Drown #12: hand in my pocket, part 2

May 2086. Keri Riley is 25. Bryson is 64, Madison is 63. Cabe Deppiesse is 45, Orion is 53, Dallas is 21.

Soundtrack, "Hand in my Pocket," by Alanis Morissette


Back on Earth, Keri's work looked a lot like most people's jobs looked. Notebooks on long tables, cups of coffee, colleagues talking over each other. But it wasn't everyone's job to meet with Earth's only known resident alien family. It was funny that Keri had never thought to ask Cabe before why he decided to pursue a job in astronautics. She had assumed he was like everyone else who just wanted to fly rocket ships and explore space. But knowing now that his brother was half alien, the reasons became clear. There was so much he wanted to learn about our universe and how it all worked.

They had two orders of business to start. First, they needed to make sense of the engineering notes that Lampyridae had left them. Second, they had to find a way to communicate with the Cassiopeians on a more reliable basis, which would also be the way they could communicate back home once they had embarked on the mission. Although their engineering specs could make it possible to travel faster than light, only those physical things that traveled with them in their ship would come along for the ride. To send messages that way would mean to harness the power of their warp drive each and every time, and that was just not practical.

"But let's think about this another way," Cabe suggested. "How did the Cassiopeians know that we needed help here? They didn't send a message on a warp drive, and they didn't use a wormhole. They spoke with the baby. They communicated with their minds."

"You’re not using my baby," Dallas said.



They hadn't asked Dallas to join the team so that they could convince him to offer up his baby for mental experimentation. Dallas was a brilliant recent graduate with an honors aerospace engineering degree. They promised that they only wanted him to build rockets. But his father, Orion, was Cassiopeian, too.

Cabe said, "We think this could work. Baby Cassie is a third generation hybrid. She has eighty-seven percent human DNA. But Orion, he's half and half." Cabe turned to his brother. "You told me once that you heard things when your children were infants. You said it was almost like you could speak with them. And you have the strongest Cassiopeian DNA of anyone in your family. Surely you could do it, too, if you could only remember how."

After fifty-three years of trying to humanize and shed his alien traits, that was a lot of forgetting for Orion to undo. But he agreed to try, so they had a place to begin.


Keri had enjoyed catching up with her old colleague from the Lunar Colony. Dominique was actually the first person she told that she was getting divorced, and now Dominique would also be the first person she told that she was giving her daughter up and that she couldn't tell her mother so.

"But won't she be mad that you didn't tell her, too?" Dominique suggested. "Maybe she'll surprise you."

All of the grandparents were invited to the adoption hearing if they want to attend. Stephanie and Justin would have their parents there, and they’d have each other, too. Keri hated to feel vulnerable—she was a warrior, she wasn't weak, she didn’t cry—but she felt like she needed someone there to support her on the day she gave her child and husband to another woman.

Maybe her mother would surprise her. So she decided to be mature and grownup about this, and she told her parents.


She told her father first, and he was as reasonable as Keri expected him to be. It was Bryson's idea to play one of Madison's favorite piano concertos while the news dropped to try to soothe her mind. But Keri should have gone with her gut instinct, because the conversation went just as badly as she expected it would. Her mother surprised her, indeed, because it actually went worse than Keri ever expected.

"You’re giving away my only granddaughter? Isn’t it bad enough already that I’m losing my only daughter for five years? You don't have to do this. Lily will only be fourteen when you get back. There's still time for you to be her mom."

"Lily deserves to have a real mom."

"You are her real mom. You are! Not that tramp."

"Stop calling her that," Keri said. "Stephanie is not a tramp."

"This is Justin's fault. He should have stood by his family. He should have followed you. The military has programs for that. He would have been taken care of and had support, and you two would have made the marriage work. That’s what a person of real substance and character does, they make the marriage work."


Madison pointed hard. "Because Justin is not a good man. He’s a weak and spineless man. And that harlot took full advantage of him to rescue her out of her unhappy situation instead of dealing with her own mess like a woman does. She messed up her own marriage and someone else’s, too. She destroyed two families, and now I'm losing my granddaughter."

"You can't put all the blame on them. It was my fault, too," Keri said. "I left him, Mom. I did that."

"Well, she was certainly hanging around to snap him right up. If it wasn't for her, he would have gotten over it. You would have had a chance to fix it."

"We never would have fixed it."

"I will never call that woman my granddaughter’s mother. Not ever in my life."

Madison stormed out of the living room then, having said all she had to say, slamming herself inside her bedroom. Keri wondered who she'd try to call or how she'd try to stop it. She was probably already friends with the judge.


Keri slumped into the nearest chair. Even at twenty-five, even when she was trying to be mature and reasonable, Keri's mother still made her feel like an insolent teenager. "Play me some blues, Dad."

Bryson smiled and worked his fingers into something full of minor keys and lament.

"Just tell me where to be and when," Bryson said. "I'll be there."


"Really? Won't she be mad at you?"

"It wouldn't be the first time, and it won't be the last."

"You can probably stop the music now. It didn't work anyway."


"Of course, it worked," Bryson said. "How else do you think I held my tongue during that spat?"

"Maybe you shouldn't have."

"Your mother will say what she wants to say. That doesn't make her right."


Her father continued to play. There was an adorable picture of Willow—with Lily too, of course—on the wall above Bryson's piano.

"I bet Mom hates that photo," Keri said. "I can't believe she lets you keep it."

