Heather sat at the empty kitchen table with her legs propped on the opposite chair, waiting for her parents to reemerge. The longer they took to emerge from the back of the house, the more her hopes began to sour that this long awaited conversation would actually happen.
She had tried to be understanding of their reasons for keeping it from her. She had tried to prove she was trustworthy and responsible, that she could participate in the family secret, instead of being the only one outside the fold. Nothing worked.
Heather was fifteen now. She could handle whatever it was her parents were trying to shelter her from, and tonight, more than ever, she had a right to know. She didn’t look up as the door to her parents’ bedroom opened down the hallway.
“Okay, Heather,” Richard sighed, pulling out the chair across from her. She rescinded her legs, and her dad eased himself into the seat. “Tonight, the secret ends.”
She glanced at her mom, then back to him. “Really?”
Richard nodded. “It’s unfair to keep you in the dark anymore, especially if what happened tonight changes anything.” He folded his arms on the table. Before Heather could ask what that meant, he continued, “So—to be brief, I’m a mechanical engineer, which you already know.”
Heather bobbed her head in concession. She had long suspected her father’s work had something to do with his love for all things mechanical. There was usually something around the house he was taking apart, or tinkering with. While acting as a chaperone for her fourth grade field trip to a bread factory, he had inadvertently spent the entire tour plaguing the guide with highly technical questions about the machinery.
“I’m the director of an engineering laboratory called Larkspur,” he said. “Tonight, our latest project—a prototype for a power generator—overloaded somehow, and it destroyed the entire facility. The building was underground, so evacuation was…messy.”
Heather stared at him, eyes wide.
“But everyone was okay.” He held up his palms. “Honest.”
He used to work for a construction equipment manufacturer, Heather knew. Shortly after her eighth birthday, he had started working a more reasonable number of hours, wore collared shirts and slacks to work instead of coveralls that smelled like engine grease, and he came home with energy to spare. They moved into a better neighborhood and her mom left the workforce. He’d landed a different job, and they had celebrated their good fortune, but she wasn’t allowed to know what it was he did.
“Why did you wait until something horrible happened to tell me?” she asked.
“Because we had to be sure,” Richard said, gently. “Larkspur has to be kept a secret.”
And because we don’t trust you, Heather wanted to add. “Why?”
“Government nondisclosure agreements, mostly,” he said. “To keep projects and patents secure before they’re ready to hit public, and therefore international, knowledge.”
“Okay, ominous…” Heather said.
“Larkspur works on safety and infrastructure projects,” he tried to sound reassuring, but also already tired of being interrogated. “Nothing shady, I promise.”
“But the whole company still has to be a secret just for that?”
“That’s just how it is with government stuff sometimes.”
It was hard to believe that the secrecy overshadowing the last seven years of her life had merely been the product of an overcautious technicality. Heather had watched enough history documentaries to know that governments—especially ones like theirs—did plenty of messed up stuff under the radar.
Though, the government also funded things like the post office. She supposed Larkspur could be something like that. But it was no great secret that her aunt worked for the post office, and Auntie Yixin’s workplace had never exploded in the middle of the night.
Heather had always trusted Richard meant well, but now she couldn’t be sure her warm, geeky father was all he professed to be.
“Now that I’ve told you, can I trust that you will also keep my job a secret?” Richard asked, softly earnest.
Heather folded her arms on the table. “Only if you tell me everything.”
He hesitated, looked briefly cornered. “I can’t tell you everything.”
“I know you talk to Mom about work when I’m not around,” Heather pleaded. She had only caught benign snippets of conversations over the years, hastily cut off when she entered a room. Forever relegated to the side, excluded. “For like half my life, she’s gotten to hear about what you’ve been doing and where you’ve been when you go to work, what your life is like when you’re not here with us. But for me, all those days, all those hours, are just gone. I don’t know who you are, Dad. And this makes me feel like you want to keep it that way forever.”
Richard balked, and sadness flooded his eyes behind the lenses of his broken glasses. The scratch on his cheekbone was starting to scab, his face drawn and tired. Finally, his gaze fell.
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to push you away,” he said finally. “I didn’t realize you felt that way.”
“Then you haven’t been paying attention.”
“Heather.” Her mom put a hand on her shoulder. “Give your dad some grace. He’s been through a lot tonight.”
