Our Child of Two Worlds

by Stephen Cox

Genres: Alien Invasion

Synopsis

Cory is the child of two worlds: when his birth-people come, they will break his mother's heart...but they may also be this world's only salvation. 

Molly and Gene Myers rescued Cory and kept him safe from those who wanted to use his remarkable knowledge and power for their own ends...and in doing so, they rediscovered themselves and fell in love with a remarkable child. 

In this gripping sequel to Our Child of the Stars, Cory and his new family are having to deal with the consequences of fame - but Molly is more concerned about the future, for Cory's people are on their way. 

This is the time of Woodstock and the moon landings; war is raging in Vietnam and the superpowers are threatening each other with annihilation - but the Myers know there is a far greater threat approaching from the stars, and only Cory's people possess the knowledge to fight off the invaders. 

Our Child of Two Worlds is a remarkable story of family and the power of love, set against the backdrop of a fast-changing, terrifying decade and an interstellar threat almost beyond imagining.

 

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Release date: June 7, 2022

Publisher: Hachette

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter 1

Amber County, the first week of November 1971

Cory ran through the woods, kicking dry leaves, wanting everything. He wanted so-much to laugh with the joy of it, but he needed all his breath to run. At his heels bounded Meteor, grey shaggy curls and cheerful barks, in case any living thing could not guess they were coming. Dogs were such good friends. Close behind, Chuck and Bonnie ran too, his truest human friends, and behind them, the whoops and calls and crashing noises of the rest of the gang. Counting to two hundred might not have been enough . . . The teenagers had longer legs, and this race would not last much longer.

Run Cory run. His tentacles tasted the air, to enjoy the damp kicked up under the leaves, the faint trace of a male fox, the dog scent that was not Meteor. Among friends he ran tail out, signalling enthusiasm. Cory felt the touch of cold in the air and enjoyed how November light was lower; he saw the trees that day by day were shedding their leaves, their glory of gold and flame. Cory felt the solemn presence of each tree, he felt as well as heard the startled birds rising and the little lives scuttering to hide.

Cory-wants-it-all-all-all. How good to have older children to play with, and a dry day of running and talking and kind games. Soon Thanksgiving and rain and snow and dark, Dad’s birthday and Christmas . . . Cory loved First Harbour, his home-world of eternal gentle summer, but Earth seasons were glorious.

The narrow way twisted and turned through oak, maple, and ash. Cory knew it well now, but still felt ahead with his mind. A big shame that the woods behind his house, the woods beyond the Fence, had been spoiled. There were too often people watching for him – people who called for him, or chanted strange songs, or lit fires where they shouldn’t. All the fuss scared away the animals.

In those woods, people left tripwires to set off cameras, thinking Cory was silly enough not to feel the tripwire – or pools of stuff so he would leave footprints. People pinned envelopes in clear plastic bags to trees; the letters begged, and threatened, and asked, and sometimes had money. Cory never opened them; the grown-ups took them and dealt with them. People knowing about Cory spoiled having fun. The rough scrubland below was spoiled too, with its tents and trailers and wandering snoopers, the smell of latrines and coarse smoke. If he was spotted, people would come running. Crowds would soon gather, even if he hid straight away. Groups of humans could seem friendly but be wild in their enthusiasm, unpredictable, dangerous . . .

Better the grown-ups drive him here, a short way northwest, to be free in the woods where he was not known to go.

Chuck’s hand on Cory’s shoulder, a sign to stop. Cory and Chuck and Bonnie panted, just a little, and heard the racket move closer. Meteor barked three times from the sheer joy of the splendid game, telling everyone where they were. No more kicking up a trail. It was time to make the teenagers work for their victory.

Cory ruffled Meteor’s head with a four-fingered hand. ‘Quiet.’ His splendid striped ears sought to find the exact approach of the chasers. Cory’s friends knew to grab him, and Cory hid all four of them. No living thing would notice them. Step by careful step, Cory led them off the trail, weaving through bushes and trunks. The teenage friends would overshoot. But they were smart – Zach and Simon would be grown-ups soon – and they had played this game before.

