Supervolcano All Fall Down(85)

Scope got rid of some of the revolting taste—some, but not enough. The horrible stuff had gone up her nose. That meant she would keep tasting it all night. They called it morning sickness, but they lied. They did for her, at least. She could toss her cookies any old time. She’d found out more about vomiting these past few weeks than she’d ever known before.

Colin walked in just as she was lying down on the couch. “Don’t kiss me!” she warned. All the Scope in the world wouldn’t be enough to make him happy if he did.

“What happened?” he asked. Not What’s the matter?—he didn’t need to be a cop to figure out what was up with that.

She pointed feebly toward the kitchen. “The eggs. They were looking at me. You want dinner, you make it.”

“Okay,” he said, and did. The meatloaf came out ever so slightly scorched on the bottom and blander than she would have fixed it, but it was plenty edible. Colin cooked well enough. He’d never be great; neither his skills nor his repertoire reached far enough for that.

At the moment, Kelly wouldn’t fuss. She was just glad the meat loaf seemed inclined to stay down. Maybe the blandness even helped.

“Better now?” Colin asked.

“Uh-huh.” She nodded. “Thanks. You never can tell when it’ll get me. I sure can’t, anyway.”

She washed the dishes. After Colin had cooked supper, that seemed only fair. Marshall was out doing something with his friends. What and with whom, she didn’t know. Marshall was an adult, and she didn’t pry. Whatever it was, she hoped it didn’t involve too much money. Colin’s ex had fired her son right after ramen headquarters shuttered. If she had to stay home herself, she saw no point in paying him. Which made sense, but making sense didn’t mean it did Marshall any good.

Colin was not happy to have his younger son out of work. Kelly tried to soften it: “Times are tough everywhere. It’s not like he’s the only one.”

“I know,” Colin growled, “but he’s the only one here.”

“He’s still writing,” Kelly said.

“He sure isn’t selling much,” Colin answered, which was also true. Kelly had learned to recognize the SASEs Marshall included with his manuscripts when they came back. Every time her stepson picked one up, he looked disgusted. But he kept sending his stories out over and over, by snailmail and e-mail. If anything would let him escape from his current dead end, they were it.

But would anything? Marshall didn’t want anyone but editors looking at what he wrote. Again, Kelly didn’t pry. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone prying into what she was up to if she were in Marshall’s Nikes, either—do unto others and all that good stuff.

“He’s gonna need to get himself a real job now, a job job.” Colin paused, then tempered that ever so slightly: “Or at least find another kid who needs babysitting.”

“But—” Kelly left it right there, because she didn’t know where else she could go with it. It wasn’t that there were no real jobs; some work still got done in spite of everything that had happened to the country. Damn few new ones turned up, though, and next to none of the ones that did were for kids just out of college with a degree in creative writing.

As for babysitting, the only reason Marshall had done so much of that was that James Henry Ferguson was his half-brother. Sure, Louise would give him a good reference, but so what? Rug rat minder wasn’t his chosen career path.

Which wasn’t the only complication. If Colin felt like locking horns with his son, Kelly didn’t know what she should do. Play peacemaker? Stand clear and let them go at it? Whatever she did or didn’t do, she saw ways to wind up in trouble with the greatest of ease. That was one part of marrying somebody with grown kids she hadn’t thought about enough.

Colin chuckled. It wasn’t a cheerful chuckle: more the sort he might have given after spotting the driver’s license that dumbass bank robber left behind. “If he doesn’t find anything in the next few months, he can start making money taking care of his legitimate half-sib.”

“That’s true.” Kelly knew she sounded surprised. She hadn’t looked so far ahead. She would have bet Marshall hadn’t, either. She added, “Don’t rub his nose in it right now, please. It’s not what he wants to do.”

“I know,” Colin said. “But you do what you’ve got to do, not what you want to do. A lot of people haven’t figured that one out yet, even with the supervolcano yelling in their faces. They still try and do whatever they want, and then they get mad when it doesn’t work the way it used to.”