“I’m not even sure. Burton thought he was moonlighting for some company in Colombia. Turns out they’re in London. Sort of. They’ve got a lot of money. To invest. One thing and another, they set up a branch office here and hired Burton and me to run it, or at least act like we do.” She looked at her mother. “I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Kind of sense the world makes,” her mother said, drawing the candlewick up under her chin, “there’s death and taxes and foreign wars. There’s men like Corbell Pickett doing evil shit for a dollar, only real money anybody local and civilian makes here now, and there’s decent-enough people having to work for their own little bit of that. Whatever you and Burton are doing, you aren’t going to be changing any of that. Just more of the same. I’ve been here all my life. So have you. Your father was born where Porter meets Main, when they still had a hospital. I’m not going anywhere. Particularly not anywhere Leon tells me I’m going to like.”
“Man in our company suggested that. He’s from London.”
“I don’t give two shits, where he’s from.”
“Remember how hard you tried to get me not to talk like that?”
“Nobody was trying to make you move to northern Virginia. And I wouldn’t have let them, either.”
“You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying right here. I thought Virginia was a nonstarter the minute I heard it.”
Her mother peered at her over the clenched bedspread. “You and Burton aren’t making the economy about to crash, are you?”
“Who said that?”
“Lithonia. Smart girl. Gets it off one of those things they wear over one eye.”
“Lithonia said we were making the economy crash?”
“Not you. Just that it might. Or anyway that the stock market’s weirder than anybody’s ever seen it.”
“I hope not.” She stood up, went and kissed her mother. “I’ve got to call them now,” she said. “Tell ’em you’re not going anywhere. They’ll need to get you more help around the place. Friends of Burton’s.”
“Playing soldier?”
“They were all in the service, before.”
“Think they’d’ve got their fill of it,” her mother said.
Flynne went out and found Janice in the living room, in plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a black Magpul t-shirt, her hair in four stumpy pigtails. She was holding an old ceramic bowl with most of the edge chipped off, full of fresh-picked peas. “Ella’s not going anywhere,” Flynne said. “They’re just going to have to make her safer out here.”
“I figured,” said Janice. “Why I didn’t try to push it.”
“Where’s Netherton?”
“Guy on the Wheelie Boy?”
“Here,” said Netherton, wheeling out of the kitchen.
“In the kitchen if you need me,” said Janice, stepping past the Wheelie.
“Did you speak with your mother?” Netherton asked.
“She’s definitely not going anywhere. I have to call and sort that with Griff and Burton and Tommy. They’ll have to protect her out here, whatever happens.”
The Wheelie had kept going. Was across the room now, in front of the fireplace. She watched the tablet tilt back. “This tray,” he said, voice tiny at that distance, on the little speakers.
“What?”
“On the mantelpiece. Where did you get it?”
“Clanton. Mom took us all over for the bicentennial, when we were kids.”
“Lowbeer found one like it, recently, in London. Her modules had recorded this one the night I was here. Her friend searched for it. She deals in American antiquities. She’s American herself. Clovis Fearing.”
“Clovis?”
“Fearing,” he said.
“Not Raeburn?” It didn’t make any sense. “How old is she?”
“No older than Lowbeer, I suppose, though she chooses to be more obvious about it. Ah. Looked it up. Raeburn. Mrs. Clovis Fearing’s maiden name.”
“She’s an old lady? In London?”
“They knew one another, when they were younger. Lowbeer said she was visiting her to have her own memory refreshed. Mrs. Fearing said something about Lowbeer having been a British spy, and Lowbeer said that that had made Fearing one herself.”
“But she was Raeburn then,” said Flynne. “Now.” She was looking at the white tray but not seeing it. Seeing Lowbeer’s hand instead, holding her hat against their quadcopter’s downdraft in the Cheapside street, and Griff’s hands, arranging the Sushi Barn food. “Shit,” she said, then said it again, more softly.
100
Something about the mention of Clovis Fearing had caused Flynne to abruptly change the subject. She’d taken him out on the veranda, placed him on the love seat between Tacoma Raeburn and the man Flynne had introduced as her cousin Leon, and gone out to stand beneath the largest tree, having a conversation on her phone. Netherton had panned from Tacoma, whom he found attractive in an obliquely threatening way, to Leon, who wore a strange elasticated headscarf, its fabric abstractly patterned in shades Netherton associated with the droppings of birds, before cleaners tidied them away. He had pale, bushy eyebrows and the start of an equally pale beard.
“Mr. Netherton’s in the future,” Tacoma said to Leon, whose mouth was slightly open.
“Wilf,” said Netherton.
Leon tilted his head to one side. “You in the future, Wilf?”
“In a sense.”
“How’s the weather?”
“Less sunny, last I looked.”
“You should be a weatherman,” Leon said, “you’re in the future and you know the weather.”
“You’re someone who only pretends to be unintelligent,” Netherton said. “It serves you simultaneously as protective coloration and a medium for passive aggression. It won’t work with me.”
“Future’s fucking snippy,” said Leon, to Tacoma. “I didn’t come out here to be abused by vintage product from the Hefty toy department.”
“I think you might be stuck with that,” said Tacoma. “Wilf’s paying your salary, or close enough.”
“Well shit,” said Leon, “I guess I should remove my hat.”
“I don’t think he cares about that, but you could always take it off just because it’s butt-ugly,” Tacoma said.
Leon sighed, and pulled off the scarf. His hair, what there was of it, was only a slight improvement. “Do I have you to thank for winning the lottery, Wilf?”
“Not really,” Netherton said.
“Future’s going to be a huge pain in the ass,” Leon said, but then Flynne was there, picking up the Wheelie.
“Time for your visit with Mom, Leon,” she said. “You’re here to cheer her up, relax her. Way you do that, you start by telling her I got them to promise me she can stay here.”
“They’re scared of somebody getting ahold of her,” Leon said, “having that over you.”
“So now they get to throw money at it,” Flynne said. “They’re good at that. Go on, get in there with your aunt Ella. Make her feel good. You make her any more worried, I’ll tear you a new one.”
“I’m going,” said Leon, “I’m going,” but Netherton saw that he was neither frightened nor angry. Leon got to his feet, making the love seat creak.
“I’m taking Wilf down to the trailer,” Flynne said to Tacoma.
“That on the property?” Tacoma asked.
“Bottom of the hill behind the house. Near the creek. Burton lives there.”
“I’ll just walk along with you,” Tacoma said, getting up, the love seat not creaking at all.
“Wilf and I need to have a talk. It’s a small trailer.”
“I won’t come in,” Tacoma said. “Sorry, but you go outside the house, or this front yard, I have to move boys around, and drones.”
“That’s okay,” Flynne said. “I appreciate it.”
And then they were off the porch, Flynne striding across the lawn he’d seen as moonlit silver. It looked nothing like that now. Thinly, unevenly green, starting to brown in places. She rounded the corner of the house. Tacoma was murmuring to her earbud, he supposed telling boys and drones what she needed done.
“Tomorrow night’s the party,” Flynne said to him. “I need you to tell me about Daedra, explain who this woman is I’m supposed to be, what she does.”