Page 78 of The Last Stars in the Sky
“What do you think he saw out there?” I ask after a moment, a tremor in my voice because I don’t really want to ask the question, never mind have it answered, and, in any case, I know Kerry can’t really answer it.
She shrugs, giving a sigh. “Think about what we experienced in Corville, which is a tiny town on the edge of nowhere, and he must have had that, a thousand times worse or more. I can’t even imagine it. I don’t want to.”
I swallow. “I don’t, either.” I’ve tried to put Corville behind me, as well as that night on the river; the fear that those men might find us has lessened, with time. They haven’t come yet; why should they now, or ever?
“Then don’t imagine it,” Kerry says simply. “He might tell you one day, or maybe he won’t. But we all need to move on from whatever happened before. We have a lot of work to do if we want to survive next winter, you know.”
My stomach clenches at the thought. We’re in the heyday of spring now, with everything burgeoning and blossoming with life, with possibility. The days are long and warm, the danger of frost is past, and the worst thing we’ve had to deal with are swarms of black flies. They rise in dark clouds over the dirt, and we’ve taken to fashioning elaborate headgear made of old mosquito netting, found in a cupboard, to keep the worst of them at bay.
But so much of life feelspossiblenow, with the garden and the fields, the rabbits and fish and the berries that will burst onto the bushes in just a few weeks…and yet in just three months it will be turning cold again; there could be frost on the ground, maybe even snow, the growing season over, and we will have had to store enough food for an entire winter with ten people, and nothing in the pantry but what we put there ourselves. It’s a terrifying prospect, and yet it also excites me because for the first time I feel we might actually be able to do it. Together.
But I want Daniel to be involved, interested, excited…like I am.
“Has he said anything good about out there?” Kerry asks. “Is anything getting better? It’s been six months now since the blasts. It would be nice to think the government is starting to get its act together, that the world isn’t you know, onfire,but who knows?”
I shake my head. “He hasn’t said anything at all.”
She nods slowly. “This might be the rest of our lives then.” She sounds more philosophical about it than she has before, in part, I think, because of Trapper Kevin. He’s come three more times in the last few months; he never stays for more than a day or two, helping and teaching us, and spending time with Kerry. When he disappears into the woods to head back to his cabin, she looks wistful but not as sad as she once might have.
But what about Mattie, Ruby? Sam? As pleased as I am about the fact that we actually are managing to survive out here, I don’t really want this to be the rest of their lives, and so I hold on to hope that, if we can survive another winter, maybe, just maybe, things will improve. The world will right itself. How, I don’t know. How we’d even find out, I haven’t begun to think. I think of Mattie scornfully saying she’s like Laura Ingalls Wilder on Mars and I realize she’s not far off. We are completely cut off out here, and while that’s been no bad thing, it means we wouldn’t even know if life had got back to normal. Governments could be restarting, cities being rebuilt, and we’d have no idea. The other day, Ruby flicked the light switch up and down a few times “just to check”. Nothing happened, of course, not yet.
And judging by my husband’s attitude, the world is still a fierce and fearsome place.
“It’s only been a week, remember,” Kerry tells me, and I nod. I can wait. I have no choice, and these last few months have taught me to be patient. And in the meantime, there have been small joys; unlike his father, Sam has taken to our pioneering life with a seemingly unbridled enthusiasm. When we caught a rabbit in a snare, he was eager to try skinning it, claiming he had experience from a video game he played.
I’d started laughing when he admitted sheepishly that, in the game, you pressed a button on your controller and the animal was neatly skinned and packaged into meat, presto. It wasn’t quite the same with an actual dead rabbit. But he did it, andhe learned, and we had rabbit stew with wild roots for dinner. I wanted Daniel to be proud of him, but he barely seemed aware. It’s as if he’s become a zombie, the walking dead, with us in body but not in spirit. Where his spirit is, I shudder to think. It feels as if it has gone completely.
But maybe Kerry is right, and all he needs is time.
The sun has risen, and I can hear people stirring, the cottage coming to life. I need to make breakfast—we’re on the last of our porridge oats—and weed the oat field, fetch water and stack wood and collect more cleaver seeds for coffee. Ruby and I were going to scout out apple and plum trees in the overgrown orchards by the old barn, and Mattie wanted to look for strawberries. She remembered how I’d told her how they grew here once, back when I was a girl. Maybe they still do.
There’s a lot to accomplish. I don’t have time to stand around and wish things could be different.
“Thanks,” I tell her, and she smiles. Kerry has softened in the last few months, and in a way, I’ve hardened; the doubt that plagued me for so long has calcified into determination. And yet, as I put my coffee cup in the sink and head into the living room and the new day, a wave of doubt assails me. I’ve made a little kingdom here, one I’m deeply, fiercely proud of—and yet how long can it last?
We’re better off than we used to be, and I want to believe we are safe, but I know we’re still vulnerable. A few more guns, a couple more people, hasn’t turned us into either a fortress or an army.
I pause in front of the picture window and stare out at the lake; the mist has melted away and everything dazzles, and for a second, the sunlight shimmering on the water feels like a mirage. For a second, I can imagine it disappearing, melting away just as the mist did, into the ether, into nothing.
An hour later, I have settled my mom on the sofa with a blanket over her knees and am helping her eat her bowl of watery porridge. She has aged so much since I last saw her, just over six months ago, before we came up to Canada. Her hands shake and her fingers have become curled and claw-like. Her back is humped, her shoulders rounded, her body so thin and frail, and yet when she looks at me, there’s a gleam of understanding in her eyes, of knowledge. Whatever Alzheimer’s has taken from her, it hasn’t taken that spark of self, and for that I’m so grateful.
After I help my mom with breakfast, I head outside; Justine is already busy in the garden, Phoebe playing nearby. In the two months since Justine arrived here, she’s maintained a somewhat wary distance with us all, although she certainly works hard, and her antibiotics saved my daughter’s life. When we returned from Eagle Rapids, Ruby had fallen unconscious, her skin clammy with her raging fever. It was touch and go for two days before she finally responded to the medicine. Mattie had sobbed in my arms with relief; she’d been torturing herself with guilt the whole time for her part in their pointless argument.
Today Sam walks down the road with me to the oat field by the old barn; although the sun is warm, the breeze is chilly, but at least it keeps the worst of the black flies from us. We stroll along in easy companionship for a few minutes, and I revel in the simple fact that he’s here. But as we crest the hill, keeping my voice casual, I ask the question that’s been burning within me.
“How was the trip back here, Sam?”
My friendly tone doesn’t reassure him; he turns tensely alert, giving me a guarded look. “What do you mean?”
“Well, how long did it take?” My tone is still friendly, like a teacher talking to a student she doesn’t know.Tell me something simple.
He shrugs. “A little over four months? Dad came to Clarkson sometime in December.”
“He did?” I’m jolted by that; I had assumed that whatever Daniel experienced, whatever he saw or did, happened before he got Sam. How else could Sam now seem so unscarred, soinsouciant? And yet, maybe that’s just an act because right now, my son doesn’t seem either of those things.
“Yeah, around then. I don’t remember, actually. We lost track of the days, you know?”
“Yes, I know.” We had, as well; Christmas and New Year’s had passed unnoticed, unmarked.
