The young man, his face pockmarked with acne, brought a bowl and set it on a low-slung loading dock. The horse drank immediately and hugely. The boy handed Lucy two bottles of water. It was lukewarm, of course, but cold water was a rarity in the summer. Wintertime, when the brooks and creeks and springs ran ice cold, when you wanted it least, you could have all the cold water you wanted.
As she drank, he led her to a new part of the facility, one she hadn’t seen during her previous trip here. A series of prefabricated mobile trailers lined the back of the property, roughly a dozen. She followed him to the one on the end, at the very northwest corner of the property. It was cool and dark inside.
She smiled.
This was home. This was where Tim lived.
“I’m sorry it’s such a mess,” he said, flitting about, cleaning up the clutter of everyday life. Books and plates and dirty clothes and such. There were three maps on the wall; one of the immediate vicinity, one of the state of Virginia, and one of the continental United States. She looked nostalgically at the names of the states, which sadly no longer had any meaning.
“Please, have a seat,” he said, gesturing toward one of the sofas.
She sat down. It felt good to sit. She had drained one bottle and moved on to the next. Her folly was coming into clearer focus. She felt like a damn fool.
He sat next to her.
“How’s that ankle?”
“Not bad,” she said. “Stiffens up if I’m on my feet all day. Which, fortunately, only happens on days ending in -y.”
This drew a laugh. It pulled attention away from the gigantic fool she’d made of herself on this little excursion. This was worse than what Norah had done. Even she had been smart enough to travel with proper supplies. Lucy had done it like someone with a death wish.
Hell, maybe she did have a death wish.
Maybe she would see Emma again. What was so bad about that? As good a reason as any to believe in God and angels and heaven and hell. It scared her to think these things, but she still thought them.
“What are you doing here?”
She scraped her forehead with the nail of her thumb. The sound was huge in the eerie quiet of the trailer.
Dear God, what had she done?
She had nearly gotten herself and the horse killed.
All of a sudden, it was very, very hot.
And that’s when she understood that she had come here for herself. Not for Promise. But for her. Deep bolts of shame rocketed through her. Shame that she had given up on her family. That’s what the people of Promise were, they were family. Likely the only family she would ever have. And she had turned her back on them. When they had needed her, she had scolded them like children. When they had tried to distill a little joy from the darkness, she had mocked them.
“I don’t even know.”
She was afraid to look at him. Afraid that if he saw her face, he would know she had made this trip, come all this way in the heat, so desperate to get here that she hadn’t even bothered with a bottle of water, just to see him.
“Lucy,” he said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together. “Look, I know we don’t really know each other very well. But it feels like we do. You know? I so badly wanted to go back to the farm with you that day. I just couldn’t.”
“I know,” she replied. “It was unfair for me to ask. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“I’m glad you asked,” he said. “It told me a lot about you. I was basically a stranger to you. Still am, in a lot of ways. But we went through something that night, right?”
She nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess we did.”
He chuckled softly to himself.
“You know what I’m doing here?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I mean, here, still in Virginia?”
She shook her head.
“I’m here because of you,” he said, nodding his head. “It’s true. I’ve been kicking myself for five years, losing that piece of paper. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. The most amazing person I’ve ever met. What you did to save me, to save Norah, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. She didn’t want hear these things. She didn’t deserve to have things like that said about her. She was a coward and a quitter. she doubted Tim would still think so highly of her once he knew the truth. That she had given up. That their time in Promise was over.
“It’s over for us,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t keep up. Meeting the Haven’s quota. It’s too much. We’re gonna starve. Maybe not next week or next month, but certainly by this winter. They’re just too strong, too powerful.”
He leaned back in his seat, tapped his fingers together.
If she knew him like she thought she did, right now, he was thinking about absorbing Promise into his community. The way he had plied her, Norah, and her late friend, Manny, with pudding cups and energy drinks at the high school when he hadn’t known them from a hole in the wall. Probably the most touching act of kindness she had seen in all the time since the Panic. He’d had no reason to help them other than to be kind.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said.
She wouldn’t let him do it. She had to cut him off before the thought gained too much momentum in his generous little head. He had responsibilities and people to look after. They were his charge now, not Lucy.
“About what?”
“You’re not taking us on.”
“Just listen to me,” he said.
“No,” she said. “You don’t want any part of this, and I won’t let you risk these people’s lives for us.”
“Will you at least hear me out?”
“This isn’t like back at the high school,” she said. “Pudding cups and such.”
“Maybe you and Norah can come here.”
He said it with little authority because he knew what she would say.
“You know I can’t do that,” she said. “I already feel like a big enough coward. I can’t turn my back on them.”
“But if Promise falls, you’ll need to go somewhere.”
She shook her head and scoffed.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” she said.
“I’m glad you did,” he said. “And I really think you should reconsider.”
