Secrets

“Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.” Viola sang.
“Zippety Doo Dah, Zippety Ay.” Juliet added.
“That about covers alphabetical song titles. What should we do next?” Kathryn said.
“How about a drinking game?” Viola said.
“Too bad the only thing we’ve got to drink is water,” Kathryn said.
“Maybe the food processor can whip us up something potent,” Juliet replied.
“I already tried. Damn puritanical engineers didn’t give it any recipes to the smaller ones. They only dispense alcohol when hooked up to the mainframe,” Rex said.
They’d only been afloat their little boat for three days, and already they were seriously bored. It had taken longer than he’d wanted to build a boat. While Pedro and Zara had ridden back to the base camp for supplies, Nicholas, Russ and Rex had begun to cut lumber. They returned almost a month later with enough sheets to make a decent sized sail, and a food processor, which for some reason, made some pretty good rope. Reports from base camp were favorable. Despite his objections, Larry had taken over and the little temporary town was shaping up quite nicely. Zara said that they’d taken the news of an ocean obstacle fairly well, even though that meant they’d be there for longer than they’d expected.
It also became apparent that the boat they were making would not accommodate 8, so Pedro and Zara volunteered to stay behind to accompany the horses back to Base Camp. After a single hour at sea, Russ was puking over the side and begging for land. Refusing to leave him alone, Kathryn asked Nicholas to go with him back to the settlement.
Once again the elderly ladies and Rex were together and alone. They’d also gotten bored, and had resorted to playing ABC games to pass the time.
“How about Secret, Secret, I’ve got a Secret?” Juliet suggested.
“How does one play that?” Kathryn asked.
“We ask you about a secret and you tell us the answer. The person with the best secret answer winds.”
“I don’t know if I like the sound of that game,” Rex said as he readjusted the sail. Though he’d never been on a boat before, he thought he was getting the hang of the zig zaggy path they made to keep the wind.
“Okay, then Kathryn can go first,” Viola said, laughing. “There’s this question that I’ve been dieing to ask her, but haven’t because I thought it would be rude to bring it up.”
“Oh, yes, let the famous Clovelly sister go first. I’m sure she’s got all sorts of secrets,” Juliet said as she shifted her weight to the other side of the boat. All three woman sat on the crude bench seat they’d constructed out of roped together poles that came from a plant that looked similar to bamboo. Whenever all of them were out on the upper deck, they moved to balance the boat against the weight of the sail.
The Doctors Romanov sat on either side of Kathryn, both looking at her expectantly. Kathryn shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Ask away. Anything that old isn’t worth keeping secret anyway.”
“Well, the story goes that the love of your life died in the Battle of New Trafalgar, and that after the war was over, you wanted to retire peacefully and raise your daughter, but I kind of did the math,” Viola stopped, hesitant to continue.
“You did the math,” Kathryn prompted.
“Yes, and the Battle of New Trafalgar happened five years before Ofelia was born.”
“True. You’ve got your figures right, and Ofelia’s father did die in the Battle of New Trafalgar,” Kathryn paused and hung her head. Rex knew the memories were flooding back to her. The noise, the coppery smell of death and the colors so surreal that they shouldn’t be allowed in the real world.
“It was a bloodfest. We were trapped in one of the bunkers, low on supplies and power. We knew the enemy was coming, and they were coming in force. There were only three hundred and forty two of us left. We had two shuttles that had enough oomph to make a break for it, so we sent one in each direction, hoping that at least one of us would make it through in time to send word for reinforcements. Bea and I took one shuttle and Darren and Huron took the other.”
“This is Darren Star?”
“Yeah, Darren Star, the hero of Jusper Sea, the love of my life.”
“So I heard he looked like an angel.”
“If you mean a white boy with white blond hair and the prettiest puppy dog blue eyes you’ve ever seen, then yeah, he was quite angelic.”
“His codename was Angelstar.”
“Do I get to tell my story?”
“Go ahead.”
“So anyway, Bea, always the smart one, picks the crappier of the two shuttles for us… which stalled five minutes out of the bunker, leaving us dead in space for about half an hour. So Darren saves the day by whizzing off through enemy lines, delivering the message that there were still troops trapped at New Trafalgar. Then he makes the decision to whiz back through enemy lines, where we arrive just in time to see his shuttle blown to bits. If we’d been five minutes earlier, the carriers would have spot us and blown us out of the galaxy.”
“So if Darren Star died, then how did he get to be Ofelia’s father?”
