Cowboy Shebop

Author's Note: This is my first shot at Cowboy Bebop fanfiction (don't know if it's the first Bebop fanfic with a reference to a Cyndi Lauper song in the title, but that'd be cool). I apologise in advance for any inaccuracies that may be obvious to people who know more about the series than I do - I've seen the full TV series, sub and dub, but it's such a detailed world that there may be things of which I'm ignorant.

I realise writing a 'next gen' sort of story is naff, but Cowboy Bebop went into my head and this is what came out, so please bear with me *^.^* Anyway. It's twenty-five years later.

I - Papa Was a Rolling Stone

I've watched the recording again and again. I don't know if it makes me feel better or worse. It was bad enough seeing his name in the paper, and it wasn't 'Jet Black, twice winner of the Olympus Mons Bonsai Club's annual grand prize, pulled off a hat-trick at this year's show' or anything like that, like when he's been in the paper before 'Jet Black, husband of Meifa, father of Charlie, always loved, never forgotten.' He was only sixty-two. It is not fair. People live much longer than that these days. Sixty-two would be an old man if this was the 1950s or something but this is now.

I always watch the recording all the way through, from beginning to end, not skipping to the part meant for me, the part where he says he loves me and I make him proud, and he can't wait to see how I do in my career and he tells me not to worry, no matter where he is he'll be watching

Daddy didn't know he was going to die. He made the recording when he turned sixty just in case. He was planning to update it every five years, like if he wanted to say goodbye to any grandchildren. We didn't know he was going to die. He wasn't sick or anything. He stopped smoking before I was born and even though the doctor said he deserved to have lung cancer he didn't. He'd just have a cigar sometimes when he was out in his garden. The other day I made lemonade, and I thought I'd take a glass out to him. He was lying in his hammock with a magazine open, face-down on his chest, sleeping with the cigar in his hand, and it had burned down to a long stick of ash. I thought how silly he was to go to sleep like that, he could get burned or start a fire. And when I shook him to wake him up his skin felt cool, and then I found he wasn't breathing.

Because it was a sudden death there had to be a post-mortem, and the coroner found that he died of an aneurysm, which is just a random thing that happens sometimes. There isn't even time for it to hurt. Your brain just goes 'phut' and your heart and lungs stop after that. He might even have been napping anyway, just like I thought, with the magazine on his chest like that. It wouldn't have been painful or scary for him. As deaths go, it was a really good death. He was in his garden and it was summer. I'd just graduated; finally had my degree. He was so proud of me going to university. I was applying for jobs; he'd help me look through the Situations Vacant.

I don't know how to look after Mama. He always did that. She's so quiet since he died. All through his funeral she never looked up or seemed to hear what anyone was saying, even when his friends Bob and Faye talked about how they remembered him. Faye lit a cigarette when she started talking and didn't put it in her mouth once; it was just there in her hand, burning down. She said at the end it was for Daddy. She was there with her daughter Marie. Marie's about my age. In the graveyard she said she envied me, because she didn't know her father. I didn't know what to say back. I thought it was so rude.

Mama's hired a housekeeper because she wants to keep working. She doesn't expect me to take over everything Daddy used to do. We'll always have enough money. That's because of her business, not because of anything he left in his will. Mama brought money to the marriage and he brought goodwill. He did leave me something unusual, though. The ship he used when he was a bounty hunter. I didn't even realise he still owned it; it was something in a story to me. Bebop. Daddy had a funny way with names. Mine was because a week before I was born he had a dream where Charlie Parker lifted me out of an eggshell and gave me to him. Then there're the cats Zwei and Drei. The Bebop has been in dry-dock for years, in storage. Today I'm going to look it over.

Charlie stepped into the hangar and pushed up her sunglasses, sitting them on top of her head. The air in here smelled hot and oily and dusty. Bebop was a looming, lumpy, unfamiliar shape; she knew that was it only because she'd been told where it would be. She pushed her hands into her bomber jacket pockets and looked up at it appraisingly, rising and falling on her toes. Big and bulky, like Daddy. A real hunkajunk, the man in charge here had said. It was a refitted fishing trawler capable of space flight. The refit had mostly consisted of a communications system that was state of the art back in the late sixties. Now, well, it would probably work most of the time. If she sold it, it wouldn't be worth much - and how could she sell all that her father had left her? Besides a mammoth collection of jazz records, with a smattering of blues and rock

Jet hadn't been a man with many possessions of his own. Meifa had decorated the house, balancing elegant taste with perfect Feng Shui. He had his clothes, his gardening tools and bonsai trees, the records, and those were about the only things in the house that you would say were his and not the family's common property. He didn't need much to make him happy.

