Page 38 of A Million Suns (Across the Universe 2)

ELDER

IT’S DARK INSIDE, AND IT STINKS OF SOMETHING SOURED. There are traces of Harley here still—the inside is painted white with yellow swirls along the top. A table sits in the center of the room, but all but one of the chairs have been stacked in the corner, and the top of the table is littered with scraps of cloth, scissors, and tiny bottles of colored dye—accouterments of being a weaver.

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p; “Hello?” Amy calls. “I think someone’s back there,” she adds, nodding at the cloth covering the doorway that leads deeper into the trailer.

I step in front of her and peel back the curtain. This room is darker still and smells of musk and sweat. It’s the main bedroom—beyond this room is another curtained door leading, I know, to a bathroom and a smaller bedroom.

Curled in a tight ball in the center of the bed is Harley’s mother, Lil. Her hair is messy, but she’s fully dressed, although her clothes are stained.

“What are you doing here?” Lil asks, her voice quiet and defeated.

“Where’s—” I struggle for the name of Harley’s father. “Where’s Stevy?”

Lil shrugs without getting up.

Amy moves forward, hesitates, then sits on the edge of the bed. “Is everything all right?” She reaches for Lil, but Lil, startled by Amy’s fair coloring, cowers back. Amy’s hand drops into her lap. After a moment, she gets back up and moves behind me.

“Where’s Stevy?” I ask again.

“Gone. ”

“For how long?”

Lil shrugs again.

From under the covers, I hear her stomach growl.

“Let’s get you something to eat,” I say. I step forward, reaching down for her hand. Although Lil doesn’t flinch from me, she doesn’t respond to my offer, either.

“No point,” she says. “No food. ”

“No food?” I ask. I instinctively look to the curtained door; the wall food distributer is in the main room of the trailer. “Is it broken? I’ll have maintenance come and check on it. ”

“No point,” she says softly. I ignore her and com the Shipper level, requesting they send someone as soon as they can.

Once I break the com link, I turn my full attention back to Lil. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Why aren’t you working? Should I com Doc?”

She stares at the ceiling. “I can’t work. The dyes remind me of him. The colors. Colors everywhere. ”

“Lil,” I say, making a mental note to com Doc later, “did you take any of Harley’s paintings from the Recorder Hall?”

Now she sits up. “No!”

But her eyes dart to the curtain.

She notices my glance in that direction. “They’re mine. He’s my son. He was my son. It’s all I have left of him. ”

“We just want to look,” Amy says in a small voice from behind me.

Lil flops back into her pillow. “What’s the point? He’s not coming back. Neither of them is coming back. ”

She doesn’t look up again, so Amy and I creep around the bed to the curtain on the far wall. I lift it up, and Amy follows me into the room.

A bathroom. The toilet’s unflushed and the sink is stained. We move quickly to the side, where another curtain blocks a doorway.

This is Harley’s room—or, at least, it was until he moved out to live in the Ward. There are traces of what the room used to be—a narrow mattress against one wall, a small nightstand that still holds a clock—but clearly in the years since he left, the room has become something of a storage space for his family. I maneuver past the boxes until I see what we came for: Harley’s painting, Through the Looking Glass.