She’s centuries upon centuries old but she doesn’t look a day over twenty-eight. And she’s not alone.
I approach her. I don’t say anything.
“Oh, look, Timor,” she says as I come close. “Look who finally deigned to visit her poor, ailing mother.”
“Mom, now is really not a good time,” I start.
“It is never a good time, is it?” she asks, with this bizarre accent that’s all her own. It doesn’t hail from anywhere, but it’s there all the same—like those movie stars in the Golden Age of Hollywood—like Katharine Hepburn’s “Mid-Atlantic,” weird American-British hybrid accent.
“You’re not poor, and you’re not ailing,” I say as I glare at her and then at my half-brother, Timor. I face my mother again. “I need to talk to you.”
Timor looks down his nose at me. Equally blond as mom and me, but significantly shorter, and going out of his way to telegraph how unhappy he is to see me. “Hello, Kathra,” he says, biting down hard on the K.
“Hi, Tim.”
“It has been a long time.”
“Not long enough.”
“Leave, and it may be longer still.”
“Timor, I seriously don’t have time for this. Can I please talk to mom… alone?”
“Anything you can say to mother, you can say to me.” He stiffens. “There are no secrets in this family.”
“Family” was a stretch. “There are nothing but secrets in this family,” I argue.
Timor stares at me flatly. He’s standing with one arm drawn up to his chest, like a waiter with a napkin, wearing the flowing white robes particular to the old Roman Senate. You can’t move very fast in them. It’s supposed to be indicative of patience, precision, and unflappability. Timor’s too twitchy to really pull it off, though.
We didn’t grow up together, so I can’t tell you why he’s like this; only that he’s been this way for as long as I’ve known him. He’s a brick wall of a person, no peep holes, no doors. Just a suit of armor that shrieks every time you try to move it.
“Family must be able to… rely on one another,” he says.
“Then I’m not family.” I let out a sigh because I really don’t have the patience for him at the moment. “Just, please, Tim, go away.”
“And leave you to conspire with mother? I think not.”
“Timor, for fuck’s sake, I have better things to do than conspire against you with mom.”
“Kathra,” says mom, says Aphrodite, says Venus.
Timor stands a little closer to her, trying to present a united front. Mom doesn’t acknowledge him. She’s watching me expectantly. She’s curious, I can tell. And Timor was probably annoying her as much as he is me. He’s just annoying… period.
And I’m just done. “Fine. Hunter is dead.”
All the color leeches from his face. His mouth smacks open, closes, opens again.
“What happened?” he asks. I notice the lack of anything on mom’s face.
“A building fell on him.”
“When?”
“Two hours ago.”
“And you are here?”
“Yes, that’s the important thing I need to talk to mom about.”
Timor nods. At least he feels the need to play the part of apologetic. Mom? Not so much. “I am very sorry,” he says. “I will, um… How is his family?”
“Probably not great.”
“I’m quite sorry, Kathra, really, if I’d known—”
“You’d have been less of an asshole. I appreciate it, now would you mind leaving?”
He nods, puts his head down, and scuttles away. Mom turns over her shoulder to watch him go. She doesn’t react to what I’ve said, not in any way that I can see, anyway.
Timor mounts the steps and disappears into the temple proper. Mom exhales. I wait for her to say something.
She doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“Must you be so aggressive with him?” she asks finally. “He’s really a good boy.”
“He’s really a good lap dog, you mean?”
She shakes her head. “I wish you two would get along.”
“Why? We never fucking see each other.”
“And when you do see each other, it is always the same—always like this.”
“And I’m never the one to start it,” I say, which is a lie.
“It is unnecessary.” She reaches for a pink trumpet flower, bobbing languidly on its vine. The veins in its petals grow more pronounced when she touches it.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll try to be nicer to Timor. Can we talk now?”
She plucks the bud, turns it over in her hand. She doesn’t look at me. “About what?”
Is she serious? “Did you… did you even hear what I just said? Hunter is dead.”
“Yes, I heard you.” She closes her eyes. “What about it?”
“What about it?” I repeat, shaking my head. I don’t think I’ve ever really felt flabbergasted before.
She looks up from her petal. “Is there more?”
“Seriously?”
There’s a pause before she answers. She’s completely, utterly still, unnatural even for her. The air tastes like cold steel. The petals fall away from the bud in her hand. She takes a breath. Eventually she speaks.
“He was human,” she says. “What did you expect? Humans die.”
I snort. “Thank you, mother, for your comforting words.”
She gives me this one-shoulder shrug. It’s a delicate little motion. “There is nothing else to say. You loved a thing that dies, and now it is dead.”
“It.”
She sighs. “He. He was human, and he has died. This is what happens to humans, Kathra, you must have known this.”
“I know people die, mom.”
“Humans die.”
“Not mine. Not like this.”
Mom’s eyes flash. Her face remains impassive, disinterested, but there’s a shift—and suddenly I feel like an ant, staring up at a person from under the shadow of their shoe.
“You are