Charlie bit her lip and made up her mind to get on board. Inside, the ship smelled cool and musty. There was a scent oddly like potting mix. Abruptly, she was in her father's potting shed, helping him transfer a tiny pine to a new home; she saw his fingers pressing down the soil around the tree's roots, thick, rough, brown fingers on the right hand, smooth beige plastic ones on the left. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, willing herself not to start crying again.

She jumped as she heard a faint scuttling noise, somewhere unseen. Of course, there could be rats on board. It would be a good idea to get the exterminators through here. She stopped where she was and waited without moving, breathing very quietly. There it was again, a soft scampering. Something about the quality of the sound made her suspect a very large rat, or maybe a bigger animal, like a stray cat. Or little nails clicking small dog? This was a pretty crappy storage facility if they let whole dogs sneak in. She tried to turn on the light, and found it didn't work. The storage manager had assured her the power was on, so she supposed either a fuse had blown or something had snacked on the wires. She turned on the little flashlight on her keyring and shone it ahead of her; its beam only really provided a pale dot on the wall or floor a few feet ahead of her, but it was comforting. She had had a look at a plan of the ship before she came and had a general idea of where she was going; she wanted to see the living area and kitchen, where most things had happened and where Jet had cooked for Spike and everyone. Charlie's sense of direction was one of her strong points. Whether there were rats or not, there were spiders in here; she felt a shudder of disgust as the first cobweb brushed across her face and kept an arm up in front of it as she proceeded. She started to think horrible thoughts about enormous meaty leggy spiders abseiling down the back of her collar and quickened her pace. It should be just round here yes.

She opened the door and blinked; the lights were on in here with a vengeance, the lamp in the ceiling and a multitude of other lights, blinking and twinkling and shining in her dazzled eyes. She had never seen so much computer junk together in her life. The place was the most appalling mess; it offended her as the daughter of both a good housekeeper and a Feng Shui master. Clutter everywhere, things on top of things, a mad heap of blankets and cushions on the couch that was probably someone's idea of a bed. The energy of the room was chaotic, a stagnant soup of computer and person and dog.

The dog was sitting on the couch scratching behind its ear with a hind foot. It sat up and yipped at her. She only saw the person for a second before he or she sprang up and scuttled off into some hidey-hole, giving her an impression of wild, long, thin arms and legs, spidery and limber.

The dog growled and backed up on the couch, staring at her suspiciously. It was a squat little thing, a corgi, with a video-game control headset perched between its ears. From the look of the white hair that sprinkled its muzzle and ringed its eyes, it was pretty old.

'Who's there?' Charlie called out, trying to make her voice sound sharp and stern rather than spooked. 'Come on out where I can see you!'

Silence, except for the hum and chug of the computers.

'I've got a gun,' she lied. This achieved nothing.

'This is my father's ship!' she snapped. 'You're trespassing on our property!'

A pause. Then, a voice asked 'Father?'

'Yeah. My father. Jet Black. Who'd kick your ass if he was here.'

'Where's Jet!?' The person scrambled out from a jumble of old burnt-out monitors and stared at her eagerly. 'I've been waiting here!'

Charlie stared back. She thought it was a woman she was looking at, guessing from the voice. But her body was androgynous, lanky and boyish, no more breasts or hips than on a sixteen-year-old boy. Her skin was golden brown, her eyes a lighter, feral shade of gold, like a cat's. Her hair was thick, red and spiky, cut shortish and sticking out anyhow.

'J-Jet's dead,' Charlie stammered. 'He died last week. Did you know him?'

The strange woman's face fell. For a moment it looked awfully as if she were about to burst into tears. Then she pulled herself together a little.

'We were friends,' she explained. 'I was Ed.'

'Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Ti - thingummy, the fourth?'

'Did he tell you about Ed?'

'Yeah - often.' Charlie pushed her hands back through her hair, wondering how on earth to talk to her. 'Is - is that Ein, on the couch?'

'That's Ein.'

'I can't believe he's still alive. He must be the world's oldest corgi or something.'

'Data dogs live longer.'

'What dogs?'

