Julie took all of that in while also taking in the person sitting on the next bench. The curly hair, the ramrod spine. She was one hundred percent certain it was David, except David would have grabbed for the loose dog; the guy on the bench didn’t turn his head toward the commotion. It was David, obviously David, but something was off. She remembered the way he’d scanned the area on their first trip to the mall after his return, and his tension at baseball games all summer, trying to keep track of everyone around him.
“Hey, Davey,” she said, walking closer to the railing so he’d see her.
He startled. “Oh, hi, Mom.”
He smiled at her, then returned his gaze to the water. She sat on the bench beside him and looked to see what had his attention: ducks. She watched for a minute before impatience overtook her.
“What are you doing out here? I would’ve thought you’d be at work.”
He turned to face her. Something in his expression unnerved her. It was an absence of expression, really: an unexpression, an unalertness, his eyes unsparked. Everything about it was un-David.
He didn’t answer her question, and after a minute she wondered if she’d asked out loud. They watched the stupid ducks for another minute or ten; she couldn’t tell how long because they were watching ducks.
When he finally spoke again, she almost didn’t recognize it as the answer to her question, there had been so much separation between the two. “I’m not working at BNL anymore. I’m looking for a new job.”
She opened her mouth to say the first thing that came to her: What are you talking about? Just as quickly, she imagined how Sophie would respond if she asked something like that, the defensive turn the conversation would take. Proceed with caution, calm, nonchalance. Channel Val. “Oh. I didn’t know. You can tell me more if you’d like.”
He shrugged. “They said they were going in a new direction.”
“Oh.” She matched his placid tone again. “Was this today?”
“Nah.”
He wore his BNL work polo and slacks, so either he was wearing them to job interviews—odd given the tech no doubt woven into the logo—or he was wearing it to fool his family when he left each morning. In which case who knew how long he’d been doing it. She wanted to ask when. She didn’t.
“I’m sorry, kiddo.” The funny thing was, he didn’t seem particularly upset. He didn’t seem anything at all; he looked peaceful. “I feel like I’m disturbing you. Do you want to talk about it? Or do you want me to go?”
When he didn’t answer, Julie stood. “See you at dinner?”
Another delayed response. “I’ve got plans. I’ll see you later, though.”
She kissed the top of his head and left him to his ducks. She had to let him decide when to come to them for help.
• • •
That night, neither kid appeared at dinnertime. Val had made some variation on green curry, bright and spicy. Both kids would’ve liked it, even with the brown rice.
“I know they’re adults,” Julie said, “but they should still tell us when they aren’t coming to dinner, as long as they’re both still living here.”
Val shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“It’s rude. You’ve gone to the effort of cooking for them.”
“They’ll eat it as leftovers. I was going to cook this much either way so we’d have lunches. What’s the difference? It’s not like it’ll go to waste.”
“Still.”
“You said ‘they’re adults’ a second ago. You know they’ll get irritated if they think we’re trying to limit them. I don’t want to do anything to make them think we’re keeping tabs.”
“I’m not talking about a curfew. Just common courtesy.”
She had no reason to be irritated over Val’s nonchalance, but she was. Val was always better at these things. Better at letting them loose, better at understanding where they were coming from.
Julie had a piece of information her wife didn’t have, about the odd conversation with David at the park. Would that change Val’s tune, if she knew David pretended to go to work? He hadn’t asked her to keep it secret, and she didn’t intend to, but she decided not to mention it now. Not for any reason, but because if Val shrugged that away, too, she’d go from irritated to upset. It was worth being upset about. He was lying to them. Was lying to them part of being an adult? Val would say he was free to make his own mistakes, that given the chance he would sort it out. Which was probably true.
Julie cleaned up after dinner, then joined Val in the living room, settling in the reclining chair. It wasn’t as bad as when David had been deployed, but her habit of scanning for news about them was a hard one to break. She checked the local police and emergency feeds. When she didn’t see anything, she logged into the anti-Pilot action site’s chat in her GNM persona, looking for Sophie.
GNM!
Hi Grandma!
A few regulars greeted her, then went back to the conversation they’d been having before she arrived. She scrolled back and saw they were chatting about an upcoming neurologists’ convention they were planning on interrupting. Sophie had been part of the conversation a minute before and chimed in again a minute later, suggesting a tweak to the plan. It was a good tweak, but better yet, it meant she was safe wherever she was. When GNM responded enthusiastically to the idea, it was as much for that as the idea itself.
Sophie wrote: Learned something that