Hiding was almost cheating, but a minute or two did not count. The plan was to find an unmarked way down to Butler’s Folly, the long-closed mill that was now a riot of creepers through empty windows. Emblazoned with old signs and new that warned children not to enter and not to play, it was a castle of secrets by an overgrown creek. They had watched lizards warm themselves on summer days and fireflies dance brilliant green messages on summer nights. Dancing all-together to the radio, teenagers and kids as friends. Zach had fallen off the wall and gained a most exciting scar.

The wind changed and Cory smelled smoke, heard the whining roar of some machine, a double note. Something about that noise tugged at his stomach, brought a touch of fear. But up above were the Ship’s machines, its flying hands and eyes; somewhere nearby would be the Ship itself, resolute to protect him.

As they walked, he felt his friends grow solemn. The noise grew, and the smell. Animals hid in fear, birds flew . . .

‘A dozen or more humans ahead, Little Frog,’ said the Ship, through the silver communicator on Cory’s wrist. ‘Gene and Molly have not arrived yet. Be careful.’

Earth was a planet of many dangers. Cory was always careful. A little further and they would see . . .

Cory stopped, his friends too, and stared. Their castle of brick and stone was changed, there was a fence, and a giant pile of long drainpipe. Great stupid machines were grubbing up the bushes, destroying the picnic places hidden from the road. Places where Cory had watched frogs spawning and wild bees bumble in the flowers. Where they had harvested berries and wormy apples from abandoned trees, where they had photographed the eerie beauty of fungi. A tree crashed somewhere near. And there were fires, men were feeding them with damp branches, throwing up smoke.

There stood Zach and Simon Robertson, and VJ, Bonnie’s cousin, watching. Distracted, Cory realised the teenagers had cheated – divided their number and sent one party by the other, shorter track. Admiration for their boldness outstripped his outrage, but the whine of chainsaws, the rumble of a truck, filled his head.

Humans found it hard to talk hidden. Cory pulled his friends down and unhid them.

‘What are they doing?’ Cory said.

‘Dad said the Mill was sold again,’ Chuck said, his face still summer brown with freckles.

Bonnie had that frown, that chewed lip, that meant someone was going to get told off. ‘We should go and find out.’ Even in dungarees to run in the woods, she tied a bright red cloth in her hair. ‘They’re going to reopen the State Park. Where the Meteor fell. I bet it’s something to do with that.’

‘We’re not supposed to play here anyway,’ said Chuck.

Bonnie clicked her tongue. ‘You’re scared, Charles Henderson.’

And so Chuck and Bonnie walked towards the nearest men, waving the teens to come too. Cory and Meteor would go crouching, hidden, to listen. Cory must be careful. Already too many people knew about his clever hiding with his mind; it had been an accident that the Robertsons had found out, and that day of emergencies when VJ had. But everything Cory did or could do was news. It brought reporters and Trouble, and Mom said things were best with a Quiet Life.

The man in charge wore a hard hat, in case a tree fell on him. He was not the kind of bossy human that made him angry at kids.

‘You kids need to stay away.’ He gestured at the teenagers, now ambling towards them too. ‘Tell your friends.’

‘What’s happening, sir?’ asked Chuck.

‘Twenty-four vacation apartments, four houses and a fancy restaurant – so all this has to be cleared.’ He waved, to left, to right, as if he could wave away the old mill, old trees, the foxes and raccoons, the birds. Wave away the crisp leaves and the smell of fall. ‘Our boss’s after the rest of the land too.’

‘What about the trees?’ Bonnie asked.

The man looked puzzled, then laughed. ‘Plenty of trees left. Even if he logs right up to the ridge. We have to move real quick, the weather won’t hold off long.’

The smoke stung Cory’s eyes, bringing tears. Bringing memories too, of those first days on Earth. Amber Grove had burned, and Molly, his Earth-mother, had shed tears from emotion; one of a hundred strange things. He remembered the humans’ dreams of that time, of fire and smoke and destruction.

‘Now, you need to stay away. We’re going to be spraying, to make it easier to clear.’

‘What kind of spray?’ Bonnie asked.

The man shrugged. ‘Army stuff, does all the work for us. Kills every plant it touches, works like a charm. As good as burning it off and works in the damp. We’re putting in drains too.’

That was the ponds with their frogs and dragonflies gone too.

Bonnie steamed, getting herself boiling hot, ready to argue. Chuck grabbed Bonnie’s arm, and the whole gang walked two hundred yards to the edge of the woods. Cory was trying to see in his mind, the trees gone, the land poisoned. It brought up other images, bad ones. Memories of lessons on his home-world.

