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Chapter One Hundred and Two: Elena's Box
publish date:
2026-06-02 18:46:29
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ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter One Hundred and Two: Elena's Box
I call her immediately.She answers before the first ring finishes, which means she was holding the phone, which means she has been sitting with whatever is in that box and waiting for me to call and probably unable to do anything else in the interim."Tell me," I say."I can't do this on the phone," she says. "I need to show you.""You said you're coming next month," I say."I'm coming next week," she says. "I changed the flight when I found it.""What is it, Elena?"A pause.Like she's deciding how much to give over the phone versus in person."It's from your mother," she says.I go completely still."The box was my mother's," she says. "She gave it to me before she died. She told me to keep it until someone asked for it. She said I'd know when." A pause. "I never opened it because I thought I was the wrong someone. I thought there was a specific person it was meant for and I wasn't them.""Me," I say."I think so," she says. "Yes.""What made you open it now?" I say."Lucia saying
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter One Hundred and One: The Fourth Word
August.Lucia is six months old and the fourth word arrives on a Wednesday.Not dramatically. She is in the bouncy seat in the kitchen watching me make breakfast while slowly sulking on her milk bottle. She says it twice with the certainty of someone who has been working toward something and has decided today is the day. "More." I heard her say and I became still for just a nanosecond. I thought I might have misheard. It's just some more of her intelligible words.NI turn from the stove and looked at her with a smile She looks back at me."More." She repeated throwing a fit with her milk bottle in hand while sucking on a thumb. My eyebrows shot up in surprise. How did she know just the right wordI look at her for a moment and my smile widened as I approached her.Then I say: "More of what?"She makes the sound that means she approves of the question.I crouch to her level, taking aside a strand of her that seem to be stuck from sweat just so close to her eyes."More of this?" I say
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter One Hundred: What Stays
July arrives with the warmth and chill of a Chicago July that doesn't apologize for itself. The city at its most itself, outdoor everything and the lake and people moving through the heat with the determined enjoyment of people who endured five months of cold and are going to make the most of every degree above seventy.Lucia is five months old and she finally has the third word now.It arrived on a Tuesday morning and it was, as Dominic predicted, something she decided mattered."Li."Her version of her name.The first time she said it I was at the kitchen window watering the herbs and she said it from the bouncy seat with the specific satisfaction of someone who has been working toward something and has arrived.I turned around.She looked at me."Li."I looked at her for a moment.Then I said: "Yes. That's you."She said it again bouncing on the seat in joy. Smiling so wide I could see her toothless gum."Li."Three times. How establishing.Dominic came in from the hallway and she
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Ninety-Nine: The Night Before Everything Changes
We fly home from Albuquerque on a Sunday.The flight is two hours and Lucia sleeps most of it the way she slept the last time, in the complete committed way of someone who has decided rest is worth taking seriously. Dominic is reading, I don't know what it's about thought. I look out the window.The three days of the council meeting settle into me on the flight home the way significant things settle. Not dramatically. As weight that becomes familiar. The kind you carry differently after it's been named.Twenty-two people in a room, the structure decided, the gathering place confirmed.The morning before we left I walked to the Mira Seca foundations one more time. Alone, at six a.m., while the others were still at the hotel and Dominic had Lucia and the June morning was doing the specific thing with light that makes New Mexico look like it was lit deliberately.I stood at the foundations and looked at the plants.At the stones, then at the flowers Elena leaves. I thought about what Ros
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Ninety-Eight: What We Are Building
June.Lucia is now four months old.She has two things she says clearly now. "Ma" and "Da", both of which she deploys with the precision of someone who understands that specific sounds produce specific responses and is using this knowledge efficiently.Dominic responds to "Da" with the expression that has no name every single time without exception.I have stopped finding this remarkable and started finding it simply true. The way the morning light is true. The way the piano on Sundays is true. The way certain things settle into the fabric of a life and become part of its texture rather than events within it.He is a father.He is good at it in the ways I knew he would be and surprising in the ways I didn't predict. The thoroughness, the research, the deliberate preparation, all of that I expected. What I didn't expect was the sentimental gentleness. The way he holds her that is different from the way he holds anything else, not more careful, more present, as if she asks for a quality
ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE Chapter Ninety-Seven: Building the House
May arrives warm.The kind of May that makes Chicago residents slightly suspicious because it keeps being nice and they know better than to fully trust it, but it keeps being nice anyway and eventually you stop waiting for the catch and just accept the warmth.I am now back at work full time.Dr. Vega cleared it at the twelve-week check and Diane organized my return with the efficiency of someone who has been waiting for a resource and is not going to underutilize it now that it's back. My patient load is full. My feet are mostly cooperating.It is good to be back. To work again.The ER asks for exactly what I have. The competence and the ability, both of them, applied in the space where they make the most difference. I walk in on my first full Monday and the floor has the specific smell and sound that I've known for twelve years and I think: this is also home. Not instead of. In addition to.Multiple things can be home at once. I learned that in the last eight months.The Internation
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