A New New Man

Ronnie paused on the doorstep, all three girls hovering behind him. Each one holding a new suitcase full of new clothes. None of them smiled.

Why hesitate? She wasn't here. They said she wasn't even in the country. This was home. Sort of. It was safe.

He took a breath, and reached out with the key. The new lock clicked, and he pushed the door open. The hallway smelled of plaster dust and paint. Ronnie tried not to remember why.

It felt odd stepping inside, as if he was trespassing, or the place was haunted. He gave himself a mental shake. There's no one here!

Some part of him sensed the three children drawing closer together, like a flower unblooming, or a snail pulling its antenna back from a child's curious finger.

"Let's go and see your rooms, first," he said, too heartily. "I know you've been missing your stuff, Aster."

Aster scowled.

"Come on, Tansy," Ronnie said, "Do you need help with your case?"

Tansy pulled her fingers out of her mouth, and shook her head, pointing at Aster.

"Aster do it."

The scowl melted away, replaced with a small sigh and a resigned expression. This was, somehow, worse.

Ronnie went with them to each of their rooms, as if this were a hotel and he were a staff member. It made the place feel even less like home, no matter how familiar it was. It wasn't as if Nona would be hiding under one of the beds, like some kind of 1920s bogeyman. Still, he couldn't help it. What if she'd retaliated somehow, and ruined their things?

Everything was as they'd left it. The beds hadn't even been made.

Aster's old phone lay dark and dead on her nightstand, and her face lit up when she saw it. She hated the new one, with all the parental controls on it.

"No tech in the bedrooms, girls," he said. "We talked about this." He picked up the phone and pocketed it.

The scowl returned.

"Why don't you unpack your case and I'll go and order us a pizza?"

Aster shrugged and sank down to perch on the edge of the bed. Without her device, she was listless.

Tansy was next, but she balked on the landing, looking at the door to the spare room. It had been patched up, but not very well.

She extracted her first two fingers from her mouth again and said,

"I want to stay with Aster."

"Just put your case in your room for now," he said.

Fern rolled her eyes.

"He's not in there anymore, dummy. The p'leece took him out. Di'nt they Dad?"

"That's right."

He should have seen this coming. Alright, so he'd done his best to shield them from all that crazy stuff on the news, but it was inevitable they'd catch some of it. Even the tamest details were horrifying.

Fern snatched Tansy's case and marched it into the bedroom, as if defying the room to contain anything beyond the ordinary. Then she dumped her own in the same way, and both girls went back to sit with their sister.

Aster didn't mind, Or at least, she didn't object, and to a parent who has a lot on his plate, it amounts to the same thing.

*

Having ordered pizza, Ronnie moved through the rooms like a guest while he waited for it to arrive.

Everything was familiar, and unfamiliar at the same time. He hadn't chosen any of this stuff. But then, even if he hadn't had his body hijacked by an android, he probably would have left it all for Nona to sort out. She was just better at it. It's a woman thing, right? What man cares much about his sofa except that it's comfortable? What man cares about cushions or shower curtains, or lamps?

The photos on the wall repulsed him. They showed him smiling, but he couldn’t remember them being taken. He took them all down and tucked them behind the sofa. Out of sight. For now. Until the girls were in school and he could deal with them properly. With a hammer most likely.

Moving in to the kitchen, he had memories of his arms aching so much from all the scrubbing, that even he could feel it, buried in the back of his own brain as he was.

His handwriting on the calendar looked foreign. Rounded. Too neat.

Taking it down from the magnetic hanger on the fridge, he leafed through the pages. Looking for... What? A clue where she might be, or when she might try to come home?

He folded it closed and pushed it behind the bread bin. For now.

*

After the pizza had been delivered and eaten, the girls all headed for their rooms. He had to call them back to help clear everything away.

Of course, before, he'd done the clearing up. Well, not him, exactly. But to their eyes it had been him. This was back when he hadn't been himself, but they didn't know that. Did they?

And before that, it was Nona. It was always Nona. He'd done just the same thingb the kids did. Got up and left it to her. Took it for granted she'd do it. Treated her like a robot, really. Really.

That doesn't make what she did okay.

"Play with us," Fern said, a smirk on her mouth.

"Yes, play," said Tansay, pulling her index finger from her mouth and poking him in the thigh with it. "Stand on one leg. Go hop hop hop."

"And sing the Spanish national anthem," Fern said. "Backwards." Her eyes gleamed.

"Don't be silly," Aster said with a cold look. "Dad doesn't do that kind of thing anymore. Do you, Dad?"

All three pairs of eyes locked on to him. Ronnie floundered. He had a memory of doing things like that, but it was fuzzy and vague.

They were waiting to see what kind of man he was now.

The thing was, he wasn’t sure.

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