“It was just a dream,” said Kim.
Braden threw his arms around his father.
“You were leaving me,” he said.
Kneeling beside the bed and grateful for the cool of the wood floor against her legs, Val put her arms around the two of them.
“We won’t ever leave you,” she said.
“You said that if you left me in the woods,” said Braden, “I wouldn’t be able to hurt anybody anymore.”
“You don’t hurt people,” said Kim.
Braden let go of his father and leaned back against the wooden headboard. He rubbed his eyes and looked down at his comforter.
He was nearly twelve, but just now he looked as small to Val as he had as a toddler. And yet his face looked older than his age. It was his narrow eyes and the way his mouth was firmly set, like someone who knew he had to do something that was going to hurt and was just working up the will to do it.
Val guarded her thoughts. She could never tell when he could hear her thinking. When she was emotional, she was likely to think something that would upset him.
“I made you see my dream again,” he said.
“I saw the men,” said Val. She gripped his calf through the comforter. “Nobody like that is coming here. I promise.”
“You don’t know that,” he said.
No, she didn’t. Just a week ago, the news couldn’t shut up about police and DRS agents smashing down the door of a Virginia home accusing a woman of raising an illegally conceived child. She did have a daughter, but the girl had been conceived and gestated legally at a reproduction facility in Langley.
The boy stared at her. His eyes seemed to say, See?
“Don’t do that,” she said. For a moment she felt angry, tired of having to guard her mind. All parents had to be careful with their words, but she and Kim had to be careful of their thoughts. In the middle of the night when you’ve just been threatened by a SWAT team from your son’s nightmare, it was almost maddening.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I can’t help it.”
“I know,” said Val. She grasped his hand. It was cold. “I’m the one who should be sorry. You’re right. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. What I can promise you is that if anybody like that did come here, your daddy and I would kill them. Nobody is ever going to take you—”
But Braden was shaking his head.
“What is it?” said Kim.
“I don’t want you to be killers. Heroes don’t kill. You told me that, Dad.”
In her mind, Val saw the face of the Iranian woman, the one with the bombs hidden under her burqa and the terrified girl with a dirty face by her side. One bullet had put the woman down, and the girl had spat on Val’s uniform for saving her life.
“Good people do what they have to do to,” said Val, more sternly than she meant to.
Kim put his hand on her back as if to calm her down, but she wasn’t going to give in on this.
“They’re the ones,” she said, pointing outside the house to some unseen enemy. “They’re attacking American families on American soil. They’re the ones terrorizing people in their own homes. Not to protect anyone, not to save lives, but because the government told them to.” She grasped Braden’s forearm, willing him to understand, to read her mind and feel her feelings so he could understand her anger. “We are just a family. I’m just a mother protecting her family. He’s just a father who risks everything. We will do whatever it takes to protect you.”
Braden had his eyes closed and his head down. His messy brown hair, rounded ears, and strong jaw all came from her father’s people. Even though he had clearly inherited much of his looks from his Japanese father, Val’s family heritage hadn’t been lost in him. She could see her favorite uncle every time she looked at him, a great uncle who had been old before “Safe Reproductive Practices” had become the law. At eighty-five, that uncle and his wife had stood outside the U.S. Supreme Court in freezing weather to protest the ruling on the Susan Wade Act and had been attacked by counter protesters. He died a year later, followed quickly by his wife.
“I’m sorry you ever had me,” said Braden.
This hit Val like an elbow to her solar plexus. For a moment she didn’t breathe.
“You don’t mean that,” said Kim. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to us.”
Braden looked at them, his eyes wet with angry tears. “You wouldn’t have to do this if not for me! You could live how you want if not for me!”
“Don’t do that,” said Val, her heart beginning to pound again. We’re terrible people for doing this, she thought before she could stop herself. Making him live this way.
“How do you think we want to live?” said Kim.
“You could live near work instead of having to drive a long way!” said the boy, his body trembling now. “You could have a job at a better hospital. You could get the awards you want to win.”
Kim rubbed his face with his hands. “Son...”
But Braden turned to Val. “You could have a job instead of being stuck here with me all the time!”
Val couldn’t stop herself from thinking about her first miscarriage after Kim had removed her contraceptive implant. There had been a lot of blood and cramping—worse than any period she’d ever had. She could still see the baby, small enough to rest comfortably in the palm of her hand. There had been five more miscarriages before she finally carried Braden to term. Kim said they were caused by residual effects of the implant. Sometimes Val thought she could kill every last person who had forced those implants on women.
She took a deep breath. She couldn’t let herself be angry at him.
“You might be able to hear people’s thoughts, but you don’t see everything,” she said. “Yes, there are things that I wanted to do with my life when I was younger. I wanted to be a commercial pilot like my Uncle Red. I wanted to teach hapkido. And I’ll never do those things. I chose this instead.”
Braden stared back at her, almost defiant. It was a look that said, I know when you’re lying to me. Or worse, I know when you’re lying to yourself.
“That’s what love is,” said Val, still thinking of the dead baby. “Choosing.”
Braden’s hands were in his lap, clasped together so tightly they were turning white. “What about Asa?”
Val’s throat tightened. Kim’s leg, which had been pressed against her forearm on the bed, also tensed.
Val couldn’t speak.
“What about him?” said Kim.
But Braden only gazed at Val, his face stricken, his eyes wide.
She looked back at her son, trying to remember the last time she had thought of Asa... and what she had thought about him. It had been months. A year, even.
How dare you? she thought, hoping Braden would hear it.
He didn’t speak, but suddenly his face slackened a little, and a tear dripped down his cheek. She tried to remind herself what life was like for him. But this was too much.