While Mom and Felix finish with the dishes, I volunteer to go outside and make sure our cooking fires are fully extinguished. Ion follows me. I shoot a look at my mom to see if she’s going to do anything to prevent the two of us from spending time alone together. She sends me a little shrug that seems to say I don’t know. Cryptic as that might seem, I think I understand the vibe she’s sending. She doesn’t know if Ion can be trusted. She doesn’t know where a lot of things stand right now. We just had Eudora as a dinner guest, and might be plotting together with her to defeat a common enemy, and it all seems so strange. The world as we know it feels a bit upended. So why should she try to stop me and Ion from spending time together? Will it do any harm? She doesn’t know. She’s past guessing. In a way, so am I. Though it feels much later, it’s still only early afternoon.
