The Pieces of My Self

22 - Grady

LILLIAN

Lillian's Home, 9 June 2174, Thursday

It was dark when I got home from the college. Fluffy was in a corner, inert and charging. The house was quiet except for whimpering from the couch, where I found Amara sleeping. I woke her up with a gentle shake, and held her for 15 minutes, trying to dispel the bad dreams. Then I gave her a dose of medicine and led her to bed upstairs. When I checked on Grady, I found him sleeping soundly. I kissed his forehead and noticed a black eye and bruises.

"Hey, kiddo," I said, gently shaking him. "What happened to you?"

He propped himself up, rubbed his eyes, and looked at me. It took him a moment before he said anything. "I got in a fight."

"Why didn't the school call me?"

"It was after school. Just me and another kid—a bully. He made fun of me for being white and called me a Billy."

"So, you hit him?"

"He pushed me and wouldn't stop."

"No, no, no. Baby, you have to be careful. It's good to stick up for yourself, but you don't know what this kid or his parents might do. What they're capable of."

I brushed my hand across his forehead, trying to figure out what to say. I'm not exactly a paragon of virtue. I had my own fights growing up and was suspended from school more than once. In most cases, the other boy or girl came out worse than me. But times have changed. They've become uglier and more hateful.

"Next time I want you to walk away," I said. "I know it's hard, but promise me."

He gave a slight tip of his head and lay down, pulling the covers over his head.

I patted him and left the room.

Grady was abandoned by his biological parents as an infant, went into foster care, and I adopted him when he was six years old. He's always had a chip on his shoulder. When Tony learned what I did, it was like a grenade had detonated on our marriage. Our messy divorce added to Grady's anger issues. I love him dearly, but blame myself for his shortcomings. They are my shortcomings.

* * *

I tried to shake off the guilt pangs from abandoning Grady and Amara for nearly an entire day, not being there for them, telling myself it couldn't be helped. The world was crushing in. There was food to buy. Rent to pay. Medicine to procure.

The biggest shock of the day was that the government had raised the price of AmphoraX—again. Buying the latest prescription nearly emptied my bank account. The pernicious thing about the drug is it made you addicted to life. The only way to break the fever was to pay up or die.

Debra Knightly's project would cover my expenses for a while and there was the promise of a big bonus if I could solve the puzzle before William Nkumbra. But LESA was hot on the trail, and Debra could be thrown out of her home.

I had to find the money! Three words kept playing in my head: Context is important.

I pulled out Knightly's journal and re-read the initial part, written in a cramped, barely legible hand, describing his boat journey to Loumissala with a baby. After that, a lot of pages were removed. There was nothing that revealed the child's fate. Henri's last entries were numbered 93 and 95. Entry 94 was missing.

He made the notes on the 8th of January 2141, the day of a political rally that cemented Mangalotte's power. It seems Henri was at its center.