But at some point he’s going to need to stop running. The body gives up. I’m so worried about him. And there’s still so much to try to think about, to try to figure out.
Emily and I do what we can to look after Ted, but really it’s Callie and Greta and Tara’s thing. All we can really do is check on things, just look at our sisters and try to see what’s in their eyes.
IT’S EARLY MORNING. The sun’s just starting to think about dragging itself out of bed. Callie’s up here with me, and I’m trying to figure out where we’re supposed to go.
But mostly what I’ve spent my time figuring out is this: Callie, my sister, is a plant person. I mean that she was brought into this world by a plant that rose up from a trembling field of ice, and she was plucked from the pod of that plant by my father and brought home to me.
Or that’s my guess. But everything he said, about the ground shaking, then going still, about the sky smelling like lightning, the clouds low and heavy and with a mind of their own, opening a hole in the sky to let the light in . . .
He didn’t know what he was doing, I tell myself. I hope to myself. I hope so hard that he didn’t know that he was stealing—kidnapping—dozens of infants, robbing them of their home, their families, the lives they were supposed to lead. And maybe he didn’t mean to. Maybe he really thought he was saving them. But even if he thought he was somehow helping them, saving them, I still have got to wonder: Why would he take them away from their home? Their habitat, the place that literally nurtures them. They came out of the ground. In pods. What would make him think that they’d belong somewhere else? That they’d survive somewhere else? Was it because of me? Did he take them because of me? Did he miss me so much that when he saw Callie, a perfect alien baby, his parental instincts just went haywire and took over? Did something go wrong with the pods, and was it his fault, and was he afraid for their safety? Did something go wrong and it wasn’t his fault? Did he understand at all what he’d done? And if he did, and if he took them all away more out of love than anything else, would that even start to make it okay? Or was that his mission all along?
And then I always come back to the fact that if he hadn’t done what he did, I wouldn’t have Callie. And right now, I don’t even know how to ask if that would have been a good thing or a bad thing. For either of us. And I especially don’t know how to think about the more likely and infinitely more gut-punching possibility: that Dad never bringing Callie home would have been a bad thing for me but a good thing for Callie. Everything is so wrapped up in itself right now, I don’t have a clue what to think. I mean that just . . . I mean that if I was going to sit here and wonder what would have happened if none of this had happened, then I wouldn’t be of any use to anyone.
And then there is this: What if Callie’s an alien? And what if she’s not the nice kind of alien? Or what if she’s not an alien but just a plant-based fluke from the middle of the earth who can withstand extreme climates and who looks like a human but isn’t? What if Callie is dangerous? What if Callie doesn’t really love me at all? Not because she hates me or wants to harm me, but because she can’t? Love me or hate me, she just can’t?
But you know what? So what? Who cares? What I know for sure is that in this life, Callie is my sister, and I want to help. She’s my sister. And I want to help. I have to help. Right?