Iron Station Savage Masks IC IV

[mmdeforrest]

November 8th
Providence
Emi descends the stairs in the morning using the back stairwell at about 6:45am. She’s dressed in a tan sweater and jeans with matching ankle high boots. Her makeup is light, and she has a small makeup bag under arm.

She says a quick good morning to Joe as she walks through the kitchen and rounds the corner to where the door to the office and the hallway connect, and where she had remembered there being an extra bathroom. “I’m just going to finish getting ready in here, if you don’t mind. Just trying to stay out of everyone’s way.

Spoiler: Emi Being Curious and Sneaky

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Careful not to actually shut the bathroom door all the way she waits until she sees and feels that Joe’s attention is back on getting breakfast ready before the bright orange binder she’d spotted last night floats into the bathroom so that she can quickly skim through it before it returns exactly to it’s place when his attention is once again away from the stove.

The hard copy Hot File, based on the table of contents’ references to appendices that do not have tabs, is a summary document. The list of young men (incomplete) that Emi has been seen with over the last three years, for example, has no printout.

Nevertheless, the organization makes skimming through the document something Emi can do quickly and efficiently.

Most of the tabbed sections seem to follow the Myriad “Who Is…?” page for East Side. The printouts include basic information — for example, the web page for her boarding school in New York. One or two points have been highlighted on the page and, like many others, appear less for calling attention to information that might be on a test or for further follow up and more for places where one might start a conversation.

Also, there is a note that any mention of her mother is missing and that Mary and the rest of the family should probably avoid that topic for now.

While there are a handful of items from the tabloids in here, they are exclusively instances where she has been seen with John. Whether she is picking something up psychically or via the little physical clues that paper can sometimes hint at — the curl of a page, a greater level of shine where ink has been smeared, Emi can tell Mary has lingered over those photographs.

The last three tabs, however, are different: Plans, Rivals, and Conclusion.

Whatever anxiety or excitement she might have felt at the plans section quickly dissipates, as it is mostly concerned with the things needed to be done to prepare for her arrival, which is organized by who is to do the task and further broken down by the dates and times the tasks should be finished.

Every box has been neatly ticked.

There are two pages under Rivals — one for Mastroianni and the other for Radke. Mastroianni appears to have gotten more of Mary’s attention. Also of note is that, on the right hand top of his Wikipedia page is the phrase “Assign to Jefferey.”

The notes for Grayson are more sparse and are headed by a social media photo of him with Emi followed by the kind of report one can by from Intellus for $25. In the upper right hand corner is the phrase “Assign to Kate.” Her handwritten notes include a list of several provisional heroes he might be (with Draconian, Goldenheart, Kid Vitrian, Meteor, and a couple of others being possiblities) alongside the possibility of his being a Myriad agent in training or a friend she has made at university who provides an anchor of normalcy.

Under the conclusions tab, Emi comes across a letter addressed to her.

Spoiler: The Letter Addressed to Emi

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Dear Miss Emilia Shaw,

I have no way of knowing if you will ever read this or, if you ever do, when you will read it. It may be soon or it may be years from now—either when we are laughing over the strangeness of first visits or when your are helping sort through my effects. If those futures are not on the cards, however, this will be destroyed and no harm will come of it.

My primary reason for writing you is that, in two days, you will arrive to stay at our home in the company of my firstborn and I need to begin to think of you more as a person and less as a research subject. As Joe points out, if I am—as I plan—to place you in a room set aside for close family, we should use familiar names with you—which means I need to quickly recalibrate the way I think and speak of you.

I also need to order my thoughts about your visit and writing helps in that process. You will be, with the possible exception of Jefferey (who was a small child at the time), the first person brought home to meet the family. Yes, Kate has had young men arrive and have ‘the talk’ with Joe before and Stephen has brought a girl or two to dinner, but this is different.

