Except, in Soledad's world it was. In Soledad's world she had to believe it was.
Soledad: "Please quit the bullshit acceptance of the-"
"It's not… bull." Knocking on Death's door. Gin wouldn't sully herself with foul language. "I'm fifty-eight years old. My time is coming. Today. Tomorrow. It is. I can cry, or I can… I can get what I'm able to out of the time I have left. If that means taking a few days, flying to see my daughter… My fear, Soledad, my living fear was that something would happen to you while I was still alive. I didn't want that. I didn't want that as badly as possible. There is something so horribly out of sync about a parent burying their child. And I take comfort In knowing the manner I will end. It won't be by a bullet from a. a thug or some such. Or getting run down by some drunk. This way when it happens it will be just like, like slipping under water."
Soledad was realizing there was so much more to her mother than she knew. Was it some kind of law of nature you had to be close to losing something to appreciate it?
"How's Dad taking it?"
"Well. He's well in my presence. I think he cries alone, wishes that he could do something. I haven't… There are some things you avoid talking about, but I know it must be horrible for him. When you marry, you take a vow to love, to protect. Then there comes a time when the vow is useless."
"It's not useless. He still loves you."
Gin appreciated her daughter's insistence. But she was in a place of frankness. "Not useless, then. Hollow. How much does it hurt to love someone, to say you'll always protect them… I know he'd give his life for me. But he can't. He can't, and that's a hurt beyond imagination. I've felt it about you. There have been so many times where I've felt-"
"Do people know? Have you told people?"
"No." A slight smile. Even at this juncture Soledad steamrolled her mother, kept the personal conversation from becoming too intimate. "I told… do you remember Mrs. Schoendorf? Her daughter was in your class."
Soledad remembered the girl, her mother. She indicated so to Gin.
"Right after," Gin continued. "I got out of the doctor's office, in a store I ran into her. Don't even know why I'd gone shopping except so that I could pretend everything was normal. Pretend the doctor hadn't told me what he told me. So there I was. Mrs. Schoendorf, she was talking, going on about… whatever. About nothing, really. I don't know. Maybe it was important. Maybe it was the most important tiring in the world to her. But once you know you have, you have this thing, you have this thing that's actively trying to end your life inside you… once you know your self is trying to kill you, that's the only thing that's important. And I said that to her. I said: I can't talk now, I have cancer.'"
"… How did she, what did she-"
"Well, I think I shocked her. I did. I know I did. You say something like that… but not so badly that… I saw her again. A day later. She shunned me. She actually shunned me."
"What do you mean?"
"She…" As if it were a cat lying on the table, as if it could feel and respond to her movements, Gin's hand, the tips of her fingers, moved up and down over the fork that rested near her discarded plate. "I don't know how else to describe what she did. She did not wish to encounter me, and did everything she could to keep from doing so. Because I was sick. Just because I was sick, she treated me like I was some kind of-"
"I want to come home. I want to go home with you." Soledad was forceful with that. Put the same energy into her words she would if she were kicking in a door, executing a warrant.
Her mother, not as forceful, was equally indisputable. "No."
"This isn't… we're not taking a vote."
"Soledad, I love you. There it is. The cliche I didn't want to… I love you, you're all the daughter I could have ever wanted."
A lie. It hurt Soledad that at such a moment her mother was so mindful of her feelings she felt compelled to engage in emotional subterfuge. That Soledad, despite, in spite of her faults-her baggage that she portered poorly. The distance at which she kept people-could be as a daughter anything close to all Gin could have hoped for was beyond Soledad's comprehension. Both her self-perception and her perception of her mother were that badly adjusted. When she looked in the mirror, all Soledad saw was a cop who did work. That she was a cop who was honest and true and selfless was as lost on her as it was precious to Gin.
And that it was lost on Soledad made her all the more beloved to her mother. Tears free-flowing from her. The cloth napkin not nearly enough to contain them. Giving effort to rejoin her own thoughts: "But since the day you left home you've been your own woman, I haven't agreed… I haven't even liked every choice you've made. But I've let you live your life the way you wanted to." She was pointed with that. "All I'm asking, if I'm done, let me end my life the way I see fit."
Soledad tried to think of a time-after Reese had a pit burned in her chest by that fire freak. After the tag team of a metal morpher and a telepath had cut through half her element. Even when a weather manipulator, for a minute, looked unstoppable to the point Soledad thought for sure she was staring death in the eye-she did not want to face a day of work.
Couldn't come up with one.
Her work gave her purpose. Even being benched from MTac. maybe especially because she was benched, her work gave Soledad a sense of purpose.
She wouldn't, could not consider not working, even though the stats said her work would eventually catch up to her. Kill her.
There were, yeah, times alone when Soledad found herself with the shakes. The night after going against that telepath she'd gone home and vomited. Spilled from her gut contents she didn't even know it had. That reaction was human. It was a reminder she hadn't actually "seen it all." Like Vin had said: the kind of nerves that keep you on your toes.
What Soledad was feeling now… competing needs: the need to come up with a reason to pry loose her grip on her Prelude's steering wheel, get out of the car, cross the parking lot and go into the DMI offices. Into work.
Vs.
Come up with an excuse not to do all that. Flip the ignition. Go home.
Her mother's dying of cancer. A reason. No excuse needed.
But telling people, telling Abernathy about her mother meant opening a door a little. Letting people view a sliver of herself.
Wasn't going to happen.
So there had to be something else; another reason to go in or drive off. Stay or leave. Do work or-
Metal tapped the glass right next to Soledad's head. Unexpected, but it didn't startle her. Not that she was startleproof. She was in another space where sound took its time traversing, and when it had, it was garbled among thirty-three other sensations coming to her on a lag. Even turning her head was a process where thought and action were filtered by delay.
At the window of her car: Raddatz rapping his wedding band against the glass. He said something. Through the door it was just a fog of wordless sounds.
Soledad dropped the window.
"You good, O'Roark?"
"Yes," she said. Quick, but without conviction. "Sitting in your car alone? You sure you're good?"
Soledad's eyes drifted over Raddatz. Over his body. She wondered: What did he look like naked? What kind of damage did his clothes hide? Massive scars? Burns?
Twisted flesh that would never be a well-tailored suit again? She wondered: Was it better to have your wounds on display-a missing arm, a leg gone-was it better to look damaged than to walk around normal on the outside only to, end of the day, have to strip down to the truth of yourself?
"O'Roark… " Raddatz tossed out her name trying to catch her focus.
"I'm not okay," Soledad said.
Raddatz squatted, came down to Soledad's level. "Got issues you want to talk about?"