Summer keeps getting hotter and Ava keeps getting busier and Penny seems to be a little bit discontented with how everything is going. Back down in Tent City he worked with Shan and was in on their missions and secrets and planning, but Ava does not let him in on what she’s working on. She says it’s partly because she has authorization that he does not have and she legally cannot tell him most of it, but also partly because she does not want him to worry about it and deal with it anymore.
I do not know if he wants to deal with it, but he spends a lot of time with Bayan still, and I am not sure if he misses Shan or at least that he was busy down in Shan, but he is busy with Bayan now too. I overhear them sometimes, Penny wants him to talk about Miss Lilly, and Miss Lilly dying, and what Miss Lilly did to him, and how Miss Lilly bought him from an agency, and what happened to him before Miss Lilly bought him from an agency. But Penny does most of the talking. Bayan listens to him, he always listens to him, he is a good listener but not a good talker and so he just listens to Penny talk but he does not talk much himself. He does not want to talk about Miss Lilly, I know this, because if I were him I would not want to talk about it. He should, I know he should, but he doesn’t, and he can’t.
I find Penny one evening out in the backyard, alone. He’s standing by the edge of the pool, staring down into its depths, and I think of what Ava told me right after Keol died, right after the death of her second prominent. The second one died from withdrawal off the meds that she had been giving him; the first one died by jumping into the pool and sinking to the bottom.
I go out to him. He does not seem to notice me coming towards him, until I say, “Bayan’s making lasagna.”
He looks over at me, and is quiet for a moment, and then says, “Nice.”
“I’ve never had lasagna before.”
“Bayan makes it good.”
But there’s something off about him, and I look at him for a moment. I’ve always had a sister, but I’ve never had a brother. “What’s wrong?”
He looks up, away from me, towards the poolhouse.
“Are you and him okay?”
Penny gives a big sigh. “Did you know that even before he used to sleep in my mother’s room? With her?”
Oh, god. It had crossed my mind when we sent Sloan to go find him, the fact that we all had beds but I never knew of any room specifically for Bayan, I didn’t know where she would find him in the house in the dead of night. “No.”
“Yeah,” says Penny softly. “Ava has her big room and I used to sleep in your room before I went away. And then after Mother died I moved into her room, with Bayan, we were supposed to, we were supposed to live together. But now he moved out.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly, and Penny shakes his head. “Don’t be. He’s never been able to move out before.
“He just,” he continues after a moment, his voice breaking. “He just can’t deal with me. Not right now. Not in that room.”
“That’s not your fault,” I say softly, and he smiles a bit, looking down at the pool. “I know. I just don’t know how to help him.”
“What about you?” I ask softly, and Penny looks at me. “What about me?”
“Are you okay?”
He sighs, and shrugs, and says, “Yeah. I don’t know. I think so. It’s just. I’ve had more time, to deal with it. He doesn’t, he doesn’t want to go to sleep in that room every night anymore.”
“Rearrange it,” I suggest, and he looks at me again. I shrug. “Make it look different, make it not hers anymore.”
“Yeah,” says Penny softly, with a slight smile, and then says suddenly, “Hey, you know we’re brothers now. Technically.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I say with a smile. “Unless Ava signs me out of it.”
And he looks at me once more, and then down at my hand with the ring on it, and says, “You really don’t have to annul if you don’t want to.”
I shrug. “Yeah, I keep telling her that there’s more important things she could be focusing on, than me.”
“You’re the most important thing to her.”
“No,” I say, “that’s you. For as long as I’ve known her, that’s been you.”
And Penny smiles, but I can see tears in his eyes, and he stares at the water in front of us. The sun is going down, reflecting in shimmers, and I say softly, “Hey.”
“She died in his arms,” whispers Penny. “Like Ava did. But my mother, she stayed dead. Do you think he ever dreamed about that?”
“Bayan?” I say in slight surprise. “I don’t think he’s ever dreamed of violence. He wouldn’t wish death on anyone.”
“Maybe, yeah,” says Penny. “But people who have been hurt, they’re not bad people if they want their abusers gone. Or to hurt too.”
