Page 73 of The Midnight Hour
I’m not that strong, after all. Not like Daniel thought. I’m weak, horribly weak, and it’s on show to everybody.
Sam, Mattie, and Ruby all put their arms around me as the sobs rack my body, impossible to stop. Grief can’t always be contained or controlled and mine rises up and overwhelms me while everyone watches, and I don’t even care because I simply have to cry.Daniel. My Daniel. Even now, especially now, I can’t believe he is gone, that I won’t get to tell him again that I’m sorry, our gazes won’t meet, full of wry humor as we know exactly what the other person is thinking. I won’t rest my head on his shoulder, he won’t hold me in his arms. I won’t become annoyed by the way he crunches his cereal or clears his throat before answering a question. How can I not have all these things, forever?
The sobs continue to shudder through me, and my children hold me up until I can stand again, wiping my face, whispering my thanks, and Stewart continues reading from Habakkuk.
Afterwards, we head inside for refreshments, of a sort; Sheryl made a cake with precious flour and sugar, although I find I can’t eat anything. My stomach is both hollow and churning, and the future has never looked bleaker. I can’t face thenext hour, never mind the next day or week or month. And what’s the point, anyway? What future am I hoping to forge, anymore, without Daniel by my side, holding me up and urging me on in his sure and quiet way?
I end up slipping away from the muted gathering and heading outside to the lake, where I can breathe, even though it’s icy cold. I carefully walk down the cleared path through the snow to the dock and stand there, breathing in the freezing air, my face tingling with the cold, staring out at the blur of blazing whiteness that is the snow-covered lake.
Daniel…
I can’t think about the future; I can’t think at all, and so I simply stand there, and let myself empty out. Then I hear the crunch of boots on snow behind me, and then a voice.
“I know you probably want to be alone.”
Nicole. I close my eyes, tilt my head to the sky. Yes, I very much do.
“I also know there’s nothing I can say right now to make this remotely better. I just…” She blows out a breath. “I admire you, Alex. I know I haven’t acted like I did, but…I do. And…you’re not alone in this, okay?” I hear the hint of a smile in her voice as she adds, “And that is absolutely all the sappiness you’re going to get from me.”
“Good,” I manage to reply even though my voice is hoarse from crying; I’m an empty husk, blown on the wind. “Because that is definitely all the sappiness I can take.”
A month passes, I’m not sure how. Days slip by and I immerse myself in work—sewing, cleaning, baking, sinking my hands into the soil of the greenhouse. Whatever I can do to keep busy, not have to think, or, worse, remember.
For a while it works, but then it stops, and it feels like all I can do is think—and remember. I see Daniel everywhere; I hearhis voice, I know what he’d say in any given situation, I can picture his wry smile perfectly. At night I know exactly how it feels to have my head resting on his shoulder, his arms loosely clasped around me. When we’re sitting around the dining table, I can picture perfectly his cocked eyebrow, hear his dry remark…
Strangely, this is no longer a torment but a comfort. It almost feels like he’s there, this ghost version of him that walks by my side. But in the meantime, as much as I long to, I can’t live in this shadow world of grief, because I have five children to think about—my own three, as well as Kyle and Phoebe.
And life, for them, needs to go on.
The first flicker of something new happens in early March, when the snow is still deep but the days are warmer, if not actually warm. Vicky comes to find me in the kitchen, where I’m peeling carrots with Sheryl.
“Alex.” There’s something deliberate about her tone that gives me pause, the peeler in my hand.
“What is it?”
She glances at Sheryl and then says, “I just had a radio communication from a place in Winnipeg. They heard that the U.S. has set up a temporary government in Watford City, North Dakota.”
“Watford City…” I haven’t heard of it, but I recall the rumor from the Strattons that the government had moved to North Dakota. “I heard they might be doing something out there,” I say, unsure why she’s telling me this in such a deliberate way, with such emphasis.
“Not just that,” Vicky continues. “They’ve put a kind of callout to American citizens. They want to populate several communities up there, restart civilization, as it were. They’re going to collect people from various places. Mackinaw City is one of them. That’s about three hundred miles from here.” She stops then, deliberately, and waits for me to catch up.
I stare at her, sensing where she’s going with this, and yet resisting it out of both instinct and fear.
“Do you…do you want us to go?” I ask uncertainly.
“No,” she replies quickly. “It’s not about what I want, Alex. But you’re American, and…maybe I’m wrong here, but I always got the sense thatyouwould, one day. That you wanted to be part of something like this, eventually. Something bigger than what we’re doing here.” She pauses before admitting, “Daniel told me as much.”
Daniel, heckling me from the grave, pushing me forward even as I resist. The thought almost makes me smile, even as I am accosted by both fear and grief. “I suppose I did,” I admit slowly. “Once. But when it actually comes down to it, now…”
“You can think about it for a little while. If you decide to do it, we can contact them by radio, learn a little more, as well. And we can give you enough gas to get you to Mackinaw City.”
I shake my head. “You need it?—”
“No,” Vicky returns, smiling. “I don’t. I’m staying here. We all are. We’re happy here. But you…” She pauses, considering. “Alex…I think Daniel really understood you. He knew you needed something different.”
I think about it on my own for three days, my thoughts pinging around like the proverbial little metal ball in a pinball machine. Vicky gives me a little more information she’s gleaned from the radio: there are twelve settlements that are going to be the start of a new United States of America, and the government is building more infrastructure to support them.
For the moment, the entirety of the United States is concentrated in northern North Dakota, and they will expand from there. There’s estimated to be less than five percent of the U.S. population still alive, around just seventeen million people scattered across the wasted country. Before the bombs,North Dakota had a population of less than a million. There’s going to need to be a lot of building. Of growing. Of hoping. Of believing. But it’s also going to be hard, and unknown, and I really don’t know if I’m up for it. Yet for my children’s future…for the chance for them to have a life that is more than survival, as pleasant as that has sometimes been here at Red Cedars…
