Bebe (34 page)

Completely oblivious, Bebe arranged the chairs and, ever the half-sized and gracious hostess, gestured for them all to sit. Then she hustled into the kitchen, returning a moment later with coffee and cups enough for all. She was still checking to make sure they were clean when she set them on the table.

We don’t have cream
, she signed and then made impatient gestures at Tral to translate.

“That’s all right,” Sir quickly assured her once Tral had.

Sit, sit
, she told him, climbing onto the chair next to Ma’am to pour the coffee and pass around the cups. Just as soon as her hands were free, she was talking.
How have you been? How is the baby?

Ma’am watched Bebe’s hands fluttering through the air and then turned to look at Tral helplessly.

Still managing to keep a grip on his temper—and it was getting harder, particularly when Sir sat down next to Bebe, reaching out his hand to smooth a blonde lock of golden hair back from her face—Tral approached the table. He took the chair farthest from everyone and stiffly made himself sit.

“She wants to know how you’ve been,” he said flatly and then glared at them.

Sir couldn’t hold Tral’s blaming stare. “We, uh....We saw you on the news, Bebe, and...”

“And we had to come,” his wife finished for him, looking every bit as guilty.

I’ve been on the box a lot
, Bebe signed with a nod.
Tral says it makes me look fat, but I think it’s the dress. Did you see all the people outside? We are building a city. People come every day from all over the world, and even from other worlds. They bring us money and sometimes stay to help. How is the baby? Does he still cry?

Ma’am stared uncomprehendingly at Bebe’s fluttering hands before turning questioningly to Tral.

Tral’s fingers had begun tapping against the table. Beneath the concealing surface, one leg was jiggling rapidly up and down. It was a struggle to keep from snarling. “She wants to know how the baby’s been. Whether or not he’s still crying.”

“Oh.” Ma’am shifted the sleeping child in her arms.

When she faced Bebe, as she opened her mouth to answer, Tral lost his self-control. “She’d also like to know why the hell you left her in the middle of fucking nowhere in the middle of winter, without food, without clothes, without anything! Without any chance of help even, as if she were a piece of garbage you’d lost all use for!”

Neither Ma’am nor Sir looked at him, although Bebe did. Somewhat chidingly, she signed,
That’s not what I said.

“I’m paraphrasing,” he muttered.

“She was never garbage,” Sir said, intensely uncomfortable.

"We listened to the wrong people," Ma'am added, her voice soft and shaking. "We thought she would hurt the baby. We thought..." She stopped, swallowing hard before continuing. "The baby rolled over two days after...we did what we did. We knew then we had made a mistake. We went back to look for her. Again and again, we went back. But she was gone."

“We thought returning her to the wild would be kinder than taking her back to the shelter where she might have been euthanized.”

“The day we bought her, that’s what they told us,” Ma’am tried to explain, her dark eyes pleading for understanding. “They said she’d been there too long. When we realized we couldn’t keep her, we thought—”

“That she’d somehow automatically know how to survive when she’d never,
ever
lived on her own? Had she even been outside for a day—one day—in all her life before you dumped her
naked in the snow
?”

“We thought—”

“Did you?” Tral countered ruthlessly. “Did you really? Because personally, I don’t think you were thinking at all! I could have you both arrested for trespassing on a government-sanction preserve and for the illegal abandonment of a human. I specifically asked for that law to be made retroactive, just in case I ever found you two!”

“Tral.”

Gritting his teeth to keep from saying anything more, Tral glanced once at Bebe and instantly wished he hadn’t. She looked devastated.

Please don’t do that
, she signed.

I won’t
, he signed back in short, angry motions.
I just want them to squirm
.

Please
, she signed again, a soft shimmer of tears in her eyes.
Don’t be mad at them.

She reached out across the table to touch him arm, but he quickly pulled away. He didn’t want her to touch him. He didn’t want to lose control of his temper, or to have her gentle petting hands rob him of it. He wasn’t yet ready to let it go.

“We made a mistake,” Sir told him evenly. “We came here to admit to that.”

“And to make amends,” Ma’am added. “If we can.”

“How can you possibly make amends?” Tral demanded, his temper exploding another fiery degree closer to his losing all control. “You’ve no idea what you did to her? Did you actually watch her interview all the way through? Have you seen her feet?”

“Tral,” Bebe said, her voice quavering softly. Unshed tears sparkled all through her wide, blue eyes. Again, she shook her head. It was such a small motion, and yet it somehow planted the smallest seed of shame underneath the surge of anger roiling inside him.

Tral looked away first.

“We’d like to foster her,” Sir finally said.

