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"fatberg"
Affinity
Dad was a plumber. His work was a little different from mine -- he dealt strictly with clogs, pipes, toilets -- the usual stuff.
"I spend my days up to my elbows in filth," he joked, "but look at how good we have it."
My parents were not well-off, but they were well enough. We weren't rich, and we didn't act like we were, but the house was paid for, we had good food, and between Mom and Dad, they made enough to send me and my brother, Stephen, to private school. The McCallister Academy of Science, Art, and Magic. It was the last in the county that still had a magic division. Most of the schools had stopped offering it, citing waning interest -- a lot of students didn't take it up until they were in late high school, or when they started college.
McCallister started us on it in second grade, the old way. Aptitude tests, learning about the different elements and finding our affinity -- all the usual stuff.
Stephen's affinity was for fire. Dad laughed uproariously at this, when he heard it -- he'd gotten tested back in the day, and had a mild affinity for water, which was what had led to his career path (well, that and our grandpa's plumbing business, which he'd inherited).
"A plumber with a son who has an affinity for fire," he wheezed, when Stephen brought his letter home, proudly beaming about the good news. "Well, I suppose you won't be taking over the family business!"
When I was tested, at age eight, I found that my affinity was for water.
"That's my girl!" said Dad, puffing proudly.
Stephen, six years my senior, smiled grimly. "Better you than me," he said. He didn't want the family business -- he wanted to become an engineer, or maybe a physicist. His calling was the stars.
He pulled me aside at one point, when Dad was busy in the kitchen. "Chloe, you can be whatever you want. Don't let Dad stop you from following your own dream."
Dad hadn't stopped him from following his, but there had been disappointment, that Stephen wasn't going to follow in his footsteps. It had been a relief to Dad, then, that my afinity was water -- that I so clearly enjoyed helping him.
"I know," I told him. "I'm going to be a plumber. It's what I want."
Dad's work fascinated me. I didn't mind the gross parts -- it was all part of the job. I was enchanted by water. I wanted to do nothing more than spend my life playing with it, directing its flow.
"You see?" said Dad, to anyone who would listen, as I handed him tools and watched intently while he fixed our kitchen sink. "She comes by it honestly."
Stephen graduated from McCallister and went to college to major in physics, eventually applying to PhD programs in astrophysics, ignoring Dad's occasional comments about how he was never going to get a job in the field and why didn't he do something practical? He'd given up on magic after leaving McCallister, and it was clear to me and Mom that Dad's comments ate away at him. He winced every time Dad said something -- "it's enough to give up on plumbing, but magic, too? Why did I pay for you to go to private school if you aren't going to use the talents you developed?"
He straightened a little, every time Dad started talking, and always found a way to change the subject.
I felt sorry for both of them, in a way -- Dad for not being able to see what was in front of him, which was that my brother was brilliant and talented in ways that Dad couldn't respect, and my brother, for Dad's lack of understanding.
They drifted apart, and I couldn't do anything to stop it.
I kept taking classes in magic theory, and found that there were ways to apply them to what I did with Dad.
"Hey," I said. "I think I can diagnose what's wrong with the pipe if I say a quick incantation over the water and follow where it goes."
"Do it," said Dad.
He was great at diagnosing plumbing problems -- even those that other plumbers couldn't always find -- but I made it easier.
"What would I do without you?" said Dad.
We stayed close, because of our shared interest and love for water, and that made it easier.
I saw Dad and Stephen drift apart, and I worried that it would happen to me. I didn't dwell on it, but it was always at the back of my mind: that could be you, if you aren't careful.
At eighteen, I graduated from McCallister. I helped Dad over the summer, and started a civil engineering program in the fall, with a focus on water treatment. After graduation, I passed the certification tests and got a job working in wastewater treatment for the county. I found an apartment, close to home, and kept hanging out with Dad on the weekends.
Magic was still part of my life. In college, I'd done a minor in hydromancy. It didn't come up much at work, but when I helped Dad out, it was still there.
Dad was the first to start complaining about clogs.
"I oughta go on the news," he griped, as we cleared yet another clogged main sewer line of 'flushable' wipes. "Let 'em know you can't flush this stuff."
"Yeah, but if you did, you'd see a big drop in business," I teased. "And this is an easy job with the auger."
He looked over at me. "I was thinking more about the ones that make it into the city sewers," he said. "If they get caught in a line like this, imagine what they'd do for all you guys."
