Page 12 of The Midnight Hour
Back at the campsite, Ruby has made a mushy sort of porridge out of the cattails, which taste kind of like a bitter cucumber. The berries help, at least. We all eat it without complaining, even Phoebe, scraping our bowls out. Even though I didn’t feel hungry, I realize I was.
Afterwards, Mattie, Ruby, and I gather the dishes to go back down to the stream to wash them while Daniel and Sam continue organizing our supplies. Before we head down, I check on Kyle, and give him some water and porridge. He manages a few spoonfuls before he blinks up at me blearily.
“Sorry to be such a mess…”
“It’s not your fault, Kyle.” I wipe his forehead, trying not to wrinkle my nose at the smell of him. He needs to wash in thecold, clear water of the stream, but that can wait until he’s stronger.
“What’s happening?” he asks. “Have those guys…the cottage…”
“The cottage burned down,” I remind him gently. I’m not sure how much he took in yesterday, when it was all going down, a blur of chaos and fear. Kyle had been the lookout at the barn, so he wasn’t there when they started shooting. “I don’t know about those guys,” I tell him, “but we’re a hundred miles away from them now, and I think they’re more of a homegrown gang. I doubt they stray far from their little patch.”
He nods as his eyes flutter closed. “Kerry…”
Kerry was the only relative he had left. His parents almost certainly died back in the Miami blast, where they’d had a condo.
“I’m sorry, Kyle,” I say quietly. “She was a good friend. A good woman.”
He nods, gulping, his brown eyes glassy with tears before he closes them again, and it takes me a few seconds to realize he’s fallen back asleep. I glance down at him, filled with a sudden, surprising tenderness for this boy-man. He’s only nineteen years old, the same age as Sam, although the two are totally different in personality and experience. Kyle lived by himself in a shabby, dirty apartment in Corville, aimless, jobless, hopeless.
When we found him he was slumped in a chair, having no idea what to do without electricity or running water, just waiting for something to happen. Not every kid who grew up in rural Ontario knows how to shoot game or survive in the wilderness or any of that kind of stuff; Kyle certainly didn’t. But he came into his own over the last few months, his weedy frame filling out as he grew both in stature and confidence, learning the skills we all had to, so we could survive in this brave new world. Gently I dab his forehead again and then I leave him to sleep.
Mattie, Ruby, and I lug the dishes down to the stream, with Phoebe following along behind us. The day is turning hot, and dragonflies hover over the stream, the sunlight catching their transparent wings before they flit away, dodging and weaving over the water, an elegant insect ballet.
We kneel on the bank of the stream and start washing the dishes; Mattie rinses, Ruby scrubs with the soapwort she made weeks ago, and I dry. Soapwort is a plant that looks like a weed to me, but, according to her book, when you simmer the leaves and strain the liquid, then whisk it till frothy, it more or less acts like soap. It’s what we’ve been using for the last two months, since the dish soap ran out. I’m glad for it now.
Kneeling there with my daughters, working in harmony, I feel the tight knot of anxiety, guilt, and fear inside me start to loosen, just a little. If I don’t think about the past or worry about the future, I can breathe. I can feel, if not quite content, then close enough.
But of course it doesn’t last. When we head back up to the campsite, Daniel and Sam have finished organizing the crates, and Mattie and Ruby start playing a game of hide and seek with Phoebe. I check on Kyle again, and see that he’s sleeping; and then, steeling myself, I flip down the visor on the driver’s side of the truck. A photograph flutters out and I pick it up, blink the image into focus.
It’s of a young woman with blond hair and three little kids—two girls and a boy, just like my family. The oldest girl has blond braids, the boy a pie-eating grin and a gap between his front teeth. The littlest girl is little more than a toddler, chubby and rosy-cheeked, sitting on her sister’s lap. The mother stands behind them all, beaming but looking a little tired. They’re all in front of one of those cheesy photographic studio backdrops, a mottled blue screen.
I stare at that photo, and I taste bile, as the guilt rushes through me all over again, worse than ever. I was so concernedabout howmykidswould see me, how they might judge me. Now I feel the far greater weight of the family I deprived of a father, the wife of her husband. All because I was scared and angry and just a little too trigger-happy…that is, if he really was a good guy. Is there any way for me to ever know?
Still, no matter how I try to spin it to myself as well as my children, right now I know there’s no other way to look at it. No other way to feel.
I’m a murderer.
SIX
In some alternate universe, I’d luxuriate in feelings of guilt and ideas of atonement, indulging in various ways to somehow make peace with the fact that I killed a man who might have—maybe even most likely—been trying to help me. Maybe I’d meditate or plant a tree or summon a prayer. I’d let go of my bad feelings, surrender them to the universe, accept my guilt as well as my release from it.
But that is not this world, and so I slip the photo back in the visor, barely glancing at the Bible verse written on an index card next to it.Habakkuk3:17–18, the reference reads, but it’s not one I know, not that I know many at all. I’m not about to look up this one.
I walk away from the truck without looking back.
“So, what’s the plan?” I ask Daniel briskly, clenching my hands into fists at my sides before I deliberately uncurl them. Sam is standing nearby, watching us both, his expression wary yet alert. “We leave tomorrow for Port Granby?”
Daniel glances at me, his expression both guarded and appraising, clearly trying to gauge my mood. I feel determined but anxious, strong yet fragile, like I could splinter into a millionpieces and yet still keep going. I lift my chin as I keep his gaze. “Well?”
“I thought we said we’d stay here for a few more days?” he asks. “Gather food, let Kyle rest, make sure we have what we need for the journey.”
“The longer we stay here, the more supplies we’ll use,” I point out. And we don’t have that many, maybe not even enough, to begin with. But it isn’t really our supplies I’m thinking about; it’s this edginess inside me. I’m not sure why, but I feel an urge tomove, maybe just to escape the memories that I already know will come with me.
“That’s true,” Daniel replies equably enough, “but we can live off the land here, for a little while at least. Trap, fish, hunt.”
I eye him skeptically. He’s a pretty good shot, but he hasn’t, as far as I know,lived off the landthe way we’d been doing before I let the cottage burn to the ground. And while we did bring a couple of rabbit snares and fishing poles with us, it’s not like we’ll be living large on what we can eke out here in the woods.
A tiny smile quirks Daniel’s mouth as he seems to read my thought process with the accuracy that only comes with twenty years of marriage. “You know I’ve always wanted to be on one of those TV survival shows,” he reminds me. “This is my big chance.”
