All the Space Between Us (A Deathless Series Story)

Episode Twenty: Sisters and Brothers

"We will all face the judgment of our actions one day. Our old misdeeds won't ever leave us."
-Alexander Ovis

ESTHER

Just like in the olden days, Kayleigh Winter has the right to a fair and speedy trial, so now that my family and the other representatives from Hicksmon are here, the World Alliance has scheduled Kay's trial to take place two days from today.

I sit atop an orange rock and look out over Jordan as the sunsets. I'm doing the thing where you sit in a place, looking contemplative, and wait for the person you want to come and talk to you to show up already. I'm waiting for Milo. I want to see what, if anything, can be salvaged here. But then Isla comes up behind me and sits on an adjacent rock.

"I forgot how pretty it is here," she says. I don't respond to her attempt at small talk. "You must really hate us to have run away the way you did, and I get it. I totally get it. I knew the whole time, we all did—about you at least—, and I should have said something. I need to tell you something that might help you understand why I never told you that you were mine, biologically."

I think about walking away right then, but I try to take a page from Calliope's page and hear Isla's side of the story. "Fine," I reply.

"The whole war was complicated. Ugh, sorry, that was a stupid thing to say. Of course, it was complicated, it was war. Let me try again, on a smaller scale." She takes a deep breath. The bottom of the sun is touching the horizon now. "The situation I was put in was complicated. For a long time, I thought that Daniel was dead. He had been taken and he hadn't come back, so in the apocalypse, that usually doesn't mean you're going to get a happy ending. So then your biological dad came into the picture, Nate. And he was suave and he was obnoxious and he paid attention to me, and even though I hated him for everything he did to me before his death, losing him was still one of the hardest losses I've ever had to face. I had to put him down, so to speak. Did you know that?"

I shake my head.

"He was there, bleeding, trying to tell me something, and...." She chokes up a bit, and I turn to see tears welling up in her eyes. "He took my hand, took the gun, and pressed it to his head. He nodded, and I knew what he needed me to do. He is the only person I have ever shot to kill, but I never saw it as killing him. I was doing the humane thing." She wipes the tears from her cheeks, and takes another deep breath to continue. "Anyway, when I was at Cooper's estate, I saw this video he made for me, explaining everything, and... Nate saved me. He saved Daniel. He saved everyone in the bunker, and for that, I loved him. There were a lot of complicated emotions there with Nate. Daniel knew that, I knew that, even Nate knew that. So when you came along and you were our child, I didn't want everything to be any more complicated. Eleanor wanted another child, she was carrying you, and she had already lost so much. We all decided it was best for all of us. Nate is memorialized in other ways, but the complicated emotions between he and I didn't need to be memorialized in you. That wouldn't have been fair for you. Or me. Or anyone involved really. I hope you don't hear this all as an excuse, because I loved your biological dad in so many ways and I love you in so many ways too. But you were always meant to be Eleanor's daughter."

By now, tears have filled my eyes too. "Was it fair for me to not know who my real parents were, though?"

She tilts her head slightly and smiles, a mannerism she must have picked up from Beatrice. "Family isn't always by blood, Esther. Some people have crappy parents, some people hate their siblings, some people are adopted. You can't choose who is related to you, but you choose who your family is. Eleanor is your mom. You have my genes, bless your soul, but you are not my daughter. And honestly," she says, "you are lucky. Eleanor is the best mom you could ask for. She is supportive, she is kind, she is loving, she is nurturing. Stop complaining and just be appreciative that your family loves you so much that we would travel half-way across the world in the apocalypse to get you."