I made a face. "Oh, I know. I'm hoping that they disintegrate in the sewer proper."
"Keep hoping," he said.
At work, we started noticing oddities in the city sewer system. Drainage and flow weren't what we expected.
"Well," said my boss. "We're going to have to investigate, send someone down and figure out what's going on."
They sent an investigative team, who reported a massive blockage in one of the main lines.
"Fatberg," said my boss, once the reports came in. "It's happened in other cities; was only a matter of time before it happened here, considering how old most of the city plumbing is..."
My main assignment at work became figuring out what to do, how to fix it.
At a loss, I called Dad, who suggested that I talk to Stephen.
"He's smart, he'll know what to do."
Dad's words gave me an idea.
Stephen and I had kept in touch over the years. Despite the gap in our ages and our interests, we were still close to one another. I called him, once a week, and we caught up on what we were doing.
He'd finished his PhD and was working at an institution on the opposite side of the country, doing something I didn't really understand.
He'd picked up magic again, too, once he was away from home. Being away from Dad and his constant talk about water must have made it easier -- he leaned in to his affinity and started doing some interesting stuff with pyromancy.
I phoned him as I was walking out of my boss's office.
"Hey bro," I said, when he picked up the phone. "I have a proposition for you."
"Uh, hello to you, too," he said. "What?"
I explained about the mass in the sewers, the perpetual worry about flushable wipes and how they weren't actually flushable.
"Okay," said Stephen, when I was done. "And what does this have to do with me?"
I took a deep breath. "I know you've been using magic again."
Silence on the other end of the line.
"I also know that there's a lot that can be done if you have two handlers of opposite affinities. Some of the more complex vanishing spells, for instance, require two people with opposite alignments. It's one of those...matter and antimatter things. They meet and poof, that's it, they cancel each other out."
"Okay, that's not how physics works," Stephen started.
"I know," I said. "Look -- let's not go into that right now. The point is, um, I need your help. It's not life-or-death, but it's...look, it's an opportunity for you to come back here and help me. You'd be paid, too."
Silence.
"Please, Stevie," I said, resorting to the childhood nickname. "I know that you don't want to come back, and you definitely don't want to help with what you probably see as a glorified plumbing problem, but this is nasty, and if it's not resolved, people could get sick. If they can't remove it, there's going to be weird blockages and backups all around town, and there's little I can do about it on my own. I can't get to the root of the problem without you."
I finished speaking my piece, and waited to hear him say something -- anything.
"Fine," he said, after a moment. "But only because you're right, and it's a public health concern."
"Thank you."
I flew Stephen in first-class. I had a bit of money I'd been saving, from the plumbing jobs that I still helped Dad with on the weekends, and I wanted to show him how much I appreciated what he'd done.
When I picked him up at the airport, it was the first time we'd seen each other in four years.
"Jeez, Chlo," he commented, when I met him at baggage claim. "You haven't changed at all. You're still my gangly younger sister, band t-shirts and all."
I grinned at him. "Neither have you, except for the beard. Was that a requirement for the new job, or did some small scraggly animal decide to make your face its new home?"
He rolled his eyes. "Yup, definitely the same."
I took a deep breath. "Look -- thanks for coming out. I'm really glad to see you."
He shrugged. "Well, you asked, and I answered."
"Thank you," I told him again.
He looked away from me, staring toward the unmoving baggage carousel. "I'm just glad you asked."
I let him settle in, took him to dinner, and the next morning, after a rough night's sleep on my apartment's futon (I gave him the bed), I took him in to work with me.
"This is my brother, Stephen," I explained to my boss. "He's a magic handler as well, of a different affinity. We -- we're going to try to cast a vanishing spell on the blockage. We'll have to do it piece by piece. It'll take a few days."
"Fine," said my boss. "Did you get a quote to the city?"
"I did, and they approved it, contingent on us actually succeeding at removing this thing."
"Great," he said. "So go do it. The guys in Sewage Maintenance can help you with any gear you need and get you out to the site."
"Do you...want to know anything else?" asked Stephen, bewildered.
My boss shrugged. "I know your sister," he said. "She filed all the right paperwork and she floated the idea past me before she did it. We don't have the manpower to take care of this thing on our own, and quite frankly we don't have the time. If you can find a way to remove it, more power to you."
