Shelter (37 page)

    "I'm just your secret fetish, is that it? Some people collect corsets and silk stockings, and you collect moments with Merry?"

    "That's a totally shitty thing to say." His voice was icy now, furious. Good: she'd gotten to him. "Meredith, would you just look at me, please? Just turn around, all right? I can't be completely disgusting to look at, not after all these months."

    She remained stubbornly staring out at the water. "If you'd told the truth—"

    "Well, I'm telling it now! Yes, I wanted to get to know you; yes, I'm glad I have; no, I don't want to be sent away like—like a servant in disgrace. And I haven't been talking to anybody about it. Are you trying to drive me away so I'll be safe from terrorists? Well, I don't think they're any threat—I told you that at the beginning—and if they are, I'll take my chances. I came to you after—after Raji because—because we both know about losing people. Because we finally had something in common. And because I had an excuse, because of the drawings. I knew I might not like you after I'd spent time with you, but I do like you. I'd like you even if you weren't rich and famous, although I suppose there's no way to make you believe that. And I don't want to go away."

    It came to her then, watching the Pacific break on the edge of the continent, that Kevin was halfway in love with her, or maybe more than that. He would certainly be entirely in love with her if she gave him any encouragement. She remembered something Fergus had said, after his breakup with Johann. In any relationship, the person who cares the least is the one with the most power.

    Kevin was saying something. "I've been afraid to trust too, Merry. I have. I don't have any family left except my uncle—I was an only child—and it's been hard for me to let myself make friends, even, because I'm scared to lose them. I know what that feels like. I understand that. But if we don't take the risk, we might as well not be alive. We might as well have died too."

    He wants to marry me, she thought. He's not going to say it yet; he's not going to say it for a long time, but he's already made up his mind. He helped me design the house so he could live with me in it. She remembered Matt and Gwyn, that first terrible day after Raji disappeared, exhorting her to keep loving. They'd said the same thing Kevin was saying now. She didn't know if she'd ever be able to truly love Kevin—she didn't know if she'd ever love anyone again, not the way she'd loved Raji—but if she let Kevin love her, everybody would be happy: Kevin, her parents, Matt and Gwyn. She'd be doing what everybody wanted, and she'd be keeping herself safe at the same time—because she wouldn't care as much as he did, because she'd have more power. And if she married him, she could keep him safe too; she could insist that he be given GPS cells, which would make him as immune from terrorism as she was herself.

    Her parents wouldn't let her marry anyone until she'd finished school. That was all right. She'd switch to commuter status, drive in for classes, keep living at home. She'd keep her life private, and Kevin would help. Kevin was a very private person. She wouldn't have to worry about him talking to too many people. She wouldn't have to worry about terrorists, at least not Luds, because Kevin wasn't working on AI. And if something happened, if he decided he hated her or if he got hit by a car, her heart wouldn't break. It had already broken once; it was as broken as it could get.

    ScoopNet would love the story. Prince Charming, from a humble and obscure family decimated by tragedy, leads the princess of the realm. back out of the monster's lair, and she shows her gratitude by marrying him. They ate that stuff up.

    Would Kevin want kids? He liked Theo, liked the little girl in the Cambodian restaurant. Well, they'd deal with that later on. And maybe she was wrong, anyway. Maybe he didn't want to marry her at all. Maybe she was making the whole thing up.

    "Merry?" She felt a tentative hand on her shoulder, but his voice was despairing. "Merry, are you ever going to look at me again?"

    She turned, forced herself to turn. His face was worried, tracked with tears. She forced herself to reach out and wipe some of them away, clumsily. It was the first time she'd ever touched him, and she saw his eyes widen, heard him take a sudden breath. He went very still under her hand, as if afraid that she'd flee if he moved.

    She took her hand away and put it in her lap. His hand remained lightly on her shoulder. ''I'm sorry about your parents, Kevin."

    "I know. You already said that." He removed his hand now, and jammed it back into his pocket.

    "What were their names? What did they do?"

