His sire was just the same as always, wearing his favorite cardigan, khaki pants, and worn leather slippers. With his pipe in one hand and reading glasses on his nose, he looked like he could have been ordered out of the Dad Catalog.
Blay smiled. “I didn’t want to intrude.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m just paying bills in the den, and mahmen is making bread.” Rocke laughed. “We sound like something in a Hallmark movie. From the fifties.”
Blay tried to imagine he and Qhuinn after the child-rearing was done, the two of them rattling around a big house in a happy decline that was going to take a lot of time, living for visits from the grandkids.
He would love that. He would really love that.
“So how are you, son,” Rocke said as they embraced. “How’s Qhuinn?”
“We’re as good as you could expect.” And he supposed that wasn’t a lie. “It’s really hard.”
“I can imagine.” Rocke squeezed his shoulder as he hipped the door shut. “We’re so sorry, your mahmen and I.”
As pain lanced through his chest, Blay rubbed his sternum. “Thanks, Dad. Oh, wow, smell that.”
“Your mahmen is making stew as well.”
“You know, I think I’m hungry.”
“Good thing. She’s going to want to feed you. She always does.”
The stuff about the hunger was, in fact, a lie, but he had hope that his mahmen’s cooking would wake his stomach up. But even if it didn’t, he had other familiar comforts to sink into. On the way toward the aroma, his father started in with what Blay had always considered the six o’clock newscast for the family: Updates on his shipbuilding, the cooking course the two of them were taking, a distant cousin’s impending graduation from online human college.
“—really great what they can do with remote learning,” Rocke was saying as they entered the kitchen. “Look who’s here!”
Blay’s mahmen paused in the midst of kneading. “So I sensed! I would have come out, but I’m knee-deep in—well, you get it. Actually, I think it’s more my elbows. Anyway, come give me a kiss, my son.”
It was amazing how he regressed to full-on mahmen’s boy whenever he was around her—and like the dutiful young he was, and had always been, Blay went right over and kissed the cheek that was presented to him.
“Now, go in there.” She pointed across to the refrigerator with a flour-dusted hand. “Second shelf, in a Tupperware container, is the quiche I served for First Meal. There’s fresh fruit next to it, and I want you to make yourself some toast. The bread is over there. You’re too thin.”
Annnnnnd that was how his mahmen communicated: I love you, I’m so sorry about Luchas, I’m worried about you, and I hope you know that you and Qhuinn are welcome here anytime.
Rocke shook his head with a smile and went over to the coffee machine. “You better do what she says, or she’ll make you have seconds before you have firsts.”
“Don’t forget to put a place mat down,” she said as she went back to work with the dough. “And Rocke, that coffee needs to be lighter than we like it. He doesn’t want it too strong.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rocke replied with a wink.
There was light conversation as Blay followed instructions, outing the broccoli-and-cheese quiche and the mixed fruit, making himself up a plate, and sitting down—with toast and a place mat—at the table. As he dug in, he nodded in the right places, laughed when he was meant to, shared surface updates. And yet there was no elephant in the room. At no point did he feel like he couldn’t talk about what had happened, and he didn’t feel like he was hiding how sad he was.
It was the very best commentary on his parents, he supposed: That he could be honest friends with the people who raised him. And there was the temptation to stay over day, mostly because he was so exhausted with the silent tension between him and Qhuinn.
God, he was so tired.
And lonely.
“Would you like seconds?” Lyric asked as she put the dough back into its bowl and covered it with a damp dish towel.
Blay looked down at his clean plate. “Yes, Mahmen. Please.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
After Qhuinn worked out down in the training center, he took a shower in the facility’s locker room and then changed into surgical scrubs because he’d forgotten to bring an extra set of clothes with him. As he stepped back out into the corridor, he had a thought that he should go up to the big house. Blay was off for the evening, and maybe they could try and find each other.
Or, more likely, he would just stay lost.