Shelley grinned back at her. “I know. Actually, my name is also Michelle.”
They shook hands and the other Michelle raised her eyebrows at that.
“Well, I should be able to remember your name!” she said with a laugh.
It was the first time somebody had laughed today. Everybody noticed. Shelley looked around, slightly embarrassed.
“I’m Romy.” The dark-skinned woman broke the uncomfortable silence and shook hands. Nat had no choice but introduce herself as well.
They all had a few bites to eat in silence. Then Romy looked up at the two Michelles as she chewed and swallowed a bite.
“So, how do we tell you two apart? I mean do we call you Michelle-One and Michelle-Two, or...?”
“There can only be one!” The farmer said good-naturedly. “I guess that’s a good question, though. My last name is Van der Laar — and before you ask, it’s Dutch — but I don’t expect people to call me that.”
Shelley volunteered shyly, “Actually, everybody calls me Shelley...”
Michelle’s eyes lit up. “Shelley! I like that. Can I call you Shelley, Michelle?”
That quickly settled it. The foursome shared a pleasant meal with some small talk. They found out that Michelle was a fifty-four-year-old widow with four adult children. Her oldest was going to school at a university in the Netherlands, in a place called Wageningen. Shelley only remembered that because the name sounded funny to her. Apparently, they had a great agricultural program there, and her son was supposed to come back and eventually take over the farm.
“So, have you been running the farm all by yourself?”
“No, Shelley,” she said with a small wink at the younger woman. “It takes a bunch of folks to keep the place going. I had a lot of help. But then again, I guess I was managing the farm on my own.”
“You must be worried about your son.”
Michelle turned somber. “I have no idea if he’s OK or not.” She shook her head and sighed. “Same goes for my daughters and my youngest son. My second daughter is in the Middle East, in a place called Jordan. She’s married and has three kids of her own. My grandkids...” She trailed off, then continued, “My other daughter is in New York. She was pursuing an acting career. Broadway. She was struggling.”
Her face dropped, emotions starting to rise.
“My youngest... He ... We never got along that well. Bruce, my husband, always said that it was because we were too similar. Stubborn.” She smiled bitterly. “Anyway, he left when Bruce passed, almost two years ago now. The last thing I heard was that he was in Oregon somewhere. I hope he’s OK. I hope they’re all alive.” She frowned, and her eyes started to glisten. “But I’m not so sure if they are. I don’t know if it’s a mother’s instinct, but I have this hollow feeling inside of me...” She left the rest unsaid. Everybody knew what she meant.
Shelley reached out and put her hand on Michelle’s broad back. Michelle smiled at the kindness and wiped the tears from her eyes.
They ate the rest of their meal in relative silence. Shelley did notice that Romy and Nat had hit it off. Both were stand-offish at the start, but they’d found a common interest. They had a shared love of weapons.
The things that connect people ...
After supper things got a lot more interesting. Joe asked everybody to stick around so they could talk about some new developments. Rachel had shared Q’s story with Joe, and he was curious as to whether there were other people connected to Maddie Jeffersons.
He started off by explaining the gist of Q’s story and sharing his experience with Maddie and the apples. He then asked John if they had received their apples from the very same Jeffersons’s farm. They had. That really got the crowd stirring. Several conversations started up at once but were immediately drowned out by Joe’s exclamation.
“So, it was intentional!” he proclaimed triumphantly. “I knew it!”
John was a lot less enthusiastic about the whole discovery. “This Maddie person brought us the cure or the antidote. But why? Surely not because she just liked us?” John wondered with a puzzled shake of the head.
Conversations started to buzz again, so Joe asked for the group’s attention once more. The big man thanked everybody for quieting down. “Let’s figure this out together. I think that the first thing we should find out is if anybody else knew of the Jeffersons or had received a gift of apples recently.
Michelle spoke up. “I knew of the Jeffersons. I think—I think I had the Syndrome too, but I got the antidote through Sandra Randolph. Ed and Sandra were my neighbors. We escaped town together. They didn’t make it...” Her expression turned somber for a moment. “Anyway, I know that Sandra used to babysit Maddie and her little brother. I guess that’s why they were selected?
“It’s thanks to them that I got the antidote. They had received more apples than they could eat, so they shared with me. I didn’t really think about it, as we share—” She sighed and closed her eyes, grieving the loss of her friends. “We shared stuff all the time.”
“I’m sorry, Michelle. I’m sorry that the Randolphs didn’t make it. A lot of people didn’t make it.” Joe looked around the cafeteria at his companions. All of them had lost acquaintances or friends, or even family. “There are definitely some links here, but I’ve been thinking about the rest of you. The ones that did not get the antidote.”
Keith piped up. “You know, I have a bit of a theory. I think that electric shock destroys those nano things”
“Nanobots,” Ethan supplied.
“Yeah. Right. Nanobots. Maybe they were made of metal or something metallic. I remember that I was feeling some pain,” His hand reached to his lower belly in remembrance. “Until the day I suffered an electric shock. I didn’t think about it at the time, but the pain went away after
