Of Waves and War

3: his troubles still went on

Telemachus

My father is missing. My house is invaded. My mother depressed. And me? I am running short of ideas. That's not a thing that's done in my family. Yet here I am, near weeping tears of frustration.

By the time I finally leave my piano my fingers are sore and stiff, and my eyes heavy. Small price to pay for the ultimate satisfaction. Intensely irritating people I hate.

The thing is, we're rich. Or we're supposed to be. My family is old, old money, and with my father gone declared dead years ago, then my mother's hand in marriage is rather sought after. To that end, over a dozen gold diggers seek to win her hand. Interestingly enough, my mother loves my father even in his death and cares not for their attempts. Interestingly enough, they don't care in the slightest and are camped out in our house waiting for her to change her mind. If that seems like a weird sort of way to get to marry someone, that's because it is. Why can't we just evict them? Well, part of being old money is our home is actually a historical land mark sort of thing. Which means that certain areas, like the main hall which I have to walk through to get basically from one end of the house to the other, are public property. Which means they get to be where they like.

"Hey, T, come have breakfast with us," one of the suitors calls, as I try to slink past to the kitchens.

"NO! I have explained this to you but I do not like you and I will never, ever hang out with you," I growl.

"Could you not learn another song? Or practice at another time?" another asks, rubbing his head as he sits up in his sleeping bag.

"If you don't like it, leave," I snap, hurrying on my way. I find my mother in our kitchen, which is something of command central since it's one of our few private rooms. She's already making breakfast and feeding the dogs. Her skin is ashen, and she looks as though she hasn't slept.

"Morning, darling," she says, hugging me and kissing my hair.

"Morning," I say, going to help her with the dogs, still rubbing my hands.

"You know, I think we should reassess our plans to get rid of them—,"

"My plan is working fine," I growl.

"Because playing the same three depressing tunes on the piano at weird hours is upsetting the staff I've gotten eight complaints this week," she says, a little amused.

"Well, do you have a better idea?" I ask.

"Not yet, no," she says.

"Then we're doing this—until you can convince them somebody else in the family is dead how many more relatives do we have?" I ask.

"Not enough," she did keep them out by claiming she was making my not-dead grandfather's funeral shroud. Eventually they got pissed and now they've moved in and say they'll stay till she talks to them.

"That's the thing," I sigh, looking at our cork board. It's a proper board, got red string and everything. We've got mapped out on it everything we know about my dad's whereabouts. Which is nothing. The last we have is a newspaper clipping of when the wreckage of the ship he was on washed ashore. And rescuers searched everywhere. They found other dead men from his crew. But not him. I move my fingers over the last clipping. Then the picture of him my mother put there. It's one of the last ones she has of him. He's standing holding me aloft in front of him, studying me seriously but with the smallest of smiles on his face as he beholds his son and heir.

"He's not coming home, is he?" I ask, looking back at the articles. "He has to have drowned."

"This is your father, if he did drown he's having an extended card game with the god of death, he is definitely cheating, and he'll be home just as soon as he can," she says, coming up behind me and wrapping her arms around me, "All right?"

"I don't think even he can get out of this one," I sigh. And I'm sick of waiting around for him to save us. "I'm going to get rid of those men. Myself. I'm done with waiting for him to come home."

"Get rid of them if you can, but don't be done with waiting," she says, fussing with my curls before going back to breakfast, "He said he'd come back. And he's not broken a promise to me yet."

"It doesn't make sense though. Where is he all this time?" I sigh.