It took a while, but Elias woke up and began speaking. We took Sim to see him, to test what the Dandelion Knight had done. When Elias laid eyes on Sim, he blubbered like a child, so sick at himself he couldn't even name his crimes to apologize.
Aimée was not so lucky. There was a will drawn up, though, at least.
And I've slipped into past tense because I'm back in the present—that was how the whole sorry thing ended. Sim grew up; by that time we'd bought out some members of the board, so he reached his majority with a controlling interest in Greyking Books, and he's made canny use of it since. I raised him in the ways I could, hired help to raise him in the other ways, and kept the Leblanc finances on more or less an even keel until Sim could claim them. Elias, fucked up as it sounds, stayed on to help until he died. He was free of his compulsion, and Sim grew in time to trust him like Aimée had when she was little, before she learned what he was and what he wanted. And as far as I know, none of the three of us ever put a dandelion out on our windowsill again—or, if we did, the call was never answered.
YOU ARE READING
Dispatch from a Colored Room
Science FictionPel has a story to tell. There's the girl who grew up destitute, addicted, single mother to a son she can't protect; the father who left the family, then disappeared; the old family friend, angel and demon both; the Dandelion Knight. But why tell it...
