JOSEPH'S MOTHER AND HER PARTNER FINALLY DECIDED NOT TO GO with them. Since their son was going to be on Playa, where there were annual trips to, the separation wouldn't be so drastic and they'd be able to visit. He was all right with that and it didn't alter his plans at all.
Joseph requested a transfer at the medical center, which was quickly and easily agreed to.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Only the women's passes remained to be obtained and, in this, his mother's boyfriend, also a doctor by profession, really helped them, endorsing the medical report stating their psychotherapeutic need.
"Not everything is bad on Planet Eleven," Joseph told them, trying to cheer them up. "The medical and scientific organization is excellent. And it's the sector that's growing more strongly. Maybe soon, individuals like our father will be mere things of the dark initial past."
Maybe. But, for the moment, he remained very present in all of the girls' minds.
"Are we considered ill?" Roxanne eventually asked Joseph. "Is that why we're allowed to leave?"
"Well, not exactly. Let's say there is the understanding that moving elsewhere will benefit your health."
"But if they care about our health, why have they let Leonard keep us trapped within the castle for so long?"
"This is not globally governed, Roxanne. It's simply divided into private areas, which mind their own businesses and don't usually interfere in the others' affairs. The spaceships that travel to Playa from the Northern Territory belong to the scientific community settled there and, since they purchased the land from Leonard a few years ago, also here. So, they establish their own parameters when it comes to granting the places. But they don't meddle in whatever Leonard does or has done in the grounds that still belong to him. Although, of course, they disapprove."
"It doesn't matter how we manage to get out of here," said, almost implored, Lorraine. "The important thing is that we do."
Roxanne realized she wasn't as close to her aunt as she was before, and she couldn't understand why.
Everything had got so complicated in the days, barely weeks, since they'd run away from the castle… She felt she was changing and, maybe, not always for the best. She felt closer to Celeste and Blanche, but quite the opposite seemed to be happening towards Lorraine. How could that be when she'd felt so distraught at the thought that she was dead?
It was the last afternoon at Joseph's before heading off to the north. They could not delay it any longer if they wanted to arrive on time for the spaceship departure to Playa. They were going to go in his van, where there was room for all of them plus their luggage. They were pretty much packed and Joseph had gone to take his other car, the first one Roxanne and Celeste had been in, to his mother's garage.