Page 40 of The Reluctant Reaper
Not now, migraine.“Okay. Where is your telefacsimile machine?”
“The library!” Gray piped up. “I saw it when I was poking around there earlier. It’s in the cabinet with?—”
“Another obsolete device?”
“Don’t be such a whatever-our-generation is called,” Gray said. “Plenty of people still need printers.”
“It’s that archaic mindset that has kept us from the paperless offices we’ve been promised for the last fifty years. All right, I guess I should take a look and see what the telefacsimile has reassembled on our end.”
“Stay here with your mom, I’ll get it for you.” Gray paused. “If—if that’s allowed? A regular person intercepting Death’s bitmaps?”
“Gray, you don’t have to?—”
“I want to, Amara. My best friend is in a mess and a half. I want to help.”
“You’re a good boy,” Hilly said. “If Amara has no objection, I don’t, either.”
After Gray scampered out, Hilly added, “You have fine taste in friends.”
“Thanks.” She spread her hands and smiled. “What can I say? I love that delightful weirdo to death.”
“... Does he know?”
Amara said nothing.
“Ah, my poor poor dear. Why are you chasing heartbreak?”
“I like to keep busy?”
“Is he, ah, prepared?”
Amara said nothing.
“If you wish, I could talk to your fath—” Hilly choked off the word, then buried her face in her hands.
“Mom! Dad’s not dead.” Amara wasn’t used to the role reversal; it felt odd to pull her mother into a hug and make ineffectual soothing noises. “He’s just, um, resting. Which he wholly deserves. When was the last time he went on vacation? Or took a mental health day?”
Her mother pulled back. “What on earth is a mental health day?”
“Never mind. I’m crap at the comfort thing.”
“You just need more practice.”
Perish the thought.“But I meant every word. You wait. He’ll be coughing up backhanded compliments and sneaking Cokes when he thinks you aren’t paying attention in next to no time.”
“I wasn’t prepared.”
“No, of course not. Who is? Plus, you’re not an ordinary woman married to an ordinary man.”
“No, I mean... this wasn’t supposed to—” They could hear Gray galloping back along the passage, so Hilly forbore to finish her sentence. “That boy can move when he gets the urge.”
“You should see him on Free Scoop Day.”
“It’s good to have you both here what with all this—I mean, especially since—we didn’t plan forthis, obviously...”
“Mom?”
Hilly shrugged.
