mother wasn’t a megalomaniacal bitch who thinks of her kids as useful pieces in a century-spanning game of chess, but that didn’t make her a great communicator, and sometimes she’d make children out of random stuff when Dad was away. When Pete showed up, she was just this skinny kid with kelp in her hair and fish guts in her teeth, and we all assumed Mom had fallen in love with the story of a shipwreck or something. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