“Have you talked to him about any of this?” I ask, glancing at him, and he sighs again, shaking his head. “He doesn’t talk.”
“Wish he could talk to Haywood,” I say softly. “He’s good at that kind of stuff.”
“Yeah,” agrees Penny with a slight smile, I’m sure he did his fair share of talking to Haywood down in Shan. Penny looks up, and sighs, and says, “How’s Abigala?”
“Angry,” I admit, looking up at the sky as well. “She thinks Ava’s out to get her and she can’t believe I’m taking her side.”
“Ava is kind of out to get her.”
“Well, she wouldn’t have to be if she just told us where her husbands are.”
Penny looks at me, and I close my eyes, and sigh. “They’ve gotta be underage. Or, or, or…” I don’t even want to say it. “Or she hurt them. She raped them. Or she let Lilly and didn’t do anything. And that’s why she doesn’t want us to find them and talk to them.”
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“Are you angry at her?” asks Penny after a moment, and I shrug. “I mean, I guess. At first I kinda got it, like, I should trust her, right, she was mad that I wasn’t trusting her, but, I mean, at this point…”
“There’s really no other reason,” murmurs Penny. He looks down into the pool again, and takes a deep breath. “We should go inside, then, if he’s making dinner.”
The lasagna is good. Bayan and Taymer eat with us, and then Ava helps them take the plates into the kitchen, but tells us to stay. Nua is telling us about a book he’s been reading because apparently one of the shows Penny likes is based off of it, so I am just sitting listening to them when Abigala enters. I look at her in surprise, she hasn’t eaten with us since she and Ava fought, and she shrugs, sitting down next to me. “Taymer told me you wanted to see me.”
“Well, yeah,” I say, “but I don’t have anything to tell you.”
“She might,” mutters Abigala, and I laugh a little. “Hey, you wanted to live in this house.”
“Aber,” says Abigala, and I just smile. “Abi, I haven’t seen you in, like, three weeks.”
“Well, it’s not like I’m going anywhere,” she says softly. “He won’t drive me anywhere because she told him not to.”
“You could still come and hang out with us,” I say, and she scoffs. “Please. Would you hang out with Lilly?”
“No, because Lilly kidnapped me.”
“Ava’s holding me hostage.”
“If you just told us you’re not a criminal she wouldn’t have to.”
“I’m not a criminal,” says Abigala hotly, Penny glances at us but doesn’t say anything, he and Nua are talking at the other end of the table and I don’t know if they’re listening to what we’re saying but I hope not. “I know you don’t get it and at this point I don’t expect you to but Ava has a thing against her mother and she’s taking it out on me now.”
“Her mother gave Penny away and forced to her get married four times and kept in place the entire legal system that makes those things keep happening across the country,” I say, lowering my voice, Nua is soft-spoken and I don’t want to be louder than him. “As far as we know, you helped her with it. Tell us you didn’t.”
“We were trying to fix it.”
“Then why did you get married four times?”
Abigala opens her mouth, but then sighs angrily and looks away. Ava comes back in the room then, and Penny and Nua and Abigala and I all quiet down, and she takes a deep breath. “Okay. I need to talk to all of you.”
“Told ya,” mutters Abigala.
“About what?” says Nua, and she smiles a little, looking at me. “A few things. The first, Aber, Abigala, is for you.”
Something happens in my stomach; I don’t have time to figure out what it is before Ava says it, finally, she says the words I have been waiting to hear for almost a year. “I know where your parents are.”
The conversation of the past few minutes is forgotten; Abigala takes my hand and squeezes, and I look at her, I smile, and I say, “Where? Are they okay?”
“They’re fine,” says Ava with a slight smile, “but I hope soon they’ll be more than fine, because at the moment they are in a jail downtown.”
“Jail?” repeats Abigala, and I take a deep breath. Then I look at my sister. “You didn’t know that?”
“I’ve told you,” she says, sounding slightly frustrated, “I told you I didn’t know, I never knew.”
“Well, you do now,” says Ava, raising her voice slightly. “I know, it’s hard to hear that they’re in a jail but I think, what I’m trying to tell you, is that I think I can get them out. And bring them here.”