"That means no," I translated. "Look -- I took care of everything. Let's go."
"Okay," he said, and we went.
I taught him how to gear up, what he needed to wear, and then some of the Sewer guys took us down to the blockage.
"Ready?" I asked.
"Ready," said Stephen.
We descended the ladder.
Down below was dark. They'd set up lamps, here and there, and our respirators kept us from smelling the worst of it.
I'd done the necessary preparations before, had told everyone what to bring down, what we needed.
"I think we can do this in sections," I said calmly, via the headsets we wore. "Remove a hundred kilos at a time. That's the limitation of the spell that Yanovski developed for vanishing earth. I've modified it slightly, and I'm pretty sure that it should work. It's targeted only at the mass itself -- what it's made of -- and not at the, um, other stuff, like the sewer infrastructure."
"I read what you sent me," said Stephen. "You wanted to start small, do ten kilos and see if we could get rid of it from there?"
"Yeah." I shut my eyes. "Okay, um -- we're going to need to, um..."
"You start," said Stephen. "Because everything is wet. And then I come in, and..."
"Yeah," I said. "Okay. Let's do it."
I bowed my head, focused, and started.
A few minutes later, at the right interval, I felt another thread of power join mine.
"Stephen?" I said, over the headset. "Ready?"
"Ready."
We tied it together.
As spells go, it was anticlimactic: one moment, part of the mass was there, and the next, there was a void where it had been -- an empty space that quickly began filling with dirty water and sewage.
"Ugh," said Stephen. "I don't know how you do this all day."
"Next piece?" I asked. "We're going to, um, expand it out."
"Okay," he said. "One of twenty, let's go."
We began.
Eight and a half days later, it was done.
"Right on schedule," said Stephen. He ignored the praise from my boss and inquiries from the press and other magic handlers about what it was that we had done. "Suppose I'll be flying out in the next week."
"Yeah," I said. "But there's something else to do, first..."
I'd made reservations at one of my favorite places, a casual Mexican fusion joint that I thought Stephen would like.
I plied him with margaritas at the bar, and then I told him: "I made a reservation for three. If it's okay with you, I'm going to invite Dad."
He made a face. "Why? So he can grouse at me about how I'm wasting my life again?"
I took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let go. "No. Because it's a good time to talk, and he's not going to say anything bad."
"You don't know him like I do," said Stephen. "You know the last time I had a long conversation with him, four or so years ago? The last time I came home for winter solstice. He asked me how the job hunt was going, then told me that I could always come back home and become a plumber like him, if I couldn't find anything."
I sighed. "Did you know that he offered me the same thing? With the exact same phrasing?"
He glanced at me, startled. "What?"
"It wasn't a sign that he thinks you're going to fail," I told him. "It's more...he wants you to know that you still have that safety net, if you want it."
"He could have phrased it better."
"Yeah," I agreed. "He could have. But it's Dad. If you expected an eloquent, articulate speech about how he was proud of you and believed in you, but wanted to give you a safety net anyway...you weren't going to get it."
He drummed on the bar top. "Fine," he said, after a moment. "Text him."
So I did.
We moved to the table. Dad showed up fifteen or so minutes later.
"Stephen!" he said, stripping off his jacket and sitting down. "How have you been?"
I watched as Stephen eyed him, wondered if he noticed that Dad was wearing a shirt with the logo of the federal agency he worked for.
"Um," he said. "Fine. Chlo called me out because of..."
"The fatberg," said Dad. "Yeah. I suggested she call you."
"What?"
I laughed. "I was having a hard time figuring out what to do, and so he told me to phone you. 'Call your brother. He's smart, he'll know what to do.' When he told me to call you, I remembered the old studies about opposite affinities, and, well...you know."
Stephen blinked slowly, didn't say anything. I could almost see the gears turning inside his head. Dad thinks I'm smart?
"Yeah," I said. "That."
"So," said Dad. "How have you been? What do you do for work these days?"
Slowly, steadily, they began to talk, and the old fears -- Stephen's of being seen as a disappointment, Dad's that Stephen was embarrassed by him -- began to disappear.
Stephen left a few days later, but not before inviting Dad out to see him and tour the facility in which he worked.
"You too, Chlo," he told me as I dropped him at the airport. "You should come too."
"Okay," I told him. "Let's make it happen."
It wasn't much, but it was a start.
