∞ ☆ ∞
Serafina stopped and began to idly shade the bottom of their sketch. The three of them sat for a moment, silent in their separate bean bag chairs.
"Then what? Then what?" James asked eagerly.
"James..." Martha said, shaking her head.
"Well. Dad," Serafina said, still shading. "We went back to her place and..."
"Oh. I see," he said.
"Did you want a play by play?" they teased.
"No, no. That's fine," he stumbled. "Nothing wrong with that, of course... Two consenting adults and such... Yet seeing as how we are, in fact, your parents, perhaps you shouldn't."
"I figured," Serafina said, amused.
"But Ursula sounds amazing," he said. "An absolute one of a kind."
"Yes," Martha agreed cautiously. "She has such... colorful language." Martha understood why, under the circumstances, Serafina had been so attracted to Ursula. It was the spark they needed and Martha was grateful for that. But as she listened to the story, she couldn't help but feel conflicted. The girl had more red flags than a parade through Beijing.
"True and true," Serafina said. "And Dad, you and she did get along really well."
"Oh how predictable," Martha said. "What about me? Not so much?"
Serafina shook their head as they darkened strands of their teenage mother's hair for texture. "You were fiercely protective of me and suspicious of her from the moment you met so... no. But in the end, you weren't exactly wrong."
"Oh," Martha said. Like most people, she enjoyed being right. But the satisfaction was pyrrhic. Martha and James had been each other's light from the dark. She couldn't imagine eternity without him. More than anything, Martha wanted Serafina to be happy - oh good, I've become my father - however and with whomever they needed. "Do you still see her?"
"Yeah," James said. "Do you think we'll get a chance to meet her in this life? I hope so."
Serafina chuckled. Then they swallowed and their smile slowly turned into a grimace, their face a deepening pink.
"What is it, Ser-Bear?" James asked.
"What did she do to you?" Martha said, her aforementioned protective instinct rising.
"Nothing. It was me. I messed up," they said, then sniffled. "Bad. I messed up really, really bad."
"We understand, Sera," Martha said, holding them. She recalled visiting Nan in the lifetimes following her murder in Hawaii, hoping for absolution. "It's hard when they don't remember. You want to apologize, but they can't hear it, so the guilt-"
"Guilt? I can handle guilt. Feeling guilty is like breathing oxygen by now. This is... so much worse."
"I've got one more treat for you, Madison my dear," Mrs. Johanson said as she wound the key to a ballerina snow globe music box with her arthritic fingers, then set it on the bedroom dresser as it began plinking out Swan Lake.
Tucked beneath the blankets of her new bed, six year old Ursula gasped. "That's so pretty, Mrs Johanson! And thank you for the stories. My mommy and daddy never did any of that. I don't think they even owned a Bible ever."
"Oh, you poor thing. Well thank the Lord he sent you to us, Madison dear." She hobbled to the bed, leaned down, and kissed Ursula on the forehead. "Sweet dreams."
"Goodnight, Mrs Johanson." Ursula waited for the septuagenarian to amble out of the room then closed her eyes, listened to the music box continue its loop with flat C and E notes, and inhaled the combination of lemon Pledge, mothballs, and 2-nonenal aldehyde. This would be her room for the next twelve years as it had in the previous four lifetimes.
She opened her eyes. Though the room was darkened, she knew the green, pink, and white floral wallpaper by heart. Scattered across were framed photographs of their previous foster children and crosses - so many crosses. There were eleven in all: eight hanging on the walls, a pair standing on the dresser, and another on a window sill.
The Johansons were kind, generous, and self-sacrificing. Or so the story goes...
Of course, Ursula knew their charity was transactional. They didn't care about her. They cared about the payoff. Residence in eternal paradise while the rest of us burn... pretty sweet deal for a little childcare.
But their motives were at least partially transparent. Far worse were the humanists and their secular morality, vain enough to crown themselves paragons of human potential.
She closed her eyes again and imagined the three of them out in California, snuggling on a couch or toasting marshmallows over a campfire or something equally nauseating. Mr and Mrs Perfect and the Genius Bitch...
Ursula gripped the edge of her blanket with her tiny fingers then released. She had a lot of work to do. Armageddon wasn't going to hasten itself.
Author's note:
This is why we can't have nice things, Ursula.
Thank you for reading. This is the final part of what is technically the longest chapter I've written in my whole life. I'll have another one for you in about a decade (JK, it'll be a year, tops (JK again)).