Blow across the face. Didn’t know why. He didn’t know why mama ever did things, one minute hit him, another held him, Marie had never made sense about what made her mad. Call her Marie, not mama, that was the first lesson he learned. Marie was his mother, and finally, finally she took him home to her quarters like the other kids’ mothers—but if he made her mad or called her mama she’d take him back and the other kids would know…
Which she did. More than once.
“Were you?” Mischa asked, and he didn’t know what Mischa had just said.
“I’m sorry, I lost it.”
Long silence, long, long silence in the captain’s office, himself sitting in front of the desk, like a kid called in for running, or unauthorized access. Damn Mischa, he’d thought he understood, he’d thought Marie was right. Now he didn’t know who’d lied or what was real or how big a son of a bitch Mischa was, after all.
“I can’t control Marie,” Mischa said. “Your grandmother might’ve, but she’s gone. I’ve talked to her. Ma’am’s talked to her. Your aunt Lydia’s talked to her. Said—You’re hurting that boy, Marie, he’s too young to understand, he doesn’t know why you’re mad at him, and for God’s sake let it be, Marie. Which did damned little good. Marie’s not—not the kid that went into that sleepover. She’d hold a grudge, yes. But nothing like—”
Another trail-off, into silence. Maybe he was supposed to fill it. He didn’t know. But he still had his question.
“Why didn’t she abort? What was it you almost said she wanted?”
Mischa didn’t want that question. Clearly.
“Tom, has she talked to you about killing Austin Bowe?”
“She’s mentioned it. Not recently. Not since I moved out on my own.”
“She ever—this is difficult—do or suggest anything improper?”
“With me?” He was appalled. But he saw the reason of Mischa’s asking. “No, sir. Absolutely not.”
“The answer to your question: she said… she wanted Austin Bowe’s baby. And she wouldn’t abort.”
It rocked him back. He sat there in the chair not knowing what to say, or think.
Marie’d said, just an hour ago, she’d kept him because she chose what happened to her. Obstinacy. Pure, undiluted Marie, to the bone. He could believe that.
But he could… hearing the whole context of it… almost believe the other reason, too. If he could believe Mischa. And he did, while he was listening to him, and before Marie would turn around and tell him something that made thorough sense in the opposite direction.
“Wanted his baby,” he said. “Do you know why, sir?”
“I don’t. I’ve no window into Marie’s head. She said it. It scared hell out of me. She only said it once, before we jumped out of Mariner. Frankly—I didn’t tell your grandmother, it would have upset her, I didn’t tell Lydia, I didn’t want that spread all over the ship, and Lydia’s not—totally discreet. I didn’t even know it was valid in the way I took it. She’d been through hell, she never repeated it in any form—it’s the sort of thing somebody might say that they wouldn’t mean later.”
“Have you asked her about it?”
Mischa shook his head, for an answer.
“Shit.”
“Thomas. Don’t you ask her. She and I—have our problems. Let’s just get your mother through the next week sane, that’s all I’m asking.”
“You throw a thing like that at me, and say… don’t ask?”
“You asked.”
He felt… he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know who was lying, or if Marie was lying to herself, or if Mischa was deliberately boxing him in so he couldn’t go to Marie, couldn’t ask her her side.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Has she talked—down below—about killing anyone?”
“She said—she said she wants to get at him through the market. Legally.”
“You think that’s true?”
“I think she’s good at the market. I think—there’s some reason to worry.”
“That she might pull something illegal? Damaging to us?”
If Mischa’s version of Marie was the truth—yes, he could see a danger. He didn’t know about the other kind of danger—couldn’t swear to what Marie had said, that she wouldn’t take to anybody with a cargo hook, that it wasn’t her style. Cargo hook was Marie’s imagery. He hadn’t thought of it.