Vision in Silver(212)

            “What’s a man like him doing with someone like her?”

            “I don’t know what he sees in her.”

            When did I begin to ask myself those same questions?

            I heard Nicholas talking on the phone. I didn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but what he said was enough.

            Thaisia will experience food shortages—grains, flour, I don’t what else. Why? Because a farming association is selling their harvest to Nicholas, who is shipping it to Cel-Romano, because food equals victory, whatever that means. But here, some families won’t be able to afford a loaf of bread, assuming there is any to buy.

            How can there not be something as basic as bread?

            Humans first and last. I think I’ve figured out which humans will come first.

            I always wanted my mother’s love and approval. I never got either one, but she made sure she kept me under her thumb enough that I kept trying to get them. The only time I acted for myself, the only choice she hadn’t managed to control, was when I fell in love with Monty and we moved in together. My mother didn’t speak to me for several months as a punishment. Those were the happiest months of my life.

            Gods! I found a bag of jewels inside Boo Bear. Lizzy had mentioned playing hospital and Boo Bear needing an operation, but Leo had shrugged it off, and I’d had too much to drink after a quarrel with Nicholas—who had sent me home early because, he said, I was causing a scene. But the way that skanky bitch was looking at me as he escorted me out, I knew he was planning to sleep with her tonight.

            Then there’s Lizzy using up all the adhesive bandages on that damn bear . . .

            Jewels. I wanted to believe they were glass, something Lizzy had picked up somewhere. I wanted to believe she’d hidden them inside Boo Bear after Leo told her a story about how he used to hide things in his toys when we were kids so that Mother wouldn’t find what he wanted to keep secret.

            But that ugly white gold and diamond ring is in the bag.

            And I remembered that Leo would hide things in my toys, especially things that would get him into real trouble if anyone knew he had them.

            Has he done the same thing to Lizzy?

            Leo and Nicholas. Are they stealing during the benefits people were holding for the HFL movement? Are they working together, or is Nicholas unaware that Leo is using him?

            Is Leo using Nicholas? Or is Nicholas using all of us?

            I tossed Nicholas Scratch out on his sorry ass. I packed his bags and had them sitting outside the apartment door. He’s too aware of his reputation to indulge in a shouting match through the door. That’s probably why Leo showed up a little while later “to talk some sense into me.”

            Leo was sweating, and he was trying to look around without being obvious about it.

            Three guesses why he really wanted to see Lizzy.

            Mother called. I shouldn’t have answered, not when I was so angry and scared. She started in on me, with her cold criticism, and I lashed out, screaming that I knew everything about the underhanded deals and I was going to tell the whole fucking world that Nicholas Scratch was a liar and a thief and I could prove it.

            Then I hung up and realized what I’d done. She would tell Leo. Of course she would. And Leo would have to make the problem go away in order to stay in Nicholas’s trusted circle.

            And he would need to make the problem go away in order to get his hands on Lizzy and retrieve the jewels he’s hidden in Boo Bear.

            I won’t let that happen because he’ll hand her over to Mother. Let Mother raise Lizzy? Never.