“It would be wrong,” she said. She couldn’t explain how or why it would be wrong. It was like a conflict of interest. If she had a landing spot already lined up, she might be more inclined to quit. Promise deserved better. Jack deserved better. Those who had already died, their memories deserved better.
He chuckled sadly.
“I know. I know you wouldn’t do it.”
Tim looked up at the ceiling, chewing on his lower lip. They’d drawn closer together on the couch, their knees barely touching. Her heart was racing. She hated not seeing him anymore. She hated knowing that after today, she would likely never see him again, and that there would be a hole inside her for the rest of her days. How could she so desperately miss someone she barely knew?
She reached out and lay a hand on his knee. He glanced down at it intently, as though it were a grenade. Perhaps it was. Perhaps she wanted it to blow up. She didn’t make another move, but she did not remove her hand either. She would leave it up to him. She didn’t want to say goodbye without saying goodbye.
After what seemed like an eternity, he placed his left hand over hers. His right hand had slipped behind her neck and was drawing her face close to his. Their lips touched briefly before they drew apart once more, the pair taking a moment to process what had just happened. Electricity flowed through her, and she decided not to wait a second longer. She pushed him against the seatback of the couch and straddled his upper thighs. She took his face in her hands and kissed him the way she had thought about kissing him for a long time. His hands snaked around her back as she paused to remove her t-shirt. His hands wer
e strong and callused from the years of work since the Pulse.
He stopped for a moment, chuckling as he did so. He caressed her arms, her neck, tracing his finger around the swell of her breasts and down the flat of her stomach.
“Not bad.”
She slapped him lightly.
“Glad you approve.”
He gently rolled her off him, yanking down her jeans and underwear, pulling down his own pants, pushing up against her and then inside her. He kissed her deeply, and she closed her eyes, and it all drained away. Every terrible thing that had ever happened to her, for a brief, wondrous moment, simply vanished. Like some trick of an illusionist, if you turned your head just so, it was all gone, the loss of her Emma to the loss of their world to the coming collapse of Promise. He finished quickly, just as her orgasm burst through her, and a sharp cry emanated from her throat. It was as if this thing had to happen quickly because it was all this world would allow. Just a brief flash of happiness. Try to take more than that, and you would be punished.
He rolled off her, understanding this was a onetime event, that this was not the appetizer for a night of crazy sex. This had been two people telling each other without words what they meant to each other in the midst of all the horror the world had seen fit to unleash upon them.
After getting dressed again, they sat quietly on the couch, entwined in each other’s arms. Neither said a word, the room silent but for their calm breathing, until they fell asleep.
19
Lucy was at breakfast a month later when she began to feel ill. A wave of nausea, and then another, and then another. She blew out a shaky breath, hoping to steady her stomach. She sat at the table as long as she could, but eventually, the decision was made for her. She bolted outside and curled around to the back of the cafeteria just in time for her breakfast to make an unwelcome reappearance. Her legs were shaky, and she pressed a hand to the wall to keep herself up. A chill ran through her. Her skin was clammy and cool, and she wasn’t feverish. Her bowels felt normal. A bizarre occurrence of emesis. She took the day off, carefully monitoring her vital signs. But everything seemed normal. Her temperature, blood pressure, pulse, respiration, all within normal limits.
Illness was their biggest fear. It had been months since the coronavirus scare, and they had been fairly lucky since. Granted, summer was a low point for the spread of disease, but as their caloric and nutritional needs went increasingly unmet, they were ripe for a new outbreak. And in a weakened state, they might not recover as quickly, even assuming they recovered at all.
She felt better the rest of the day and all the next day, but she experienced another episode on a quiet Sunday morning. This one struck her as she lay in bed, listening to an early autumn rain patter the rooftops. Again, she worked on her breathing, shaky and ragged, attempting to settle her stomach. It was the oddest sensation. She wasn’t hungry, but she wasn’t not hungry either.
The only other time she’d felt like this was--
She hopped out of bed like she’d been launched from a cannon. Her legs rocked under her, and for a moment, they started to buckle, threatening to send her to the floor. She eased her bottom back down to the bed as it hit her.
The only other time she’d felt like this was when she’d been pregnant with Emma.
It was early. the cottage was still quiet. Dawn was breaking, but full daylight was still an hour away. Probably around five in the morning. She laughed. Pregnant. She was not pregnant. She could not be pregnant.
But then it all came back to her, all at once. Her one and only time with Tim. She did the math. A month, six weeks at the most since she’d ridden up there for a booty call. That’s what it was, Luce. It was a booty call, and don’t you dare deny it. How quickly did morning sickness begin to manifest? Certainly four weeks was too soon. Wasn’t it?
And besides, they’d used protection.
Hadn’t they?
She wasn’t on the pill anymore because there were no more pills to be on. They’d been one of the first medications to disappear in the aftermath of the Pulse. She’d had a three month supply, and when those had run out, that had been that.