'Data dogs. Genetically engineered, special dogs. He's very smart.'

'Daddy never told me about that.'

'Jet didn't know.' The woman scratched the back of her calf with the toes of her other foot and folded her arms behind her head, twisting to one side and the other.

'Uhm Ed I don't know how to ask this are you still like you were back then?'

'No. I grew up.'

'Uhh'

'You're trying to ask in a nice way if I'm still a feral spaz-child, aren't you?' Ed grinned, and her grin broadened as Charlie blushed. 'In bits. Sometimes. When I haven't got a good reason not to be. When I'm not thinking about it.' She became serious again. 'Why did Jet die? Did someone kill him?'

'No he had an aneurysm. He died in his sleep, we think.'

'I thought someone would come back sometime but I guess if Jet's not going to no-one's going to.'

'Miss Ed, do you mean you've been living here for twenty-five years!?'

'Oh, no. More like twenty. In and out, off and on, up and down.'

'Oh my God!'

'It's okay.'

'Daddy thought you left to find your father and live with him. He was always sorry he didn't get to see you again. You should've come to the house!'

'I did find my father,' she said wearily, blowing upwards so that her spiky bangs fluttered. 'And I stuck with him for a few years. But it was going to drive me crazy. My father was never really attached to me. He never remembered me or waited for me when he wanted to move on.'

'That's awful,' Charlie said, genuinely shocked. 'You were just a little girl!'

'Oh, come on!' Ed said cheerfully, her face splitting again in a grin. 'I'd been on my own for years. I had lots of fun!'

'Miss Ed'

'Just Ed.'

'Ed, you don't look old enough to be Ed. You should be close to forty by now, shouldn't you?'

'I'm not getting old like normal people,' Ed said. 'I'm not sure why. I think I was a bit different from the beginning. Did your daddy ever tell you about that boy who stopped getting older?'

'Yes,' Charlie said, with a shiver. 'I thought it was so creepy.'

'It must be something like that,' Ed said, shrugging. 'It's not that I don't get any older I just do it real slowly. It's not real interesting. I think I'm, like, thirty-eight.'

'So you live here just you and Ein?'

'And MPU.'

'Mmpoo?'

'MPU is an AI program. He used to be part of a computer satellite. He was the first bounty I caught! But they wouldn't pay me anything for him because he's not alive.' She ran a hand over a screen and it came alive with a squiggly light-show, meaningless to Charlie. 'That's MPU. He's sleeping just now. He's a pretty old computer and he gets tired.'

'Ed why did you wait here all this time? What were you hoping for?'

'To go out bounty-hunting again,' Ed said, a little forlornly. 'I figured I had to go out in the world and find where I belonged. But I didn't belong with my father. He wasn't interested in me, he just wanted me to be okay like you hope all kids will be okay. I belong on the net in my head, but I've got this body that has to live too. I liked it here with everyone. I know Spike died there was a news report about what happened to the Red Dragon syndicate but I thought Faye and Jet might come back I guess I didn't really think.' She looked up, then away as if ashamed of herself. 'I didn't look after myself very well for a while and my mind wasn't always where it should be. It would get lost from my body. MPU and Ein had to put me back together a few times. I would get confused about time. And eating food and stuff.'

'Jeez,' said Charlie faintly. She picked her way through the junk all over the floor to sit down in the armchair opposite the couch. For a moment she wondered if she ought to ask Ed's permission, but thought 'screw it, this is my ship.'

'I can see you're Jet's daughter,' Ed said. 'Cause you're tall like he was, and you've got blue eyes like his.'

'Thank you.' It felt good to think that she could be recognised that way. 'People mostly think I look like Mama otherwise.'

'Well, not all girls like to look like boys so I guess you wouldn't want to take after him too much.' Ed scrambled up on the back of the sofa and perched there grinning at her. 'But me, I like confusing people.' She tipped her head on one side, like an inquisitive cat. 'So what are you going to do with Bebop?'

'Not sure, really. I mean, it's okay for you to go on living here, now I know you're here. I guess I'm going to want to go right through it and have a good spring-clean.'

'Jet always said there were parts of the ship even he hadn't explored. One time a new life-form evolved in the spare fridge.'

