Part three of three...

On Thorns Stands the Rose

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere!


William Shakespeare's Sonnet 97

Time enjoys forward progress more than most and it churned along with us in tow. My son grew and my wife smiled and I worked. So many veiled doors this victory over death had set ajar, each proposing an uncharted discovery. I had to learn it all, try everything. The more preposterous the hypothesis, the harder I strove to prove it, infecting Belly as well. But his quest veered into a craving of wealth, of public achievement. Such motives I cannot understand and when his trials with other people's children approached new levels of unethical treatment, I understood even less.

Hypocrisy is a scratchy suit.

I was reminded, in rather glacial tones, that I experimented on my own, stolen child and therefore I should offer no reservations over the use of strangers. Science was a search for better guinea pigs and the immediate payoff robbed me of my righteous thunder. Special children became our mutual playground and Peter was, as they say, off the hook. Oddly, once I halted our little games my son's grades seemed to suffer. Rebellion, my wife proclaimed in something close to prophecy. Yes, the boy was certainly asserting his independence and in the course of things began to deny his gift.

Laziness is a cancer.

I thought it was disappointment over the end of our lab time. No matter how much he feared our games, quality time with his father must have made it worth the discomfort. Or so I believed. I was too blind then, too focused on extending our knowledge to understand what Peter was doing. He was hiding his intelligence in a clear attempt to distance himself from me. Something in me came to disturb him because he seemed to view brilliance in quite the wrong context. Belly had departed by then, the lab my settlement in our suitably amiable divorce. As the burden of working alone claimed increasing amounts of my time, my family became something of an inconvenience. After all the laws of nature I'd smashed in order to recover my son, I allowed him to grow up in this dimension without the benefit of an attentive father.

But he was no less mine.

I believed that even as a sweet girl lay dead in the lab. Even as they led me away in cuffs. Even as I was declared insane. Peter was my find and I was his savior. Who knew what sort of life he was destined for in the other place? Who can deny the possibility of another premature death from illness or injury? He was safe here, of that I was convinced. The only side effect of his relocation had been tremendous nightmares, which I had helped him overcome. I pacified my worry with assurances that he'd be able to visit me often.

Except he didn't.

As a teenager, I remember pacing in foyers while my dates would slather veneer onto their faces. Eternity is a fine word for the waiting that women force us to endure. And a woman made me wait in that hellhole too. The only explanation for Peter's absence was that she was keeping him from me. It was unforgivable, this cruel repayment of all my efforts. And the passage of time no longer interested me. Easier to sink into the court-defined madness than suffer this separation with the full support of my faculties. Letters were sporadic, always in her careful hand and as vague as the confines of reality. He was fine, but no details were granted as to what that entailed. Until the letters ceased altogether and I was under no delusion as to why.

I knew they'd need me eventually.

In the remote place their drugs couldn't touch I retained the conviction that our work would be my salvation. Belly was still out there, accumulating millions by the manipulation of science and the man wasn't one to weather backfires well. They would come for me. And they'd need my son to do it. The waiting continued as one decade ended with the birth of another. A world proceeded, advanced without me but still I waited. Until a visitor came. And I knew what to ask.

I'd so very much like to see him.

And I did. Before me stood a man, thinned out with a beard gracing a face still rounded in a manner I knew well. My son. Not the first one or the replacement. No, by now he was one and the same. Mine. The eye check confirmed that he was still possessed of a shadowed, off-green shade. It no longer mattered from whence he came or from whom I stole him, which was essentially myself. We had so much to rebuild, but it was clear in those first moments that he did not share my pleasure in this meeting. A challenge yet again.

I'm never dad.

I noticed that in the first days as Peter reluctantly shelved his nomadic life to assist the work. Finally. The lab smelled like home, plus two decades of dust and I suppose my request for a cow set some kind of tone. I like that, surprising people. If one must wear the crazy label, one is obligated to enjoy the role. My projects were valuable once more and I was needed. But not by him. No, she'd undoubtedly filled his impressionable head with negativity. I soon learned to tread carefully, as scolding him for being like her triggered such protectiveness from him that my place was understood.

She came first, even in death.

Months passed and the boy softened a bit, still calling me by my first name but doing so with a marked decline of exasperation. The father in me was dismayed at how Peter had squandered his substantial education on frivolous ventures, but when he uses his vast knowledge for our cases, I am never so proud. He understands my theories, however much he disagrees with the logic. I'd always planned to work with my child and while this has come to pass, I find that I was wrong in my initial premise.

It's not the work.

Rather, it's the bonding. Making him grin with a well-placed moment of inappropriateness is worth the sigh that accompanies it. Teasing him about his fondness for a fetching blond, in my opinion, brings us closer to a proper father/son relationship. And though forgiveness has been slow in coming, I can now acknowledge that my wife had done an admirable job with him. A bit of a con artist perhaps and prone to more sarcasm than is healthy, but not lacking in heart. The lengths to which I'd gone to bring him here was nothing compared to what I'd do for him now. And ultimately she was right.

He is the universe and sufficient to fill it.