Certainly, as responsible adults, they would have used some kind of protection. At least one of them would have taken the time to… what? Run down to the convenience store for a three-pack of condoms? Come on, Luce.
They had not used protection.
Oh boy, would her health teacher not be impressed with her.
Her parents either.
At least with Emma, she had been on the pill. The pill had just failed her.
This, though, was her own failure. Her and Tim’s together.
Wait, wait, wait.
It wasn’t a definite thing yet. The clinic. She needed to get to the clinic. Although they were out of oral contraceptives, there was still a stockpile of pregnancy tests. She pulled on a sweatshirt and a pair of shorts, absently caressing her belly as she did so.
The sun was rising by the time she got to the clinic. There were only two inpatients currently. A dehydrated farm hand receiving intravenous fluids and a terminal cancer patient. Both were asleep. Terri, her nursing assistant, was on call, snoozing on the cot. She tiptoed to the stockroom and foraged through the supplies until she found the test kit.
She pocketed it and made her way out to the woods for some privacy. She did not want to risk being interrupted while peeing on the stick. There was a thick grove of trees about twenty yards in; it saw little activity, even among the kids. The brush was too thick. Confident that she was alone, she opened the kit and studied the instructions. It was one of the fancier ones—it actually displayed the words Pregnant or Not Pregnant in the result window. She lowered her shorts and crouched over the stick, balancing herself against a tree as she peed. It would take about three minutes for the result to register. When she was done, she pulled her shorts back on and began to wait. The tree was huge but oddly shaped. Its trunk was massive; two people could hug it without their hands touching. Its thick branches were low to the ground. Lucy wedged her foot against a divot in the root and hoisted herself up onto the branch, the test stick clenched between two fingers.
It had been ages since she had last climbed a tree, at least thirty years. Checkpoints on the way to adulthood. She and Jack had grown up in a rural county. Their yard bordered a large forest to the south featuring plenty of climbable trees. There had been a last time, of course. One day, she had climbed down from a tree and she had never gone back. There were a lot of last times in your life, and you didn’t even know it until the last time was well behind you. The last time you held your child’s hand. The last time you played in a softball game. At forty-four, a survivor of a paradigm-altering disaster, her life was riddled with things she had done for the last time.
One of those things should have been getting pregnant.
Forty-four.
Forty-four-year-old women didn’t get pregnant.
Well, of course they did, it just didn’t happen that often.
Another emotion swirled through her.
Guilt.
She felt guilty.
Because of Emma.
Having another baby would be wrong. She’d had her chance to be a mother, and it was disrespectful of Emma’s memory to be pregnant again. Wasn’t it? But why would she think that?
Emma wouldn’t care.
What a weird thing to think.
Many strange thoughts zoomed through her head as the three-minute clock ticked down slowly. She kept staring at the blank result window. No three-minute span in human history had ever taken as long as these three minutes.
What if it was positive?
What if she were actually pregnant? She would have to think about the baby.
It would change everything.
She would have to leave Promise.
She might have to take Tim upon his offer. They would be safe there.
They would be safe until the Haven set its sights on Tim.
Could she be a mo
ther again?
Norah.
What would Norah think?
She would hate Lucy all over again. She would feel abandoned. In the midst of all their fighting and conflict, she would think Lucy had done it on purpose, gotten pregnant out of spite. That she was replacing her with a new model. This made Lucy tear up, this irrational thought, because that’s what pregnant women did. Their minds became fertile ground for irrational thoughts.
Three minutes.
It had to have been three minutes by now. She shut her eyes tightly.
The test stick trembled in her hand as she lifted it to eye level. Her whole body was shaking now, so much so that she had to steady herself with her free hand lest she tumble from the branch.
Down will come baby, cradle and all.
She opened her eyes.
The word floated in the window.
Pregnant
20
She carried the stick back to her room, not caring that it was stained with her urine. She would want to check it again later, just in case she had been hallucinating. Maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her. Maybe she just wanted to be pregnant for some reason she could not fathom, a secret rationale or motivation hidden away deep inside her.
She floated through the rest of the day. And the next, and the next. Three days, she felt like she was outside her own body, looking down at the story of someone else.
She checked the stick twenty-six times.
Pregnant
She was pregnant.
A symphony of emotions swirled through her. Fear, joy, terror, love, anxiety. It came back to her, the nine months she had carried Emma. The nuts and bolts of it. The morning sickness hadn’t been terrible. It hadn’t been a walk in the park either, mind you, but it was manageable. She hadn’t started to show until near the end of the first trimester; if the same form followed, she would have some time to keep it to herself.
She was pregnant.
She had not given any thought to having more children. Emma’s death, of course, had cast a long shadow over her life. It threatened to swallow everything that was Lucy Goodwin. But it hadn’t. Not really. There had been room for Norah in her heart. And she loved Norah. Truly, she did, with her whole self. Of course there would be room for a baby.
American Midnight | Book 2 | Nightfall Page 15