'Yes, I know that story,' Charlie said wryly. 'I'll just have to carry a flamethrower at all times. Frankly I think there's more likely to be a lot of plain junk than any sinister aliens.' She got up, dusting off the seat of her shorts as she did so. 'Um listen, I have to go now, but I'll be coming back tomorrow with cleaning equipment. I guess I'll see you then.'

'Okay,' said Ed. 'Ein and MPU and I'll be here. See you, cowgirl.'

Charlie parked the car and got out to unload her gear, stopping in surprise when she saw the figure leaning against the chain-link fence of the storage yard.

'Hello,' said Marie, exhaling a cloud of smoke with the words.

'Marie. Hi.' Have you come to apologise for being so rude at the funeral? And jeez, do you think those are clothes?

'So Daddy left you a spaceship.'

Charlie looked at her blankly. 'Yeah,' she said. 'It was his ship, now it's mine. That's how inheritance works.'

'And once again, everything you could want is handed to you on a silver platter.' She lit a fresh cigarette from the glowing ember of the old one.

'I beg your pardon?'

'I just think it's unfair. What's someone like you going to do with a ship?'

'What the hell do you mean, someone like me?'

'A spoiled little rich girl.'

'I am not spoiled! I - I helped my dad do the housework all the time! I've come to clean the ship out today myself!' She picked up a bottle of disinfectant and brandished it indignantly.

'Relax. You should be happy. The saying goes, "It's better to be envied than pitied".' She shot Charlie a sidelong glance from under her eyelids.

'Yeah, well, I don't pity you. I think you're a rude bitch. So you don't know your father. You would only be worth having sympathy for if you had sympathy for someone who's just lost hers. Now go away before I tell the manager there's a hooker hanging around.'

'How easy it is for a big homely girl to be rude to someone with looks' Marie said vaguely as she sauntered off.

'Get bent, Valentine!' Charlie shouted after her. She turned back to unloading her equipment with stinging eyes.

Ein whimpered and nestled closer to Ed.

'I know, Ein,' she murmured, scratching between his ears soothingly. 'She scares me too.'

'Please do not let her damage any of my peripherals or storage media,' said the lugubrious voice of MPU. 'My artworks are of great value to me.'

'I'll keep you both safe,' Ed promised.

There was a clattering crash from somewhere in the ship, followed by a startled silence. Then Charlie's voice came over the intercom: 'Nobody worry! I'm okay!'

A few minutes later she came bustling in, her overalls lavishly decorated with dust and grease and the bandanna covering her hair askew. 'I found a big box of old pictures of Daddy's! I'll have to look through them later.' She dumped the box down on the couch, raising a fresh cloud of dust. 'Oh, this is so much fun!'

'You think cleaning's fun?' Ed murmured, mildly unnerved.

'Oh yes! Daddy and I always made it a game, and sang together - I'm singing away by myself while I'm working, and it feels like he's right with me. Housework always makes me feel good. Freshening up the place! Making everything clean and comfortable and cheerful!' She clapped her hands together and rubbed them keenly.

'You can't bring order to chaos you know,' Ed muttered, bending over her laptop.

'No, but you can create balance,' Charlie said happily. 'And the physical exertion is very good for you, and it takes your mind right off any worries you might have. Folks, here's a story 'bout Minnie the Moocher - she was a low-down hoo-oochie-coocher.' She strode off singing lustily.

After she was gone, the door slid open. Ed looked up, ready to bolt, but paused as the girl who put her head through said inquiringly, 'Charlie?'

'Charlie's cleaning,' Ed said. She turned up the intercom volume a little. 'Hear that?' Charlie was clearly audible in hi-fi hi-de-hi.

'Oh. She would.' Marie stepped through and looked around with her hands on her hips. Ed regarded her with her head tipped on one side, then rolled over on her back and gazed at her upside down. Marie returned her gaze with a sarcastically raised eyebrow.

'You're like Faye-Faye,' Ed said.

'Faye Valentine is my mother. And you're - oh God. You're Ed, aren't you? This ship's a time-warp.' She strode over and tweaked at Ed's hair, poked at her face. 'Or are you an android? Should I call the Blade Runners?'

'Ed is Ed!' she replied indignantly, and snapped at the poking finger with her teeth.

'Ain't that the truth,' Marie said, drawing back with a heavy sigh. She stood and listened to the faint sound of Charlie thumping about and singing.

'Minnie had a dream about the King of Sweden; he gave her things that she-he was needin'. He gave her a home built of gold and stee-yel, a diamond car with-a plat'num wheels.'

