Chapter 28:
AUNT PETRA WASN’T HOME yet, which was good. If Lithia could pack up quick enough, maybe she could be gone before anyone noticed. She had already made her decision. She could just leave a note. In fact, she had made her decision to help Tarja’s friend during their conversation. Telling them she’d let them know by the end of the day was her way of remaining in control of the situation.
Cade was crafty with his offer, but she wasn’t about to let him start calling the shots. After all, they’d be flying her ship, and it was going to have long-term effects in her life.
Lithia walked past Bobby’s bedroom. Bobby was awake, or at least she assumed, judging from the heavy bass from his sound system that was rocking through the wall. Lithia dug through her closet, throwing clothes into a suitcase.
She had had her pilot’s license for a couple months now. And had taken her ship on a few short runs just to make sure it was still running right but hadn’t decided what to do with it. Her father had taught her how to fly when she was a teenager. She checked up on it semi regularly and even spent a night or two in it, sneaking into the Magdalenes’ vault, just to reminisce but oftentimes, the memories of family outings were still entombed on board and too painful to bear.
Reaching up to a top shelf, she dug through the back of the closet, excavating. She was looking for something in particular—a framed picture. One she had buried up there years ago, in hopes of locking away the memories and emotions held within the image. A picture of Lithia, Bobby, Mom, and Dad. Bobby wasn’t much older than five or six when the picture was taken, which meant Lithia was ten or eleven. Mom and Dad looked so happy. They didn’t wear the fake small smiles most parents did in family photos. Theirs were genuine. So were Lithia’s and Bobby’s. The type of innocent smiles from a time before life had gone off into this terrible parallel world. Lithia couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled that widely. She buried this picture, like she had the anguish of her parents’ deaths, but something was different now. Maybe it was because she was about to try to carry on her father’s legacy. Maybe it was because she was about to fulfill her Venusian heritage. She packed the picture in between a couple jackets in her suitcase.
The bass thundering from Bobby’s room morphed into the full echo of music as he opened his bedroom door, making his way down to the kitchen for his normal morning refrigerator raid so Lithia followed bobby downstairs.
“Oh, hey! I didn’t know anyone was up. The house is so quiet,” he said.
“Your music could wake the dead.” Lithia replied.
“Yup…”
“Hey. I gotta tell you something.”
Bobby eyed the suitcase Lithia wheeled into the kitchen, “Where… Where are you going?” he asked with a startled expression on his face.
“Bobby, look… I gotta go away somewhere for a little while, but when I get back, things are going to be different. A lot different.”
“What? Where are you going! How long are you gonna be gone?”
“If I don’t tell you anything, then you won’t have to lie.”
“I lie all the time. I’m a lie-a-holic.”
“It’s complicated.”
“How complicated can it be? I can’t believe you’re just gonna disappear. How long are you gonna be gone? Aunt Petra is going to be so mad.” he fired at her in rapid succession.
“About a month and a half.” she replied.
“You’re going to leave me here alone with Petra and her lap dog for a month and a half? When she finds out you’ve temporarily run away, guess whose balls are going in the salad shooter?”
“I know, Bobby, I know,” she tried to empathized, “but you gotta just believe me when I say I’m doing this for both of us. For our own good.”
“Doing what? Do you really think she’s just going to take you back and act like nothing happened? If anything she’s going to use it as the excuse she needs to keep you out.!”
“Calm down… I’d tell you where I was going if I could.”
There was a short pause. Lithia could see Bobby’s eyes pondering. “You’re going on the journey aren’t you?” Lithia’s hesitation to answer was all the confirmation Bobby needed. “I see… You’re taking the ship somewhere.”
“Listen, somebody has offered me a lot of money to take them somewhere. Enough money that when I get back, things will be very different.”
“Well, I’m glad things will be different for you.”
“There’s more going on here! I can’t explain you’ll just have to believe me.” Lithia couldn’t risk telling him the truth. She couldn’t risk getting his hopes up, or worse, Aunt Petra finding out.
“When I get back things are going to be a lot better. You just have to trust me, okay?”
Bobby scowled with adolescent melancholy, relenting to her plea. The next month and a half was going to be excruciating for him, and both of them knew it.
“So when Petra flips out on my ass, what am I supposed to tell her?”
“Tell her everything I just told you.”
“You haven’t told me anything.”
“Exactly.”
Bobby just stood there, clearly not knowing what to say. Of course he wanted his big sister to go on her journey, Lithia knew that. Their parents had talked about it all of their lives. The journey each Venusian was supposed to make out to some place in the cosmos as a spiritually enlightening trek.
“I mean… How can you just up and leave all of a sudden?” he said, playing with his bracelet.
Lithia didn’t know what else to say so she stepped forward and gave her little brother a hug, “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Mom and Dad would be so proud of you...” Bobby’s said, the remark struck a tear in Lithia’s heart that boiled up to her eyes, “But for the record, I’m still not happy about this.”
