Now We Match

Alex's rather pointed attempts at trying to cheer Claire up worked, even if he nearly did burn the kitchen down in the process. He was doing his best and she got a good laugh out of it, which helped her push the car bomb incident out of her head.

When she got home from work the next day she felt ready to keep looking into whoever might be after her. They got back to tearing her mother's closet apart looking for clues. They didn't find anything that gave a hint to her father's identity but they found a bunch of other random items.

Claire ended up wearing most of them. Thirty minutes into their venture she was wearing a vintage mink coat that may have been her grandmother's, a long curly brown wig, a pair of gigantic red plastic sunglasses, and some sort of red, white, and blue headband made out of pipe cleaners and sparkly pom poms from a long forgotten Fourth of July.

Alex was confused by what she was doing at first but eventually decided not to question it and did as she did. Now he was wearing a shoulder-length purple wig and a pinstripe fedora that had probably been her grandfather's.

He looked oddly like a drummer in a rock band and she barely managed to hold back her laughter. "Can I get a picture of you?"

"Sure."

He didn't smile for it but that wasn't a big deal. Claire wasn't sure he even knew how to smile for a camera. He had never once shown her more than the tiniest twitch of his lips, even when he said he was happy.

"Now let's take one together," she said as she scooted closer to him to take a selfie.

She pulled a weird face and did a sideways peace sign like she used to in middle school for the fun of it. He noticed what she was doing and copied her hand sign but remained blank faced.

It was the funniest picture she had taken in years. This time Claire couldn't hold her laughter back.

"I'm making this my new phone background," she informed him with another laugh.

"Can you send it to me then? I want to do that too."

All this time Alex had been using the defaults for his home and lock screens. She had showed him how to change it the day he got the phone but he had never bothered so it was a bit surprising that he wanted to now. Was he simply copying her again?

She didn't mind if he was. Copying was how small children learned, wasn't it? Her mom used to say she copied her all the time. Though being responsible for teaching a human weapon how to act like a normal person was a lot more pressure than raising a child.

People gave kids a lot more leeway while they were learning than they gave adults. If he screwed up in public and someone picked a fight with him over it, he might end up accidentally killing them.

Claire sent the picture over and Alex set it as his background without assistance. He held it up for her to see and said "Now we match."

She had absolutely no idea when he learned that concept but was proud that he had gotten it right. "Yeah, we do! Hang on…is that why you're wearing the weird stuff we find with me too?"

He nodded. "It seemed to amuse you so I thought it would be fun."

He really was learning! It warmed her heart to see him starting to understand all of these simple concepts more than it probably should have. At this rate, someday he would probably be able to seek fun on his own instead of only copying her.

Claire beamed at him. "It is pretty fun, isn't it?"

"Yes. Doing nonsensical things is more enjoyable than I anticipated," Alex said.

Nonsensical? Had he been reading the dictionary for fun or something? That was a pretty big word for him that wasn't related to his work.

He was an intelligent guy; he really should have been in a proper school growing up. Everything he learned so far was either by watching or his own research when he didn't understand something he saw or heard.

When this was all over, Claire should sign him up for some courses so he could get a GED. That way he could go to college if he wanted. He did seem to enjoy learning but she had no idea what sort of career a man like him would want later on.

He probably wouldn't want anything that had too much to do with people. Anything customer service based could be potentially disastrous.

She continued to be lost in thought as they worked after that because she was wondering what sort of person Alex would turn out to be someday once he had more experience with people. So much so that she didn't notice the more-than-two-decades-old business card tucked away in the pocket of one of her mother's nicer coats.

The rest of the closet didn't yield anything helpful and Claire felt a bit discouraged. Maybe searching for clues about her mother's past had been a pointless endeavor from the start.

Stephanie Conway had hidden herself well from whoever might be after her. And from her own daughter. She had never suspected a thing about her mother's past, which in hindsight was pretty stupid of her. But it was her mom; how could Claire have known that the person she loved and trusted most wasn't telling the truth?