by Kate Morris
“Hey, easy,” he said, chasing her down and gripping her upper shoulders to stop her pacing. She was already so fidgety anyway. Her eyes darted up to meet his. “Why don’t you just get some rest tonight? I’ll check into this more tomorrow. Want me to text you what I find out?”
She nodded shakily and tried to step away from him. Tristan let his hands fall. Then he stuffed them into his jeans pockets. Her eyes were roaming over his tattoos. She looked…he couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe disgusted. Not in ten million years and even if he didn’t have tats.
“Look, I’m gonna head out. Want me to walk you back to your apartment?”
She shook her head, so Tristan went to the kitchen again. There was so much about this whole situation that was bothering him, but she didn’t seem like the kind of person who could handle something of this magnitude. Avery was feisty but also a little fragile and definitely very sheltered.
He gathered his cookies. She insisted on placing all the containers in a reusable shopping bag. It was huge and held all the boxes and containers easily. To feed so many kids, they probably had to buy everything in bulk, thus the giant reusable bag.
“Is it too heavy?” she asked with concern. “I could split it…”
“No, it’s fine,” he said, trying not to laugh at her. A few boxes of cookies too heavy? At the door, he turned to her and said without even thinking first, “Lock this when I leave.”
Her icy blue gaze jumped up to his, and she pulled her hands through the ends of her sweater sleeves and grasped the hem. Then she hugged herself around the middle as if she were cold.
“Yes, okay,” she said agreeably.
“I’ll text you,” he offered again.
She nodded, and Tristan left. He jogged through the rain and got into his truck. Even parked up by the barn in the driveway near the woods with trees concealing part of their house, he could see her standing at the front door still. She was backlit like a candle in the darkness that had consumed the rest of the countryside. A house like that with all that glass, it just didn’t seem safe. He was going to worry all night about her.
On the internet news feeds, the government was telling people to evacuate the big cities and go to one of the temporary military bases they’d set up to handle everything. The footage was horrific. People fighting in the streets. The sick being hauled away in military vehicles. It seemed more like a bizarre nightmare than the truth. This couldn’t be America. Surely this was a bad dream and she’d wake up soon and everything would be fine and everyone would be safe and healthy. Just because she wanted it to be true, didn’t mean it could be.
The camera angle showed a mother and her young daughter riding in the bed of a huge, military truck huddled together under a blanket for warmth. She wondered where they were being taken. They wanted to evacuate cities. They told people to get out, flee, take what they could with them and leave. They weren’t telling people who already were out, people who already lived in the country, what to do. They weren’t telling the city people fleeing to the country that it wasn’t safe there, either. Why were they lying to everyone?
Chapter Ten
Before her father left for his flight, Avery sat down with both her parents the next morning. She didn’t want to talk about it in front of the kids, but she wanted to know what they’d heard about this flu. Her father told her that he’d seen a little footage in the airport waiting for his flight home last week. Her mother said she’d heard about it on the radio driving to town the other day. Neither seemed worried, though. They assured her that their family’s limited interaction with people in the more populated cities also limited their possibility of getting sick. The last child who was sick was Faith, and that was three years ago when she’d contracted Chicken Pox. They assured her it was nothing to fear. They both also warned her not to believe everything she saw on the internet.
Avery didn’t go into detail about her attack at the bar still. She didn’t want to scare them or have her father take her to the doctor again. Instead, she helped her mother make a big breakfast so they could eat together before he had to go. The children filed in one by one and also pitched in helping. They had a noisy but nice breakfast together before he had to get ready to leave.
After he kissed everyone goodbye, her father kissed her mother in the foyer for a long time, each whispering, her mother occasionally laughing. Then he left out the drive in his sleek black Mercedes and beeped the horn once like he always did.
“You should get ready and take those cookies to the base,” her mother stated. “Kaia could go with you.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” she explained.
“No?”
“Um, Tristan stopped here last evening to give me back my phone. Turns out they found it at the bar and gave it to him to give to me.”
“That was nice of him,” her mother commented. “And you, in turn, gave him the cookies?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she answered as she wiped down the countertop. “I didn’t want to have to go out there. I-I don’t really like that guy.”
“Avery,” Ophelia said, wanting her attention. Avery turned to face her mother. “I don’t want you getting involved romantically with one of my patients. That would be unethical. I wouldn’t be able to treat Tristan any longer.”
She snorted and scoffed dramatically. “No way. I just said I don’t like him. He’s not my type.”
“You have a type? I would think you’d have to actually go on more than the three or four dates you’ve been on with men to develop an affinity for one sort or another.”
“I’m not interested in him. He’s…he’s…hm, he’s got a lot of tattoos.”
Her mother laughed gaily, confusing Avery.
“What?” she asked.
“That would be a deciding factor as to whether or not you’d be attracted to someone, Avery?”
“Of course,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “They’re gross.”
Ophelia laughed again, this time more gently and reached out to stroke Avery’s hair back from her forehead.
“Oh, my love,” she said on a soft sigh. “So young. So much to learn still.”
