Olivia - still Olivia Aurelius, at the moment, though she no longer had any reason to hold onto that - gazed idly around the coffee shop and sighed. She wished she knew what she were supposed to do now. It wasn't as though she hadn't known something like this was coming...but why now, damn it? Why now, in these circumstances? But it wasn't as if she hadn't known it was coming. She'd known that, somewhere in the back of her mind, for years.
She often wondered just what it was that had attracted her to him in the first place. It wasn't the money, was it? She hoped it wasn't. She hoped she wasn't...wasn't that shallow, wasn't just some insecure ditz looking for some rich man to hang off the arm of, like so many of the wives of men like him. If she were honest with herself, she had to admit that she liked the money, but...no, it wasn't that. Not in the beginning. It was the way he carried himself, the way he acted like a man with a vision. She'd almost forgotten what the feeling was like, to be drawn to that image that he projected, but she remembered that she had felt it.
It was only later, a few months after they'd gotten married (after an abbreviated and hasty engagement,) and the initial infatuation was fading into the routine of married life, that it began to dawn on her how much his vision was about him, about his plans for his legacy, and how she seemed to be mostly just an accessory to that. It was like she'd managed to become one of those empty-headed trophy wives without even knowing it. She'd hoped that having a child could maybe get him to focus more on building a family, but first he'd fed her that bullshit line about not being ready, that she now realized was just because he'd wanted a son - the bastard! - and then, when Jeff Jr. had come along, it hadn't changed a damn thing. His focus was still on building a capital-L Legacy, but now Jeff was the object of this construction as much as his father was, and she was even more of a third wheel in the relationship than she had been...
She sighed. It had been inevitable, really. She was almost sorry that the marriage hadn't fallen apart sooner; then at least she might've just taken Jeff Jr. and gone, and let him marry his damn legacy if he loved it so much. But there was nothing she could do about that now...now she just had to figure out what to do...well, now. What was she going to do about her son, her son who'd become a giant wind-up doll? How was she supposed to house her new daughter!? And she'd been out of the job market for years...how was she supposed to jump right back into earning a living!?
"Mrs. Aurelius?"
She started. "Uh, yes?" She turned to see the two government people, the ones who'd been checking up on her son-turned-daughter since that incident with...with the thing her husband had been constructing.
"We were wondering if you had any idea of the whereabouts of your husband," Hawkins said.
She felt...she wasn't sure what she felt. "No...did something happen to him?"
"We believe he was exposed to the Sun and changed," the masked man said. "We found his clothes in front of an open window, but no sign of him anywhere in the house."
A part of Olivia that she wasn't too proud of felt a bit elated at that news...but still, that wasn't like him... "He wouldn't have gone outside naked," she said. "Not Geoffrey. Are you sure he wasn't in the house...whatever he turned into?"
Cecilia nodded. "Pretty sure. Any ideas where he might have gone?"
She sighed. "No. Not a clue. Is that all you needed?"
Hawkins shook his head. "Actually, while we're here, I wanted to ask if you'd found a place for you and Jeff to stay."
Olivia groaned. "No...no, I haven't. Where am I supposed to look? I'm not going to just shove her in a warehouse like he did! And I don't even have a job, it's not like I can just get a house built out of what's in my checking account!" She flushed, feeling embarassed and irritated at having to admit this to some stranger from...whatever government agency it was these people were with. She buried her face in her palm. "So unless you have any suggestions..."
"Actually, I do."
She felt a little taken aback, almost; she'd just started to build up steam before being interrupted. It would've been a nice release from all the pressure of the situation to just get to rant at someone about it, but he'd actually meant to help, which meant now she had to feel bad. But she wasn't about to let herself get hung up on this, not if he really did have a way to help. "Uh, do you?" she asked.
Hawkins nodded. "It's not being announced just yet, but there's an experimental disabilities-assistance program being launched for people who are changed in ways that prevent them from using normal housing. At this stage it's by referral, until they get an applications process set up," he said. "Cecilia was checking property listings in the area, and there's a summer house a couple miles up the lakeshore that was repossessed a few years ago, during the housing bust. It's not huge in terms of total square footage, but it's a loft design, with about half the ground floor open all the way up to the rafters."
Olivia stared at him. "Y-you mean...big enough for Jeff?" Was he really just going to do this for them?
Hawkins nodded. "The peak is thirty feet. With the rafters and the insulation, it's about twenty-seven on the inside. Jeff's about eighteen feet right now; we think she might grow to twenty-five, if she does grow. It'd be a close fit then, but for now at least she'd have plenty of room to move." He shrugged. "The caveat is that she could only get in and out through the double door in the front of the house, and she'd have to get down on her hands and knees. But it'd be better than nothing, and ideally the program would help subsidize the cost of getting larger doors installed."
She gasped, lost for words. "I...I don't know what to say..."
The masked man nodded to her; she couldn't see his face, but she got the distinct impression that he was smiling. Certainly if the wry smile on the robot-woman's face was a clue. "Jeff's been through a lot," he said. "It's in everybody's best interests that she have a healthy environment to adjust to her new state." He didn't mention the way Jeff had spaced out under the stress and gotten lost in another self when she'd first changed, but Olivia was sure they didn't want that to happen again any more than she did. "Besides," he said, "it'd be a crime to leave a little girl out in the rain."