Tral barked a hard laugh. He only just managed to suppress his instinct; to erupt out of his chair, grab them both by the scruffs of their clothes and—baby or not—hurl them headfirst out the front door and off his porch.

“If you’d let us,” Ma’am whispered. “We’ll be good to her, we swear it. We won’t ever make a mistake like this again.”

Tral glared at her. He glared at Sir. He couldn’t even make himself look at Bebe.

“That’s not my decision,” he finally seethed. He still wanted to throw them out, but he got up and left the table instead. He couldn’t even trust himself to stay in the same room. With Bebe’s cajoling call following him down the hall, he retreated to the bedroom and shut the door. It was his greatest accomplishment to date not to slam it violently behind him.

Breathing slow but hard, he approached his bed and quite matter-of-factly unleashed his rage upon his hapless pillow. He punched it, three times in rapid succession and then threw it. It hit the wall so hard that the seam burst, sending an explosion of micro-stuffing flying through the air like snowflakes.

Sinking down on the edge of the mattress, Tral folded his shaking hands between his knees and waited for Bebe to leave him. There was no doubt in his mind—none whatsoever—that she would go. She never would have left them to begin with, had they not made their ‘mistake.’

The low muffled tones of Sir and Ma’am drifted down the short hallway, too soft for him to make out the words, but he knew what it meant a short time later when the front door opened and closed again. Then small footsteps came padding down to his bedroom door.

The handle twitched, then turned, and Bebe cautiously poked her head inside.
Are you all right?

“I’ll help you pack,” Tral said dully.

He didn’t even have luggage to offer her, but then, she didn’t have all that much to take with her. Just a few hand-me-downs given to her by Pani—which Tral folded neatly and stuffed into a box—and her hairbrush, which didn’t because people like that probably wouldn’t have used it on her hair anyway, and there was no way he’d provide them with something they could use to hurt his Bebe.

His Bebe. Tral pressed a hand to his aching chest, turning away from her because it suddenly hurt too much just to look at her.

Bebe watched him move around the room. She tapped her fingertips, her eyebrows drawing together in an expression of worry and quiet sadness. When he’d gathered everything he could (it didn’t even fill half the box), he walked with her to the front door.

“Call me if you want to,” he said stupidly. He lay the box in her arms and then opened the door for her.

She didn’t say anything; her hands were too full. Head down, she simply walked out of his life.

Neither Sir nor Ma’am were waiting just outside to help carry her things. They had probably gone to secure transport back to town. So, as Bebe sat down on the top step to wait, setting the box down between her feet, her head bowed and shoulders sagging, looking so sad, forlorn, abandoned, that Tral couldn’t help taking a seat on that top step to wait alongside her. He wanted to say something, but he just couldn’t think of anything beyond, ‘please stay.’ And that wouldn’t have been fair, to either of them. So he stayed silent, and the minutes dragged by.

“It’s taking them long enough to get the damn transport, isn’t it?” he finally grumbled.

They went home
, Bebe signed.

Tral’s heart almost stopped in his chest. “What? Without you?”

I didn’t want to go
.

Tral’s jaw dropped. He stared at her, completely dumbstruck, both thrilled and shocked, ecstatic and yet afraid to be too happy. “Why not?”

She looked at her box, then glanced sideways at him before leaning over and lightly bumping her shoulder against him. It was a gesture both teasing and admonishing.
I am home
.

“You are home,” he echoed, feeling stupid. He looked at the box he’d packed and then, searching the yard for any last sign of Sir or Ma’am, grabbed it, turned and flung it back through the open door and into the station house.

Be gentle with my things
, she signed, then burst out laughing when he grabbed her next.

“Who the hell has time for gentle!” He didn’t even think he’d have time for self-control. He only barely thought to kick the door shut behind them before carrying her back down the hall to the bedroom they shared.

Bebe shrieked laughter when he dropped her on the bed. Ripping his shirt off over his head, he didn’t bother doing more than jerking his pants open.

Very powerful!
she signed.

“Yeah, I’m powerful all right.” He literally tore the snaps off her coveralls, stripping her clothes down her slender body and right off her legs, freeing her breasts for his very hungry mouth, shoving her legs apart as he grabbed her buttocks, pulling her hips right up against his. “Say it again.”

I am home
, she signed, smiling.

“Again.” He fit himself to the hot, wet sheath of her and pushed, luxuriating in her throaty moan as he filled her. He groaned along with her, burying himself as hard and deep into her as he could. Wrapping his arms tight around her, he held her as close to him as any two beings could come.

I am home
. She gasped, head thrown back, her eyes drifting shut as she arched to meet his thrust. Her fingers fluttered one last shaky,
Home
, before latching onto his shoulders and clinging to him.

Home. It was the last thing either one of them read or said for a very long time.

The End