‘I guess if he owns the land, we can’t stop him.’ How can you own land? It’s like owning sunlight.

The humans argued. ‘There’s plenty of other places. Millions of trees.’

‘We should start a protest.’ That was Bonnie.

‘Who’d care? If it was nearer town maybe . . .’

‘Everyone’s always protesting. My dad says we need more jobs in the town. New buildings are good.’

Cory was silent. Birds nested in the cracks in the walls. Cory remembered the drum of woodpeckers, the curious work of the ants. There would be living things ready for the sleep of winter, who would have to find new places. The squirrels’ caches of food would be lost.

Cory gave the tock-tock-tock of frustration. ‘Humans must do something. Yes-they-must.’ They all fell silent.

‘Burning trees and seabirds all covered in oil.’ He had seen it on TV, thick tarry oil choking the birds and killing the fish. ‘Rivers so poisoned even water burns. What Army spray do to the animals? To people?’

Talk properly, Cory. The teens teased him if he did not, like they made jokes about his birth name meaning Little Glowing Blue Frog. He was angry enough not to care.

‘It’s kind of sad,’ Chuck agreed.

Humans were so stupid. Soon, Zach and Simon could be ordered to be soldiers, sent to kill or be killed in a land far away, a vast murdering that had been happening since they were babies. They each promised Cory they would not go to the stupid war; they would hide or go to Canada.

The humans, the rest of Cory’s gang, were silent. They must feel his alarm, his fear, his anger pouring out of him. They were his friends, good people.

‘Your folks are here,’ Simon said. And yes, up the road came the baby-blue camper van. Dad and Mom and Baby Fleur, his sweet human sister.

‘We could go further down, by the creek,’ Zach suggested. Zach and VJ liked each other but there was some big horrible human thing. VJ was dark like Bonnie and Zach was paler like Chuck. Because of that and only that, some people didn’t like them hanging out. Cory felt cross enough to pull his ears off sometimes, humans were so weird.

‘If you don’t protest, I will,’ Bonnie said, and everyone knew she meant it.

 

Supper was tuna with macaroni and cheese. Mom put a little hot spice in, which Cory liked. The radio played ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain?’

Mom and Dad were not agreeing with him, and he suddenly had no appetite. Meteor gnawed at her rubber bone.

Mom held Fleur sleeping and ate one handed with a fork. Under her eyes was dark; Fleur woke often in the night. ‘Cory, if you write to the paper, it will create a massive row. You know we’ve got to keep a low profile.’

Cory had written one letter, to the Hermes, about the poor fish dying in the lakes to the north. The Hermes now sold a hundred thousand copies each week round the world, because Cory had made Amber Grove famous. The Great Lakes had been there for millions of years and then humans came and used them to dump poison. Cory’s letter about pollution had brought all the TV crews to the bottom of the road where the barrier was. Two trucks of workers had come from the power-plants in the north, and Mom and Dad had four of them to drink coffee while Cory hid on the stairs.

‘Do you want the plant closed? How will we feed our families?’

So many people had come to town, to protest or to support him. Senators had come from Washington to ask Cory to endorse their ideas for new laws. Grown-ups said that the tall one, Muskie from Maine, might be the next President.

‘One little letter . . .’

‘Remember the beef letter?’ Dad said.

Those schoolchildren in Houston had asked why Cory didn’t eat meat. All he did was just explain. Ranchers came all the way from Texas with a TV crew to offer everyone in Amber Grove free steaks from poor, gentle, murdered cows. Founders Green was a barbecue for two days, stinking of burned flesh. It was called a ‘stunt’ and it made the town cross for weeks.

‘What is the point of being famous?’ Cory moaned.

‘Maybe it would be better if we weren’t,’ said Dad, trying not to yawn. ‘But you know why it happened, and we can’t get the milk back in the bottle. I’m sorry Cory, you know there are people who want us to go. You want to stay near your friends, don’t you?’

‘Yes of course yes.’

Cory guessed what his Earth-father was about to say.

Grown-ups were so predictable. Dad said, ‘Cory, maybe someone else should lead the fight.’

