10)

Julie did everything she could to be around Zee and Ro. And while she was helping her mother finish chores in the kitchen, she even spewed off a convincing speech about how she thought her brother's heroes deserved to stay the night. The soliloquy won over Tess's heart effortlessly, and Warren soon joined in. Once Ro was out of the bath, where she'd spent a good half-hour soaking, and back downstairs, Jas gave her the good news. Ro was enormously pleased. After that hot bath, she was relaxed and sleepy, ready for bed. The weather had not turned inviting. The rain came down in globs, there was still the occasional burst of thunder and splash of lightning. Ro was happier still that she did not have to venture out again into such loathsome weather conditions. She was glad for a fine, hospitable roof on such a night.
Julie noticed Ro was wearing the same outfit as before, muddy blue jeans and faded black shirt. She took the teen's bare arm and wrapped it around her own. "Good heavens, don't you have anything else to wear?"
"I pack light."
"You must pack really light," Julie teased, and tugged Ro forward to ascend the staircase. "You can borrow something of mine. We're about the same size."
"That's nice of you, but I don't think I'll be able to give it back. Once clothes are on me, they tend to stick for a while."
"Don't worry about it." Julie turned on the light to her pink and white bedroom, a wide corner room with two large windows, a canopy bed, dresser, wardrobe, bookshelf and hexagon fish tank, in which were swirling blue neons. Julie went to the wardrobe and started thumbing through clothes to find appropriate stuff she no longer wished to keep. "I've been meaning to get rid of so much of this for just ages. How long have you been traveling?"
Ro's eyes danced as she tried desperately to think of a good answer. "A few months. I've lost track. One day just bleeds right into the other." She grinned hopelessly and lifted her shoulders. She thought of it then: two years, and wondered where all the time had gone. The beginning seemed so far away, while at other times she could remember it like she could remember yesterday. "After a while it's hard to tell the sunsets from the sunrises."
"And how is it that you travel so light?"
"Sometimes I have a backpack, but more often I just lose it."
Julie examined Ro closely for a moment, seeing odd marks about her skin and clothes she hadn't noticed before. "What's happened to you?"
"What?" Ro grew paranoid, unaware of Julie's observance.
Julie pointed to Ro's arm. "You've got a few scratches."
"I had a little accident. Some trees and I didn't get along. Then we taunted the river. The river seemed to win."
"Your jeans have holes in them, and your shirt's in total disrepair." Julie prodded at one of the shreds in Ro's pale blue jeans, then examined equally the rip in the side of the black shirt. "That won't do. I can mend it for you, but it won't last."
"That's all right. If I can get another year out of these, that'd be fine with me."
"In the meantime, you can take any of these that you like." Julie lifted a pile of clothes on the bed beside Ro.
Ro gave her thanks warm-heartedly, unsure of all the generosity that seemed to be taking place in her sour little world. Julie left Ro to change, and said she'd have a root beer float ready downstairs when she was done. Ro sifted through the clothes, the bargain shopper in her facilitated, and she grew excited. A lot of Julie's stuff was trendy, fluffy garb in bright colors Ro would never wear. But she did manage to find a hip red shirt and a pair of black jeans she appreciated. Over it she threw a long brocade jacket with square, classic lines, also in black. She examined her clean reflection in the mirror, and felt comfortable in the borrowed fashions. Julie Dumes had impeccable fashion sense.
Downstairs, Zeta was chattering to Jas and his parents about complex computer systems and the future of androids, if the government saw fit to have them outlawed. Zeta insisted it would never happen, and an absolute ban would never gain world-wide acceptance.
"The only place," Zeta said, "that will be allowed to run and maintain and manufacture androids in the future are government facilities. Androids being a presence in a private home will become a thing of the past, when it's hardly been a thing of the future."
Ro didn't catch any reply. Of course Zeta would believe that androids would always have a purpose in the world, and Ro believed that, too. She wandered through the family room, unnoticed by Jas and only glanced at by Zeta. He did a double-take when he realized she'd changed her outfit and made a note of it. Dark pants, possibly a red shirt. Ro found Julie in the kitchen, preparing those promised root beer and vanilla ice cream treats.
As soon as Julie looked at Ro, she nodded her esteemed approval at the new clothes. "Much better. And a good choice, too. You have excellent taste. That's a deCarlo jacket. He does fine work. I had it sent to me from the deCarlo store in Los Angeles Island." Julie spoke again, as if she couldn't wait for any reaction from Ro. "Your cousin is awfully strange, Ro Smith."
