Luke wrapped his hand around the bathroom knob and squeezed it so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “We found out he was on Earth from watching the news. He didn’t even visit. Part of me is happy Mom is gone because this would have killed her,” he whispered, his voice full of misery.
“If he came here, that mutant turtle would have followed. Did you want to have a family fight in front of that thing? And you saw that vid where the reporter got close to the big alien. I can see you yelling at Liam and that alien backhanding you into the middle of next week. There are all sorts of practical and even kind reasons why Liam would have stayed away. I mean, if he came here, reporters would have descended on us. What would happen if we lost one of our jobs or if we even lost a week of work because the reporters were interfering too much? Don’t assume he doesn’t care.”
“He didn’t even call. He didn’t leave one word for me.” Luke’s voice broke, and then he fell silent.
Dana said softly, “He gave you the money. He’s still thinking about you.”
“Or he feels guilty.”
“If he didn’t care about you, he wouldn’t feel guilty.”
Luke rubbed his hand over his face. “I hate it when you’re logical.”
“You worship logic,” Dana said. “And given that those turtles measure success through trade and profit, Liam’s willingness to give you part of his salary says a lot about how he feels.”
Luke stared at the wall over Dana’s shoulder. He stood silent for a long time before he threw out one last pathetic excuse. “Or he has more than he needs and doesn’t care about it.”
“Oh please. Who gives money away because they have enough? That’s not what people do.”
“I need to...” Luke was unable to finish his thought. He stood framed by the bathroom door, one hand fluttering like a broken scarecrow in the wind. Then he gathered his resolve, and he headed for the door. “I’ll be back.” He fled.
Dana was left alone in the tiny apartment. She sighed. So much fucking drama. If she ever pinned Liam down, she would give him several pieces of her mind, because Luke deserved better than he’d gotten from his family. And Liam might have been avoiding them because he knew that lecture was coming.
The vid-set still lay on the desk, the yellow pause button flashing. She picked it up and slipped it over her head. It was Luke’s set and the eyepiece was too low for her smaller head, but she could still see a distorted version of the documents the bank had forwarded. The first showed the automatic transfer. Damn. That money was every two weeks. Between the specialist pay and the officer pay, Liam was making a killing. For that much money, Dana might consider enlisting.
She flipped past a few more pages of legalese describing who the pay would go to if Luke refused it. Dana had grown up around the Munsons, but she didn’t know most of the names in the paperwork. She only recognized the other Munson siblings on one of the last pages. When the younger siblings reached their majority, Luke would share his percentage with them.
As guilt money went, it wasn’t bad. And as far as Dana was concerned, Liam owed his brother something for walking away without a word. Luke had suffered deeply. She hadn’t been close to Luke back then, but her brother had been friends with Liam.
She remembered Luke coming over every day. He would ask if Chak had gotten a vid or a letter from Liam. Luke had been so sure his big brother would send some sort of word home, to his best friend if not his family. Liam and Chak had been close once, but something had happened. Chak never explained what, but Chak had taken over where Liam had left off. He’d been the best brother he could be to Luke, but he couldn’t invent letters or vids that never came. Liam had cut everyone off.
Dana had asked Chak about it once. Her brother had suggested that things were harder for Liam than anyone knew. And Dana got it. Being poor and brilliant and stuck in a shitty school with all the responsibility for helping with little brothers and sisters—it was a lot. And Liam had been young, but no younger than Luke was now, and Luke never would have put himself ahead of his family. Sure, Luke was trying to claw his way to the top like everyone else, but he wanted to stay on Earth to make sure he could help his siblings when they aged out of the foster system. Hell, he’d have taken them now if the state allowed it.
Dana had gotten the better Munson brother. Maybe Liam’s slightly mercenary bent worked better when it came to making treaties with those aliens of his, but she would much rather have Luke, even with his occasionally overdeveloped sense of honor. There were more important things in the world than money, and Liam had missed out on that.
One day he might live to regret it.
Lost Words: The Unauthorized Biography of Liam Munson
Luke fingered his pad and considered pulling up the message and reading it again, but he knew he had the address right. He’d checked it often enough. But this meeting... talking to someone about Lieutenant Liam Munson the “War Hero” felt like betraying his family. He didn’t want to let go of his anger, no matter what Dana said or his mother would have said. His mother had always seen Liam as some sort of fucking saint. All the way to the end, she would never hear a word against her precious golden boy. Sometimes Luke wondered if that wasn’t because she had loved his father more than her next two husbands. He tried to avoid that sort of thinking because it would drive him insane. Then she’d died, all the kids had been scattered to the wind since their mother had lost all three husbands to Earth’s idiotic war.
Dana’s folks had taken him in, but they hadn’t had the money to support the younger children, so Luke had watched social workers come and pack one small sack with a few clothes and one toy per child and then cart off the rest of the Munson children. Where had the sainted Liam Munson been then? Where had he been when Luke had cried himself to sleep at their mother’s hospital bed? Where had he been at the funeral?
He’d been off the planet by then, but he’d been gone long before that. Luke had been really young—six or seven—when Liam had started spending weeks at a time away from the house. He’d pick Luke up after school and walk him home, only to vanish after. Or he’d be home for a few days before he vanished again.
Luke remembered a few fights and nights when their mother tried to hide her tears after Liam left—abandoned them again.
But Dana was right. Money was money, and if Luke wanted to finish school quickly and get on his financial feet well enough to take care of his younger brother and sisters when they timed out of state care, he needed every dime he could make. Now that he had an actual hope of keeping them all out of the draft, he had to take it.
He wouldn’t count on this latest peace holding, not when the Ribelians were insane zealots with a bad habit of bombing civilians.
“Luke Munson?” someone called.
Luke’s stomach dropped. The speaker was a middle-aged man in a uniform standing in the open door to the café. After all these years, the thought of talking to someone about Liam still made Luke feel unbalanced. He plastered on his best smile and stepped closer. “Lieutenant Spooner?”
The man held out his hand. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“You’re paying.” Luke’s discomfort grew as they walked into the social café together. Dozens of links waited for customers to plug in a computer and jump on the socnet, and on another day, Luke would’ve loved some free access. Today? Today, not so much. The café was largely empty, Luke felt exposed sitting next to this military man with his starched uniform. He chose a seat at a large table. That would ensure a little distance from Spooner. “You wanted to talk about my brother?”