With that, Ophelia left the kitchen and went to the hallway where Abraham and Kaia were doing their schoolwork. Avery was left to stand there wondering what her mother just meant. She felt genuinely confused.
She worked for the remainder of the day on sketches and uploaded them into her system as her siblings did their school, and her mother saw patients. Her mind kept wandering to that night at the bar. Mostly it did so because every time she leaned against her drafting table, the pain of her bruised ribs bumping it caused her to jump. That man had been so insane.
As she was finishing the final draft of the new brochure that would explain to patients their hospital of choice, The Cleveland Clinic, Canton location, she kept thinking about that man’s garbled speech. Avery printed the brochure, front and back sides, took it off the printer and tacked it onto the magnetic strip of her drafting table. She leaned against her stool’s flexible backrest and clasped her hands behind her head, interlinking her fingers and studying the final product. She swiveled her stool to snatch a green sticky strip of paper from behind her on the desk. She pressed it against the glossy copy. All in all, she was happy with it. The other three beside it had varying shades of sticky post-its attached to them, all with their own meaning. This design was the finished, cleaned up version of the one she’d taken in with her when she’d given her proposal presentation. She was fairly confident they’d like this version even better.
Avery arched her back and winced. Again, her ribs pinched. Her arm was sore, too. She couldn’t stop her mind from lingering on that night.
Instead of dwelling on it, she began drawing a new design, something that would be eye-catching yet conservative for what would become the front page of the hospital’s revised and updated website. When she uploaded this image, she could manipulate it, make it move, or fade in or out, or swirl. She wasn’t sur
e what it would be yet. She never did until the design came to life under her fingertips.
Avery took a break a few hours later and made herself a coffee. While she waited for it to brew her single cup serving, complete with froth, she noticed the two mugs from last night in her sink. It was strange, a little surreal, seeing someone else’s mug next to hers. Other than her girlfriends, nobody had ever been up here. And now Tristan had. Twice. Once when she was out of it from the pain medication the doctor insisted on at the hospital that was clearly too strong for her. And the second time when she’d been nearly naked in only a silk robe. Her life could not possibly get more embarrassing right now.
It bothered her, his cup in her sink, so she washed them both and put them away where they belonged. Then she took her mug of fresh coffee back to her office and worked for another hour. When she uploaded her drawing, she began changing and manipulating it digitally. Unfortunately, her wrist was sore, another leftover reminder of the other night.
She laced up her hiking shoes and decided to take a break. That’s how her days usually went anyway. They were broken up by work, exercise, and time with her family. Then she’d work until the wee hours of the morning, which was when her creativity kicked in.
Avery wasn’t much of a runner, but she did enjoy a good long hike. She texted her brothers to see if they wanted to go. Abraham said he was in the middle of a Calculus test, and the others were in the basement playing carpet ball or studying. Her mother was probably only allowing it because it was drizzling rain. She wished the sun was out because they still hadn’t closed the pool down for the year. Maybe she’d get in the hot tub later. That might help her soreness, too.
She texted her sisters next, as she kept them on separate group threads. The younger ones were playing on the trampoline outside and didn’t want to go. Kaia explained that she finished early and went to her friend’s house in her car, something their parents had just given her. It was her first car. Technically it was her mother’s old car, a gray Honda Titus. It was small and compact. They’d offered it to either Kaia or Abraham, but he had not wanted it because of the small size. Her brother was not. He’d always looked a little funny in it. He had a part-time job doing accounting work for one of the oil companies in their county, so his father had agreed to a negotiated deal of paying for half the cost of the vehicle Abraham wanted, an old Porsche, which he’d had his eye on for years that their father’s friend owned. It needed some work but ran beautifully. Avery wasn’t into cars like her father and brothers. As long as it started and went forward when she pushed on the gas, that was all she required.
Foregoing the companionship of her siblings, she set out with the collar of her raincoat pulled high and the hood pulled low. She noticed the black sedan parked at the entry to her mother’s office, a patient. She knew it wasn’t Tristan. Thank God. He drove a big truck, of course.
She headed down one of their paths through the woods and cranked up the music in her earphones, this time listening to the restless strains of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto Number 2.
Avery hiked about a mile according to the tracker on her wrist and kept going. When she crested one of the hills in their woods, she could view the big white farm of Jasper and Annie Stephens. They were both gone now, she of cancer, and he of an accident but mostly of broken-heartedness. Mr. Stephens was really sweet, but his wife always sent Avery and her siblings a lot of openly judgmental stares at church. Not everyone approved of her family’s choices, namely to be homeschooled or to be raised as free-range kids. So far, knock on wood, none of them were pregnant, on drugs, or addicted to alcohol or their electronics, which she’d heard a lot of parents complain about over the years.
The Stephens had three nephews who lived in the city, care of his sister and her husband. The boys used to come down in the summer during school break to visit their aunt and uncle and stay on the farm. Her mother once told her that the Stephens could not have children, so they loved the visits in the summer with their nephews. Avery remembered feeling so sad for them. Growing up in a home filled with children, she couldn’t imagine couples not being able to have children of their own. It must’ve been awfully quiet in between visits with their nephews.