Heather narrowed her eyes at the table, arms crossed and shoulders slumped. It sounded like his life had been in danger, in fact, but he was never going to tell her that. They were never going to tell her anything.
“I’ll do my best to include you from now on,” Richard said quietly. “But I really need to be able to trust that you can keep this in the family.”
“If you still don’t think you can trust me, then nothing I do will ever be good enough to change that,” Heather said. She got up from the table.
“Acknowledged.” Richard stood up too, and offered her a hug, which she accepted, dismally.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” she said, hugging him back.
“Me too.” He kissed her head, and Su joined the embrace.
“Can I stay home from school tomorrow?” Heather asked.
“No, sorry,” Su said. “We don't know how fast this will spread. You turning up absent might raise suspicion.”
“No one will notice I’m gone,” Heather groused.
High school hadn’t been good to her so far. Her best friend had moved to another state halfway through the year, and she had been struggling along at the surface as the third wheel in other friend groups ever since.
And now her best friend barely acknowledged her texts anymore. Big city life on the east coast was apparently much more important than the bonds of junior high ride-or-dies.
“They will,” Su said. “You normally have such good attendance. It might be too much of a coincidence.”
Heather groaned.
She was sure this really was all so much worse than anyone would ever tell her, but of course she would have to go to school the next day and pretend everything was fine. What other choice did she have? Especially if something dangerous was happening.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Whatever you need, Dad. If it’ll help.”
“Thank you.” He kissed her again and the hug fragmented. “Now, bedtime for me,” he said with a weak smile, already on his way out of the kitchen. “I’m exhausted.”
Word traveled quickly at school, incited by the students whose households watched the early morning news. Homeroom became an impromptu political club and Heather kept silent. Whatever was going on with her dad, she didn’t want to make it worse. At least not until she could get some kind of angle on it.
“I bet it was a secret headquarters for some government agency,” one of her classmates said, perched on the desk across from her with his feet on the chair. “My dad says President Ferrens is up to something super shady these days. We’re all gonna pay for it soon.”
“Please, Beni,” Laura groaned from the desk beside Heather. “It's too early in the morning for this.”
“We’re already in a dictatorship,” Beni insisted, “Even if he’s not calling it that.”
“You’re talking like you're gonna join the Conxence yourself or something.” Another classmate who’d just arrived cuffed his arm on his way past.
Beni straightened, suddenly. He snapped his fingers. “That’s it! Mason, I’ll bet you anything it was them! Last night.” He swiveled around to face the newcomer, throwing his arms out. “What else could it be?”
Heather glanced at the doorway, but their teacher had yet to appear.
“Conxence?” Laura droned, skeptical. “This far east? Not a chance.”
The Conxence—formerly the non-militarized “Conscience Movement”—was established by civilians with the purpose of calling the troubling political climate to accountability. Currently demonized as an uncontrollable rash of vigilantes and terrorists, the Conxence was mainly active in the nation’s capital, three time zones west.
“They do like blowing stuff up when they can,” Mason said.
“I’m sure whatever happened last night was just an industrial accident, like the news said.”
“Yeah, like the news always tells the truth,” Beni snorted.
“Didn’t you see footage of the site?” asked Mason.
“It was crazy!” Beni grinned at him. He turned it on Laura, who remained unconvinced.
As Beni proceeded to describe the video coverage of the aftermath with as many sound effects as possible, Heather tried to act like her hackles weren't raising.
A crater, he said. The facility's demise had made a crater. In a rural area. Farmland outside of town.
A charred, skeletal, crater.
One that had almost claimed her dad's life. Heather should have thought to watch the news that morning—but she had barely caught the bus. And maybe her dad wouldn't have let her near the TV or internet anyway. She resented more than ever that her parents wouldn’t let her have a smart phone until she was seventeen. She could be facing a full lockdown when she returned home that afternoon.
She planned to spend her lunch hour in the library at one of the computers. Maybe it was good she was at school, where her dad couldn't interfere.
Still, if Larkspur was tied up in government secrets, that first confused local news story would be all the information to get out.
Heather fidgeted with the edge of her sea green hairband. She opened her notebook and tried to look busy.
By pushing her to the margins and rejecting her from a key part of their world, did her parents think they were protecting her? Especially now, when she had no idea what they were dealing with. Was the Conxence after her dad?
