Boon: Book 7

Hormones or Not, Emotions are Real

"The reason for giving my side of the story is because I think I can give a valuable contribution to my wife's work. Also, I can't say I like the idea of my children only hearing her voice when they read about the career and adventures of their parents. The idea is oddly...unbalanced in my thoughts. I am not against her being the one to tell about us, nor do I think she isn't fully capable of giving a reliable, intelligent account. After all, I could not have married anyone I considered inferior to my own intellect. But I can't help but be concerned that if she gained the monopoly over telling our story there'd be nothing left for me to do as a father. After all, isn't parenting simply passing on our own stories? Our own fables, our own morality tales, our own stories of choices and consequence along with those of our forefathers?

And if you accuse me of leaving out the nurturing and love involved with raising a child, you mistake me. No story reaches the heart of an individual without some degree of love and earnestness on the author's part, and the stories I will tell them I want to reach the very core of their being."

-Oliver Davis in Plain, under a different name.

The moment Naru was home he proceeded to drag me into the shower, where the way he held me made me feel instant guilt. His skin had been clammy before the hot water warmed and washed away the sweat. Love threatened to strangle me when I noted that he didn't feel safe showing weakness until he had locked our front door, the bathroom door, and then essentially hid with me naked in the shower.

Almost as though sensing the distress of his father, little Eugene kicked out at the hand that rested on my belly. I felt Naru's smile by the slight twitch of his ear against my neck, as he had draped his head over my shoulder.

"Bad case?" I asked.

"No. It was very productive. I'll be able to another case to my thesis off the data I got." Which he'd also be showing me extensively after we got out, if my predictions proved right. I had always loved a good ghost story, and he was always more than delighted to tell me one, even if he still sounded like a recording of a textbook as he did so.

"Then why are you like this?"

He didn't answer at first. Eugene did some more squirming beneath Naru's hand before somersaulting to the other side of the womb to continue his assault on some more unsuspecting target, like one of my kidneys.

"There was a ghost," he started. "But it wasn't the client's home. The haunting the client had been complaining about had actually been their daughter's low level of ESP. No. The ghost was in the apartment below...a ubume."

For once in my life, I didn't have to ask Naru what kind of ghost that was.

"That's the ghost of a woman who died in childbirth, right?" I said excited, not thinking to tone it down before the full impact of them hit my overly protective husband's ears.

Sure enough, his fingers twitched and I felt his shoulders do that slight hunch up from behind my own. One of the signs of his fear.

"The woman in the apartment below was pregnant," he said. "The only reason I knew there was a ghost there at all was because she came out one night and started banging about on the van. Said there was a naked woman with her lower half covered in blood appearing at the foot of her bed, wailing 'be born! be born!'"

"That's not creepy at all."

He squeezed me. "She went into preterm labor that same night."

"Oh my gosh, is she okay? The baby?"

He shrugged. "I found out after the fact, so I'm not sure. I know her baby was born just a little over a micro premie. Chances aren't good. There was no warning."