Ro smiled at the name. "Yeah, he's a bit on the tipsy side, isn't he?"
"Well, he refused dinner and he won't have dessert."
"He's got a very, very small sweet tooth." Ro pinched her thumb and forefinger together, squinting. "Very small. Only comes out once in a blue moon. And his metabolism's slow, so he can only eat once a day. Doctor's orders."
"I see." Julie handed Ro a float, all foamy, tan, the tall dessert-style glass freezing cold, just the way it ought to be. This Julie puzzled Ro enormously. She was an intellectual but also had great fashion sense. The two were uncommon attributes in a single person. And, in some unknown manner, Julie reminded Ro of Tiffany Morgan, but luckily not in an irksome way. "If you'd like any extra whipped cream, it's in the fridge. I think I'll take this out to Jas. It's so good to have him home." Julie touched Ro's hand as she left the room. Ro lingered and looked at her dessert. Whipped cream would be extra nice. Even if Zeta had no sweet tooth, Ro certainly did.
It was while she was flipping down the dollop atop the ice cream that Ro felt that strange sort of panic she had felt before, most recently before the instance with seeing--imagining--her mother. To her dismay, against her orders, her hand began to shake. The spoon clattered into the metal sink, and Ro felt the inclination to look up to the window. A lightning flash illuminated the farm's grounds for a brief moment, just long enough to see someone standing out in the muddy paddock. It was a man, in middle-age, who wore an outfit that didn't belong to someone who worked a farm: business slacks, shirt, loosened tie with the tip flittering in the angry wind. At first Ro believed it was Warren Dumes, but then realized with horror the man in the field was staring straight at her, from far across the lawn and into the latticed kitchen window. He was too familiar, achingly so. Ro was frightened into action. There was a door that led from the kitchen into a square laundry room, and from the laundry room she found a door, locked, that led outside. She fumbled with inadequate, quivering fingers to undo the bolt. Once it snapped back, she hastily pulled open the door, nearly taking it from the hinges. After passing the screen door, which slammed shut raucously behind her, she was out amid the mud of the lawn, slopping through the wet to reach the apparition behind the paddock fence. The man seemed the glow with a radiance, a green-blue sea foam radiance. The closer she got the more he glowed, and the closer she got the more she knew who it was. The rain trickled upon her head, fell down her forehead, her cheeks, to her chin where it dripped or was blown away. She was aware of how cool the air had turned since sundown, how damp she was getting, but didn't seem to feel the affects. There was no other thought in her head but the man in the suit. At first, as she drew closer, he only stared, with a slight smile lifting his lips. Then, suddenly, he turned his back on her and broke out in a canter, like a mustang, and headed deeper into the range, past the barn, past the calf stall and the hen house. Ro climbed over the fence in stealthy hastiness, in earnest to catch him. "Wait! Wait!" she called out, passing the barn, the empty calf stall, seeing the figure glowing, darting further into the field. "Why won't you wait for me?" Ro ran on, hardly watching where her feet took her, past the hay mound and past the equipment shed, until she was at the edge of the civilized grange, and all that stretched out before her was a brown hilly field. The figure tipped down into a glen, over a hill away. She stopped at the half-way point of the decline, unable to move another step. Ro couldn't understand why her eyes were misty and she could not see, but then remembered she was crying, and it wasn't the rain falling in her eyes after all. "Wait!" she called again. The figure of the man finally halted and faced her.
"Rosalie," he called in a parental voice, as though tucking his daughter into bed from afar.
"Dad?" She was afraid to ask, more for the answer of an affirmative than a negative.
Pierce Rowen, or the ghost of him, began to retrace his steps into the glen, and finally up the hill. Ro watched him the whole way, anxious, scared, shivering.
He stood before her, glowing in an eerie light. His eyes were dimmed and near black, without the white cornea. "I knew I would find you again someday, mo stoir, if I just looked hard enough."
"Dad, are you real? Or am I just imagining you?"
The head of the figure shook a little, and a small, sly smile appeared. In it was a touch of Ro's own snide manner. "What's the difference, Rosalie? There is no difference. Whether I am imagined or real, would it matter, since I'm standing before you now?"
Ro wanted to reach out her hands to his hands, just to be sure he was real. But she didn't dare, since she was sure disappointment over the failure to connect would be too much to handle. "But--aren't you--?"
