“You are,” Eva said, with an intensity that surprised her, “way more than just a field medic.”
Pink chuckled. “I’m also more than a black woman, and a trans woman, and a daughter, and a sister, and a lot of other things. It’s nice to hear it from you, though.” She raised a hand, as if sensing Eva’s shift in position. “Don’t hug me. Let’s finish this meeting and get back to our own bullshits. My therapy appointment is today, and I definitely don’t want to miss it.”
“Right.” Eva inhaled and exhaled slowly as she gathered her thoughts, still extremely conscious of the fact that Vakar hadn’t said anything.
Before she could continue, Min interrupted. “Oh, Cap, you’re getting a call. On the emergency frequency. I think it’s your mom?”
A brief rush of hope flooded Eva’s veins. “Finally,” she said. “Maybe she’ll have something else we can work with.”
“Or something that confirms we should be going to Garilia after all,” Pink added.
“Right. Send it to my bunk.” She gently placed Mala on the floor and stood, finally looking over at Vakar.
He was staring at the table, now smelling like farts and acrid incense. Eva wanted to say something to him, to reach out and touch him, to beg him to touch her, but fear held her back and she swallowed the feelings threatening to choke her.
“We’ll continue this in a few minutes,” she said. “Stand by.”
This time, the call included visual, and Regina’s head and torso floated in front of the closet in Eva’s cabin, her face already fixed in a half-frown. Her mother sat in her kitchen, the yellow paint bright and cheerful, and Eva knew if the perspective shifted a bit to the left she would see the same white curtains covered in lemons that had hung there for over twenty years.
For her part, she hoped her mom wouldn’t notice she’d been crying.
“I haven’t been able to find anything else,” Regina said, after the barest of greetings. “Your friend’s brother seems to have stopped using their family’s account at some point after he reached Abelgard.”
Eva’s hope vanished like a fart on a breeze. “No te preocupes, Mamita,” Eva said. “I appreciate you checking, really. You’ve helped so much already.”
“Bueno, y ahora qué? Maybe you should try contacting the police, por si las moscas.”
“Ay, no, por favor.” Eva shook her head for emphasis. “We have one other lead we’re checking out, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.”
“And is there anything else I can do?” Regina asked.
Eva shrugged, giving her mom as kind a smile as she could manage after what she’d just been through in the mess.
“Nada, nada, limonada,” Eva replied. “I know you’ve got a new big-deal job, pero there’s only so much an auditor can do. Now it’s up to me and my crew and a whole lot of flying de aquí a Casa Carajo.”
Regina’s already-frowning expression grew more pinched, her eyebrows narrowing as her lips thinned. “Oye, Eva-Benita, escúchame bien. I don’t know if you think I’m a fool or what, but I looked up your friend. She’s a criminal, mija, and something suspicious is going on with everyone in that family.”
Mierda, mojón y porquería. Of course her mom wouldn’t just do what Eva had asked. She’d always been such a metiche. Eva could feel her anger rising despite how exhausted she was, or perhaps because of it.
“Sue is my engineer and I trust her,” Eva said. “She’s a good person, and I—”
“Good people don’t rob banks,” Regina snapped. “Did she tell you about that?”
“Yes, Mami, she did.” Eva resisted the urge to flop backward onto her bed, instead sitting up straighter and staring directly at her mother’s eyes. “She had her reasons, and she—”
“Ay, no me diga, reasons,” Regina said scornfully. “Your father had all the reasons for doing what he did, y mira lo que pasó. And you, going off to work for him, and ending up doing who knows what.” She reached for something, which turned out to be a glass that Eva assumed was a gin and tonic. Her mom was nothing if not consistent, and Eva knew then that any further argument would be pointless.
Not that it would stop Eva, because she was as stubborn as a goat.
“I should never have let you go with that cabrón sinvergüenza,” Regina continued, after sipping her drink. “I should have stopped you before you ruined your life.”
“My life isn’t ruined,” Eva said, though after telling the story of Garilia in the mess, part of her wasn’t entirely on board with that assessment. “Anyway, this is nothing like that. And I’m a grown woman; I can make my own life choices. No fastidies tanto.”
“You’re the one who asked me to help!” Regina shouted.
“Fine, coño, gracias y adiós!” Eva shouted back.
“Espérate,” Regina said, raising the hand holding the drink to stop Eva before she could disconnect the call. “I don’t know where you’re going, pero I’m leaving on a business trip. Así que, if you need anything else from me—”
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Eva snapped.
“Fine. Jódete, malcriada. Que te vaya bien.” And with that, the holovid vanished, leaving Eva to stare at her closet and fume in silence.
This was why she and her mother had never gotten along. They always fed into each other’s anger, like they were a pair of incendiary devices, both simultaneously starting fires and getting set off by them. And they each knew how to push the other’s buttons, knew exactly what to say and how to say it for maximum damage.
And after all that, they still had to go to Garilia. Eva wilted as the rage drained out of her, and she allowed herself to flop back into the bed and stare at the ceiling.
A quiet knock interrupted her thoughts. She opened the door with a mental command, and there stood Vakar, smelling like a cloud of anxiety and remorse.
“We must talk,” he said.
Eva suddenly, strongly, wished she had a drink of her own. “Of course. Okay. Come in.”
He stepped inside and the door closed behind him. Eva waited quietly, nervously, wondering if he could smell the vinegary sweat she was probably covered in. As usual, she broke down first.
“I’m sorry I didn’t—”
“This is not about Garilia,” he said. “I have received communications from my superiors. They are reassigning me.”
Eva’s stomach flipped as if the ship’s gravity had stopped working. Her mouth opened and closed like the fish’s in the tank behind her. They’d talked about the possibility before, but to have it happen now, of all times . . . She had hoped that, maybe, even knowing what she had done on Garilia, that they could still . . . That nothing would change. But she’d always been good at lying to herself, better even than lying to other people. This was one more example of how lying was a shitty option and created more problems than it solved.
And yet if you had kept lying, maybe he wouldn’t be leaving, she thought.
No, that was bullshit. It would have come up eventually, and then what? This, but later, and worse.