She and her siblings had befriended the boys almost immediately, too. Alex Brannon was older, about four years older than her at the time. And Elijah Brannon was one year younger than her, and their little brother Stevie, who she couldn’t remember as well because he was a lot younger and didn’t always get to come on their visits. But they were fun, used to run through the woods with them playing airsoft. She and her siblings, in turn, climbed the rafters in their uncle’s dairy barns, chased the cows, and played down at the lake between the two properties. Then when their uncle passed, they never came to visit anymore. The boys’ parents inherited the farm, closed up the house, and sold all the cows and equipment. That was about three or four years ago. Her father ran into Alex and Elijah’s father once in town when he said he’d just come down for the day to check on the place. Mr. Brannon told her father that his own wife had also passed away just like her sister-in-law, Annie Stephens, from cancer and that the boys weren’t taking it too well. Avery remembered overhearing her father telling her mother in private later as they sat in his office listening to music and sipping wine that Mr. Brannon also wasn’t looking so great. That was last they’d heard about them. She often wondered what they were up to but didn’t have their phone numbers or even their address to go up and visit them. As a girl so close with her own mother, Avery couldn’t imagine what they must’ve gone through. At least they still had their father.
She hiked another three miles through their woods full of brilliant fall foliage and their neighbor’s woods because she knew they didn’t care. Mr. Stephens had never said a word about her or her siblings being on their property. After Mr. Brannon took possession of it, he hadn’t changed that rule. As far as she knew, it still hadn’t been sold by Alex and Elijah’s father, either. They still owned the farm but weren’t doing anything with it. Maybe it was just too painful to deal with it. Avery wondered if she’d ever see his sons over there again. It would be neat to reunite with them again and learn what was going on in their lives.
Circling their farm, she came out to the gravel road that led to her home. She was about two miles away, a good finish to her long walk. She was actually getting hungry, so she tried to send a text to her mother to see if dinner was started. If it wasn’t, she’d help when she got back. The message wouldn’t send through. She should’ve known better. They only got reception on this road at the top of the last hill and the next one about a half mile away.
She listened to a radio news station as she passed their only neighbor in this direction, the Campbell family, who were nice but older and retired and without children living at home. Avery heard their dog, Charlie, barking at a near constant rate. That was unusual. She could hear it even with her headphones on, but she pushed them down to rest around her neck anyway. He was normally such a quiet dog. He was a huge English sheepdog, a herder, who mostly only herded treats from his masters or anyone else who gave in. She’d wanted a dog her whole life, but her mother wasn’t a fan of indoor pets, hated cats and said she was allergic to dogs, but Avery figured she just told the kids that to deter nagging about getting a dog. Ephraim had an African Grey parrot named Mr. Gray, which he kept in his bedroom that was one room over from Abraham’s in the basement. Subsequently, Abraham complained sometimes that the bird talked too much. Avery wasn’t a fan. Probably because it had pecked her once really hard when they first got it. Over the last four years of ownership, Ephraim assured her many times that Mr. Gray would never do that again, but she was not going to believe him. During the day, he kept Mr. Gray in the atrium room, which was a long, narrow, glass-enclosed room with a porch swing on either end and contained all of her mother’s tropical flowers and greens that needed more heat and humidity than everything else. Her father had the room built just for her because she loved orch
ids and Chinese evergreens, rubber trees, succulents, lilies, Bird of Paradise plants, and other varieties of flowers. There was even an overhead sprayer that misted every so often during the day and a water fountain in the middle of the glass room. It was like a tropical jungle in there but was also a peaceful place to lounge and read. To say her mother had a green thumb was an understatement. Avery enjoyed working in their vegetable and herb garden in the summer and liked helping can the produce in the late summer, but she was nothing like her mother. She had one small cactus on the windowsill in her apartment’s kitchen and figured it was probably going to die.
Faith and Joy shared a room and had a small aquarium with fish. Fish were acceptable pets to her mother. But Ophelia didn’t like the texture of animal fur, so she didn’t allow dogs or cats inside. They had a small flock of chickens, but they certainly weren’t inside pets anyway, although Joy often carried them around outside petting them like they were. Her mother was all about healthy eating, organic, clean and all that, thus the chickens for the eggs. Someday, though, Avery wanted a dog of her own. Maybe even something small and hypoallergenic that would like cuddling on the sofa in the evening while she read a book or worked on her laptop.
Something was wrong with Charlie the sheepdog, though. When she got home, she was going to text Mrs. Campbell and make sure the dog was okay. He sounded very upset about something. It was hard to put her finger on it. Charlie just didn’t sound happy.
The sun began to set as she crested the next hill and sent the text to her mother, who said dinner would be ready by the time she got back. She returned it with a smiling face emoji.
The wind picked up, putting a chill in the damp air. The rain had finally stopped, but she was fairly wet even with her waterproof hikers and water repellent jacket. Her fingers were getting cold.