Lithia nodded, not really knowing what else to say.
“When are you leaving?” Bobby asked with a curious expression on his face.
“I need to talk to someone at the church, and then I’m off.” Lithia said; “You’ve got to trust that I’m doing this for both of us.”
“I do.” he said.
Lithia grabbed her suitcase and left the room trying not to look back over her shoulder, but as she stood in front of the house that had been her home for the better part of the last ten years, she began to wonder. She had promised Bobby she was coming back, and he had told her that he thought their parents would have been proud of her, but at this moment as she was leaving her brother behind with their aunt and uncle she wondered if either of those things were actually true.
...
Lithia walked through the labyrinthine gardens of Grace Cathedral. She was looking for Vijay, Tarja had said the other gardeners had basically adopted him so he had to be around here some place. She knew she could have called out for him, that even if he hadn’t heard her someone else would have and sent him in her direction, but Lithia wanted to walk the labyrinth one last time before she left. The walk was soothing, it allowed her to focus less on all the thoughts that were spinning through her head, and just be for a moment.
The calm of the Labyrinth was short lived though, because as Lithia turned a corner and saw him knelt down in a bed of clovers everything came flashing back.
Lithia had been thinking about what she was going to say in this moment, she was sure she needed to speak to Vijay once more before she left. She hadn’t wanted to leave while so many things were still unsaid but standing here watching him work Lithia couldn’t speak. A big part of Lithia wanted to turn and walk away without saying anything, without him even knowing she had been there but her legs seemed to be as frozen as her lips so she simply stood there silently.
Lithia just watched him work. Vijay had a trowel in one hand and a small watering can in the other and while he was clearly no expert at the work he was doing it was still clearly work that suited him. Vijay seemed content and that was something Lithia had never expected to see in him, how could she spoil that. She knew she should just go, walk away and let him be happy here, but she couldn’t make herself move.
“You going to stand there all day?” Vijay didn’t turn around so Lithia couldn’t see his face but she knew he was smiling. She could hear it in his voice, she could hear so many things in his voice.
“Vijay…” Lithia started but then stopped.
“Yeah?” He asked.
“I’m not going to be around for a while.” This wasn’t what Lithia wanted to say, she wanted to tell him she cared about him, that she loved him, but not the way he seemed to want, she wanted to tell him that she hoped he’d be happy but none of that seemed to want to come out.
“Yeah Tarja said, Didn’t say anything more than that though. Made the whole thing feel very hush hush.” Vijay said.
“It kind of is. I wish I could tell you what was going on.” Lithia said, and again it was not what she wanted to be saying.
“I know.” Vijay said.
“Vijay... I… Want… to…” Lithia started, and it was a battle to get out every word.
“Lithia, I know what you’re going to say. I’ve been running this conversation through my head since we last talked. You’re going to tell me that you do care about me, right?” Vijay said and Lithia nodded “Then you’re going to tell me something like, we’re from two different worlds. Then you’re going to say that you do love me, but that you’re not in love with me or something like that.”
All lithia could do was nod, Vijay seemed to know everything she wanted to say but couldn’t.
“Yeah I thought so.” Vijay said and the sound of heartbreak was clear in his voice.
“Vijay, I’m…” Lithia started before Vijay cut her off, “Listen, I know you are. I know part of you wishes it could be different. I know you can’t help feeling how you do. Right now though, I can’t hear it. I know what you are going to say and that’s bad enough, please don’t actually say the words.”
Vijay said, and lithia could hear the pain, she knew he had to be close to tears, and that was probably the reason he hadn’t turned around when he realized she was standing there.
“I am coming back, it’s going to be a few months, but I am coming back. maybe when I do…”
“Don’t, Lithia don’t. Don’t tell me you’ll come back and we’ll talk, don’t tell me something about no one knowing what the future is going to hold. Lithia I love you, I’ve loved you for years and maybe in time I can get over that but what what’s between us isn’t going to magically get better after two months.”
“I’m sorry.” Lithia said, knowing it wasn’t enough but knowing it was the only thing she had.
“Lithia I’m going to ask you something I’ve never asked you before. Please just walk away. I’m going to be ok, but right now I’m not and I don’t want you to see that.”
Lithia felt stunned, she hadn’t known exactly how things were going to go, but she hadn’t expected this. She wanted to reach out to Vijay, do something to let him know how she felt, and that things would be ok.
“I don’t hear you walking away.” Vijay said and Lithia knew it was the right thing to do, there was nothing more she could do here, and she needed to leave Vijay to handle things on his own.
Lithia’s walk back through the labyrinth wasn’t nearly as peaceful, as her walk into it. Every plant she passed seemed to be standing in judgment of her, everything seemed to be telling her that this wasn’t her place anymore and it was true, she was leaving, only for a few months but she was still leaving. Vijay on the other hand had no where else to go.
Lithia stood outside the labyrinth and just looked at it, somehow knowing that she was leaving this place behind triggered in her pangs that leaving the house in the Upper City never had.