Cory gave a massive fed up noise. Cory kept telling humans his Excellent Plan, but they weren’t listening. His people survived the Times of Hunger, had healed the Poisoned Land. His people must come now and get the humans to listen.

‘Cory, don’t sulk,’ said Mom.

‘Not sulking.’ He ate tuna from duty, his mind elsewhere.

Cory’s people must come right now. 927 days since he had landed on Earth. The colony starship Dancer on the Waveshad been destroyed by the vicious snake machines. Yet it sent messenger ships forward and back, many months to have reached old home, and the colony-world which was to be his home. Many-many months for more starships to be prepared and to come and rescue him.

They had not come. As ever his terrible fear, colder than any ice, that they were not coming. That the messengers had been destroyed, and his people did not know he was here. Or that his whole people had been attacked by the predator snakes, and they were too busy fighting to send a starship for one little boy. This nightmare idea was a big hole that could swallow him up.

Dad put his big human hand on Cory’s. They must feel his sadness. He loved his human family and his friends, but he wanted the smell of his own people, the oneness of the lodge, the dreaming-together. He touched his communicator. How he missed his mother who died saving him . . . The device held her dying words left in love. How sweet and painful they were. Everyone on the ship but him had died.

Cory saw his sorrow on Gene and Molly’s faces. Dad took Fleur, and Molly held out her arms. His human parents held him in love.

 

That evening, in Cory’s bedroom, Dad yawned and played a new song, a silly one about Cory with a chorus about his scrapbook in four volumes: ‘All The Places I Want to See’. Then he sang old favourites, slow songs for sleep. Cory did not ask for more; he was impatient to sleep, to dream, to recharge for the next day. In the dark, sleep came, his swift and reliable friend.

Cory went swimming in his dreams, down through the top layer where humans dreamed, down through memories and stories and music, down down down to the cool dark layer where his people should be dreaming with him. Of course, it was empty and lifeless, as it had been every night on Earth. Even if he had been a solo, sailing the Northern Ocean of his home-world, he would have known others dreamed far from him.

He had loving family and friends and yet how alone he was.

Then: a spark. Something astonishing in the emptiness. He swam towards it, a tiny bright fleck like a lightning bug. It flickered and moved. This was new; he had to chase it with all his dream muscles not to lose it.

Somehow – he just knew – it was a dreaming-together . . . yet one he could not join. It was so fragile, so far and yet he knew it was of his people.

It took so much effort to focus. Yet he was closer to it now. It was like looking at a dream through a pinhole. Yes, it wasa dreaming-together, sixteens of his people in an open dreamhe could join. To be on the edge of it and, for moments, touching it, was a moment of yearning so strong it was pain. He could not tell what was him, and what was them. A few moments of joining, then it was gone.

He called out, here I am, here I am. In vain.

There were healthy dreams and unhealthy. They did not follow day logic, and every child knew that sometimes dreams showed you things you wanted rather than things as they were.

Yet his birth-mother told him the old saying: what comes in the dreaming-together is true.

Cory swam on in darkness, looking and listening, feeling and smelling for the others. He swam longer than was wise or restful, chasing hope until the dawn, until he could dream no more.

For when his people came, all would be well.

Chapter 2

An unexpected caller

Far too early, Molly sat in the big chair by the bedroom window. Fleur, blue-eyed and born with a little fuzz of Gene’s black hair, snoozed innocent and well fed on the breast. Fleur was perfect, she was beautiful, and she was as persistent as a jackhammer ripping up the road.

Fleur had woken twice in the night, that Molly remembered. Dimly she thought Gene had gone to the baby too, then retreated to the spare room.

There was a relentlessness to it; how shallow sleep was when you had an ear open for the hungry cry. Molly wondered if she could catch another hour before Cory bounced in for a talk. Or stay in the chair, rather than risk waking Fleur when she tried to put her in the crib.

A call of nature decided it. With care, Molly moved Fleur to a shoulder and stood. She walked to the sunshine yellow crib and, heart melting, put Fleur into it. John had made that stout wooden crib for his son Gene; it had come to them when Molly was first pregnant, beautifully restored. After the miscarriage, Molly had kept it as a sign of hope amid despair. Gene had made the mobile of yellow birds and pink clouds, and Eva knitted the blanket.

