Parched

by Lou Cadle

  She gave her hair a very quick wash with the lye soap and then stood there dripping, not much closer to knowing what to say to Zoe than she had been in the instant it had happened.

  Again, her mind—her body—wanted to pull her back to remembering the kiss, which had been her first kiss in…. Well, not that long, to be honest. She and Dev had nearly had quick sex in the barn the other morning. But it was the first kiss that broke through the ice around her heart.

  Oh, nonsense. Don’t be such an idiot romantic. There’s no time for that these days.

  The harsh voice in her head didn’t quite convince her. Why couldn’t there be time for that? For trying to develop something with Curt? Oh goddess, yes, the awkwardness as everyone in the neighborhood, including the other Quinns, adjusted to it. But they’d adjust.

  Zoe. Surely there was some way to communicate with the girl.

  I love you. That must be a good beginning, no matter what else she said.

  Sierra toweled herself dry and wore the damp towel into the room she shared with Zoe. No sign of here being in here lately. Everything was as she had left it hours ago. Sierra pulled out shorts and a T-shirt with lettering so faded it was barely readable. Some sports team logo she didn’t know or care about, not even back then. They’d gotten the shirt from the closets of the places down the hill where Becca’s family waited, not even aware that Janine had gone into labor.

  If she had a moment, she’d drive down and update them.

  First things first. Zoe was her priority.

  She went back to the Quinns’, found Dev, asked, “Is Zoe here?”

  “Should she be?”

  “She’s not at our place. Pilar said she might be in the orchard here. I’ll check.”

  “Don’t misplace my daughter,” Dev said. He wasn’t joking.

  “My daughter too.”

  “Is something wrong?” Dev asked.

  Damn the man. He had a mother’s instincts about that girl. But Sierra schooled her face into a bland expression. “It’s almost suppertime. I want her to help with the salad.” Telling Dev she was “seeing” Curt—to use a polite term for it—wasn’t going to be an easy discussion either. Well, she wasn’t seeing Curt—not yet—and she’d take one hard talk at a time.

  “How’s Janine?” she said.

  “Same, as far as I know.”

  “Okay. See you later, no doubt.” And she went on to the orchard, where there was no Zoe, and to the rabbit hutch, where Arch was changing litter. “Seen Zoe?”

  “No. Why? Is she missing?”

  “No,” Sierra said. “I was clearing land so didn’t have an eye on her at every minute.”

  “Right. How’s that going?”

  “Slow but steady,” she said.

  “I should help,” he said.

  “I’m sure we’ll need your help plenty once the worst of the trees are out of there,” seemed the best reply. Arch’s arm had never healed to 100% after he was shot, with nerve damage leaving it weaker than his other arm. But he was fit otherwise. Still, the youngest five people tended to protect the oldest generation from the heaviest of labor, and without really discussing it. “There are a bunch of rocks in that soil. Digging isn’t going to be any fun.”

  “I remember. I cleared the garden here when I was younger than you.”

  “Before Dev came.”

  “That’s right,” Arch said. “You’re going to help Kelly tonight, aren’t you?”

  Sierra nodded. “Misha too, I assume. She’s the medic.”

  “It’ll help that you had a baby so recently.”

  “Nine years. Not that recent,” Sierra said.

  “Everybody is getting older,” Arch said. He sounded sad.

  “You’re still a young guy, Arch,” she said, hoping it was the right thing to say.

  “Anyway,” he said, bending to his task again. “Zoe’s not here. She knows not to go in the house while the strangers are here. Try the garden.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Sierra would glance in the Quinn shed before going back to her own place and hunting in the barn. There were only two houses left—and she couldn’t imagine Zoe going to Curt’s at this point. Any other day, maybe.

  Though Sierra climbed up into the loft of her barn and looked in the corners for Zoe, she wasn’t there. So Joan’s it had to be.

  Joan was sitting on the back porch, mending. None of the kids were anywhere in sight. She came up and said, “Hey, Joan. You seen Zoe?”