"We're at home. We're at home waiting for you, Lola and I. When will you come to us, Rosalie? We miss you."
"I miss you, too." And, just like she had with her mother, Ro began to feel her energy draw back, away from her father, from the comfort he could give her, that he could've given. "Oh, Dad," she started to speak, her eyes tear-active again, "I can't go with you now. I just can't."
Pierce Rowen looked so hurt, so dismayed and confused. The glow around him dimmed, then flickered, until it finally ceased. He was just a shadow then, gray and blue, translucent. "We've tried to so hard . . . to . . . and we couldn't. . . . . Why, Ro? Why?"
"I can't seem to remember," she said, her mind going blank as she gaped at the beautiful image of her handsome, strong father. "It's something, but I just can't remember." Ro swallowed, no longer noticing the rain or how wet her clothes were, how clammy her skin felt. She was really no longer Rosalie Rowen, she was something else, but didn't know what or how it mattered. "If I went with you now, where would we go?"
"Take my arm and find out," he said, extending his elbow as an escort.
Ro hesitated, a nagging feeling that was far too real beginning to surface.
"We could go to the moon tonight, and we can be back tomorrow," her father suggested.
"The moon?" Ro repeated, critical of such an idea.
"The moon, or the stars, some distant planet. Wherever you'd like to go. Nothing's too good for my little Rosalie. Absolutely nothing."
"The stars? Do you mean it?" This idea excited her, and she couldn't figure out why, except that stars seemed so beautiful, so far away from the pain she found on the earth.
"Of course I mean it. Do you remember when you were a little girl, and you used to lay out at night under the stars, watching them fall and move across the sky, as the earth moved? Do you remember your wonderment in everything? You've forgotten, I know, but you'll remember again."
Ro didn't remember, not at first, because her childhood, anything that had happened before she was seven, seemed like just evaporated dreams; it was too hard to distinguish what had been real from what had almost been real. But the time Pierce Rowen mentioned was far beyond the time of his death, things that he would not know, unless it was some keen insight reserved especially for the immortal soul, like he'd been watching over her from a distant place. Ro could remember her foster homes, her orphanages, and how she'd always stayed out so late, just late enough past sunset to watch the stars as they formed, first faintly, the first three, then watching them bud like flowers on the eastern sphere. The display of astronomical delights filled her with a since of the important, and, at the same time, the vastness of the world frightened her, but she loved that feeling of fright. Ro wiped the tears from her eyes, scornful at the memories for making her cry. How had she forgotten so much? She used to love everything boldly and unquestioningly, yet she'd forgotten how good that love had felt.
How had she ever been Ro Rowen after growing up?
Ro fell into the abyss of unreality, throwing herself into the appearance of her father, and plainly seeing him before her, as though he was the only thing real around her.
Pierce Rowen tried to get her to take the elbow again, but still she would not. Now she appeared disturbed, her eye with a dark gleam in it, an ardent concentration forming.
"The Pleiades," she suddenly uttered, hissing out the hard 's' at the end, and to her it sounded vaguely like a 'z'. The look she gave her father was like a child pleading for a pony. "Will you take me to the Pleiades? I want to dance with the Seven Sisters. Maia, Electre, Merope---!"
"You live in a dream world, mo stoir," her father said, no longer offering her his arm. He was cold and brusque. "I never would've thought I'd lost you. All these years, I never wanted to believe you would never return to us, to your family. But we're losing you, Rosalie. You're stepping away from us."
"No!" Ro shouted, all the hurt and rage banked within her leapt to new hot flames. "I never wanted to leave you! That's not fair! Dad! You were the one! The one who went away!" Ro's mortification deepened as the apparition of her precious father began to dissolve into a fair mist before her eyes. "Don't leave me! You're always leaving me!"
Finally, his features blurred into the night, and all that were left were his coal-colored eyes.
"Dad, don't! Come back!" Ro reached out both arms to encircle the mist that remained, but it evaporated into nothing but the rain. Exhausted, uncertain and her legs weak, Ro fell to the muddy earth, and laid back to feel the rain upon her face, like gentle kisses of nature. "Why?" she asked to the sky, and she saw a part in the clouds over her head. The stars peeked through. She was an orphan again. "Why do they always go away and leave me?"

--

Notes

Pierce and Lola Rowen
Ah, yes . . . Ro's invisible parents turn visible. And these were the names that I bestowed upon them.

Mo stoir
Irish. "My treasure." I believed it's pronounced mah steuy(r).