Books talked about making a routine, but Molly kept telling everyone, ‘Fleur hasn’t read the books.’ It wasn’t helpful that everyone was so ready to give unwanted, contradictory advice, particularly once she said she was breastfeeding.

Molly went to the bathroom and, as she left, tuned in to a noise downstairs: a raised voice, hooting and trilling. Two voices in fact: Cory and the Ship. She went down the stairs, feeling cranky and straining not to take it out on her son.

In the kitchen, Cory was cross, tock-tock-tocking in frustration and interrupting the Ship. He strode up and down, talking into the silver bracelet. His tentacles emphasised the swoops and trills of his voice, his ears twitched and his tail lashed. A bowl of oatmeal steamed; he’d fixed his own breakfast, and Meteor was slavering at her toy. Both alien voices fell silent.

‘Cory, look at the time. You might wake Fleur.’

‘Morning Mom. Ship is being oh-so-very-annoying.’

‘Well, argue outside or not at all.’

It was a school day, and Cory would be happy and off her hands in a while. How often she pushed him away because of Fleur. Going to Amber Middle School was impossible – the school would be deluged with gawking tourists outside, maybe a lunatic with a gun – but the School Board supported an ad-hoc school sometimes as big as twelve students. World-famous academics begged to teach there.

‘Well, I’d like to go back to bed, sweetie-pie,’ she said. ‘But if it won’t wait . . .’

‘Should wait for Dad, tell both of you. Don’t want to wait.’ He sat and grabbed a spoon of raisins. ‘My people are coming.’ Said with all the certainty he might declare a sunset beautiful or point to magnetic north.

Cory said that often, but as hope, not this blunt certainty. And Molly felt many things. Heaven knows the world needed the purples, as a wake-up call to humanity. Humans needed allies against the snakes. Cory needed his people too – she knew that – and yet what she felt prickled at her eyes and turned down her mouth. A feeling of loss swept in, swamping the things she should feel. What if his people take him back?

She filled the kettle, trying to hide it. No time for tears. ‘Well, that’s wonderful, Cory. When will they be here?’

Cory didn’t answer. She looked, and he was eating, staring into the bowl as if it could give an answer.

‘Ship says no messages. Network always listening out for them. There are beacons.’

Barely awake, she couldn’t understand. ‘So how do you know?’

‘I dreamed it. A splendid dreaming-together, sixteens of my people . . .’

Gene had taken pages of notes on Cory’s extraordinary dreaming, how the purples shared their dreams and guided them. It seemed to knit their whole society together. Cory took her silence as invitation to give a longwinded description, but for all his superlatives, it sounded like moonshine: something and nothing.

He was waiting for her response. She sipped coffee, remembered a discussion of a month ago and said, ‘So how close are your people? How soon before we’ll meet them?’

His ears dipped; a bit defensive. ‘Don’t know.’

‘I can’t remember, did you dream with your dads on your moon?’

Ears down a little more. ‘Much too far, everyone knows that.’

Be gentle. ‘So, Cory, if your moon was too far, that means your people would have to be really close. They’d have to be here on Earth . . .’

‘Tock-tock-tock Ship says I am wrong.’ Cory gave that odd shiver of the head which served as his eye-rolling protest. ‘Even little child of my people knows what is made up in a dream. First-graders. A proper dreaming-together. I wish-dream all the time. I know the difference.’

‘Who knows? Let’s hope they come soon. Let’s hope they can tell us how long they will be.’ She felt the insincerity behind her words.

Cory trilled an emphatic statement, then said, ‘Whatever comes in the dreaming-together is true. It would be nice to be believed.’ He leaped up. ‘I will take Meteor for her run. Meteor is always interested.’

How painful when you disappoint your child. Two and a half years since Cory arrived. Molly had named him and saved him. But where were his people?

What if his people take him away? What if they don’t come, and the snakes destroy us all?

When Gene came down, holding Fleur freshly diapered, he found Molly sobbing.

 

Evening, and Molly sat at peace in the big chair by the bedroom window. She had the drapes a few inches apart, so she could watch the sky. The Ship could be anywhere, but she liked to think it hung over the town, guarding them directly. Molly had always enjoyed watching the sky, but since Cory came, she had new reasons. New hopes and new fears. But right now, all that was far away. A nap, then a wonderful coffee with her soulmates Janice and Diane, a chance every day to talk about other things. Mrs Robinson had dropped off supper. Molly felt safe and well . . .