  “She’s inside with Emily.”

  A tiny kernel of worry that had been building dissipated at the words. “Okay, good. It’s nearly time to make supper.” She spoke loudly enough that Zoe might hear her through the open door or windows.

  “Do me a favor?”

  “Sure, anything,” Sierra said.

  “Thread that black thread into the needle there. The needle is stuck into the thread spool.”

  “It’s a wonder we have any thread left.”

  “That Kelly. She saved our bacon more than once.”

  “Bacon. Doesn’t that sound good?” Sierra said. “Not javelina bacon. Pig bacon.”

  “Everything sounds good. I don’t know that there’s a food I’d turn down any more.”

  “Truth,” Sierra said. She threaded the needle and stuck it back into the spool of thread. “Working on jeans, I see.”

  “Rodney’s. He’s hard on clothes.”

  “You wonder what we’ll be doing for clothes in ten years?”

  “All the time. It’s why I keep up with mending. Trying not to let a tiny tear become a big ragged one.”

  “I already have that one patchwork jacket. We’ll all look like that eventually.”

  “I like that jacket.” Joan was looking down but smiling.

  “I do too! Since you made half of it, you’re not unbiased, but I am. You’ve given me a lot of help over the years, getting up to snuff on the things I didn’t know how to do. The jacket is just one thing.”

  “I’m not even close to paying you back. Without what you knew about gardens and hens—especially the hens—we’d have starved to death long ago.”

  “I’m glad we got you up here.”

  “‘We’ didn’t. You did. Don’t you remember that night? When I found you at the church door? You had me scared to death.”

  “No more than I was. I had a lot to be scared of, including Dev, who was going to kill me for sneaking off like I did when I got back to him.”

  “You saved my girls. I’ll never be able to pay you back for that.”

  “You have. You make my father happy. Seriously, that’s the best thank-you I can imagine.”

  “I get a lot out of that too, you know.”

  Sierra hadn’t been thinking about Zoe when she’d said what she just had, but she did now. If her daughter loved her at all, eventually she’d be able to be happy for whatever joy Sierra was able to squeeze out of a hard life. Right? But Sierra was almost thirty, and Zoe was only nine.

  Emily came out the back door, quiet as a ghost. She did a complicated gesture at Sierra, pointed back to the house, and then nodded. Zoe was in there. But Emily also frowned, as if worried. She plucked Sierra’s sleeve and pulled her toward the steps off the back deck.

  “Be right back,” Sierra said, both to Joan and to Zoe, if she was listening.

  Emily walked all the way to the hen house, a wheeled affair that was fairly far out from the house right now. By keeping the hens moving, the birds always had fresh forage, and they kept fertilizing a new patch of ground. There were fewer choices of where to move them than there’d once been, as the garden had needed considerable expanding to feed four people, including three teenagers at once for quite a few years. A wide track around the garden had been left free to keep the hen house mobile. Emily took them around it until they were out of sight of the back windows of the house.

  “Zoe’s with you?” Sierra said.

  Emily’s responses were all in mime, a sign language of her own invention that they all un
derstood: She’s inside looking at Misha’s rock collection.

  “Ah.”

  She’s upset.

  “Is she crying? Was she?”

  No.

  “Angry?”

  A frown: I don’t think so.

  “What then?”

  Emily apparently didn’t have a gesture for the emotion. But she mimed searching for something, not finding it, scratching her head: She’s confused.

  “Me too. I don’t know what to say to her.”

  Emily raised her eyebrows. A question: What’s going on?

  It would be simpler just to say it. “She caught me and Curt kissing.”

  A different eyebrow raise: Interesting. A little surprised.

  “It was the first time. And if it’s a thing, it’s a delicate thing. Not two minutes old, and neither Curt nor I is sure what’s going on yet, and Zoe walked into it.”

  A nod.

  “I need to talk with Zoe, but I can’t figure out how.”

  No. A sharp headshake. Emily pointed at Sierra, forcefully, and then cupped her hand at her ear. Clear as anything: You need to listen, not talk.

