Profession

Contemplation

Jon was similarly bemused when he got home later and I recapped, snuggling up to him on a sofa in the game room. "I can't say I know her much," he said, grinning at me and stroking my cheek. "At the family events for heroes, I was focused on you." I blushed with pleasure; it wasn't often that people had bypassed my prettier, more social sister for me. "But this seems pretty uncharacteristic from what I know of her."

"I agree, actually. She seemed really humbled, which is NOT a trait of hers."

"She say what brought this all on?"

"Motherhood, apparently. They want to have a large family, four girls, one every year. She doesn't want her kids to be tainted by the splashback of people's opinions of her.  Or embarrassed by her or for her. So it's a really good time to try to clean up her reputation, before her daughters get old enough to pick up on... irregularities in how people treat her."

"She's going to be pregnant for four years?" He was astonished.

"No, no, she knows that it would be terrible for her body. They're using the artificial gestation chambers. She wants her daughters to be close and supportive of each other."

"That's... something. Honey, what do you want to do about her apology?"

"Well, nothing right off the bat. I'm just all astonished that A) she made one, B) it sounds sincere, and C) her therapy is astonishingly effective. I wonder who she's seeing? Because Dr Lance said she wouldn't treat her again. I'm going to let it sit awhile and ponder. But there's a lot of misdeeds to weigh against the apology." I felt his lips curve into a smile when he pressed a kiss on my head.

"I think that's wise, Lys. And if I know you, you'll be fact-checking her story." I laughed.

"You know me too well, my darling. If she really is going on a global apology tour, I won't even have to seek out information. People will come to me."

And so it proved. It wasn't two days until Iris called, completely flabbergasted. I went to her office at the Valkyrie building. "What's up?" I asked casually, setting my mocha on the corner of the desk and offering a bag with a sugar cookie from Grandma Rose's coffee shop to her. I had once for myself.

"You could have knocked me over if you blew on me hard," she said, still addled. "I heard from Deri. She apologized, no conditions, for being such a bitch about her wedding, her transgressions toward me from birth, basically." I sipped my coffee demurely. "Lys! You rat! You knew?" She threw an eraser at me which I easily dodged.

"I saw her a few days ago. She had a full and unreserved apology for me, gave me some things to think about too."

"Huh." She pondered this as she broke off a piece of cookie. "Maybe she's going down a list in order of severity of her crimes against decency." I laughed, and she laughed too. "So what did she say?"

"Well, after the apology and the reasons for it, she gave me her side of Growing Up Wayne." The smile faded. "I didn't realize that I'd been withholding toward her. I thought she'd ask if she wanted something from me, when she didn't, I concluded--erroneously, apparently--that she didn't want a closer relationship. We banded together when we needed to against the parents, but I thought that was it. I didn't reach out, she didn't either."

"Not surprising, given what it must have been like with your parents. And you were really... meek. Back then. Your parents brought you up to observe the forms of a relationship but not really engage in one. It's kind of a miracle that either of you managed to bond to somebody enough to marry them, if you don't mind me saying."

"I don't, you're right. It was really hard to learn to let Jon in. I did think that she wouldn't love Grant as much as he loves her, but I might just be wrong about that." I shook my head. "It's so weird to think that she's not the black hole that I thought she was." We burst out laughing. Eira padded by, so it wasn't surprising to see Grandma Alex in the doorway a few minutes later as we were getting a grip on our gales of laughter. I love all my friends, but it has to be said that there's nothing like somebody you grew up with who's always known your dirty laundry. Family.

"This is lovely," Grandma said, observing us. I let out a final few chuckles and dabbed my eyes. "What's the joke, if I may ask, girls?" Iris and I glanced at each other.

"Oh, this and that, dumb stuff. Trading stories. She couldn't say much about the hearing, but what she did was droll." Grandma would find out about the apology tour the same way we did. She sat down in the other chair and I recounted the little I could say, thinking ahead of time in order to try to put a funny spin on it that provoked a laugh here and there.

Word got around the family as Derinoe made good on her intentions and contacted pretty much everybody, apologizing for transgressions large and small. All of the cousins called me after they'd heard from her, astonished to varying degrees, but I had a hard time tracking the older generation. Predictably, I heard about that group of apologies from Uncle Tony, who'd been kind of frosty with her, but had accepted her apology. He'd heard about the apologies from Grandpa Damian and Uncle Steve, who'd discussed it on a retired superhero guy's night out. Uncle Steve had been bemused that she'd apologized for being such a diva, as he called it, over her dress and issued a proper thank you for all the work he'd done for her. We chewed this over, him not pressing me about my own stop on her apology tour, then went on to business. We were ready to open our structures in Persia. Z had contacts in the empire because her mom's family was there and they knew everything. She put me in touch with an event coordinator that she said was top-flight, and Uncle Tony and I used him to put together parties for our facilities. I loved move-in days, when my residences were opened to my tenants for the first time, and wanted to be there. Uncle Tony generously planned the opening celebration of his facility until the day after, so I could attend too. We'd get this done just before Jon and our guests and I took our little cruise on the yacht.

A completely unexpected side-effect of the hearing in the UK was that I started getting inquiries for portraits around the world, important people in business and government. The aide to the Tsarina who'd contacted me said delicately that although the hearing's findings weren't publicized, it was known that I'd absolutely refused to spy for anybody, and the publicity had made me useless as an asset anyway. Knowing that I refused to have an ulterior motive for accepting possibly sensitive commissions made people more likely to inquire. I could understand that reasoning, and I booked several portrait sessions in Russia for the ruling Tsarina, two of the Grand Dukes, some of the banking elite in Switzerland, and the Crown Prince in Japan. I turned down a request for the Party Chairman in China, because things were very tense there; it looked like a civil war was in the offing as a would-be emperor was challenging the rule of Communism. I didn't need to get caught up in that, and I was able to truthfully say that I was booked for the time they wanted me.

After that, I made myself comfortable in my office and placed a long-distance call to the UK. It took some time, and surprisingly didn't involve me leaving a message, but ultimately, Diana's face filled my screen. She was strained looking and drawn, not surprisingly, really, but she smiled tentatively when she saw me. There were apologies on both sides, immediately accepted, then we left all that behind us. She was in the last days of her pregnancy and was desperate to get it over with. While the morning sickness had gone away, she'd had high blood pressure that worried her doctor and false labor a couple of times in the last week. She was very uncomfortable and sick of not being able to see her feet unless she was sitting. The call was fairly short, but I felt a lot better after we hung up.

I dialed another number. "If you'd like the company, I'll go with you to the island," I told Derinoe when she picked up her communicator. I'd had to get her number from Iris; after the wedding disaster, I'd deleted it from my devices, and I'd never learned it to begin with.

"What brought this on?" she asked cautiously.

"I remember that the last time we went there together, when I was in high school, you stuck up for me when the visit got shitty, even though they were pleased with you. I'm still thinking about everything else, but I really did appreciate that, and it won't be easy for you to go alone. But maybe you'd planned to go with Diana instead." She sighed.

"I haven't brought it up with her," she said. "I've been putting it off. I don't really want to go, the queen will probably rip strips off me, not without reason, but I'm just not looking forward to it. But if you're willing to go with me, that changes things." She paused. "And frankly, I just don't want to hear it from Mom yet. 'I told you so.' I know that I owe apologies, and fortunately everybody's been willing to take my calls even if they haven't forgiven me or are thinking about it, but it's hard to eat even well-deserved crow and I don't need more from her."

I nodded, completely understanding this, and we agreed to go in August, after I got back from my yachting trip.

So there was that.