The guitar next door had stopped. Gene sneaked his head through the door.

‘Need anything, Molly-Moo?’

‘Just you.’ The six huge blue correspondence folders on the other chair almost glared at her. But she didn’t have to be the mother of the most famous boy in the world every minute of the day. Publishers had sent Gene another crate of space stories too.

‘He’s still cross with us about the dream,’ Gene said, coming in. ‘He’s going to try to have it again.’ He put down a brown square parcel on the table, proofs of the new guidebook for Amber County.

‘The Ship is sure it couldn’t be true.’

‘Sure,’ Gene said.

Molly stood, pulled the drapes together and embraced him. How sweet his kiss, tasting of mint, and how her body remembered. He knew how to hold her. That hand stroked where her back ached sometimes. In other times that could have been a pass . . .

‘I’d like to,’ she said, meaning it.

‘But not tonight? That’s okay.’

They sat on the bed, his arm round her shoulders, cherishing their time alone.

‘The book is there,’ Gene said. ‘Bit more on the last film, then that’s done.’

Gene could no longer work at the library; he’d be mobbed by tourists and reporters. Nowadays, he was finishing films for the new Visitor Centre. But the eternal question hung in the air: what then?

Molly knew where he was headed, and she didn’t want the conversation. ‘Can we not talk about this now?’

He shrugged. ‘Just, I can write songs anywhere. We may not have long before his people turn up. Cory sure wants to see more of Earth. We could make a plan.’

Molly had joked that Gene would have kept the family travelling until she went into labour, on a boat, or up some glacier in Alaska. He frowned, but it was not much of an exaggeration; it was Molly who had insisted they come home, to have their baby with Dr Jarman and Rosa Pearce, to be surrounded by her friends – people she liked and trusted. For her, two months on the road had been more than enough. Too many false alarms and the odd real danger, too many demands for their time, too many hasty departures and unfamiliar beds. Day by day, great or good, the travelling had palled. For her but not for him.

She used her discouraging sigh, but Gene was picking up strength.

‘Cory wants everything. Our time on the road just fed his appetite. We’re not locked up, let’s show him a bit more. Take a month or two. The Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, the Rockies. The West Coast, right up into Canada.’

This tired her. ‘We can decide later.’

‘We were going to travel, when we got together. We talked all the time. You were keen, we were going to cross the country . . .’ Gene was in his stride. ‘People travel with babies. People say they can be easier to handle when younger. We don’t have to worry about trains and planes, the Ship will fly us. It could bring us home in an hour or two if we needed.’

She didn’t want to discuss this. Was that so hard to understand? ‘I get airsick.’ The Ship had never let them inside. The three times it had flown them, their vehicle had been gripped to its hull with metal tentacles.

‘It would give us something to look forward to. Say, skip the West. We could go to Europe.’ He clearly thought this was a winning card. ‘All those galleries and museums, old castles and so on. Great hiking.’

‘Of course, that would be great.’ She could fake enthusiasm but didn’t. ‘A motor tour, like an ordinary family. Two adults, two kids, a dog . . . followed by half the world’s press and a spaceship as big as the White House. Let’s talk after Christmas.’

He was frowning now. ‘Don’t you feel cooped up? You can’t even go for a walk without having Cory along to hide you. Being everyone’s business?’

They both hated it, all of it, the trucks of mail and not daring to open a newspaper. Hiding behind the alien Fence to have some privacy, stopping everyone telling them what latest nonsense was in the press. The threats, the adoration, the endless attempts to use them for this or that. These were twisted, troubled times. To Molly, it was such a gamble they would be safer anywhere else.

Gene fell silent, looking at Fleur for long minutes. For all his fretting, he was a good father.

‘After Christmas,’ she said, reaching for her book. If he wouldn’t take a hint.

‘You promise we’ll go?’

‘I’ll promise we’ll discuss it, after Christmas.’

‘I think if we moved, for the summer, we’d have a month or two before anyone figured it out. Wouldn’t it be great to feel free? Maybe one of the other families would come too. The kids would entertain themselves and we’d have babysitting on tap. We’d feel freer than we are now.’

He wouldn’t give it a rest. He’d ruined the mood. She snapped, ‘You’re kidding. You know what it was like.’