Dad was a plumber. His work was a little different from mine -- he dealt strictly with clogs, pipes, toilets -- the usual stuff.
"I spend my days up to my elbows in filth," he joked, "but look at how good we have it."
My parents were not well-off, but they were well enough. We weren't rich, and we didn't act like we were, but the house was paid for, we had good food, and between Mom and Dad, they made enough to send me and my brother, Stephen, to private school. The McCallister Academy of Science, Art, and Magic. It was the last in the county that still had a magic division. Most of the schools had stopped offering it, citing waning interest -- a lot of students didn't take it up until they were in late high school, or when they started college.
McCallister started us on it in second grade, the old way. Aptitude tests, learning about the different elements and finding our affinity -- all the usual stuff.
Stephen's affinity was for fire. Dad laughed uproariously at this, when he heard it -- he'd gotten tested back in the day, and had a mild affinity for water, which was what had led to his career path (well, that and our grandpa's plumbing business, which he'd inherited).
"A plumber with a son who has an affinity for fire," he wheezed, when Stephen brought his letter home, proudly beaming about the good news. "Well, I suppose you won't be taking over the family business!"
When I was tested, at age eight, I found that my affinity was for water.
"That's my girl!" said Dad, puffing proudly.
Stephen, six years my senior, smiled grimly. "Better you than me," he said. He didn't want the family business -- he wanted to become an engineer, or maybe a physicist. His calling was the stars.
He pulled me aside at one point, when Dad was busy in the kitchen. "Chloe, you can be whatever you want. Don't let Dad stop you from following your own dream."
Dad hadn't stopped him from following his, but there had been disappointment, that Stephen wasn't going to follow in his footsteps. It had been a relief to Dad, then, that my afinity was water -- that I so clearly enjoyed helping him.
"I know," I told him. "I'm going to be a plumber. It's what I want."
Dad's work fascinated me. I didn't mind the gross parts -- it was all part of the job. I was enchanted by water. I wanted to do nothing more than spend my life playing with it, directing its flow.
"You see?" said Dad, to anyone who would listen, as I handed him tools and watched intently while he fixed our kitchen sink. "She comes by it honestly."
Stephen graduated from McCallister and went to college to major in physics, eventually applying to PhD programs in astrophysics, ignoring Dad's occasional comments about how he was never going to get a job in the field and why didn't he do something practical? He'd given up on magic after leaving McCallister, and it was clear to me and Mom that Dad's comments ate away at him. He winced every time Dad said something -- "it's enough to give up on plumbing, but magic, too? Why did I pay for you to go to private school if you aren't going to use the talents you developed?"
He straightened a little, every time Dad started talking, and always found a way to change the subject.
I felt sorry for both of them, in a way -- Dad for not being able to see what was in front of him, which was that my brother was brilliant and talented in ways that Dad couldn't respect, and my brother, for Dad's lack of understanding.
They drifted apart, and I couldn't do anything to stop it.
I kept taking classes in magic theory, and found that there were ways to apply them to what I did with Dad.
"Hey," I said. "I think I can diagnose what's wrong with the pipe if I say a quick incantation over the water and follow where it goes."
"Do it," said Dad.
He was great at diagnosing plumbing problems -- even those that other plumbers couldn't always find -- but I made it easier.
"What would I do without you?" said Dad.
We stayed close, because of our shared interest and love for water, and that made it easier.
I saw Dad and Stephen drift apart, and I worried that it would happen to me. I didn't dwell on it, but it was always at the back of my mind: that could be you, if you aren't careful.
At eighteen, I graduated from McCallister. I helped Dad over the summer, and started a civil engineering program in the fall, with a focus on water treatment. After graduation, I passed the certification tests and got a job working in wastewater treatment for the county. I found an apartment, close to home, and kept hanging out with Dad on the weekends.
Magic was still part of my life. In college, I'd done a minor in hydromancy. It didn't come up much at work, but when I helped Dad out, it was still there.
Dad was the first to start complaining about clogs.
"I oughta go on the news," he griped, as we cleared yet another clogged main sewer line of 'flushable' wipes. "Let 'em know you can't flush this stuff."
"Yeah, but if you did, you'd see a big drop in business," I teased. "And this is an easy job with the auger."
He looked over at me. "I was thinking more about the ones that make it into the city sewers," he said. "If they get caught in a line like this, imagine what they'd do for all you guys."
