Cass came out of the hospital and deposited Ruthie back in the stroller-she whimpered, no doubt tired of all the repeated resettling-and when she stood back up, she was startled to see Suzanne standing several paces away, her arms folded across her chest.
“Oh, Suzanne…” Cass’s heart fell. Not now, she was not prepared to deal with this now. “I took a few things from the house, for Ruthie. Just things she had in her room. I would have checked with you guys first, but-”
“Do you honestly think I care about a few toys now? When we’re about to…” Suzanne’s face crumpled in on itself but with a tremendous effort she righted it, her jaw working and worry lines appearing between her eyebrows. “I just… I have been very angry at you, Cass, and I resent everything you’ve-all the risk you’ve brought us and the children.”
“I know, I know, I wish I could. I wish-I’ve just been so-”
“Shut up, shut up just for a minute. I’m here because-well, I don’t know why I’m here, only I thought you should know.” Suzanne took a deep breath and hugged herself tighter against the chill. “They took Smoke. After they took Charles down there and, you know, and drowned him, they came back for Smoke. About ten minutes ago. I saw you over on the porch talking to Red. I should have come then. I just-I just want you to understand, I-”
“Down the east way.” Suzanne pointed, her tone still defiant. “I would have told you right away, but after everything you’ve put the rest of us through-”
But Cass was already gone, careening down the path, pushing the stroller with its big rubber wheels absorbing the bumps. Ruthie sputtered as she bounced along, but Cass had secured the straps and she was held tight in place.
How could they justify this? Charles had been as good as dead anyway; they’d only hastened the end, saved the poor man from a final battle that he’d be the first casualty of anyway. But Smoke-he was getting better. He’d made it across the lawn, hadn’t he? He’d spoken her name, touched her, talked to her.
Cass swung the arc of the flashlight back and forth wildly. So they’d know she was coming-so what? She might surprise them before they began their task, and then they’d have to deal with her before they finished him off.
There-up in the gray sedge growing along the bank. Cass had transplanted it herself in an effort to stem erosion and the plants had thrived, and they were thigh-high now, so it took her a minute to make out the figure of a man struggling with another on the ground. When the flashlight beam hit him, he wheeled around and held up a hand to shield his eyes. Cass stumbled over a clump of reeds and nearly went down, but the stroller’s weight steadied her and she found her footing and stared in shock at the scene in front of her.
Smoke clutched the shirtfront of a man who was kneeling in the dirt. The man’s chin bobbed against his chest and blood saturated his tan shirt and fleece vest. More blood coursed over Smoke’s hand and fell to the earth.
Milt. Oh God, it was Milt Secco and if he wasn’t dead already he would be soon. All that blood…Cass put a hand to her mouth.
“What happened?”
“Cass,” he said, and dropped the limp body. It fell gracelessly, facedown, legs splayed.
Smoke stood painfully and hobbled toward her. He looked at his hands and seemed surprised to see all the blood there, and stood awkwardly holding them at his sides.
That’s when Cass noticed the other body, half-submerged in the river, also facedown, its head at an angle that suggested a neck broken. But Cass knew that red parka. It belonged to Jack.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “You killed them both?”
“They were going to kill me. Drown me. They told me-I had to.” Smoke’s leg buckled as though it would go out under him and Cass rushed to help him, draping his arm over her shoulder. He was warm, even through his bloody clothes, so warm. “They said I ought to thank them. What the hell is going on in this place?”
“Oh, Smoke,” Cass said softly. “What are we going to do…”
Behind them-across the fields she’d so carefully tended, the kaysev that both nourished them all and hid a traitorous poison within its cells-there was frantic activity, fear, the shadow of death waiting for them and gnashing hungry teeth. But here in this moment it was just the two of them.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” Smoke said, his words slurred against her neck.
Cass could not find her voice to respond. There was so much to tell him, and no time at all to do it.
“What day is it?” he asked.
“February sixteenth.”
“I’ve been gone for…”
“Almost three months. We came a few days after you left the Box. After…what happened to you. Do you remember?”
He was silent for a moment, and then he pulled back and stared down into her eyes. He touched her cheek with the hand that was missing part of his fingers, but his touch was as gentle as ever.
“I remember most of it. I remember…the ones who burned the school, I think I got at least one of them, maybe two.”
“Two. And one died later.” His mission of vengeance, completed before he fell. “You killed them all, Smoke.”
The bitterness she’d felt at the trade he had made-risking his life for the momentary sweetness of revenge-was lifting. She’d hated Smoke the day he left the Box with nothing on his mind but finding and killing those who had murdered his old lover and the rest of his old community. At the time, Cass thought his wrath was proof that he loved them all more than he loved her and Ruthie. Now, in his arms, she understood that the truth was far more complicated than that-that his hatred had not been more powerful after all.
“I don’t remember after, though,” he said. “I’ve tried. A million times, in that place. That jail. Where are we, Cass?”
There was no way to explain it all to him now. And far off in the east, a thin line of azure tinged with pink signaled the coming of dawn. There was blood on their clothes, and two men lay dead at their feet.
“We’re at a place we have to leave. I’ll tell you everything,” she promised. “But for now, we’ve got to get back and get ready.”
“Ready for what?”
Cass looked across the inky waters, to the shore where the beach was choked with matted dead weeds. Not so long ago, people had anchored their boats there, set up their pop tents and their portable grills, their coolers and their lawn chairs, and whiled away long afternoons scented with sunscreen and charcoal. Children waded and splashed, teens swam across to the island, old folks watched the scene from under the shade of their sun hats.
“Ready to travel,” Cass said sadly. “Again.”
Happiness had once dwelled in that humble little strip of land. In the morning, the Beaters would be back, and perhaps they would trudge across that sand in their fetid rotting shoes, into the water they’d only yesterday learned to navigate, and follow the yearning that was the only emotion they had left. If any of them had been to this place before they turned, if they’d water-skied these waters or drunk pitchers of icy lemonade or read the latest romance novel or stolen a kiss under an umbrella, that memory was as lost to them as the ability to speak or love.
Chapter 22
RED SAW THEM coming, the man limping along with his arm around his daughter, who was somehow managing to push one of those funny-looking three-wheeled strollers at the same time. The man walked like he was about to collapse, leaning on Cass for support.
So this is how they were to meet. Red had imagined this day a hundred different ways, but never like this. Red would call for Zihna. She was good at this sort of thing. He knew the only reason Cassie had come to him was that she had no other choice, and he accepted that. But this was a start.
The trailer, a little single-axle flatbed utility model with a handle he’d rigged from an old ski rope, was as comfortable as he could make it. Earlier, Craig Switzer and a few of his friends had come by and tried to talk him out of it, and when he didn’t budge, the talk had turned ugly.