‘We’re young,’ he pleaded.

‘I’m tired, Gene. I’m going to the other room. If Fleur wakes, feed her yourself.’

She stood, and after a moment, he stood up. ‘Fine,’ he snapped and walked out.

It took an hour for her to feel she might have handled it better. Then forty-five minutes when pride prevented her making the first move. She was getting ready for bed when he reappeared, looking rueful.

‘Of course, it can wait,’ Gene said.

‘Write it in your diary,’ she said, kissing him. ‘We’ll talk after Christmas.’

‘When you want to.’

‘Let’s go to bed,’ she said.

The conversation was gentle, about shared joys, shared frustrations. To their surprise, desire came, and they made the old moves, slow and gentle. Physically it was still awkward for her, but still, it was a blessing, a healing, a renewal of vows.

 

Molly woke with a start from the deepest of sleeps. For a few moments she did not know where she was. An Army cell? That place they’d stayed in Vermont? No, she was home in her own bed, Gene still snoring, her sidelight still on. It was the phone ringing.

She made her way down the stairs, in the half light from the landing. The clock said half past eleven, and the latest ex-directory number was top secret, only for people they trusted. Lifting the handset, she said through a mouth thick with sleep, ‘Molly Myers.’

‘It’s Selena.’

Molly wasn’t expecting her sister. There was something odd in the voice, some note of strain.

‘Hi, are you okay?’

‘Yes, I’m fine.’ No, Molly decided, she wasn’t. ‘Look, M, this is short notice, but could we drop by? Would you mind?’

Drop by? The way Molly liked to drive, Indianapolis was two days away. ‘Uh . . . yes, I guess. When were you thinking?’ She grabbed at the calendar. ‘Next week might be—’

‘Well, we’re in this motel. Not very clean, to be honest, and the lock on the door’s broken. And the man at the desk is a creepy brute. I’ve had to put the bed against the door. So we could be at yours by suppertime? I have the boys with me.’

‘Right. Sel, it’s almost midnight.’

A long silence. ‘Oh, okay. Sorry. We’re in some creepy two-bit place in Ohio, like one of those awful slasher stories. I know it’s short notice. I’ll find somewhere to stay.’

‘We’ll put you up,’ Molly said, then regretted it. How many to cook for? How many beds? Perhaps Mrs Hardesty could help. ‘Is Mason with you?’

‘No, he’s busy.’

Molly paused, trying to hear under the words, wondering if Selena would say more. Once the sisters had been so close.

‘I have to go. Suppertime at yours.’

‘Call me when you’re at Bradleyburg. It’s complicated, getting here without a fuss.’

‘Speak soon, Sis.’

And she was gone.

Molly hung up. They still sent diligent Christmas cards, and Molly sent athletic Connor and bookish Rory money for birthdays – but, for years now, the sisters had been so distant. Each happily pretended that they meant vague promises that ‘next year, you really must come for Thanksgiving’, but somehow it never happened.

Through childhood, Selena had been younger Molly’s best friend, role model, confidante. By her teens, however, for her own survival, Selena had become their mother’s enforcer, the good girl, the example. Selena had conformed, Molly had rebelled, and they had grown apart. And yet when Selena married Mason, the dullest man in Indianapolis, a tearful Selena had whispered in Molly’s ear, ‘You soon, Molly. You’ll be away from them too, and free.’

Molly, half asleep, was still holding the calendar. She hung it back on the wall.

She had tried to like Mason for her sister’s sake. Old-fashioned Catholic, and that hearty patriotic Rotarian Elk can-do attitude, she could live with. But he was a defence contractor in an Army town – when Cory came, they had to keep him secret. She could not have risked Mason learning about Cory.

Then Cory had become the most famous boy in the world. Selena and Mason had been interrogated by the FBI, so Molly had called Selena, dreading it, feeling the need to apologise. Her sister had been shocked, confused, and to Molly’s astonishment, hurt. ‘You should have told us,’ she’d said. ‘I would have understood. Of course, I would have helped you hide him.’

Molly fumbled and said, ‘Oh, I knew you would. But Mason . . .’

‘Mason would have kept his mouth shut, if he knew what was good for him,’ Selena said, with a sharpness that had surprised her.

And now her sister was coming.

It was not quite a meteor, but Selena’s call was the order of things turned upside down.