Strange Dogs (Expanse 6.50)

“What happens to him tonight?” Cara asked.

Mari blinked and reared back a centimeter as if Cara had shouted something rude. Her father didn’t react at all, just turned the fixed, polite smile a degree more toward her. Her mother was the one to answer.

“This isn’t the time—”

“I know the funeral’s tomorrow,” Cara said, “but it’s not like there’s a place in town that he can stay in until then. Can he be here? It’s the last night he can, so he should stay here. With us.”

Her voice was louder and shriller than she’d intended. Mari Tennanbaum wasn’t looking at her, but other people were. Her mother’s eyes were as dead as Momma bird’s.

“Sure,” her mother said. “If it’s important to you, he can stay here until the funeral. That would…that would be nice. To have him here.”

Then her mother started crying and didn’t stop. Her father put down his wine, still with the same smile, and led her away. For a moment, Cara expected Xan to rush in and ask what was wrong with Mom, and then she remembered again. She went back out to stand guard over the body. To make sure that if anyone came and tried to take him away, she’d be there to tell them her mom said not to.

The memorial ended late, people staying until the darkness felt like it had always been there. Like daytime was some other planet. She was still standing beside Xan when Admiral Duarte and the soldiers left, and when Stephen DeCaamp and Janet Li came to move Xan’s body inside. Probably nothing in the local system would mistake him for food, but they brought him in anyway, still on the table. They left him between the dining area and the kitchen, dressed in his funeral whites. It was like something out of a dream.

Her parents saw everyone out, said their last farewells, and closed the door. None of them spoke, and Cara went to the washroom and pretended to prepare for bed. Brushed teeth, washed face, changed into a nightgown. She kissed her mother on the cheek and went to her bedroom. She left the door open just a crack, though, so the latch wouldn’t make noise when she opened it. Then, as quietly as she could, she took the nightgown back off and pulled on work clothes. She tucked her handheld into her sock drawer. If they checked, it would look like she was in her room. She crawled into bed and pulled the covers up to her neck so if her parents did come in, she’d look normal. The trick, she thought, would be waiting until they went to bed without falling asleep herself.

In the darkness, she bit her lip, chewing the soft flesh so the pain would keep her awake. She counted backward from five hundred, one number with each breath, and then counted back up to five hundred again. She was just shifting the blanket aside to get up when she heard the back door open and her parents’ voices drift in. She froze, listened.

The strangest thing was how normal they sounded. How much grief sounded like regular life.

“I’ll get that cleaned up later,” her father said.

“It’s fine. I don’t care.”

“I know, but I’ll clean it up anyway.”

The ghost of a laugh, gone almost before it started. She could imagine her mother leaning against the counter the way she always did, except that Xan was dead. So maybe they acted different. It seemed like everything ought to have changed.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” her mother said. “It’s just not…plausible?”

“Yeah. I keep feeling like I just had a little seizure or something. Like I was having some kind of hallucination, and now I’m back. Or I’m asleep again. I don’t know. I can’t…I don’t feel like he’s gone.”

Cara felt a little smile tugging at her mouth. For a second, she was tempted to run out and tell them. To have them help. Then they could all do it together.

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” her mother said. “We weren’t supposed to be here anymore. Not us. Not—” Her voice thickened and stopped, like the words had gotten too gooey to get out. Her father was making noises. Like little cooing sounds Cara might have heard from paper bugs. She shifted a little, thinking that maybe she could peek through the crack in her door. See what they were doing. The tightness in her gut was the seconds of nighttime slipping away, and she had to find the dogs.

“He should have been back in Paris,” her mother said. “He should have been with his cousins, not on this fucking nightmare of a planet.”

“I know,” her father said.

“I hate it here. I want to go home.”

“I know, Dot. I want to go home too.”

Cara felt the words like a punch. Home? They wanted to go home? They were home. This was home. What they meant was Earth, where she’d never been, where she didn’t belong. Where Xan didn’t belong.

She must have made a noise, because her mother called out in her tear-thickened voice. “Babygirl?”

Cara froze, then inched back toward her bed. She couldn’t be found now. Not dressed like this.

“Babygirl?” her mother said again, and Cara jumped back into the bed, hauled the blanket up to her neck, and turned her face to the wall. If they saw her face, they’d know she was only pretending to sleep…

Her door opened. She fought to keep her breath slow and deep. What would she say if they touched her? Should she pretend to wake up? What did she look like when she was just waking up? She didn’t know.

“I love you, babygirl,” her mother whispered, and the door closed, the latch clicking home. Cara let out a long, stuttering breath. Her pulse was going fast enough for two people, which struck her as funny, because it was sort of true. Her heartbeat and Xan’s too. For a while at least.

Her parents’ voices were less clear now, but she heard the door to their bedroom close. She waited, counted to five hundred and down again, waited some more. No more noises. No more voices.