Javier waited until he heard a door slam before asking: “Where is he, really?”
“I really don’t know, Javier. He’s your son.”
Javier frowned. “Well, did he say anything—”
“No. He didn’t. I told him that Abigail would be going back with her dad, and he just up and left.”
Javier made for the door. “I should go look for him.”
“No!” Brigid slid herself between his body and the door. “I mean, please don’t. At least, not until my ex leaves. Okay?”
“Your ex? Why? Are you afraid of him or something?” Javier tipped her chin up with one finger. “He can’t hurt you while his girlfriend’s watching. You know that, right?”
She hunched her shoulders. “I know. And I’m not afraid of him hurting me. God. You always leap to the worst possible conclusion. It’s just, you know, the way he gloats. About how great his life is now. It hurts.”
He deflated. “Fine. I’ll wait.”
In the end, he didn’t have long to wait. They showed up only fifteen minutes later—a little earlier than they were supposed to, which surprised Brigid and made her even angrier for some reason. “He was never on time when
“That’s a bad word, Mom,” Abigail said. “I’m gonna debit your account.”
Brigid sighed. She forced a smile. “You’re right, honey. I’m sorry. Let’s go say hi to your dad.”
At the door, Kevin was a round guy with thinning hair and very flashy-looking augmented lenses—the kind usually marketed at much younger humans. He stood on the steps with one arm around a Japanese-model vN wearing an elaborate Restoration costume complete with velvet jacket and perfect black corkscrew curls. They both stepped back a little when Javier greeted them at the door.
“You must be Javier,” Kevin said, extending his hand and smiling a dentist smile. “Abigail’s told me lots about you.”
“You did?” Brigid frowned at her daughter.
“Yeah.” Abigail’s expression clouded. “Was it supposed to be a surprise?”
Brigid’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “Of course not.”
The thing about the failsafe was that it made sure his perceptual systems caught every moment of hesitation in voices or faces or movements. Sometimes humans could defeat it, if they believed their own bullshit. But outright lies, especially about the things that hurt—he had reefs of graphene coral devoted to filtering those. Brigid was lying. She had meant for this moment to be a surprise. He could simulate it, now: she would open the door and he would be there and he would make her look good because he looked good, he was way prettier by human standards than she or her ex had any hope of ever being, and for some reason that mattered. Not that he couldn’t understand; his own systems were regularly hijacked by his perceptions. He responded to pain; they responded to proportion. He couldn’t actually hurt the human man standing in front of him—not with his fists. But his flat stomach and his thick hair and his clear, near-poreless skin: they were doing the job just fine. Javier saw that, now, in the way Kevin kept sizing him up, even when his own daughter danced into his arms. His jetlagged eyes barely spared a second for her. They remained trained on Javier. Beside him, Brigid stood a little taller.
God, Brigid was such a bitch.
“I like your dress, Momo,” Abigail said.
This shook Kevin out of his mate-competition trance. “Well that’s good news, baby, ’cause we bought a version in your size, too!”
“That’s cute,” Brigid said. “Now you can both play dress-up.”
Kevin shot her a look that was pure hate. Javier was glad suddenly that he’d never asked about why the two of them had split. He didn’t want to know. It was clearly too deep and organic and weird for him to understand, much less deal with.
“Well, it was nice meeting you,” he said. “I’m sure you’re pretty tired after the flight. You probably want to get home and go to sleep, right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Momo said. Thank Christ for other robots; they knew how to take a cue.
Kevin pinked considerably. “Uh, right.” He reached down, picked up Abigail’s bag, and nodded at them. “Call you later, Brigid.”
“Sure.”
Abigail waved at Javier. She blew him a kiss. He blew one back as the door closed.
“Well, thank goodness that’s over.” Brigid sagged against the door, her palms flat against its surface, her face lit with a new glow. “We have the house to ourselves.”
She was so pathetically obvious. He’d met high-schoolers with more grace. He folded his arms. “Where’s my son?”
Brigid frowned. “I don’t know, but I’m sure he’s fine. You’ve been training him, haven’t you? He has all your skills.” Her fingers played with his shiny new belt buckle, the one she had bought for him especially. “Well, most of them. I’m sure there are some things he’ll just have to learn on his own.”
She knew. She knew exactly where his son was. And when her eyes rose, she knew that he knew. And she smiled.
