, closed up and buckled. Worn over by the many times she’s opened it up to write, dropped it down in a hurry to get to her next class, thrown it down on floor of the science labs every time she got frustrated (to her mentor’s displeasure, she was sure), and the sleepless nights she’d studied for one or more tests. The droplets of tears that adorned both the cover and several paragraph-riddled pages as she thought of the worst when it came to her grades, to her friends, to the rejections she’d experienced, both professionally and personally.

Even through two whole years at Gallagher and the many times she’d picked up her head from the toilet after a night of drunken fun at one of Gallagher’s many events, Mags still felt like she did years ago. She was good, she followed the rules, and she could count the amount of tension-filled confrontations she’s had with one hand.

And maybe part of her was delusional, but it was her summer before her third year. Her first year at Gallagher after Laura Sutton had resigned, for better or for worse.

She could envision herself at her dorm window, looking down at the incoming class of first years and wonder where the last two years had went. Because she could swear it was just yesterday that she was arranging her plants by her dorm’s window, thinking about the many ways her first years could end. And how none of it lived up to what actually happened.

“Mags?” Her mother urged, a hand reached out to grasp her shoulder. “What do you think?”