'Maybe I should haul ass to Sweden,' Marie said. 'Except I bet it's a hole like the rest of Earth.' She glanced down at the box of photos and picked up the one lying on top, a Polaroid print. A scribble on the white section at the bottom seemed to say 'Me & Spike 1st bounty.' Two men grinned and gave the thumbs-up from either side of a very disgruntled-looking old woman in handcuffs.

'This is Spike?' Marie asked, holding the photo so Ed could see it and tapping on it. 'The guy with all the hair?'

Ed spared it a glance. 'Yeah,' she said, and put her goggles on, effectively cutting herself off from the outside world.

Marie dropped the photo back in the box and began to go through the others. They were neatly arranged between labelled dividers; she pulled them out and stuck them back in at random. In some Jet was clearly quite young, judging by the amount of hair, although it looked as if that had gone early anyway. Jotted at the bottom of each picture was a little aide-memoire as to why it had been taken. 'Alisa - Beach. First summer together, my favourite swimsuit.' 'Fad's Great Black Eye. Apparently we should see the other guy.' 'Ed wanted her picture taken in this dress. With dog on head!' 'Strangest position I have ever found Spike asleep in.' 'Alisa - Casino. My lucky charm.' 'Faye getting in way of sunset.' Some pictures seemed to be professional, too, a record of contacts and acquaintances. Marie looked these over with mild interest, but what always got her attention was any picture in which her mother appeared. 'Faye w/sorry sonofabitch lawyer.' 'Ed drawing on sunbathing Faye's legs.' 'Captured Faye "Romany" Valentine. V. annoying.'

'They handcuffed her to the toilet?' Marie murmured. 'Jeez.'

'Mummy-man Spike Again.' 'Ein w/too many damn Mushrooms.' 'Alisa sleeping.' 'Faye blocking view of beach.' 'Fishing trip w/Bob.'

'Who knew he took photos of every damn' thing that happened to him,' Marie muttered.

'Excuse me,' said a sharp voice behind her. Charlie was there, with a black smear of grime and a ruddy blush of anger on her cheek. 'I don't remember giving you permission to come on board, let alone to rummage through my father's personal things.'

Silently, Marie held up a photo of Faye.

'That might give your mother rummage rights but not you.' Charlie snatched the photo away, stuck it in the box and grabbed it to her chest. 'Go away!'

'I have as much right to be here as Ed does.'

'Yeah, but the difference is I like Ed. Go on. Go away!'

'Make me,' said Marie insolently, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs.

Forty-five seconds later she landed painfully on her backside on the concrete floor of the hangar.

'And stay out!' Charlie snapped.

'You are freakishly strong,' Marie muttered, pulling herself to her feet and dusting off the back of her miniskirt. 'Not to mention a violent lunatic.'

'Nope,' said Charlie, dusting off her hands. 'Just a girl whose daddy taught her to take care of herself. He didn't want anybody taking advantage of me.'

'Will you stop throwing your father who art in heaven in my face?'

'Then stop coming here and hanging around!'

'I've got nowhere else to go!'

'Go home!'

'Faye threw me out!'

Charlie stared at Marie's flushed face, at the tears that had sprung into her eyes.

'Well... why would she do that?' she asked, feeling a little foolish.

'We can't stand each other. She says I'm a lazy little slut. And she, she's a bitter old cow. She just resents me because I'm young and I've got potential! She won't tell me anything! And I'm sick of being part of her grifting schemes!'

'Um you can stay here, I guess'

'Don't you dare pity me!' Marie scrubbed at her eyes angrily with her shirt-tail.

'I don't,' Charlie said. 'It's just decency. Our parents were friends and you're in trouble. It's what you do.'

'Okay, then,' Marie said, as if conferring a favour. Charlie rolled her eyes.

'And if you're going to move in, you can help me clean the place up,' she said. 'I've got a spare pair of rubber gloves, and there's a bathroom with your name on it.'

'Oh, gross.'

'I mean, literally. I could write your name with my finger in the mould on the mirror. C'mon!'

Charlie came home feeling both tired and invigorated. Since she wanted to put the buckets away in the potting shed, she went round the back to the alley between houses and let herself in at the garden gate; having dealt with the buckets she slipped into the house through the french doors. Meifa must be at home if the house was all unlocked; as she stood in the sunroom taking off her sneakers, she could hear her voice in the sitting-room, so maybe she had a guest - or was just talking to the cats again.

