The Girl Underground

Chapter 12: What the Night Brings

        

Chapter 12: What the Night Brings

"So why a Magistrate?" Malia asked. The night was wearing on and their time was growing shorter and shorter, yet there was so much still left that she wanted to know about John, things they didn't speak about. They were risking so much just to be together, so the least they could do was make sure they knew one another well enough.

John took a moment before answering, mainly because, Malia suspected, he wasn't ready to answer such personal questions about himself. "Every town needs one. This duty fell on my shoulders, as it will the next man in line."

"And you accepted it as soon as it was offered?"

"It's an honor to be the local Magistrate," he said, running a hand gently over her leg. "It's a mark of your honor and status in the society."

Malia smiled. "You are a very honorable man without the title."

He chuckled. "Hardly... I admit I was shocked when I was asked to step up. My father's fortune had left my family in a very good way for a long time, and I was ready to settle down with..." He paused, "well..."

"Abigail," Malia finished for him, feeling the woman's name roll off in a hateful way from her tongue.

"Right," John cleared his throat and continued to stroke her leg. "Well, the Magistrate before me was your uncle, actually, Jonathan Raver. He served well before some sort of scandal regarding a murder case caused him to relinquish the title. He lives in Brighton now with his wife and... Three daughters, I believe."

Malia's eyebrows rose upon hearing that. "I didn't know I had an uncle... Or cousins, for that matter!"

"Really?"

She nodded. "My father never spoke of his family. Well, he never spoke of himself at all, actually. My mother was always so curious but whenever she asked him something, he would either deflect the question or dance around it, as if he had something to hide. I didn't make a point of asking him too much myself, mainly because for most of my life, I didn't really believe that he was my father."

John sat up and frowned at her. "Why not?"

"I was a little girl," Malia sighed. "I thought that I was the child of an Indian man and an Indian woman, and that was how it always was. I never once thought that a man and a woman from two different worlds could fall in love and have a child. It was all so new to me. Besides, my mother didn't really introduce me to my father until I was about five years old so, up until then, I never entertained the idea of having a father at all," she suddenly laughed. "I was small child then, but I remember every moment of the day I first met him. He was so shell shocked, we both were. 'She has my eyes!' he had said, and I do. Light brown... He was so happy. But I was so scared of the white-skinned man in that bold red coat, I thought he was there to take me away from my mother, as a lot of the British were doing. It took him years to get comfortable with me, and I with him, but by that time, he had saved Mr. Boatwright's life, and I was sent here."

"So you never really got to know him?"

She shook her head. "He's a stranger to me now as he was then, but he was my father, so I have to honor that."

"Yes," John took her hand in his and kissed it, looking into her eyes with a smile. "He was your father, Malia, and a good man. He was respected and loved in Lanfore, and his death was hard for many people here, myself included. If you ever need to remember your father as anything, remember him as that."

Malia could live with that. As it was, she had nothing else to go off of, and the idea of her father being a good person did make her feel better about never getting to know him.