Not that I haven’t enjoyed the process. It has been an interesting challenge to prepare for your visit. Such nonsense has been written and implied about you over the years. But even in that nonsense, there have been hints of things. An offhand comment in Novella 2000 about your ‘women’s intuition’ makes me suspect you will be able to hear our surface thoughts. If that is the case, of course, all one would have to do is keep one’s thoughts elsewhere to prevent you from knowing what might be coming next.

If this is the case, however, it would be no different from meeting someone with exceptional hearing. One could not blame them from overhearing things in the natural course of events. If it is natural for you to overhear our thoughts, I hope that the lads in Stephen’s quartet remain well behaved.

I should be more cautious of your arrival—more reserved—but confess that I am finding it difficult to do so. This has less to do with you than it does with what I have been seeing in John. He is more himself (if more mature and, if possible, more earnest) since meeting you. We cannot know everything that happened to him after his fateful visit to the British Museum but what I am speaking of goes beyond what is restricted or classified information.

I have grown used to those kinds of gaps due to Joe’s line of work.

You should know that something still haunts him from those early days as Dee. His handler—an AEGIS agent at City of London—spoke with us in the days immediately after the Windsor Incident to assure us that he was recovering and would be in touch when he could. And there has been another gap in communication that he will not speak of.

You are not in a position to know what his eyes look like when you are not there but they change for the better when you are the subject of conversation.

It gives me hope for him. And, perhaps, for the two of you.

I mentioned a woman’s intuition earlier. I am aware that I have more of it than most and always have. So does Joe and the rest of the family (John has, I think, learned something of why that is but has not yet disclosed what he knows.). My intuition is clearer in person so we will have to see if my opinions of you change, but I have a good feeling about you as a person—even if I do not yet know what that means. Nor do I know how much is colored by my hopes for my son.

He is such a good boy and you are beginning to touch the age when that begins to matter more. He may not be as handsome as Enzo Mastroianni (nor as rich — even considering John’s newfound wealth) and I admit that I am writing from a mother’s bias that I cannot imagine Mastroianni or Grayson Radke are as worthy as he is.

In this way, he is like his father: He can hide himself within a strong, professional persona. I hope you can see through that and know when he needs your support—the support his mother is no longer in a position of offer him.

I’ve looked at that last sentence for a surprisingly long time.

I must confess that I am surprised to find that a part of me hopes you will find a way to read this during your brief visit with us. As Joe might remind me, there is no need to rush things but if you are an important part of John’s life now and, as such, I would like to get to know you better. We won’t have time to sit down to tea and talk during this whirlwind of a trip. Perhaps we can arrange something for later.

I’ll have to give that possibility some thought.

I look forward to meeting you, Emilia Shaw, and seeing how closely aligned my impressions of you are. If they are close enough, I know we will get on well.

With growing affection,

Mary

She returns the kitchen with her full makeup done and looks at the spread for the morning. “Is there anything I can help with?” she asks Joe as her bag floats back up the stairs, headed toward her room.

“You can come and keep me company before the others arrive,” Joe responds with a winning smile before it turns conspiratorial. “Now’s your chance to ask whatever questions you have while Mary and Kate aren’t around hatching their plans for or with you.

“Kate usually hops up on the counter about there,” he said, pointing to a stretch of countertop. “Between you, me, and anyone else paying any bit of attention, she would be thrilled to sit there next to you when she comes down—although from the sound of things last night, that may be setting John up to become the victim of another plot.”

While he was clearly looking forward to Mary’s retelling of the events from last night, it was clear Joe believed that was a story to be heard from the teller when they were ready to tell. There were sure to be some embellishments but he was sure that, if Kate laughter that much, it was going to be a good one.

“Unless, that is, you are here to try and steal my pancake techniques, of course,” he teased, sprinkling a mixture of blueberries and chocolate onto the uncooked sides of one of the pancakes. “Those you’ll have to drag out of me. But that probably wouldn’t be much of a challenge for you anyway.”