Meifa's voice rose high and clear. 'You have no right to say these things to me. In my house! Barely a week after my husband's funeral!'

What?

A man's voice replied, but he spoke in a low rumble that Charlie couldn't make out. Curious and alarmed, she peered round the sunroom door into the dining-room, and found that the communicating door to the sitting-room was safely closed. She crept through quietly and, taking a glass from the cabinet that held the good crystal, set it to the door and put her ear to the bottom.

Meifa spoke again, and since she really didn't need a glass to hear her it made Charlie recoil a little.

'I don't care. Do you really think he was in control of me? My refusal to work for a syndicate was not his decision. I saw my father's life destroyed by you people. It's true that one reason why I loved Jet was that he was too honourable and decent and sensible to get involved in any such racket. But you can't walk in here before he's cold in the ground and try to corrupt me as if I were some weak-minded little woman!'

A pause; then the man spoke again, and this time she could distinguish the words.

'Madam Pao, maybe you don't understand.'

'Stop calling me that. My name is Black.'

'The Black Dog is dead. Why don't you embrace your new freedom, as many modern widows learn to do? Full mourning is a thing of the past.'

'You are the most tasteless man I've ever met. Will you please leave?'

'Madam Pao, you could live in comfort for the rest of your life. Never have to worry about your daughter's future.'

'I don't worry about my daughter's future. And my business is doing just fine. You can't offer me anything I can't get honestly.'

'Perhaps not, Madam Pao but we can take things away.'

There was a hot, shocked pause. Charlie felt her face turn red as her heart started to beat faster, and bit her lip.

'Your business your daughter's future?' The man spoke slowly, languidly.

'Don't you dare threaten my daughter.'

'Why, we don't have to harm her physically. Not at all..But supposing her academic transcript showed some things it didn't before? Some 'incompletes' or 'fails'? Suppose she was not, how shall I say, attractive to employers? Suppose she was pestered by the police? Or less savoury people.'

'The equivalent of writing up her phone number in a truck-stop restroom,' Meifa said with a bitter laugh. 'Do you think we don't keep protected copies of all our personal information?'

'Only ask yourself, Madam Pao, which will be believed? The one copy you keep at home, or all the records pertaining to your daughter, everywhere, which will be in agreement?'

'We still have friends. Friends who'll believe us.'

'You can't hide behind your husband's old boys' network forever. Be reasonable, Madam Pao. We are reasonable too - we'll give you time to think it over. But not long.' There was a soft scraping sound as he rose from his chair; Charlie heard her mother get up too, walking him hastily, angrily to the door.

Slowly, she lowered the glass and stood looking at it in her hand. A smudge of grease from her cheek, still covered in Bebop dirt, was imprinted on its bottom. Still moving slowly, she carried it to the kitchen and put it in the dishwasher, then remembered that crystal had to be washed by hand, removed it and filled the sink. Her hands began to shake as the water ran, and she dropped the glass. It smashed against the stainless steel. Meifa hurried in at the sound.

'Charlie? Charlie darling, I didn't know you were home.'

'I've - I've been home for a few minutes now. I heard you talking.'

'Oh, my dear girl I'm sorry' Meifa put her arms around her and rested her head on her shoulder; it was the highest she could reach.

'You can't do it, Mama, you just can't work for a syndicate! They're terrible people Daddy wouldn't' To her shock, she was starting to cry.

'I know he wouldn't. And I wouldn't either. Don't be afraid, darling Charlie. We'll work something out. For one thing, I'll call Bob and tell him we've been approached and threatened.'

'They'll find out, though, won't they? If they can do things like ruin your business and take away my degree'

'They can't, Charlie, truly they can't. I'm sure they can't.'

'I want Daddy!'

'Charlie!' Meifa spoke almost sharply. 'You're a young woman now. At a time like this you have to behave like it. I need you to be strong. We both have to make Daddy proud of us.'

'I'll I'll try.' She pulled up the front of her teeshirt and wiped her eyes. 'I'm sorry, Mama, I broke a glass.'

'It's all right. One of that set was broken anyway. Now we've got an even number again.' Meifa rubbed Charlie's back with one hand as she leaned over to pull the plug and let out the water. Charlie watched the broken shards of crystal gather in the plughole; she felt as shattered as they were.

To Be Continued...