Single Parents
“Will your parents not be worried? You have been gone for 2 days,” Atlanta texts her second phone, which is once more in my possession, after we have snuggled into our beds for the night.
“They know,” I text back. A blatant lie, doomed to be forever unproven.
Favour for favour, still. “Will your mother not be angry with me joining you here and drying up your resources for 2 nights already? What about your father?”
“Mom is a single parent,” she writes, and I can hear her shift in the bed; rather restlessly, I would imagine. “No father. I do not think I need a father. She does not think she needs a husband. She is never married and she said she never wants to be. She values her freedom.”
`She is never married….` I wince inwardly. `Atlanta is a bastard.` What a fate to have befallen an innocent babe. It is the worst stigma a child can have in Asgard, aside from being the adopted child of a total stranger, for pity instead of for skills and honour no less, and being disabled by birth or childhood accident.
Then she asks, “How many parents do you have, actually?”