Greenhouse by Thomas A. Easton

Author:Thomas A. Easton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781587151217
Publisher: Borgo Press
Published: 1991-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Muffy Bowen knew that her mate had grown up in a pumpkin house. She knew what Tom Cross’s parents looked like, what his father did for a living, and what his mother cared about. Yet she had never seen the house nor met Tom’s parents. She and Tom had found each other only after they had each run away from their respective homes, and she had only his occasional tales to go by. He had even less, for she never talked about her own family.

She had never realized just how out of date her image of Tom’s family really was. Nor, she knew, had Tom, for he had finally tried to return home again only because Muffy had been kidnapped and his friends had urged him to seek whatever support his parents—his mother—might give a prodigal. He had craved that support, yes, of course. But he had never dared to cross that line he himself had drawn when he ran away from home.

The current truth was thus something of a shock. Once everyone was in Tige’s cabin and Jim Brane had set the Mack on the proper path, Tom told his mate what he had found: The house a mess, his father missing, his mother a honey bum. Home, but not the home he had left, not what he had dreamed from time to time waited, unchanging, for his return. As he spoke, he seemed to be realizing the vastness of the difference between what he had left years before and what he had found. He fell silent, staring at Muffy while she stared at him. She wondered if similar vast shiftings of reality awaited them. She thought he must be wondering much the same.

Their quiet drew sidelong glances from Jim. Tom had said enough about him in the past so that Muffy knew he had some idea of the contrast between expectation and reality that had silenced her, and of that between memory and reality that had silenced his old friend. It drew stares from Kimmer Alvidrez. From Freddy it drew only a snort: “That’s why we’d better finish up this mystery pretty quick. I don’t want to be away from the museum for long. There’s no telling what Porculata will do if...”

“Peirce won’t let her get any honeysuckle wine,” said Tom Cross.

“He isn’t the one who feeds her. And what if she gets a yen for porkchops?”

Muffy shuddered. “I’m done with that,” she said. “I really am. The wine is

nice.” If she thought with a mental wince that that was hardly why she had drunk so much of it, no one could tell. No one ever would, unless and until she chose to share what she felt as the shame of her background. “But I had more than I could stand, locked up by those kidnappers.” She hesitated. “I couldn’t even scream.”

“Me, too.” Kimmer was nodding her agreement. “I never drank that much of it before. But now I know what it must feel like to be a honey bum.

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