5. Bird in Hand

My mother still saved fat in a little square made from aluminum foil that she kept by the stove.

World War Two had been over for decades. She had let every other relic of her rationing days fall by the wayside, but every time I went over to her house, there was that little foil square full of fat. Every couple of months, my older sister threw it away, only to see it replaced with new foil and ever ageing unused fat congealed inside of it.

It was exactly the sort of thing I'd been looking for in Cassie. Some sign. Some habit. Some tell that exposed what she had been through.

But I never noticed one.

She was different, obviously. More serious. More thoughtful. More determined. I knew the decisions she'd made. We'd spoken about a few of them and I knew she hadn't told us everything.

She had let Tom have the morphing cube. Defended Jake's decision to recruit handicapped soldiers. She had told us about the staggering beauty of the Leera oceans. The horror of Agincourt first hand. The wonder of flying. The terror of dinosaurs. The joy of seeing Aftran become a whale.

She had seen and done terrible things. She had fought. She had killed. She had nearly died countless times. She had changed.

But she was whole.

She had accomplished incredible things and accomplished more every day. She was a nineteen year old black woman in the Cabinet. She had a job she loved. A charming boyfriend that Walter and I were looking forward to having join our family.

She was happy.

And I kept thinking about that little aluminum square on the counter.

One Christmas, the Christmas just a few months before Jake and Marco disappeared, I finally asked my mother about this tiny mysterious square.

She laughed, and I could just tell she wasn't going to answer, but then, from the next room, Cassie laughed, loud and clear as a bell.

Mom paused, looked at me, and finally told me the story.

A black soldier's was expendable in world war two. Disposable, really. My father had been in Europe. Whenever that big black government car came in to the neighborhood, like a storm cloud rumbling through an almost peaceful day- every time- my mother had been cooking.

She would listen to the engine, hear it stop, but not hear her doorbell ring. She'd listen to the crackle of meat cooking, but was never interrupted with news of her husband's death. Other women's dinners were ruined. Other women's children cried. Other women collapsed in doorways. And every time, in the otherwise unbroken quite of her kitchen, she would hear that storm cloud car drive away and pour out the fat to save for the boys like they were supposed to.

It had become a talisman. A protection charm.

Cassie and Ronnie had come into the kitchen then, laughing, to refresh their drinks. My mother had smiled at them and made her way out to her chair in the living room.

And that's when I realized that maybe what I should have looked for in Cassie all those years was survivor's guilt. Rachel dead. Jake a mess. Tobias… god only knew what had happened to that poor boy. Red tail hawks have relatively short life spans. It was hard to imagine that he was still alive.

It was years before I realized that Cassie didn't have survivor's guilt.

But I did.

It was a strange time. The world changing more and more every day. The galaxy opening up. Everyone knew someone who had been infested. People with war wounds, talon scratched on their eyes, bite marks, blade marks, burn marks, were common in our part of the country. Everyone who had been less scathed than someone else was a survivor in their own way.

But I looked at Cassie, and then to Jean and Steve. Jake the Hero had haunted their home for years. Jean had once cried, telling me how she couldn't figure out how to help him, what to do, if he could even be fixed. Loren worried about Tobias, but he wasn't her child, not really. Eva was proud of Marco, but knew more than any of us could what this war had cost her son. He was successful, sure, but hearing how Eva and Cassie talked about him… was he happy? Naomi had run from Rachel's body like it had chased her away.

Cassie never actually told me that Jake and Marco had informed her they were running off to save Aximili, but I'd figured it out. Jake would never have left without telling her. And if they never came back, Cassie would tell Jean and Steve why. She would tell Eva and Peter there had been one more death without a body.

My baby girl would drive up in her own storm cloud car, the messenger, but not the dead.