    "Nicholas and Evelyn. Dad was a civil engineer. Mom was a nurse. That's how they got CV, from one of her patients. Nobody at the clinic realized it was CV at first. A doctor got sick too, but he recovered."

    "And your uncle? Does he live nearby?"

    "Sacramento. Near enough." He was wary now, defensive. "His name's Richard and he's a lawyer. Why are you asking me all this?"

    "You know a lot about me," she said. "I think I should be able to know some stuff about you. It's only fair."

    "Ah," he said. Maybe he relaxed a bit and maybe he didn't; she couldn't tell.

    She looked down and scuffed her toe in the sand, feigning diffidence. "So. Do you want to get coffee?"

    * * *

    Her relationship with Kevin unfolded almost exactly as she had envisioned it. For the rest of her life, this would amaze her; it was as if she had handed the universe a shopping list, as if the universe had granted every item she had requested, because so much had already been taken from her. Within a few weeks after that day on the beach, she and Kevin had embarked upon a decorous, conventional dating relationship: dinner and a movie on Friday nights, lunch once or twice during the week, phone conversations every other evening. It was a month before they kissed, another five months before they slept together. She told him she was still grieving Raji, and he understood—he was, she knew, nearly inhumanly patient with her wounds, and with his status as rival of a ghost—and when at last they went to bed, she enjoyed it far more than she had expected. She felt no grand passion, but Kevin was a considerate and surprisingly playful lover, and she appreciated the simple animal satisfaction of sexual release, and of curling up with another warm body afterward. Kevin comforted her; they comforted each other.

    She liked him. She was grateful to him. It touched her to see his face soften when he looked at her, or brighten when she entered a room. There was no doubt that within a year, he was indeed deeply in love with her. She supposed she would grow to love him in time, if indeed she could love again at all. For now, she did whatever she could to be kind to him. She wanted to protect him, and the idea of anyone hurting him enraged her. She wanted to make him happy.

    She met his uncle Richard, whom Constance invited to the house for the winter solstice feast. Constance and Jack, and Preston, began taking a more active interest in Kevin, and he in them, although Meredith knew that she was still the only thing they had in common. She returned to school as planned, although she wasn't sure what she would do after she got her degree. She didn't need to work, but she wanted to. She had toyed with the idea of starting a sacred housecleaning service, with human workers who would perform the tasks as part of their spiritual path, but Matt and Preston both advised her, gently, that there probably wouldn't be enough potential employees, even if beginning her own business straight out of college had been wise. She considered cleaning other people's houses for a living, but Constance told her tartly that she'd embarrass the family. "It was bad enough when you were only cleaning our house, Merry!" Once she would have argued; these days, she valued peace. She thought about starting a dog-walking service, about being a professional pet sitter, about becoming a ritual consultant. Finally, the week before she graduated, Constance used connections to get her a spot in an interior design firm. "It's a start, dear. You can get some experience and branch out from there."

    The job was pleasant enough. She didn't have any contact with clients yet, of course, but she helped the people who did pick out paint and fabric samples; she dealt with vendors and contractors, arranged deliveries, and spent a great deal of time at her desk reading thick, glossy magazines that consisted nearly entirely of advertising. Nonvirtual magazines, with their reassuring tactility and scandalous suggestion of wastefulness—although of course they were printed on recycled paper, and recycled again once discarded—had become newly fashionable.

    Kevin, who had gotten his master's in architecture the year before she graduated, was working for a firm in the city, not far from her office. They had lunch together nearly every day. One morning he called her at work and said, "I took the afternoon off. Can you do the same thing?"

    She did. She thought she knew what was corning. She wasn't surprised when Kevin suggested a walk down the Filbert steps, wasn't surprised when, his arm around her, he said shyly, "Do you know what today is?"

    "The anniversary of the first walk we took on these steps," she said. She'd used it to measure how she was doing on her relationship-withKevin timetable every year since then. So far, they were right on schedule.

    He cleared his throat. "Merry, have you thought about—I was thinking—maybe we could make this permanent?"

