Page 17 of The Last Stars in the Sky
“What’s the alternative, Alex?” His voice turns gentle again, and I cover my face. “We can’t go back home. It would be worse, much worse, anywhere else in the entire country. More danger from radiation, from pollution, from other people—”
“Canada wasn’t hit, though, was it? We could try to get to a city. Ottawa, or Toronto—”
“When all the power is knocked out across all of North America? When there’s no water, no plumbing, no medical services, and the only food people have is what is in their fridges?” He shakes his head. “We’d be competing for resources with thousands, millions, and we don’t even know if Canadian cities have been affected. A radioactive cloud could be heading toward Toronto right now.”
“It could be heading here,” I point out, and Daniel concedes the point with a nod.
“Even so, you’re better off here.” He pauses. “But after I leave, I think you should try to camouflage this place a bit. I know the neighbors like Darlene know it’s here, but other people won’t. If you cut down a few trees and lay them across theroad…” He frowns. “I can help with that before I go. We can’t give any reason for people to wander up here and take a look.”
“I don’t want you to go.” The words come out of me quickly, a whimper of protest, as if I’m a child. It’s foolish for me to say, to feel, because we both know I’m the one making him go. Would Daniel try to get Sam if I hadn’t insisted? I hope so, for our son’s sake, but I’m not sure—and I’m scared. I don’t want to be alone with the girls, fending off wolves or wild woodsmen or whatever else might be lurking out there. And what if I’m sending my husband to his death?Or consigning my son to his?
“I know,” Daniel says quietly, and a sob escapes me, an unruly sound and one I’ve managed to keep myself from since all of this happened. Daniel takes me in his arms again, and I bury my head in his chest, breathe in deep as I try to still the sobs. I don’t want to cry because there is too much to cry about, but I can’t keep from shuddering as I hold back the tears.
He doesn’t speak because there is nothing to say, no promises to make, no assurances to give. Just as he did when this first happened, he simply holds me, and once again I have to let it be enough. Even if it isn’t.
It still has to be.
Daniel leaves the next morning, forty-eight hours after it all started—or ended, really. He has stocked our SUV with forty gallons of water, plenty of food, most of it dried, a sleeping bag, matches, a flashlight, gas. He is dressed in several layers, his coat on the seat next to him along with hat, gloves, scarf. His face grimly set.
Mattie, Ruby, and I stand on the front stoop of the cottage to see him off, and it feels like an absurd tableau:the womenfolk bid the gunslinger farewell. I’m half expecting Clint Eastwood to come down the road on an Appaloosa, the director to call cut,everybody to sag and smile. But, no. This is our reality, and yet everything in me continues to resist it.
“You’ll take the 401?” I ask, even though we went over his itinerary last night, pored over the ancient map we’ve found in a drawer, considering the different roads he could take to the border. We wondered whether the border crossing would be manned; if he would be allowed to cross at the Thousand Islands Bridge where we crossed into Canada, marveling at all the tiny islands dotted in the river below, some barely bigger than the cottages perched on them.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to cross there,” Daniel said, his finger following the line of the StLawrence River, which forms a natural border between most of Ontario and New York. “If I can’t, I’d have to drive all the way to Hamilton or Cornwall. That’s over two hundred miles. I won’t have that much gas.”
Neither of us had admitted the glaringly obvious fact that he did not have enough gas to get to Clarkson, halfway between Utica and Syracuse, and back, anyway. We were both, for some not-articulated reason, participating in the fiction that he was going to be able to drive all the way to Clarkson, New York, without impediment, pick Sam up, and come home again, as easy as that.
“Well, I’ll figure it out,” Daniel had said, folding up the map, as if it was a matter of simply picking another route, being slightly inconvenienced. Reprogram Google Maps, find another way, preferably with a Starbucks, but if not, go without the caffeine. I remained silent because I did not know what to say.
I still don’t know what to say as he hugs us each in turn, with a solemnity that I resist because it feels far too final. The girls are pale-faced, silent, clinging to him, but then letting him go. Daniel turns to me.
“Keep the gun close,” he says, and I nod. “Don’t run the generator unless you have to.”
“I know.”
He nods, smiling a little, and somehow, in the midst of everything, this heartens me. He believes in me, even if I don’t. “I know you do,” he says. “You’ll be fine. This place is a part of you, after all.”
A choking sound escapes me, and I suck it back in, for the sake of the girls. I want to tell him I love him; I want to hold him and imbue him with the love I know I’ve felt for him all along but have withheld these last few months because I was so angry.
Last night, in bed, Daniel took me in his arms, like a question. We hadn’t made love in months; we’d basically been acting like strangers, but last night we fumbled and clung to each other, and while it wasn’t passionate or frenzied or desperate, it held its own unbearable poignancy, hands sliding over familiar flesh—how absolutely Iknewthis man—lips brushing in the dark. I didn’t let myself consider that it might be the last time.
He hugs the girls one more time each, and smiles at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and there is that wryness again—like he knows what I’m thinking before I do, like he accepts it and understands. I try to smile, but my lips tremble.
In the frozen, still silence of a November morning, the ground dusted with snow like a scattering of breadcrumbs, he climbs in the car and drives away while the three of us silently stare, watching the car bump down the drive and around the corner. Even after it has disappeared, we stay there out in the cold, listening to the sound of the motor fade into the distance. It is a comforting sound, the soundtrack of modern life, a false reassurance that things are normal.
“When will he come back?” This is from Ruby, who has said maybe six words since I told her about the nuclear strikes two days ago. Selective mutism has been her default in times of stress, and the doctors and therapists we’ve consulted over theyears have told us to let her be, and so I do. It’s easier, anyway, especially now.
“I don’t know,” I tell them both. “A few days, maybe?” It is only a six-hour drive to Clarkson from here; in theory, in normal times,before, Daniel would be back tomorrow. But we all know he won’t be, and he probably won’t be back in a few days either. The fear none of us is willing to voice is that he won’t be back at all.
When the sound of the car’s motor finally dies away, we all troop silently into the house. For the last forty-eight hours, we have been focused on getting ready for Daniel to go, but now that he’s gone, I don’t know what to do. The thought of tidying up or making breakfast feels ludicrous, almost offensive, as if I’m pathetically clinging to some sort of normality when the whole world has been upended, destroyed.
And then it comes to me—my shoulders straighten, my spine stiffens, and I feel a sudden surge of resolve, like a much-needed shot of adrenalin in the arm, waking me up, giving me strength.This place is a part of you.
“We need to take stock,” I announce.
Mattie looks at me warily. She has been almost as silent as Ruby, drifting around the cottage or spending hours curled up on the sofa, simply staring into space. When she realized she might not be able to charge her phone again, she turned it off; it felt like a funeral. “Take stock?” she repeats. “What do you mean?”
“Of our supplies. Food, first aid stuff, batteries, blankets, firewood, everything. We need to know how much we have. Make a list of it all. An inventory, so we can make a plan, a…rationing rota.” Saying it out loud bolsters me. Daniel was right; my parents kept things here pretty well stocked. And while everything is at least seven years old, that doesn’t mean it’s useless. At least, I hope it doesn’t. Besides, the three of us need aproject. A reason, or at least a distraction from all the emptiness around us.
