A Mother's Duty

Tellyn Delphin looked up from the documents in front of her to survey her son. The fourth of her children and sitting there with that faux-apologetic look on his face, shoulders hunched, hands balled into fists like a toddler. In the privacy of her own head she wondered, not for the first time, whether she should have stopped at three.

“Dor,” she said. “How many times are we going to do this?”

“Is Katrina okay?”

“The protest leader?”

“It wasn’t… it was a march for children’s cancer! We were raising money to treat – ”

“A march which featured a protest specifically against the new Engarde factory, due to rumours that its location is leaking carcinogens into the water supply.”

“You know they’re not just rumours! The water quality tests – ”

“Have not been, in any legally enforcable sense, tied to the factory. I turned a blind eye when you got involved int his charity, but it’s bleeding money already with very little positive PR return, and if you’re going to turn the PR you do have against – ”

“Why do you care? You don’t own the factory!”

“The Leiss family own the factory, which you well know, and they are investors in the rubber factories that are part of your portfolio, attached directly to your name, and because of this they’re threatening to pull out. Do you know what happens when a Tarandran family suddenly pulls their investments from something? All the other investors sit up and take notice! I’ve spent the last three days protecting your inheritance and reputation in this debacle, I send Frederick to pull you out of jail, you finally see me after three days and the only thing you want to talk to me about is Katrina Salt? Haven’t I done enough favours for you? How about a ‘thank you’?”

“Thank you, mother.”

Tellyn rubbed her temples. “Over and over again you do this. You never learn your lesson. It’s time to withdraw from that money pit of a charity.”

Dor’s cheeks flushed. There it was, that defiance hidden under the fake contrition. He never listened to her experience, just wanted to run off and cause more problems with his stupid pet projects. “It’s not a money pit! We spend more on travel!”

“Travel doesn’t distract you, land you in jail, and threaten the reputation and investment potential of you and by extension, the whole family. Name one good thing that charity’s done.”

“Last year, we paid for the cancer treatment of nearly three thousand children.”

He didn’t get it. He never got it. Tellyn waved a hand dismissively. “Like I said, a money pit. There are six billion people on Earth, and half that off it. Do you think three thousand children matter? That warm, fuzzy feeling of charity you’re addicted to doesn’t justify the risks you’re taking. This march alone could have caused a nearly three per cent drop in your net worth, if I hadn’t been quick enough to take care of it. How would that look at the next family reunion, huh? And with the way you make decisions, I’m sure you’d make that a one hundred per cent drop withing the next decade; you won’t be able to help any children at all if you have no money. No; the charity has to go. You’re pulling out; let Ms Salt see who she can save without us bankrolling her hobby.”

“She’ll be okay?”

“I can get the charges dropped.” Tellyn pushed two papers across the table; one authorising the charity pullout, the other authorising the payment of bail for Ms Katrina Salt. Dor hesitated, and signed both.

“One of these days I’ll disown you,” Tellyn warned him.

“No you wouldn’t. It’d be terrible PR.”

“Some days I think it’d be worth it. Get out of my sight.” She waved him away and, once she was alone in the office, turned back to her folder. It wasn’t a complicated report, just speculations and recommendations from some of her relatives about the Javelin Project. They would be going ahead, apparently, and her cousin Audrin was looking into extraterrestrial ownership laws and speculating that it might be to their advantage to have actual family members on site on some of the planets, just as legal asset holders. Cully was suggesting that they could adopt some colonists into the family for this purpose.

Tellyn glanced at the door her son had just left through. The usual way to deal with a problem you didn’t want to disown would be to expose them to a little accident, but Tellyn had always been too good of a mother to do something like that, too soft-hearted, more willing to drag the weight of Dor around her neck than to take the plunge and actually hurt him. But there were other potential life opportunities, ways for a hotheaded boy to expand his horizons. There were ways to make problems go away that didn’t hurt him or her reputation. He’d complain, of course; he’d refuse, he’d cry, he’d throw tantrums. Just like he had when she’d fought to maintain partial control over his portfolio after he reached adulthood, and saved him from splurging his fortune on trivialities. But she’d won that, and she’d win this – the javelins wouldn’t launch for years yet, and she knew how to get her hardheaded brat of a son to cooperate, for his own good and everyone else’s.

She was a very good mother, after all.