“What?”
“I didn’t want to end up like your mother. Who would believe me if I was the only one to hear a message?”
“I would have been there.”
“Even better.”
Randy took a pull of beer and said, “Start respecting me Hazel or I can’t be around you anymore.”
“I like it when you’re forceful,” she said and leaned in close.
“Slow it down, you’re drunk and you have duty tomorrow,” Randy said.
She turned nasty, the wine shifting her mood like the tide. “You and that damn Hendricks’ order and control. Do you ever stop worrying about duty? Do you ever just lie on the beach, close your eyes and imagine you live in a sacred text?”
He said nothing.
“Because of that god-damn duty and honor, my father’s gone,” Hazel said. Her eyes were glassy and her cheeks red.
Silence stretched on for several minutes. Randy didn’t know how to get through to Hazel when she was like this despite trying to break her cocoon most of his life. She stared at the bar, her face twisted and sad. Talk of her father made her dour, and when she screwed herself up, nothing but time brought her back down. He had to leave her alone. She’d talk when she was ready. She always did.
A gust of wind pushed through Citi and the creaks, pops and whistles of the old structure sounded like seashells being dragged over sand by the tide. Outside, palm leaves rattled, and the night symphony awoke. Insects and birds squeaked and chirped, screaming for the sea breeze to leave them be. To that, the wind roared harder.
Randy drank his beer, she her wine. Half an hour slipped away before she spoke, and when she did, she sounded tired and afraid. “I hate your mother for what she did to my mom.”
Hazel wasn’t a hateful person, but even the most delicate of flowers can grow thorns. Randy said, “You can’t blame my mother for a grown man’s actions. She never misled anyone.”
“This is why it’s so hard to trust yo…” Hazel caught herself.
“Trust you… me,” Randy said. “I’m not my grandmother or mother and I’ve never lied to you.” That wasn’t strictly true, but he’d never told her any major lies. “How can you lay that at her feet?”
“The whole thing is at her feet. The entire quest was her idea. Remember?” Hazel said.
“Has the wine gone to your head? My grandmother started it,” Randy said. “Her dying words and secrets sparked everything.”
“Yes, your grandmother, the delicate flower who destroyed my family,” she said.
“We’ve been over this.”
“We’ll never be over it.”
“No, I guess we won’t. Is that the end of us?” Randy said.
She got up to get another bottle of wine. When she returned, she offered him a full cup. “Drink something real, will you?”
“Answer my question,” Randy said.
“You want to pair? I don’t know if I can trust you,” she said.
“Trust me. Are you joking? I’m trying to protect you,” he said, and as soon as he did, he knew it was the wrong thing to say.
“That why you didn’t tell me about the ear?” Hazel said. She’d turned her hard eyes on him. That accusing stare she’d perfected over the years. The stare that said everything he did was wrong.
“I didn’t tell you for the same reason you never took ear duty. I was a fire guard, what, four months? I didn’t think anyone would believe me. I hardly believed it myself,” Randy said. He’d kept what he heard on ear duty to himself for a long time, only revealing it to Hazel who then told all of Respite at council. There were still folks who wouldn’t speak to him because of his silence.
“Respite. Respite. This is Milly Hendricks, and I’m here with Robin Hampton, and…” Hazel said. “What’s there to keep secret? That isn’t much of a message. Why would you make up such nonsense? Wouldn’t you have come up with something better? Everyone believed you heard it.” Hazel got up and bent before him, putting her face a foot from his. “What was the real reason you didn’t tell me? Don’t you lie, Randy.”
Her breath stank of wine and pork fat. She burped in his face. “You know why,” he said.
“What? This love crap again? Randy, you want me to accept you didn’t tell me because you love me?”
“Yes.”
“So you can keep me in this cage close to you?”
“Cage? When did Respite become a cage?”
“As soon as I was old enough to believe there was more out there. More people, and places with more than nineteen books.”
Randy paused, choosing his words carefully. “Can you see the gone world? I mean, really see it? Like we imagine Hobbiton or Chicago in the year 3024? Can you picture it in your mind?” Randy said.
“Sometimes. I’ve seen pictures, heard stories, seen artifacts of the gone world and the old ones, but I never experienced the world as it was, so perhaps what I’m picturing in my mind is folly. That’s one reason I want to leave here, Randy. To see for myself what’s out there.”
“At what cost? The question isn’t do we want to see, but what might it cost to see? Don’t think I don’t want to go on my own quest to the old country. I do, very much, and I’d like nothing more than to do it with you, but the price is too high, and the risks too great. We have a wonderful life here. If we were struggling and miserable, it would make more sense. But we’re not,” Randy said.
“You need to have faith,” she said.
“Faith means nothing,” he said.
She sat next to him, sipping her wine. Her beauty overwhelmed him; her
