Brenda could tell it was just one of those days, when you started late and spent the whole day scrambling to catch back up. The kids were still upset about missing out on their visit to their grandparents. They weren’t openly pouting, the way kids their age back on Earth might have done. But they were definitely less than enthusiastic about getting dressed and ready for the day.
They’re just kids, said a voice in the back of her mind. With everything that’s going on, they have a right to be disappointed.
But she also knew that they were living on a world that was very unforgiving, and it was far easier to form good habits from the beginning than to break bad ones. Indulge them now, and when it was time for them to assume serious responsibilities in a few years, it could end in tears. No one had forgotten the Munroe girl, and what her stubborn self-pity had gotten her.
All the same, by the time she got the children through breakfast and handed off to their teachers, Brenda was thoroughly frazzled. And she had an air shift to get through — and given her dad had finally called it quits on the main studio board last night, she’d have to do hers on the remote broadcast system.
As she was approaching the station offices, she was surprised to see Cindy Margrave walking just ahead of her, head bent over phone. Brenda lengthened her stride to close the gap with the younger woman. “How are things going.”
“OK.” Except her voice didn’t sound OK. When Brenda made it clear she was willing to listen, Cindy expanded. “I mean, I’m doing OK, and the rest of the family is. But I just got a text from an old friend I hadn’t heard from in years.”
When Brenda asked whether it was a friendship disrupted by the Expulsions, Cindy shook her head. “No, it was when Aunt Betty got transferred, a couple of years before. Shelly and I both swore we’d e-mail every day, but things happened, and we sort of grew apart.”
Brenda could understand how that sort of thing worked. She’d lost touch with a number of friends who’d moved away, especially the ones whose parents worked in the oil industry. No matter how close they’d been, no matter how sincerely they’d sworn to keep in contact, things would come up and the letters or e-mails or texts would become fewer and far between.
However, she doubted that reflecting on that would help Cindy. “So how is she doing?”
“It doesn’t sound good. Apparently the Pennsylvania child welfare system isn’t going around scooping up kids whose parents are in the hospital, whether or not they’ve made other arrangements. In fact, she was a little surprised when I told her about Amy.” Cindy paused. “Shelly went to stay with a friend’s family when her folks got sick, and then her friend’s folks got sick, and now all of them are sort of holed up in another friend’s place, with that friend’s twenty-something big sister as the only adult in the whole place. From the sound of things, they’re kind of worried about what would happen if the government ever notices, but apparently things are getting bad enough around there that the government’s got a lot bigger fish to fry than making sure every child has a proper legal guardian.”
“No, that doesn’t sound good at all.” Although Brenda suspected that the big sister in question was about her own age, maybe even older, she also knew that things were different dirtside.
Except telling Cindy that there was nothing they could do right now wasn’t going to be helpful. If anything, it was apt to make her worry more. “How about trying to find out as much as you can about their situation, anything they need to know to keep their place going. If you need to, let me know so I can see what I can find out.”
By then they were at the doors to the station offices. There was work to be done, and it wouldn’t wait.