  “Ah, yeah. Probably a good point.”

  Emily pointed at her heart, and then clenched her fist. She pointed at Sierra. And back at the house.

  “Thanks, Emily. I care about you too. You’re a good friend.”

  A big circle of the hand, including everyone around: We’re all family.

  “I know.” She felt a stab of guilt. “If Curt and I do decide to move forward, can the family take it, do you think? I don’t want to mess things up for anyone. Not Zoe, not Curt, not me. Not Dev either.”

  A waggle of the hand. Emily wasn’t sure how it’d go over.

  “I’ll go get Zoe, I guess. And listen, like you say.”

  Emily pointed at the hen house, to herself, and mimed plucking eggs out of a nest. She was going to give Sierra privacy.

  “Thanks.”

  She asked Joan’s permission to go inside, and Joan said, “Of course. You know you can come and go as you want. Zoe too. Any time.”

  Sierra went to the bedroom that the girls shared, the master bedroom of the house. Her daughter was there, sitting on the bed, Misha’s rock collection spread out in front of her. There was a hinged case, with forty small rock samples in foam, and labels telling what the rocks were. A few were polished, but most were natural, as you’d find them on the ground.

  Having no idea what she was going to say, Sierra sat an arm’s length away. After Zoe did nothing but stare at the rocks, Sierra knew she had to say something. “There are two kinds of obsidian shown there. And plenty on the ground. I’m thinking, with the blowguns, we can learn to make projectiles from it.” She’d been about to say the rock was “down where we’re clearing brush,” but she corrected herself in time.

  Zoe’s finger trailed along the black frame of the display case.

  “You about ready for supper?”

  “Can I eat here?”

  That hurt a little. “Have you been invited?”

  “I know they like me.”

  “I like you too, honey. I love you.” When Zoe said nothing, Sierra said, “And so does Pilar. He loves having you living with us this week. It’s been a lot of fun.”

  Nothing.

  Sierra bit her lips to keep herself from saying anything else. Maybe if she waited in silence, Zoe would say something. But she was avoiding eye contact.

  With Curt, for that brief moment, Sierra had felt the melting of the ice around her heart. And now, with her daughter giving her the silent treatment, she felt it building back up, millimeter by millimeter. She waited until she could bear the silence no more and then stood. “I’ll ask Joan if it’s okay, if you want me to.”

  Zoe nodded.

  Sierra tried not to sigh audibly.

  Outside, she said, “Joan, would it be too much a burden to have Zoe stay for dinner? Make sure she comes back to Pilar’s right after.”

  “Sure, she’s welcome.” Joan looked at her, worried. “Is anything wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “We’ll have to see.”

  Joan frowned at her. “Remember what I told you.”

  “I remember.” Fight for her. Work for it. Yanking stumps out of the rocky ground was work Sierra knew how to do. Killing had been work she had excelled at. Mothering seemed to not be work she was destined to be any good at. “Maybe I’m like my own mother.”

  “Your mother abandoned her family and went halfway around the world from her only child.” Joan surprised her with the tone of judgment, even anger. “You’re right here for Zoe.”

  “Well.” Sierra wasn’t sure what to say to that. She’d long ago come to terms with the fact that her mother was who she was. “I had a great father, so I hardly felt the lack.” So did Zoe. Maybe it’d be enough for Zoe that she was close to Dev.

  “To change the subject,” Joan said, glancing toward the door, “do you know, is Arch smoking meat?”

  “No. I was just over there, and the smoke house wasn’t going that I noticed.”

  “I got a whiff of smoke.”

  “Maybe Curt barbecuing?”

  “Might be.”

  “I’m going to eat, and then maybe I’ll drive down the hill and tell that group about Janine. Reassure them that Becca is okay.”

  “Take someone with you. I don’t want you going alone. Misha and Rodney will be back before dark.”

  “Maybe I’ll take Pilar. Or Dev.” Pilar, preferably.

