June
Lucy's Age: 6
I didn't expect the transition to be easy for Lucy, but I didn't expect it to hit her as hard as it has.
I considered lying to Lucy when she woke up in the new house and asked what had happened to Mrs. Agosti, but I suspected that would just come back to haunt me later on, so I told her the truth. I told her that their efforts to keep the playgroup at the park a secret hadn't been successful and that there were consequences to breaking the rules. For her the consequences were living in a different house without Mrs. Agosti.
The result was crying, but not a temper tantrum. Lucy's cries were the cries of someone who'd lost the person who meant the most to them.
I've been alive for a very long time, and I've spent enough time inside of other people's heads to have been exposed to nearly every emotion imaginable. I never suspected before now just how much paler those emotions are when experienced secondhand.
Lucy is devastated and I can't do anything to help her. Actually that's not true. I could reunite her with Mrs. Agosti, but I can't do that and keep her safe in the process. I think out of everything that has happened that I'm the most surprised over how badly I wish I could do something to make Lucy happy again.
If I were a lesser man I might have found myself wavering in my resolve to protect Lucy, but I stayed firm. I have altered my plans slightly, though. Rather than dealing with Mrs. Agosti in a more permanent fashion, I've moved her to a safe house which has adequate soundproofing and a cage that resembles the one that Imastious was using to keep Venice captive until a few months ago. Killing Mrs. Agosti would be simpler in almost every way, but I'm strangely unwilling to do so. If I'm going to continue to tell Lucy the truth then at some point I'm going to be faced with a direct question as to whether or not I killed the woman who has been her mother for the last three years.
I knew that they'd bonded, but I apparently underestimated the strength of that bond. If I were to kill Mrs. Agosti and Lucy were then to find out, I'm convinced that she would never forgive me, which means I'll have to try and wipe Mrs. Agosti's memory and then send her on her way.
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that what I'm trying to do is possible. It is one thing to destroy my own memories when I want them gone, or to destroy the span of just a couple of hours. It's quite another matter altogether to destroy the long-term memories of someone else, someone who desperately wants to hang onto those memories.
The process has already taken much longer than I'd expected it to, but to be completely honest I'm not entirely unhappy at the prospect of having to spend more time down here in the city. The looks that Lucy has been giving me lately make me remarkably uncomfortable. Not only that, being on the island means that I have more time to spend with Venice, who has finally recovered from the damage Imastious inflicted on her after her failed murder attempt.
Venice is still young enough that she doesn't heal much faster than a normal human, but that too will change given enough time.
Between running the occasional hit for Imastious, getting Venice started training again, and spending more hours than I'd like mucking about inside of Mrs. Agosti's mind, I'm the busiest I've been in a long time. I would have expected that to be enough for me, but I very much miss teaching new techniques to Lucy.
I suppose I thought that our bond was strong enough to compensate for the loss of Mrs. Agosti, but reality has been far different than I expected.