"This is my corner and I'll hang whatever photos I please here."

Four years ago, Keri couldn't have imagined why he would ever want to keep a picture of Willow. Two years ago, Keri would have been irate to find that he kept a picture of Willow. Now, Keri understood.

For four years, he saw Willow every time he visited Lily. For four Christmases, he bought a gift for Willow because you can't buy presents for one child and not another. He'd seen her grow up and now Willow was practically another grandchild to him. When the new baby was born, Bryson would love that child, too, because he came from Justin and Bryson loved Justin. Keri knew that her father deserved to have so many more grandchildren than she was ever willing to give him.

That was how Keri knew that her parents weren't losing a grandchild at all, they were gaining grandchildren. The family Keri left behind went on in her wake and recreated itself. That they would still let her be a part of it from time to time, after all of the trouble she'd caused, humbled her.

"Did you guys save me some dinner?"


Keri's father cooked dinner now, which was a strange difference from her childhood of prepared meals, restaurants, and take out. Neither of her parents ever had the time to cook. But as Keri's mother ramped up her political career, Keri's father began to settle into a comfortable equilibrium with his real estate empire. It gave him time to focus on his hobbies, piano and cooking, and his family. Which was not to say he intended to retire any time soon, but, in his sixties now, he'd finally struck a comfortable balance between all the cherished segments of his life. Keri wondered if she would ever feel that way when she was older. Right now, her career and ambition consumed most of her attention. Maybe her father understood that. He hadn't even tried to start a family until his late-thirties when his business was already a multi-million dollar empire.

Keri used to joke that her father loved Justin even more than his own flesh and blood, that they were more similar, that they had more in common. Now she wondered if it just took her this long to realize how much she took after her father. It had been in there, buried underneath the whims of a spoiled and bratty rich girl.

"I'm sorry I was such a brat as a kid," Keri said.

"Oh, you weren't that bad," he said. "We made it through, didn't we?"

"I know you always liked Justin more."

"Not more," he said. "I'll always be glad that you brought him into my family so that I could have the chance to know him, but your marriage wasn't about what I wanted. It wasn't about what your mother wanted, either."

"Try telling Mom that."

"She'll get used to the idea."


"I just wanted to say, after we’re divorced, I don’t care if you still want to hang out with him. I mean, you should. Because I’m gone a lot of the time and he’s here, so if you still want to do son-in-law things or whatever, or see Lily, or buy presents for Willow or the baby, I’m okay with that. Maybe it won’t always be weird."

"I’m an old man, Keri. I’ve been through some things. I can promise you, it won’t always be weird if you don’t want it to be."


"Do you like Stephanie?"

Bryson laughed. "Is this a trick question? I’m not sure what the right answer is."

"Just the truth," Keri said.

"I don't dislike her."

"That was a non-answer."

"There's nothing to dislike about Stephanie," Bryson said. "She's a nice girl. She's makes Justin very happy and that makes me glad. She is wonderful to those kids, and that makes me glad, too."

"I know, that's what sucks, she's a gem," Keri said.


"You could choose to be glad about that, too," Bryson said.

"Why?"

"You don't have to take it personally. It doesn't have to mean anything about you. Because she isn't you, and she's not trying to be. You're not trying to be her, either."

Keri tried to decide if that was a good or bad thing.

"What I mean is, you don’t need to worry about who likes her, or feel bad if she’s the woman who makes Justin happy. There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with him. You two just wanted different things. There will be someone else out there who wants what you want."

"Really? You think so?"


"He'll be one in a million," Bryson said. "So make sure you hang onto him when you find him."

"Thanks, Dad."


Keri wanted to take a swim to clear her head before bed. She had a lot to think about. Her father's promise sounded like a fairy tale, like she should be in a forest, singing, "Someday my prince will come."

Keri didn't need a prince, but she had to admit that she got lonely sometimes.


She wondered what he would be like, this imaginary man who could stand the idea of sharing a life with her, this man who wanted the same kind of life she wanted. What would they do together? Travel the stars? Discover new worlds? Live a life of adventure and knowledge and experience?

When she says, "I don't want children," he will say, "That's okay."

When she says, "Let's go," he will only ask, "Where to?"


Keri couldn't wait to meet him.

—

footnotes: baby Cassie saves the world // Bryson adores Justin, and Madison has opinions (you will have to ignore the brutally erased sister-that-never-was, Mariah)

And a side note about Mariah that I mentioned in a comment to a previous chapter, which probably not everyone got to see: in my head canon for this universe of the story—and well, since I'm the author around here, I guess that makes it canon, lol!—I imagine that Mariah had actually been born, that Madison and Bryson once had two daughters, but maybe that Mariah died in childhood when Keri was still very little. It would have been something sudden and unexpected and completely random. Not long and drawn out, like illness. Something quick, maybe having to do with a car. It would have have happened at about age three, when Keri was just a baby still and too young to remember her at all. 

Madison is just such an unhappy woman and carries around so much animosity against the world, I can see that as being something that happened in her past. And it would explain why I have all of these baby pictures of Keri with a sister, but in this story Keri grew up without one. 

Another note: Looking back on old stories, I am amused that it was Cabe who Madison called to secure Keri her cushy communications job at the Lunar base, so that she would be safe. But then that exact job led to Keri meeting Lampyridae and getting involved in the Cassiopeia project which will send her even further out into space. Fate is funny. Lesson to Madison: don't try to interfere, it will backfire on you, lol!