Constance grimaced. "Roberta—"
Roberta plowed ahead. "And Nicholas is still gone. Everyone's here but Nicholas himself. Well, Preston? Are you going to pull him out of a hat too? You've been hinting all along that you knew where Nicky was: Are you going to perform another deus ex machina and bring him back somehow? Or was that just bait to get us all to the right place at the right time?"
"I object to that accusation," Preston said. "I had nothing to do with Henry arriving here during the storm, and I did not know that Kevin was rigged, so I could not have—"
"You haven't answered the question," Meredith said sharply. "Daddy, do you know where Nicholas is?"
"No, I do not."
Roberta felt something die, a hope she hadn't even known she was cherishing. She hugged herself to control the pain and said, "Then you were lying."
"I was not lying."
Roberta shook her head. "You were, Preston! You told me—or you suggested—you led me to believe—"
"I was not lying," Preston said. "I do not know where Nicholas is."
Roberta took a deep breath. "Then why did you say—"
"He doesn't know where Nicholas is," Constance said quietly. "I do."
They all stared at her. "You know?" Meredith said, stupefied.
"Yes, I know. And I wouldn't tell your father, because he wouldn't tell me where you were. And it was none of his business, anyway. And I'm not sure it's anybody else's. I'm not sure Nicky's ready to be found any more than you were, Merry, before—before you came back. Nicky's—better. That's all anyone needs to know."
"He's okay?" Meredith said. She sounded like she was strangling again. It's too much, Roberta thought in a daze, this is all too much for her, all this happening in the same day. It's too much for me. Constance should have waited.
But Constance couldn't have waited. I raised the issue, she thought; I put Preston on the spot. It's my fault that Meredith looks like she's about to faint. "Meredith? Are you all right? Maybe you should lie down."
Meredith showed no sign of having heard her. "Mother, is Nicholas all right?"
"Yes, Merry." Constance's voice was infinitely gentle. "He's all right. I promise."
"Prove it," Meredith said. She was dead white now, the scars on her face livid in contrast, her hands pressed flat against the table. "Prove it. Otherwise it's just a story. Otherwise it's just something you're saying to make me feel better. If you want me to believe you, if you really want me to feel better, prove it."
"All right," Constance said quietly. She reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope, from which she extracted a photograph. "I have a lot of these. This is the most recent." She put it on the table.
The photograph was of Nicholas, older but still clearly the same child, sitting on a pony. He was smiling, his face bleached by sunlight. Henry leaned forward to peer at the photograph, but didn't say anything.
There was a long pause, and then Constance said matter-of-factly, "He's not the same child he was before the brainwiping, of course. He's not violent or destructive: that's the good part. He's got a speech defect and some motor problems: that's the bad part. But the wiping worked for him. It did what it was supposed to do. And he's happy now."
"Where is he?" Meredith's'voice was hoarse. She reached out to touch the photograph with one finger, as if afraid it would vanish on contact. "I looked—I thought I looked in all the right places but maybe I was wrong, maybe I should have looked here in the States, I thought they'd put him somewhere else but—"
"Yes, that's what happened. You didn't look far enough, that's all, and I'm not sure you could have found him, anyway. It was handled very discreetly. "
"Where is he?"
"Before I tell you," Constance said, "you have to promise on everything you hold sacred that you aren't going to run and track him downespecially not looking like that. You have to promise that knowing he's all right will be enough for you, Meredith. Maybe you can see him sometime. I don't know. But not now."
"I promise, of course I promise, now where—"
"No," Constance said calmly, "that's not good enough. I don't believe you. You've been obsessed for too long. Now: tell me in your own words why you promise not to barge in on him. Then maybe I'll believe you."
Meredith swallowed. "All right. All right. I promise because ... because I want what's best for Nicholas. Because I always did, even if I did the wrong things to try to get it. I promise because I know I wasn't good for him before and I wouldn't be now either and—"
Roberta couldn't bear it. "Meredith, nobody could have been good for Nicholas. Nobody! We all tried. Fred and I tried and Henry tried and—"
"And I did the wrong things for all of you, too," Meredith said.