I made a face. "Oh, I know. I'm hoping that they disintegrate in the sewer proper."
"Keep hoping," he said.
At work, we started noticing oddities in the city sewer system. Drainage and flow weren't what we expected.
"Well," said my boss. "We're going to have to investigate, send someone down and figure out what's going on."
They sent an investigative team, who reported a massive blockage in one of the main lines.
"Fatberg," said my boss, once the reports came in. "It's happened in other cities; was only a matter of time before it happened here, considering how old most of the city plumbing is..."
My main assignment at work became figuring out what to do, how to fix it.
At a loss, I called Dad, who suggested that I talk to Stephen.
"He's smart, he'll know what to do."
Dad's words gave me an idea.
Stephen and I had kept in touch over the years. Despite the gap in our ages and our interests, we were still close to one another. I called him, once a week, and we caught up on what we were doing.
He'd finished his PhD and was working at an institution on the opposite side of the country, doing something I didn't really understand.
He'd picked up magic again, too, once he was away from home. Being away from Dad and his constant talk about water must have made it easier -- he leaned in to his affinity and started doing some interesting stuff with pyromancy.
I phoned him as I was walking out of my boss's office.
"Hey bro," I said, when he picked up the phone. "I have a proposition for you."
"Uh, hello to you, too," he said. "What?"
I explained about the mass in the sewers, the perpetual worry about flushable wipes and how they weren't actually flushable.
"Okay," said Stephen, when I was done. "And what does this have to do with me?"
I took a deep breath. "I know you've been using magic again."
Silence on the other end of the line.
"I also know that there's a lot that can be done if you have two handlers of opposite affinities. Some of the more complex vanishing spells, for instance, require two people with opposite alignments. It's one of those...matter and antimatter things. They meet and poof, that's it, they cancel each other out."
"Okay, that's not how physics works," Stephen started.
"I know," I said. "Look -- let's not go into that right now. The point is, um, I need your help. It's not life-or-death, but it's...look, it's an opportunity for you to come back here and help me. You'd be paid, too."
Silence.
"Please, Stevie," I said, resorting to the childhood nickname. "I know that you don't want to come back, and you definitely don't want to help with what you probably see as a glorified plumbing problem, but this is nasty, and if it's not resolved, people could get sick. If they can't remove it, there's going to be weird blockages and backups all around town, and there's little I can do about it on my own. I can't get to the root of the problem without you."
I finished speaking my piece, and waited to hear him say something -- anything.
"Fine," he said, after a moment. "But only because you're right, and it's a public health concern."
"Thank you."
I flew Stephen in first-class. I had a bit of money I'd been saving, from the plumbing jobs that I still helped Dad with on the weekends, and I wanted to show him how much I appreciated what he'd done.
When I picked him up at the airport, it was the first time we'd seen each other in four years.
"Jeez, Chlo," he commented, when I met him at baggage claim. "You haven't changed at all. You're still my gangly younger sister, band t-shirts and all."
I grinned at him. "Neither have you, except for the beard. Was that a requirement for the new job, or did some small scraggly animal decide to make your face its new home?"
He rolled his eyes. "Yup, definitely the same."
I took a deep breath. "Look -- thanks for coming out. I'm really glad to see you."
He shrugged. "Well, you asked, and I answered."
"Thank you," I told him again.
He looked away from me, staring toward the unmoving baggage carousel. "I'm just glad you asked."
I let him settle in, took him to dinner, and the next morning, after a rough night's sleep on my apartment's futon (I gave him the bed), I took him in to work with me.
"This is my brother, Stephen," I explained to my boss. "He's a magic handler as well, of a different affinity. We -- we're going to try to cast a vanishing spell on the blockage. We'll have to do it piece by piece. It'll take a few days."
"Fine," said my boss. "Did you get a quote to the city?"
"I did, and they approved it, contingent on us actually succeeding at removing this thing."
"Great," he said. "So go do it. The guys in Sewage Maintenance can help you with any gear you need and get you out to the site."
"Do you...want to know anything else?" asked Stephen, bewildered.
My boss shrugged. "I know your sister," he said. "She filed all the right paperwork and she floated the idea past me before she did it. We don't have the manpower to take care of this thing on our own, and quite frankly we don't have the time. If you can find a way to remove it, more power to you."
"That means no," I translated. "Look -- I took care of everything. Let's go."
"Okay," he said, and we went.
