Divine Misdemeanors

Chapter Thirty-eight

Once I threw up I was fine. I was apologetic about throwing up in the lab, but luckily the floor wasn’t actual evidence. Carmichael gave me a breath mint and we left. Rhys drove us home, and made arrangements to pick up the other car tomorrow. I was the only other person who could drive, and none of the men seemed to want me to do that. I guess I couldn’t blame them.

I leaned back in the passenger seat and said, “I thought I was supposed to get morning sickness, not evening sickness.”

“It differs from woman to woman,” Doyle said from the backseat.

“You knew someone who got evening sickness?” I asked.

“Yes” was all he said.

I turned in the seat and he was Darkness in the dark car, but the streetlights shone as Rhys drove. Frost was beside him, helping make the contrast even greater. Barinthus was on the far side and managed to make it clear that he didn’t want to be that near Frost.

“Who was she?” I asked.

“My wife,” he said, and looked out the window, not at me.

“You were married?”

“Yes.”

“And you had a child?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to them?”

“They died.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I had learned that Doyle had been married, had had a child, and had lost them both, and I hadn’t known any of that minutes before. I turned around in the seat and let the silence fill the car.

“Does it bother you?” Doyle asked quietly.

“I think so, but … How many of you have had wives and children before this?”

“All of us except for Frost, I think,” Rhys said.

“I had both,” Frost said.

“Rose,” I said.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“I didn’t know you had a child with her, though. What happened?”

“She died.”

“They all died,” Doyle said.

Barinthus spoke from the dimness of the backseat. “There are moments, Meredith, when being immortal and ageless is not a blessing.”

I thought about that. “As far as we know, I’m aging just a little less than humanly normal. I’m not immortal or ageless.”

“You were not immortal as a child,” Barinthus said, “but then you didn’t have hands of power as a child.”

“Are you all going to be sitting in some rocket-powered car a century from now telling our children about me?”

No one said anything, but Rhys took one hand off the wheel and laid it over mine. I guess there really wasn’t anything to say, or nothing comforting. I clung to Rhys’s hand, and he held it all the way home. Sometimes comfort isn’t about words.