I didn’t get a chance to talk with her the next morning either. Before Harmony had even rousted herself from bed, a muffler-less compact chugged into the parking lot. I knew without looking it was another Amazon arriving. You just didn’t see a lot of vehicles two door-dings from a life on blocks rolling around Madison. You did see them at Amazon safe camps. It was about all you saw there.
Wondering who the newest arrival might be, and not wanting her to wander into the shop by mistake, I jogged down the fire escape and waited for the vehicle’s motor to slow to blessed silence.
Dana unfolded from the driver’s seat. She stopped to jerk a very large duffel out of the seat beside her, then another. I could see more duffels and bags filling the back.
Crap. Now what?
I marched toward her.
She took one look at me and burst into tears.
Double crap.
“The baby. It’s a boy.”
I stopped. She stopped too, both hands at her sides, her arm muscles straining from the weight of the duffels. Her face was streaked with tears, and her eyes brimmed with uncertainty.
I did the only thing I could. I opened my arms. She dropped the bags and fell against me, sobbing.
Upstairs in the kitchen I drank coffee and watched as Dana went about slicing apples and mixing them with sugar for, yes, a pie. The whole baking thing seemed to calm her.
“Where’s the flour?” She scrubbed at tearstained eyes with the back of her hand.
I vaguely motioned to a cupboard. Harmony had bought some last year when she and Rachel decided to make a piñata as their part of a Spanish class Cinco de Mayo celebration.
Dana found the bag of flour and returned to the table. “Alcippe told me last night. I didn’t know what to do, don’t know what I will do.” She sniffed loudly. “What would you do?”
That was a loaded question and not one I thought I needed to answer-I’d already answered it ten years ago, quite visibly.
“What would Mel do about what?” Mother strode into the room, wearing Lycra and a thin sheen of sweat. She grabbed a dish towel from near the sink and rubbed it over her face. Then she looked at me.
I set down my cup. “This is Dana. We met the other day on my trip”-I glanced at Harmony’s door-“to Illinois.”
“Oh.”
“Dana’s expecting…”
Mother’s eyes started to glaze. Baby talk was not her thing. “A boy,” I finished.
“Oh!” She dropped the towel on the floor, and pinned me with a look. “You didn’t?”
“I didn’t do anything. Dana just…” I switched my gaze to the pregnant girl who was busy bending to retrieve the towel. She hadn’t exactly told me why she was here. I could guess…already had, but with Mother staring me down, I wasn’t placing words in Dana’s mouth.
Mother turned to watch the girl too. Apparently unaware of our surveillance, Dana turned in a circle, the towel held out in front of her. Finally she stopped.
“Is there…do you have…?” She held out the towel.
Realizing she was looking for a place to deposit the soiled cloth, I nodded to a small pile of dishrags and towels that had accumulated in a corner near the door. “In the basement. Just throw it over there.”
Looking unsure and slightly disapproving, Dana tossed the towel on the pile, then went to wash her hands.
“Dana,” I said, giving Mother a give me a chance look. “Why are you here?”
She turned, surprised. “Where else could I go? I knew you’d know what to do. What my options are.”
“Options for what?” Harmony bumped into the table, her pink backpack slung over one shoulder and a fresh coat of lip gloss on her lips.
I was going to have to start belling my family.
“Hi.” Dana smiled as if she’d just baked a perfect soufflé-at least I imagined that was what would produce such a euphoric expression. I didn’t have much insight into the mind of a hearth-keeper. “You must be Harmony. I’ve heard so much about you.”
She had? From who?
“You have? From who?” my daughter parroted my thoughts.
I was curious, but I didn’t want to hear her answer in front of my still innocent-to-the-existence-of-Amazons daughter.
“Dana’s your cousin,” I blurted out.
“Really?” Shock, then joy flowed over Harmony’s teenage body. “I didn’t know we had family outside of…” She graced Mother and me with a grudging look. I assumed Bubbe was included in the less than enthusiastic pronouncement.
“Distant cousin,” I added. “Dana found us on one of those genealogy sites online.” I flapped my hand randomly. “She’s just traveling through.”
“Oh.” My daughter’s face fell.
I hadn’t realized not having other family had left such a hole in her existence. Unfortunately for her, Dana was not going to be the answer to this apparent lack. Just as soon as I could get Dana settled down and thinking straight, she was heading back to northern Illinois or one of the other safe camps. Maybe realizing she didn’t have to go back to Alcippe would be enough to get her on the road.
She said she was having a boy but, according to what everyone had told me, in the millennia since Ares and Otrera had hooked up and the first Amazon was born, I was the only one who’d had an unwaverable need to raise a male child myself.
Why would Dana be the second? And if she was, it didn’t really involve me or my family, did it?
“Actually, I’m moving to Madison,” Dana announced, her fingers wrapped around a mass of pie dough, like a bride holding a bouquet.
A squeal erupted from Harmony.
Apparently urged on by my daughter’s enthusiastic response, Dana continued, “And I’m having a baby!”
“Oh.” Harmony turned, eyes huge in her face, and stared at me. I grabbed a granola bar from a drawer and shoved it into her hand.
“Better get to school.”
“But the bus-”
“Walk slow.” With a shove, I sent her on her way.
With Harmony safely on her way, I turned back to a confused-looking Dana.
“Did I…?” Dana started.
“In the human world teens having babies, especially unmarried teens, is not reason to celebrate.”
“But I’m…”
“I know-twenty-two.” I shoved my fingers into my hair.
Dana dropped the pie dough and beat a fast retreat from the room, brushing past an intrigued-looking Bubbe on her way.
Crap, all over again.
Without pausing to explain, I rushed after the upset hearth-keeper. She’d swung left and disappeared inside the door to one of the many rooms we didn’t actually use for anything besides storing dust.
I followed her.
She was standing next to the window, her palm pressed against the glass and loud sobs lifting her breasts.
“Dana.” I took a step in.
She turned further toward the outside view, hiding her face.
“I didn’t mean…it’s just…” I sucked at this. “Harmony doesn’t know we’re Amazons,” I finally blurted.
That got her attention. Her face jerked toward me. “She doesn’t? How can’t she know she’s an Amazon? It’s who she is.”
A throb was beginning in the area of my left temple. I lay two fingers against the spot. “She’s not an Amazon; she’s Harmony.”
Dana blinked, her blue eyes clouding with confusion. “But isn’t she your-”
“I mean, she is an Amazon, but I didn’t raise her as one and she doesn’t know about the Amazons, and I want her to be herself first.” Why did this all make a lot more sense when I said it to myself or my argumentative mother and grandmother? Saying it to Dana’s sweet, bewildered stare made it all sound…idiotic.