Page 25 of The Midnight Hour
“My life was irrelevant.” She sighs. “And I loved it. I was an interior designer, and don’t bother murmuring some pleasantry,because I already know you think it’s useless. Most people do. It’s certainly irrelevant now, and it was more or less irrelevant then as well. I advised people with too much money on what throw pillows they should buy.” She shrugs defiantly. “So what? It made them happy. It made me happy.”
“I’m sure it was more than throw pillows,” I tell her. “I bet you advised on some lamps, too.”
She gives me a look of shocked amazement, and then she lets out the first real laugh I’ve heard from her—deep, from her belly. I smile.
“Oh, yes,” she says. “Some really cool lamps.” A sigh gusts out of her. “What about you?”
“Oh, I was just as irrelevant,” I assure her. “Maybe even more so. I didn’t even have a job. I was a stay-at-home mom, because I more or less missed the window for another kind of career. By the time I could have gone into a field I cared about, I was forty, and it just felt…pointless. Too much effort. Or maybe I was just scared.” I lapse into silence. Before we lost the house, never mind the nuclear stuff, I’d been toying with the idea of going back to school. Retraining as a teacher, in English or history. Thinking about that barely-there dream is like looking at an old, faded photograph. The evidence is right in front of you, but you can’t quite make yourself believe it ever really happened.
“I’m sure your kids were grateful,” Nicole says, and I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or not. When are kids ever grateful about anything? “Did you do the whole chocolate-chip cookie thing?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Oh, yes.”
She nods slowly. “I didn’t bake. Or cook. We ordered expensive meal kits to cater for our diet. William was on some paleo thing, I was low carb, and Ben could only eat beige food for a while.” She laughs. “I bet you didn’t know there was a meal kit for that. ‘Fussy Friends.’ It’s actually called that.” Sheglances at me, somber now. “Don’t tell Ben I told you. He’d be so embarrassed. It’s for toddlers, and he was eating these ‘Tot Pots’ when he was thirteen.”
“I don’t think Ben and I are in the conversing stage yet,” I tell her. “I asked him how old he was, and he looked horrified that this middle-aged nonentity was addressing him.”
Nicole nods sagely. “You can be seen as a Karen even in Armageddon. Especially by my son.” Her voice is full of deep affection. “I never knew I could be so embarrassing until my son became a teenager. Then my mere presence became excruciating to him.”
I let out a little laugh, gratified that we can bond over the typical travails of motherhood. “Do they eventually find you less embarrassing?” I muse, and her eyebrows lift.
“Maybe when they’re parents themselves? Although then I bet we just become outdated and ridiculous.”
“So unfair,” I agree.
We smile, and it feels like a moment of surprising solidarity.
“So, do you think you’ll get into this place up in North Bay?” I ask, and that moment of camaraderie is forgotten in an instant.
“I have no idea. And I really don’t care.” Nicole rises from the campsite, depositing her cup by the fire, presumably for somebody else to wash. “Thanks for the tea,” she says, and she walks away, back down to the stream, making me wonder if we actually bonded over anything.
The next few hours pass in the usual blur of activity as Ruby and I get breakfast going, and Mattie goes with Phoebe to pick some more strawberries. Sam and Kyle go fishing, and Daniel checks the snares. We all have our jobs—save for the Strattons. They skulk around the camp, silent and wary, and I start to wonder when they’re going to head off. Now that I know wherethey’re going, we don’t need them here any longer. It’s a mercenary way to think, but it’s hard not to think that way these days. They’re using our tent, eating our precious food, and bringing nothing to the table. As much as I enjoyed that brief moment of solidarity with Nicole, now I just want the three of them gone.
“So,” William says as we are all eating breakfast around the campfire, his tone that of an announcement, “I thought we’d get going later this morning. We’re very grateful for your hospitality, but we shouldn’t use up any more of your supplies.”
I haven’t had a chance to tell Daniel what I’ve learned from Nicole, but I try to give him a meaningful nod from across the campfire.It’s okay, let them go. He catches my look and gives a tiny nod back.
“I wish you safe travels,” he tells William. “All of you, that is. Do you know where you’re headed?” His voice is mild, pleasant.
“Oh, I think we’ll just keep heading north,” William replies affably. “Safer.”
I catch Nicole’s gaze and she rolls her eyes, smiling faintly. I have to stifle a surprised laugh. Maybe we would have been friends, I think, but now we’ll never know…unless we make it to North Bay, too.
They leave an hour later, after packing their designer suitcases back in their SUV. Daniel asks them if they know how to load and shoot the guns in their trunks and when William admits, annoyed by his own embarrassment, that he doesn’t, Daniel gives them all a brief tutorial.
“Nice of whoever kicked you out to let you keep some guns,” he remarks as he hands back the rifle.
“He wasn’t heartless,” William concedes, “and in any case, these guns wouldn’t make much of a dent in the door of the bunker. They weren’t worried.”
I glance at Nicole and see she is scowling, and I have the stirrings of a suspicion that her feelings for the man who kicked them out, whoever he was, are different from her husband’s. I don’t have any chance to explore that idea further, because the Strattons are leaving, giving us half-hearted waves and murmured thanks before they climb into their glossy SUV and head back out onto the open road.
Their departure brings relief, but also a certain flatness.
“When are we heading out?” Sam asks. “And where are we going, now that Buffalo’s not an option?” He speaks matter-of-factly, but I can see the tension in his jaw, his shoulders. I don’t think my son has looked me in the eye once since we arrived here.
“We need to think about where we’re going,” I say, and then give Daniel a significant look that no one misses.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Mattie demands. “What’s going on? What do you know?”