  “I’ll send Zoe along after we’ve eaten supper, but it’ll be late.”

  “Tell her if I’m not at home, I’m helping Kelly. And when Misha is done with supper, she’ll probably want to go over there too, make sure Kelly doesn’t need her. Maybe we’ll take shifts tonight. Give Kelly some sleep so she can deal with whatever might happen tomorrow. Or tonight, late, or whenever it happens.”

  “Has she changed her mind about anything?”

  “No.” She thought about it. “If anything, she seems a little more worried.”

  “Poor kid. Kids. The whole family. I don’t know what I’d do if one of my children was sick. No medicine or hospitals.”

  “I know.” Sierra had the same thought herself. Zoe was an active girl, and she had work to do every day that involved risk. She might fall from a fruit tree and break a leg, and then what would happen? It might be best not to expend energy worrying about it, but Sierra did worry. “I try to tell myself they never knew anything else. Zoe didn’t, and I bet Misha barely remembers getting her shots for starting school.”

  “Probably not. I’ve never asked her.”

  “Anyway. Let Misha know, please, to check in with Kelly. I’ll probably see her tonight. I’ll take Pilar with me in the car, so if you can hang on to Zoe until we’re back, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Of course. Any time.”

  Sierra thought about reminding Zoe to not bother Kelly this evening. She’d have enough on her hands. But why plant the idea in her daughter’s head if she was eavesdropping? And she probably was. “See you later.”

  “Be careful,” Joan said.

  Once a mother, always a mother, with those protective instincts. It was one part of parenting Sierra did know how to do. She could worry with the best of them.

  Back home, her father needed to put some tools away, and then the two of them drove the car down to the other neighborhood.

  They pulled in and saw no one, but honked the horn to warn them they’d arrived. No one appeared, so Sierra got out of the car. Her father said, “Wait. We should go together.”

  More parental worry. “I think it’s safe. Half the reason we took Janine was to have a hostage. Now we have two, and they won’t risk them by hurting me.”

  “I’ll watch from the road as you knock on the door. Give me a sign that everything is okay. Or not.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, and she honestly thought she would be. Nothing about the two women stayi
ng at the Quinn house had made anyone worry more about the strangers—quite the opposite, in fact. They were regular people, not bad people, forced by circumstance to impose on strangers. There were worse kinds of people out there. Arguably, Sierra had been one of them.

  Maybe this could be a way of atoning for that, showing kindness to these people. “It’s only me,” she said as she knocked. “Sierra. I have news.”

  There were the sounds of small feet, running. A small child, she thought, being told to get out of the way. There was still mistrust on both sides. Sierra didn’t want Zoe exposed to the new people, and they didn’t trust her not to hurt their child.

  Gili opened the door. “Hey. Come in. Is anything wrong?”

  “Not really.” She gave her father a wave of reassurance and stepped over the threshold. “Janine has gone into labor. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Oh dear,” Gili said. “Come. Sit down. I can even offer you some greens to eat.”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  Saul came in then. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Busy, as always.”

  “I have to thank you.”

  “Oh?”

  “For the plant leaves.”

  “The amaranth?”

  “It cured my bleeding gums in like two days.”

  “Yes, we suspect there’s a lot of vitamin C in it. It’s not in any of the nutritional lists we have, in cookbooks and so on, but that was our conclusion.”

  “It was a smart thing to grow. Seeds and leaves both.”

  “You have Kelly to thank for that. She pulled the seeds out of commercial bird feed—parakeet food or something like that.”

  “Smart,” Saul said.

  Sierra sensed that he didn’t give out compliments lightly. “I’ll tell her you said so. She wanted you to know that Janine is in labor.”

  “How is she? How’s Becca?”

  “Worried.”

  “Is your medic?” Saul said.

  “She is,” Sierra admitted. “The truth is, she doesn’t know if she can save Janine if the bleeding gets bad. She’d be in the hospital and get a C-section in the old days. We can’t do that, needless to say.”