    "I have thought about it," she said, and his arm tightened across her back. "But, Kevin, there's something you need to know. I can't have kids. Because of the CV." She'd debated whether to tell him about the brain damage, and had finally decided against it; he knew as much about her behavior as anyone, and he'd never criticized her or suggested that she was ill. The brain damage was nobody's business but her own. If she developed problems later on, she'd deal with them.

    She had to tell him about the kid thing, though. That was his business.

    "Oh," he said, but he looked relieved. He must have been afraid she was going to say something worse. "Poor Merry ... I'm sorry! Why didn't you tell me before?"

    "I didn't know if it would matter."

    "It doesn't. Not to me."

    She'd been afraid that he'd accuse her of keeping her own secrets—and she was suddenly painfully conscious of the one she was keeping—but evidently he wasn't going to. "I could do high-tech stuff. Petri dish babies and artificial wombs and all that. But I really don't want to."

    "I don't blame you."

    "So if we wanted kids, we'd have to adopt. The kids would have somebody else's genes. If you want kids at all. I don't even know if—"

    "I wouldn't be marrying you for your genes. I'd be marrying you because I love you."

    "Do you want kids?"

    "I want whatever will make you happy, Merry." He got down on one knee and looked up at her, laughing. "Marry me, Merry?"

    "If I marry you, if you marry into this family, you have to get GPS cells. "

    "I hate needles."

    "I hate terrorists. That part's not negotiable."

    "Okay, okay. I'll brave the needles for you. Only for you." He was clutching her hand so tightly that she could feel the throb of her own pulse. "Meredith Sophia Walford, will you marry me?"

    "Yes," she said, and he leapt up and kissed her. When she finally managed to break away for air, she said, "Kevin, where are we going to live? I don't want to move into your tiny apartment with all those roommates, and staying in my mother's house won't work, either. I want us to pay our own way. I don't want to depend on Daddy."

    "We'll figure something out," Kevin said. "We will. Don't worry, Merry. Just kiss me again, okay?"

    * * *

    There was a house for sale near the top of the Filbert steps. It was tiny, with only I,200 square feet and three rectangular bedrooms. It was nothing like Merry's dream house. It would be doomed in any serious earthquake, but so would most of the houses in the area. It didn't have a driveway or garage. Whoever lived there would have to park at the top of the hill and hike down the stairs, hauling groceries and anything else that needed carrying. That was all right; Kevin and Merry were young and strong. The house had stunning views of the Bay, a beautiful garden, and undeniable sentimental significance. Because it was so small and so inaccessible, and because it needed a new roof and a new furnace and updated appliances in the kitchen, it only cost three million dollars.

    Meredith was forced to compromise, to accept help from her father. Preston bought the house, outright, as a wedding gift for Merry and Kevin, although nominally it was a MacroCorp real estate investment. The young couple would live there until they didn't want to anymore, or until they died; if one of them predeceased the other, the house would belong to the surviving partner. In the event of divorce, the house would be Merry's, although she could choose to allow Kevin to live there. If both of them died or formally relinquished ownership, the house would belong to MacroCorp.

    Preston paid for the house; Jack and Constance paid for the repair work, and for installing the rudimentary house system Meredith had envisioned when she and Kevin drew up their plans. That left Kevin and Merry responsible only for utilities and property taxes: still a stretch, on their salaries, but at least feasible. In that respect, at least, Merry was determined to honor her principles, determined to pay her own way.

    ''I'll never want to live anywhere else," Merry said, staring out the living room window at the water below. A MacroCorp attorney had just signed the closing papers, and she and Kevin had promptly claimed their keys and gone to take possession, trailed by Constance and Jack. "It's perfect."

    ''I'm guessing you'll want to live somewhere else within six months," Constance said. Jack and Kevin had gone to look at the ductwork under the house. "Those stairs are a headache even in good weather, even this near the top; in rain, they'll be miserable. We're going to have to tip the movers big-time to get your stuff in here, you know."