“Now that’s the real secret. I think the only other one that I told this to was Bea. After the war ended, Bea and I became famous. We had a lot of people knocking on our door, asking for things… mostly money. One day, I opened the door to see Darren Star, standing there with his beautiful angelic smile on his face.”
“He wasn’t dead?”
“He wasn’t. And I was too busy doing… other things, to ask questions until well, the other things were over.”
“You mean sex,” Juliet said.
“Yes. I meant sex. We had sex, and lots of it, for several hours. Do you want more details?”
“No!” Rex shouted as he tried to hide his disgruntled face behind the sail. He did not need to hear about Ofelia’s conception.
“What?” Juliet said laughing, “It’s not like we all haven’t done it.”
“Yes, but I prefer not to talk about it with ladies old enough to…” Rex didn’t finish his sentence once his brain caught up with his mouth. Calling his only companions old ladies wasn’t going to win him any points. The old ladies in question simply laughed.
“So after a rousing several hours in bed, and well, not just in bed. There was one time on the…”
“Thanks, Kathryn. Enough details.”
“Right. I finally got around to asking questions, like where’d he been for the past five years. He broke down and cried right there. While we’d been stalled, he’d been taken aboard their carrier ship and without so much as a truth injectol, he told them everything in exchange for safe passage to the far reaches of space, and seeing that the war was now over, and everyone thought he was dead, Darren had changed his name to Nate, and was wondering if he could borrow a large sum of money to finance his new business.”
“Ouch.”
“Yes. Ouch. I gave him a quarter of what he asked for, and told him to never ever darken my doorstep again, or he should expect a laser rifle shot right behind the eyes.”
“And what happened after that.”
“Never saw him again. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t even tell Bea until I was six months pregnant.”
“Why didn’t you tell Ofelia?” Rex asked.
“She never asked… at least not once she was old enough to understand what a traitorous asshole was.”
“Wow. That’s going to be hard to beat,” Viola said. Rex tacked and the three women switched sides.
“I think it’s Rex’s turn now.”
“My turn? What makes you think that? Maybe it’s your turn, Viola.”
“Fine. Go ahead. Ask away.”
Stumped Rex remained silent. He had never been the share and share alike type. Sit, listen, gather and use against them when the time was right. Except he didn’t feel predatory when he had been listening to Kathryn. He’d been thinking that Ofelia had the right to know who her father really was… though he knew fathers tended to generally be great disappointments.
“Okay, Rex passes,” Juliet said with a clap. “I’ve been wanting to know this for ages. Rex, what is your last name.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Yes, but I bet your parents did,” Juliet said, crossing her arms across her chest.
“Yeah, they had two.”
“So they weren’t married.”
“Nope. My father was apparently Fabulous.”
“Aren’t all men fabulous?”
“No, I mean he was some sleazy lounge singer past his prime, and my mother was disowned for having his love child.”
“Fabulous? Like the Boone Fabulous?”
“Yeah. Word is he had a lot of illegitimate children. I just so happen to be one of them. I never met him, but from what I’ve heard, he was a real winner.”
“I met him once. You didn’t miss much.” Kathryn was trying hard to wipe the smirk off her face.
“What’s so funny?”
“We’re almost family. My sister almost married your step brother. We’d be step in laws, if there is such a thing.
“Wow, that’s a pretty spectacular secret, but I don’t think it quite tops man coming back from dead.”
“Well if you’re going to know that much, you might as well know the rest. My mother, before she was disowned, was the little known or heard of fourth Crosby daughter. When she was kicked out of the house, pregnant and on the streets, the patriarch actually tried to write her out of the company documents.”
“You’re Jack and Tyler’s first cousin? Why am I suddenly feeling plunged into a serial pulp novel?”
“I decided to sneak on the ship when I heard they were sending my uncle. I planned on sticking it to them by being on their perfect little colony ship. But when I got here, I decided that my uncle wasn’t nearly the bad guy that my grandfather was, and I kept my mouth shut.”
“I’m speechless,” Viola said. She stared at Rex and then back at Kathryn. “I don’t have nearly anything that enticing in my life… and I don’t think Juliet does either.”
Juliet shook her head in agreement. “I think we’ve got a tie. Equal points for each secret.”
“Kathryn, why is this feeling like a setup to me?”
“I think we’ve been out thunk by the Romanov Twins.”
“Like I always say, never mess with sisters with five doctorates between them.” Juliet and Viola laughed the same laugh, reached up and gave a high five over Kathryn’s head.