Constance shook her head. "You certainly can't see him until you've forgiven yourself, Meredith."
"Mother, has it occurred to you that maybe I need to see him before I can forgive myself?"
"No, dear. That won't work. Because until you've forgiven yourself you can't rebuild your life, and it would be no different if Nicky had died, or if the brainwiping had gone wrong. You'd need to forgive yourself even if it wasn't possible to visit Nicky. Do you understand?"
Meredith bent her head. "How can I? How can I? I'm surrounded by everybody I've hurt. How can I possibly blithely go on about selfforgiveness when all of you—when you—when what Roberta said before—"
Shit, Roberta thought. She knew what was coming next. She knew what had to happen, and she knew that Preston knew it, and she suspected that the wretched entity had arranged it this way, for all his protests to the contrary. And she knew that it had to be real, or it wouldn't mean anything. And she didn't know if she could do it. And she didn't know if her motives were pure, anyway: if Meredith never got to see Nicholas again, Roberta probably wouldn't, either. Meredith was her ticket. That was a terrible way to think about someone else, wasn't it? So she was guilty, too. That's what she had to think about. Nobody was perfect. But not everybody's an asshole, either.
She looked down at Mitzi's ring, glittering on her finger, and thought furiously about the gifts she'd been given of which she felt unworthy. She thought about the times she'd been an asshole, and why; she thought about beating up other children. "All right," she said, her throat dry. "Okay, Meredith ... it's hard, right? You need help. You need to hear that all of us forgive you. That each of us forgives you. Right? Is that it? Would that help?"
Silence again. Finally Fred said, "I think that's a wonderful idea, Roberta, whether it helps this immediate question or not."
"Thanks," Roberta said. Meredith was huddled in her chair now, hugging herself the way Roberta had hugged herself a few minutes ago. "You go first, Fred."
"I believe you should go first, Roberta. It was your idea—and of all of us, I think you're the angriest. You're the one who needs to do this the most."
I am, am I? I don't know if I can. I think I can, I think I can. How can I? She closed her eyes, concentrated on breathing, tried to calm herself And then she thought about the times when she'd felt compassion for Meredith despite herself at the hospital before Nicholas was wiped; back in Zephyr's apartment when Meredith learned that Kevin was dead; here in the house, when she had told Meredith that she was no more responsible for Kevin's death than Roberta was for her parents'.
But you could feel compassion for people without forgiving them. Couldn't you?
Meredith had hurt people. Well, Roberta had hurt people too, had been cruel without meaning to.
It wasn't much. She didn't know if it was enough. It was the best she could do. "I forgive you," she said wearily, eyes still closed, "because I want to be able to forgive myself. And because I don't think you'd do it again. I forgive you because I think you've learned something. And because I don't know how much better I'd have done in your place. You know I mean that; we've talked about it."
"Thank you," Meredith said. "Kevin?"
Roberta opened her eyes. Kevin's face looked exasperated. "It's not your fault I'm dead, I told you that. It was the stop sign."
"Kevin," Preston said, "do you forgive Meredith for not asking for help, all those years she was struggling with Nicholas? Do you forgive her for shutting you out?"
"Ah," said Kevin. "Ah ha. Ah ha ha. Oh, hell. I think so. She asked for help that last time. I don't know; I'm not sure. Can you come back to me?"
Roberta looked at Henry, who shrugged. "Henry can't forgive what he can't remember," Henry said. "But thank you for not calling the cops." He got up, put his soup bowl in the sink, and went into the living room.
"I have nothing to forgive you for," Fred said. "You were trying to protect Nicholas. So was I."
"Okay," Meredith said. "Okay, let's stop this, we can't force it and I- I'm not blaming anybody for having trouble. So—"
"Don't you want to know if your parents forgive you?" Constance said.
"No. I'm assuming you do, because—because I'd do anything for Nicholas even—even after what happened. Nicholas did what he did because he was damaged. I guess I was too. I guess the important thing is trying to heal. I guess I sound like a Hallmark card. Anyway, if I'm wrong about any of that, I don't want to know. Mother, may I try again?"
