Brightly Burning(32)

I trudged with hesitant feet to the study, unsure which brand of Hugo I would find there. Bright and zippy, or grumpy and morose? I caught him on an upswing.

“Stella!” he exclaimed as soon as I walked through the door. “My little sleuth. I have a book for you!” He bounded over to a bookshelf in the far corner of the room, extracting a hardbound volume and gleefully handing it over.

“And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie,” I read off the cover.

“She’s my mother’s favorite author,” he said. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, referring to his mom in the present tense.

“Thank you,” I said, sitting in my chair as usual, hoping he would do the same, but instead he danced over to the sideboard to refill his glass. “Hugo, I hate to say something, but—”

“You’re totally right!” he cut me off. “I shouldn’t drink alone. How rude of me.” He thrust a glass into my hand, and I took small, careful sips where Hugo did giant gulps.

“Where do you get this stuff?” I asked, trying for innocuous conversation. “On the Stalwart we had some vile backroom hooch, but your supply is of such high quality.”

“This is from the Islay, the fleet’s whiskey ship. I didn’t take you for a connoisseur of fine spirits,” Hugo quipped.

“Oh, I’m not. This just doesn’t taste like jet fuel, so I assume it’s good.”

“Tell me more about the Stalwart. And the Empire. About your life before the Rochester.”

“What do you want to know? My life story isn’t that interesting.”

“I don’t believe that. Why did you transfer from the Empire to the Stalwart? There must be a story there.”

Oh, was there. Given the topic of the day, I wasn’t sure it was the best story to tell, but Hugo prodded me on.

“I left the Empire because my family didn’t want me anymore.” I hadn’t ever said it out loud—?I was too diplomatic for that, I told myself—?but there it was. After that, it all came pouring out of me, like the tears I’d stubbornly refused to shed all those years ago.

“I joined my aunt’s household after my parents died, when I was seven. She didn’t really want me, but my uncle, who was my mother’s brother, insisted. But then he died too.” I found myself choking on the words, so I took a serious draw of liquor to fortify myself. There was no point in crying over it now. My poor uncle had been gone for nearly a decade at this point.

Hugo politely remained mute, neither offering platitudes that would make me uncomfortable nor avoiding my gaze. I appreciated it.

“She kept me around as long as was fashionable,” I continued. “She didn’t want to be seen as kicking out an orphan right away, you know? The other ladies showered her with such praise for taking me in from the poor part of the ship. But when I was eleven, after the Kebbler virus, the fleet enacted the Orphan Transfer Program, and she jumped at her chance. I’m sure she told everyone I volunteered to go. The Stalwart needed warm bodies for their farming pipeline and, as it turned out, junior ship-engineering apprentices. So that’s where I ended up.”

“I was curious about that, actually,” Hugo said, hopping up to go to the sideboard again. This time he brought the decanter with him, refilling my glass before I could protest, then topping off his as well. “Why ship engineering? It’s not a common field for women, for one, let alone one from the Empire.”

“And yet you have a woman ship engineer. Two now. So how uncommon is it?”

“Fair point. But Lieutenant Poole . . . her gender is incidental. Her father had a daughter instead of a son, and the position of ship engineer has been passed down from generation to generation on the Rochester, so, ipso facto, Lieutenant Poole became our engineer.”

“I can tell a similar story,” I said. “My father taught me everything he knew, up until he died. I’m sure if he’d lived, there would have been enough talent on board the Empire that I wouldn’t have necessarily taken his place. But who knows?” I shrugged. “Maybe I would have wanted to take his place. On the Stalwart, however . . .”

“You didn’t like your job?”

“I didn’t like being on a ship that’s rumored to be next in line to be decommissioned,” I put it bluntly.

“Cheers to that.” Hugo raised his glass to mine. Just when I thought perhaps Hugo wasn’t so drunk after all—?he seemed perfectly composed insofar as he was speaking in complete, cogent sentences—?he said, “So tell me how your parents died.”

“That’s a bit morbid, don’t you think?” I scoffed.

“Oh, come on, I’m allowed a bit of latitude for morbidity today. It’s my anniversary. I know they told you.”

Busted. I didn’t bother denying it. So I told him about my dad, how he’d been crushed by a machine part on a Monday in October, his broken body vented into space on Tuesday. And my mother fell into a deep depression—?not her first bout of it, but certainly the first that I recognized for what it was, with my father no longer around to mask her symptoms from me. How, despite that, I didn’t recognize how bad it had gotten, and that on a Thursday that November, I found her dead in our quarters.

I left it at that, sticking to the facts. Hugo didn’t deserve the burden of hearing about my guilt, or my regrets. George’s voice echoed in my thoughts: You were only seven. It’s not your fault.