Our Mother the Mountain

48. The Call of the Wild

Chapter Text

Ethan's Journal

January 28

I think it happened again last night. I THINK I dreamed about Karl.

I can't remember, unfortunately. Everything faded when I woke up.

I've given up on sleeping in my bedroom anyway. I sleep in the office now.

I can't do my "daily routine" when I dread sleeping in our room. Just like I couldn't do anything before putting those curtains over the dining room doors so I can't see the garden. Eva asked if I was this way when Mia went missing. But the thing is, I never thought Mia died. Everything is different.

Chris is getting impatient for us to use the crystal and get rid of our powers (if that's how that works.) I know he says it's for our own safety but I can't help feeling like he sees us all as a bunch of freaks that he doesn't want to babysit from bioweapons dealers.

If it were up to me I'd have done it already, I don't care. I'm not the reason for the delay. The others....well, they talk a lot. Eva, Jochen mostly, but also Donna and Moreau. I don't know what they're talking about. I don't try to eavesdrop either. I tried to ask Eva once about if she wanted to get rid of her powers and she said we "couldn't bring people back." I told her that it was stupid to hold out hope for Karl, but she and Jochen just looked at each other. I guess for the millionth time I'm left out of the loop. As long as they don't bring back Miranda I don't care what they want to use their powers for. Maybe Jochen is in more denial than me, who knows.

Earlier when Chris called me he was asking again about the girls. I know I need to consider school, at least for Evie. I just don't know how she would handle other people, especially when she could still have lots of powers-same goes for Rose. The others don't see the big deal about school, but they were all in one way or another raised by Miranda. I'm not sure how to feel.

We've been learning here at the house though and she is super smart (to no one's surprise.) She enjoys reading a lot. I bought her a bunch of shorter books for her to read on her own and that's all she does most of the day if the weather's bad. We read the classics for bedtime. She doesn't like the romance stories-we read Great Expectations and she was bored the whole time, same with Phantom of the Opera-but she likes the adventure stories. The Secret Garden, Oliver Twist, and Captains Courageous were all big hits. Tonight we'll finish up Call of the Wild, which is good, because that book depresses me.

Ethan chewed on his pencil for a moment, listening to the rain hitting the large windows of his office. He'd become a recluse here in the weeks after everyone went home. There were no windows that faced the rear of the house, and no way to view the northwest part of the valley where the remnants of the power station sat. One of the windows, the largest, had a built-in, cushioned window seat meant for reading or reclining. It had become Ethan's bed. He stared at it now, wistfully, thinking of the back pain he'd sustained last night. The seat was half the width of a twin bed; it was miserable.

He pondered Chris and his offer yet again. Dorothy had maintained after she left that she supported Ethan's decision no matter what. If he moved back to America, she would move wherever he was at, to help him with the girls. Chris had been supportive in ways Ethan hadn't anticipated, helping Dorothy find a place closer to Zoe and Joe, and calling in favors like having a network tower installed near the valley location so that Ethan and the others were 'on the grid.' Last week he even had an order of American groceries shipped to the house on the hill, calling it a late New Year's present.