"Try what, dear?"
"Try to give the right answer about Nicky."
"Yes, of course." Constance sat back in her chair and steepled her fingers on the table. "Go right ahead."
"Okay." Meredith took a breath and said, "I promise not to barge in on Nicholas because—because Nicholas needs to be happy. That's what's most important. He needs to be happy even if the rest of us never see him again. And people barging in on him might scare him, and—" She stopped and said, "No, that's no good. That's the same thing I said before."
"No, it isn't," Roberta said. "It's very different. It's about Nicholas, not about you."
"Ah ha," Kevin said. "Ah. I think that's right. Are we voting? How does this work?"
"The only vote that counts is mine," Constance said cheerfully, "but I think it's right too. Okay, I'll tell you; but if you blow it, Meredith, I'll never speak to you again. I mean it. Do you understand?"
"I understand. I do understand."
"Good." Constance reached out to take Meredith's hand and said, "Nicholas is in Malindi, dear, in Africa. With Raji's parents."
* * *
"I pulled strings," Constance said quietly, a few minutes later. "Of course, I shouldn't have been able to. That isn't how the system's supposed to work. But the Abdul-Allams pulled strings too, on their end. And Kenya's awfully far away, and we hadn't seen Sonia and Ahmed for years. It's not like we were ever close to them, even—after what happened. So I guess there didn't seem to be much danger of contact. I kept expecting ScoopNet to pick up on it, especially after that awful Veilasty business—you know, in a way it's so obvious, the grieving parents who keep adopting children because they lost Raji—but somehow we got lucky. Nicholas was just another CV orphan Sonia and Ahmed took in."
"And it wasn't even a lie," Meredith said.
"No," Constance said quietly. "It has a pleasing shape, doesn't it? The child who wielded knives embraced by the parents who lost their son to knives. I think even the placement people saw that. That's probably why they let us get away with it. And you wanted a pleasing shape too, Merry, is that it? Is that why you cut your face? To try to close the circle?"
"It was the wrong way." Meredith sounded miserable. "Zephyr told me that. She told me that hurting myself wouldn't bring Raji or Nicholas back."
"Well, thank Gaia. A voice of reason! Remind me to congratulate that woman, if I ever meet her." Constance shook her head and said, "You never could see past your own nose."
Roberta looked away, trying to pretend to be somewhere else, as Meredith said, "That's not a very nice thing to tell your daughter."
"Merry, I've been through far too much to worry about being nice. Any niceness I ever had has been burned right off me, not that there was very much to begin with. Roberta, please stop acting so embarrassed. I have you to thank too, you know. Without you and Zephyr, this one wouldn't have made it."
"She'd have made it without me," Roberta said. "She'd have gotten awfully wet, that's all. Constance, Meredith—I want to go see how Henry's doing, all right? Do you mind?"
"No, dear. Go on. We owe him thanks, too."
* * *
Henry and a bot were playing checkers in the living room while the kittens chased bots. ''I'm teaching Henry how to play," Fred said. "Henry likes this game, don't you, Henry?"
Henry scowled at the board. "Henry likes it all right. Henry wishes Fred didn't keep winning."
"You'll beat me one day, Henry."
Roberta sat down on the couch and watched them play. She knew that Fred could have let Henry win immediately, and she knew why he wasn't doing it: to give Henry a genuine sense of accomplishment when he did win. He'd make sure Henry got to a certain skill level first, and then he'd let Henry win roughly half the games. Good old Fred.
She should leave now, go back to her apartment. She'd gotten what she needed. She'd done her job. She was finished here. But she sat, weighted by exhaustion, unable even to think, until Meredith came in from the kitchen and sat down next to her. "Fred?"
"Yes, Meredith?"
"If I ask you to show me what happened at the school that last night, will you?"
"No," Roberta said, and Meredith looked at her, eyebrows raised. "Meredith, why do you want to see that? You know what happened. We all know as much as we need to know about what happened."
"That's right," Constance said sharply from the kitchen doorway. "Merry, what purpose would it serve? It would be like watching Raji die all over again, only worse."