October
Lucy's Age: 14
Geoffrey—I refuse to refer to him as my dad—came up and drove us down from Yonkers himself. It was weirder than I expected because he actually tried to make small talk with us.
Of course Renworst just sat there in a semi-worshipful silence the entire time. About all he could manage were basic yes and no responses to Geoffrey's questions.
I'm not sure what made me respond to Geoffrey. It would have been a lot easier to just give him the silent treatment. I guess I was curious. I mean what kind of guy takes a child in and then pretty much ignores her for ten years?
I thought maybe if I could understand him better it would make it so that I didn't care so much that he'd neglected me for so long. I mean if he turned out to be some kind of raging psychopath or something then I could just chalk it up as a win that I hadn't had more interaction with him.
I've created a lot of different reasons over the years for why it's just been Renworst and me for so many years, but none of them fit. Billionaire workaholic was my favorite for a long time, but what kind of billionaire throws muggers into walls hard enough to put them in the hospital? For a while I thought he was some kind of CIA operative or something, but if he is then he's got to be dirty somehow. I've seen the amount of money that Renworst pays out in rent every month and I'm pretty sure that you can't afford that on any kind of government salary.
I tried to just put all of that out of my head and listen this time around and I was surprised at what I heard. I think in his own way he is as trapped as I am. He gets to move around the city at will, but there was something there that made it feel like he wishes that he could travel to other countries.
I figured that I didn't have anything to lose, so I asked if we would be able to resume training together now that I was back in the city. He paused, not just a short pause, a long, noticeable pause while he thought it through, but in the end he just shrugged. He said that he'd like that, but that he wasn't sure that it would be possible, at least not for a while.
I went to bed that night thinking that maybe life in the city wouldn't be too bad, but then Geoffrey showed back up a few days later to talk to Renworst and it was like he was a whole different person. He barely even spoke to me, and when I tried to talk to him about some of the stuff that we'd touched on during the drive down he answered curtly, like I was getting in the way of the real reason for his visit.
Maybe Geoffrey really is a psycho after all. Hopefully the fact that we're in the city won't mean that we see him any more often than we did before.