Vanessa appeared annoyed, like she’d been playing this game since she started seeing Mark and was really over it. Mark wore his concerned brother expression, after setting down his fork and giving Molly his full attention. Ginger and Luis did the smart thing and gazed at their plates. Jimmy seriously considered finding a less combustible dining party.
“Jimmy’s afraid of dying,” Samuel said.
The bone Jimmy was chewing around snapped.
Vanessa rubbed circles on his back. “We’re all afraid of dying, Sammy, but thank you so much for sharing. I bet Jimmy will want to thank you later personally.”
“Count on it,” Jimmy said under his breath.
Vanessa regarded Molly like sunshine on morning frost. “What’s your problem this time?”
Molly’s smoldering composure ignited. She stabbed her fork through her catfish filet and left it standing there. “I don’t have a problem. It’s obvious
“Oh, that.” Vanessa directed a sympathetic look toward Ginger, and then faced Molly again. “You weren’t interested when I asked you for help a couple of months ago, so I asked Ginger. But I did ask you first.”
“I thought we decided to wait to see if the baby was a boy or girl. I would have thrown something together if I’d known it was so important.”
“I didn’t want something thrown together. I wanted something special for my baby, your niece or nephew, and for all we know the first child born since the plague started. I wanted my baby brought into this world properly.”
Mark focused on his plate; his jaw clamped shut, as if willing his forgotten catfish to offer a solution. Jimmy felt sorry for him. The last thing he needed was his sister starting trouble over something this trivial. Molly was always worked up over something. She was spoiled before the plague with instant attention to her every whim, and her expectations hadn’t changed since. But spoiled didn’t work anymore in this world.
Molly stood up, her chair screeching across the hardwood floor. “If you wanted things done
The raucous roar of the dining hall stalled out with the clink of metal utensils slipping from fingers and bouncing off plates. All eyes zeroed in on Molly, and then Vanessa.
Mark stood up in the middle of the swirling chaos with his napkin clutched in a knuckled fist. He spoke to Molly in a tight, strained voice. “I don’t want you to sit here with us anymore.”
Molly’s eyes were gorged with sudden tears. Her lips trembled. She laid her hands on the table like she might fall if she lacked the support. “But, it’s only because…”
“Molly, I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”
Molly scanned the unsympathetic faces at the table. Then she looked around the dining hall. “Quit staring at me!” she screamed, and bolted out through the kitchen.
Mark plopped back in his seat, spread his napkin in his lap and reached over for Vanessa’s hand.
Vanessa’s face twisted as though somebody had kicked her in the gut. Jimmy slid his chair back. “Are you okay?”
Her expression relaxed a bit after she puckered her lips and blew out a long stream of air like a deflating balloon. “It’s time. I think the baby’s coming.”
Mark, Samuel and Jimmy jumped and their chairs crashed backward. Luis’s chair slammed over with him still occupying it.
SEVEN
It was going to be a long night, and Scout already felt drowsy from a full day’s riding. His adrenaline burned out a while ago. Now he was running on will, and that tank was close to empty, too.
Hunter slept, his chest rising with even breaths. At least he wasn’t snoring. All traces of his smirk dissipated after the wreck, obliterated by the pain.
Catherine lay peacefully beside him. She exhaled and blonde strands of hair lying across her face billowed like a curtain in front of an open window.
Scout completed wrapping Hunter’s arm in the splint with the clean shirt he’d torn into strips. He felt pretty good about setting the break, thinking he’d got it right, hopefully. Accidents and broken bones happened in the Big Bad, and Scout tried to counter them by always being prepared. In Hunter’s case, he was lucky Scout was along. Otherwise, the fool would probably be dead from a lethal combination of shock, exposure and stupidity.
Now because of his brainless riding, Hunter had probably gone and messed up a good thing. Jimmy would be upset and worried, and he and Vanessa would blow the whole incident out of proportion forcing Hunter and Scout into the buddy system again. That’s what happened when parents died. The oldest sibling took charge.
Unlike Hunter, Scout never complained. If it weren’t for Vanessa being strong for the both of them in those early years, he would be just another casualty. She was a trouper. They endured through so many days of no food and shelter when she made the difficult decisions that kept them both alive. Scout learned quickly to stick close to his big sister.
But riding with Hunter again wasn’t something Scout wanted. They shared an amount of job-related camaraderie and even lived in the same house, but that didn’t mean they wanted to ride together. Sometimes, a little space was nice.
Scout built up the fire to keep Hunter warm. Catherine stirred as light from the flames flickered across her face. She was a big mystery. Hunter had found himself a little girl surviving alone. At least that’s the story she was trying to sell, but Scout wasn’t buying. More than likely, she carried another story giving her nightmares, a story she refused to bring out into the light.
He poked at the fire and Catherine stirred again, folding her arms together against the cool night air. Scout dusted off his hands on his pants and unhooked the sleeping bag from his motorbike. He zipped it open like a blanket and covered Catherine, who snuggled under with a contented smile.
Then Hunter started snoring like a chainsaw ripping through a forest. Scout groaned, cringing with each thunderous inhalation, and within moments, tension throbbed between his shoulder blades. He snatched up the water bottles and scampered out of earshot.
His eyes adjusted away from the fire, picking a path down to the stream he’d located earlier for fresh water. The shimmering stars reflected off the creek, causing a phosphorescent band that laced over the plains. Scout dipped the bottles into the flow and waited for the gurgling to cease. He retrieved the iodine from his pocket and added a couple drops into each bottle. Then he screwed the lids tightly and leaned back on his hands for a little stargazing.
Scout couldn’t remember what the starry sky looked like before the plague. In the middle of the city, he thought there were only a couple hundred stars total because all you saw were the brightest ones. The first time he looked into the night sky after the power winked out, he saw billions of stars sparkling from every direction in the thick soup of space.
Tonight, he thought about how lucky he was with a billion possibilities shining back at him, even if he wasn’t sure that God was up there watching his back.
“There you are,” Catherine said behind him.
Scout flopped on the grassy bank as if he’d just been hooked out of the stream. He sat back up after controlling the initial surprise, but he still had difficulty catching his breath.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. What’re you doing?”
Scout pulled in a deep breath through his nose before speaking. “Just sitting here, looking at the stars. You can join me if you want.”
She sat close beside him. It was nice. Her presence radiated a warm energy that refreshed his sleepy mind.
He smiled at her. “Was it tough being on your own?”
“What do you mean?”
