With a nod, Libby began to shovel. “Cal?”
“Hmm?” He was giving serious consideration to a nice, lazy nap.
“The questions I asked before, those were the big ones, the sweeping ones. I wondered if I could ask you something more personal.”
“Probably.”
“Would you tell me about your family?”
“What would you like to know?”
“Who they are, what they’re like.” She tossed dirt into the hole in a steady rhythm that Cal enjoyed. “I’d like to imagine I knew them a little.”
“My father’s a research and development technician. Lab work, all indoors and confining. He’s very dedicated, dependable. At home he likes to garden, plants flowers from seed and works them all by hand.”
As he drew in the scent of the freshly turned earth that Libby worked, Cal could almost see his father cultivating his garden.
“Sometimes he paints. Really,reallybad landscapes and still lifes. He even knows they’re bad, but he claims art doesn’t have to be good to be art. He’s always threatening to hang one of them in the house. He’s... I don’t know, steady. I doubt I’ve heard him raise his voice more than a dozen times in my life. But you listen to him. He’s like the adhesive that kept the family centered.”
He stretched out on the grass to watch the sky as he continued. “My mother is... what was that term you used once? Wired? She’s packed with energy and a blazing intellect that’s almost scary. She intimidates a lot of people. She’s always amused by that. I guess because inside she’s soft as butter. She raised her voice plenty, but she always felt guilty about it. Jacob and I gave her a hell of a time.
“In her free time she likes to read—flashy novels or impossibly technical books. She’s chief counsel for the United Ministry of Nations, so she’s always poring over some six-inch pile of legal documents.”
“The United Ministry of Nations?”
“I guess you’d call it an extension of the UN. It had to be expanded in... hell, I don’t know when. I think it was expanded because of the colonies and settlements.”
“It sounds like a very prestigious position.” Libby discovered she was already intimidated.
“Yes. She thrives on it. On the work and the worry. She’s got a great laugh—one of those big fill-the-room kind of laughs. They met in Dublin. She was practicing law there, and my father went over for a vacation. They matched and ended up in Philadelphia.”
Libby tamped down the dirt. It had been impossible not to hear the affection in his voice, impossible not to understand it. “What about your brother?”
“Jacob. He’s... intense is a good word. He gets his brain from my mother, and his temperament, she claims, from her grandfather. You’re never quite sure with J.T. whether he’s going to grin at you or throw a punch. He studied law and then, when he’d had his fill of it, dived into astrophysics. He collects problems so that he can pick them apart. He’s a son of a bitch,” Cal said affectionately, “but he has my father’s unswerving, immeasurable sense of loyalty.”
“Do you like them?” When Cal looked up, she elaborated. “What I mean is, most people love their family, but they aren’t necessarily friends with them. I wondered if you liked them.”
“Yes, I do.” He watched as she strapped the shovel back on the cycle. “They’d like you.”
“I could meet them if you took me with you.” She bit her lip the moment the words were out. She couldn’t turn around to look at him. She couldn’t have said just when the thought had hatched in her mind.
“Libby—” He was up and standing behind her, his hands hovering over her shoulders.
“I’ve studied the past,” she said quickly, turning and gripping his forearms. “If you let me come with you, it would give me the chance to study the future.”
He framed her face with his hands. There was a glint of tears in her eyes. “And your family?”
“They’d understand. I’d leave them a letter, try to explain.”
“They’d never believe you,” he said quietly. “They’d spend years looking for you, wondering if you were still alive. Libby, can’t you see that’s what’s tearing me apart about my own? They don’t know where I am or what’s happened to me. I know by now they’re waiting to hear if I’m dead or alive.”
“I’ll make them understand.” She heard the desperation in her own voice and fought to steady it. “If they know I’m happy, that I’m doing what I want to do, they’ll be satisfied with that.”
“Maybe. Yes, if they were sure. But I can’t take you, Libby.”
She made her hands drop away and stepped back. “No, of course not. I don’t know what I was thinking of. I got caught up—”
“Damn it, don’t.” Grabbing her arms, he hauled her against him. “Don’t think I don’t want you, because I do. It’s not a choice of right or wrong, Libby. If I could be sure, if there were no risks involved, I might toss you on the damn ship whether you wanted to go with me or not.”