“Ava,” I say softly. She looks at me, and smiles. She nods, and I manage a smile too, but swallow. “Ava, I need to see them.”
“I know,” she murmurs. I shake my head. “No, Ava, I need to see them now, I need to go see them right now.”
“I know,” she says again, gently, patiently. “Aber, I’m telling you this because I think I can bring you to see them and we can bring them home. Soon.”
“How soon?” I ask, and she smiles softly. “Soon.”
I take a deep shuddering breath, and Abigala grabs my hand again and squeezes and lets go. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, I feel something in my stomach, god, Ava has my parents, I have not seen them in a year, almost, I have been asking for them this whole time and she can bring me to them, she can bring them to me, I feel hot pressure behind my eyes and I rub them and swallow again and say, “Okay.”
“Okay?” she says, still looking at me with a slight smile, and I nod. “Okay. What’s the other thing, then?”
Ava laughs, she seems a bit more relaxed now, and sighs. “Well, this also is kind of for Aber, but I thought you all would want to know, um, Nerev is up, now, right, he’s living with his sister. And he managed to get Jimmy and Sina up, too. Because his sister, her name is Paige, she found some houses, some safe houses, that are both not agencies and also still legal. So what happened to your parents won’t happen there again.”
“It wouldn’t, with you as head of the agencies,” murmurs Penny, and Abigala rolls her eyes. Ava closes hers, shaking her head. “Oh, god, I’m not used to hearing that, yeah, well, how much authority do I really have to stop any of it.”
Penny smiles slightly, and nods. “Well, that’s good, though, that Jimmy and Sina are up. I know Shan wanted to get the young people and the older people up first, if we could.”
“Yeah,” agrees Ava. “Paige is looking into places that also offer a decent healthcare service for the older people, but they’re next on Shan’s list.”
“Nerev’s with Julian?” asks Sloan, and Ava nods. “Yeah, he’s taking care of him.”
“What about Marissa?” asks Penny after a moment. We were all thinking it, but I did not want to say it, but Penny did, he has broken the awkward silence and now we are all looking at Ava, because what about Marissa? She closes her eyes, and does not answer. Penny looks up at her. “Where is she now?”
Ava sighs, crossing her arms, and then opens her eyes and gestures towards me with her chin. “The same place your parents are.”
“You arrested her?” asks Bayan in surprise, and Ava looks at him. “She tried to kill you.”
“She did kill our mother,” says Penny.
“I shouldn’t have taken her baby,” says Bayan softly, and Ava rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “No, that’s not how that works.”
“Miss Ava,” says Taymer from the doorway, and I see her take a deep breath, closing her eyes, and then she opens them and turns to him. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“They’re back,” he says, which sounds quite ominous until I notice that he’s holding her cell phone. She smiles slightly, and looks at me, and says, “This is for you.” She goes to him and takes it and steps into the kitchen to talk, leaving Taymer with us, and I raise my eyebrows at him. He shrugs. “They put her on hold, she told me to get her when they came back.”
“Who?” asks Nua, and Taymer shrugs again. Penny laughs, and I look at him, and he shrugs. “She does this.”
“I know,” I mutter, crossing my arms. Nua puts his hand on my shoulder. Abigala looks at me, and takes a deep breath, and whispers, “I didn’t know they were in jail.”
“We can get them back,” I murmur. “She’s gonna get them back.”
Abigala grits her teeth, and then takes another deep breath. “How soon is soon?”
I look at Bayan. He shrugs too. Ava says from the doorway, “Now.”
I turn to her. She smiles slightly. “If you want.”
I rise to my feet slowly. Abigala comes with me, and Ava shrugs. “That was the lawyer. And the jail. And the judge. Big call. Working out bail. It, um, might take a few hours, but if you want-”
“Now,” I say softly. “Now, Ava.”
She looks at me, and she smiles, and she nods. “Okay.”
I rise to my feet. Abigala does too. Ava looks at her, and then at me, and raises her eyebrows. Abigala says, “I’m coming.”
“You’re on house arrest,” says Ava.
“Aber,” says Abigala, and I say, “Ava.”
She looks at me a second, and then sighs, and turns away. “Fine. Let’s go.”