I taught him how to gear up, what he needed to wear, and then some of the Sewer guys took us down to the blockage.
"Ready?" I asked.
"Ready," said Stephen.
We descended the ladder.
Down below was dark. They'd set up lamps, here and there, and our respirators kept us from smelling the worst of it.
I'd done the necessary preparations before, had told everyone what to bring down, what we needed.
"I think we can do this in sections," I said calmly, via the headsets we wore. "Remove a hundred kilos at a time. That's the limitation of the spell that Yanovski developed for vanishing earth. I've modified it slightly, and I'm pretty sure that it should work. It's targeted only at the mass itself -- what it's made of -- and not at the, um, other stuff, like the sewer infrastructure."
"I read what you sent me," said Stephen. "You wanted to start small, do ten kilos and see if we could get rid of it from there?"
"Yeah." I shut my eyes. "Okay, um -- we're going to need to, um..."
"You start," said Stephen. "Because everything is wet. And then I come in, and..."
"Yeah," I said. "Okay. Let's do it."
I bowed my head, focused, and started.
A few minutes later, at the right interval, I felt another thread of power join mine.
"Stephen?" I said, over the headset. "Ready?"
"Ready."
We tied it together.
As spells go, it was anticlimactic: one moment, part of the mass was there, and the next, there was a void where it had been -- an empty space that quickly began filling with dirty water and sewage.
"Ugh," said Stephen. "I don't know how you do this all day."
"Next piece?" I asked. "We're going to, um, expand it out."
"Okay," he said. "One of twenty, let's go."
We began.
Eight and a half days later, it was done.
"Right on schedule," said Stephen. He ignored the praise from my boss and inquiries from the press and other magic handlers about what it was that we had done. "Suppose I'll be flying out in the next week."
"Yeah," I said. "But there's something else to do, first..."
I'd made reservations at one of my favorite places, a casual Mexican fusion joint that I thought Stephen would like.
I plied him with margaritas at the bar, and then I told him: "I made a reservation for three. If it's okay with you, I'm going to invite Dad."
He made a face. "Why? So he can grouse at me about how I'm wasting my life again?"
I took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let go. "No. Because it's a good time to talk, and he's not going to say anything bad."
"You don't know him like I do," said Stephen. "You know the last time I had a long conversation with him, four or so years ago? The last time I came home for winter solstice. He asked me how the job hunt was going, then told me that I could always come back home and become a plumber like him, if I couldn't find anything."
I sighed. "Did you know that he offered me the same thing? With the exact same phrasing?"
He glanced at me, startled. "What?"
"It wasn't a sign that he thinks you're going to fail," I told him. "It's more...he wants you to know that you still have that safety net, if you want it."
"He could have phrased it better."
"Yeah," I agreed. "He could have. But it's Dad. If you expected an eloquent, articulate speech about how he was proud of you and believed in you, but wanted to give you a safety net anyway...you weren't going to get it."
He drummed on the bar top. "Fine," he said, after a moment. "Text him."
So I did.
We moved to the table. Dad showed up fifteen or so minutes later.
"Stephen!" he said, stripping off his jacket and sitting down. "How have you been?"
I watched as Stephen eyed him, wondered if he noticed that Dad was wearing a shirt with the logo of the federal agency he worked for.
"Um," he said. "Fine. Chlo called me out because of..."
"The fatberg," said Dad. "Yeah. I suggested she call you."
"What?"
I laughed. "I was having a hard time figuring out what to do, and so he told me to phone you. 'Call your brother. He's smart, he'll know what to do.' When he told me to call you, I remembered the old studies about opposite affinities, and, well...you know."
Stephen blinked slowly, didn't say anything. I could almost see the gears turning inside his head. Dad thinks I'm smart?
"Yeah," I said. "That."
"So," said Dad. "How have you been? What do you do for work these days?"
Slowly, steadily, they began to talk, and the old fears -- Stephen's of being seen as a disappointment, Dad's that Stephen was embarrassed by him -- began to disappear.
Stephen left a few days later, but not before inviting Dad out to see him and tour the facility in which he worked.
"You too, Chlo," he told me as I dropped him at the airport. "You should come too."
"Okay," I told him. "Let's make it happen."
It wasn't much, but it was a start.
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I am curious and wonder--why isn't his son there?
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I really could see having water magic being a huge help to a plumber. Diagnosing weird problems would be so much easier!
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