Nope. She can’t think about them now. There are too many other things that need her attention. If she thinks about her family, she’ll break down, she’ll cry, and then she’ll be useless for hours.
The fire flickers hopefully and she puts half her attention on getting it to grow, the other half still on the doors, the windows, did she check the back window? Did she lock the door? For sure? Is she sure she locked it?
When the flames are strong enough, she pokes a piece of firewood in and hopes it’ll get hot enough for her to cook the beef stew she found in the cupboards. Beef stew, a can of hominy, a granola bar, two things of ramen, a box of spaghetti noodles, a can of sauce. It’s so much compared to what she usually finds.
Honey. She found honey too but she’s saving that for later.
A long-handled pot goes into the fire with the stew and she frets over it, unwilling to let her first hot meal in more than a week burn. The oven mitt she wears keeps her arm hair from singeing as she pulls the stew from the flames. The brown liquid bubbles merrily.
As she stares into the dancing fire, her attention fades, her mind sinking into one of the fugues she calls a time pocket. The fugues are dark and scary—but only when they’re over. During, she just goes away. Not like she had outside. She goes away from all conscious thought when she slips into one of her time pockets. It’s only after that she shakes in terror because what if she slips into a time pocket when one of them is nearby?
When she comes back to herself, her stew is no longer hot, but she can’t make herself reheat it. Her stomach hurts now, and she’s filled with an unnameable fear. Woodenly, she shovels in the cooled stew, trying to focus on the grainy texture of the meat so she doesn’t think too hard about what might happen the next time she goes away.
She fears her sanity is slipping away from her.
When the stew is gone, she heats up the hominy and eats it too even though her stomach feels overfull. It’s a strange feeling after so many weeks running on empty.
The fire is warm. It’s bright. It reminds her of other places and other times. and she wants to curl up in front of it to sleep but she can’t yet. She goes to the sink and washes her hands—there’s running water, perhaps from a well, she doesn’t know how but it’s there. Cold, but there. She figures the pipes will freeze tonight since she’s run water through them, so she fills up every empty container she can find and fills up the upstairs bathtub too.
She can’t make herself wash off in the icy water, though, so she contents herself with warming a pot of water that she uses to sponge off the worst of the gunk.
How long has it been since she bathed?
Her boys won’t recognize her …
are they alive are they okay are they still there what if they aren’t there
She caps the last bottle and sets it by the front door, and then, unable to resist, reaches over the heavy wooden side table and checks the doorknob. It doesn’t turn because of course it’s locked. She locked it earlier. She locked it.
She tests it again, then makes herself go back to the small nest of blankets she’s piled in front of the fire. It’s ridiculously indulgent to sleep in a pile of blankets in front of a flickering fireplace, her belly distended with food. Now. It’s ridiculously indulgent now.
Then …
No. No she can’t think about the past. Not even innocuous things like fast food and 911 and electricity. It leads to thinking about Lana and she can’t think about Lana without wanting to die.
And she can’t die. Not until she knows one way or the other.
are they alive are they okay are they still there what if they aren’t there
She curls up under three blankets, her body cradled by all the pillows in the house, and she wonders if she’ll be able to sleep without listening for them. The wind howls and knocks branches against the house. It could be them scratching to get in. Snow pelts the windows like fingers tapping the glass. Is it the sigh of the house settling, or did she forget to check the upstairs closet? Did she check behind the shower curtain? Is one standing in the doorway right now?
She jerks upright, heart thud thumping in her chest to study the room, study the windows, study the door. There are so many shadows. So many places they could hide.
“They’re all gone. I checked everything.”
Except, had she?
She gets up, hating herself, wanting to cry, and she checks everything again. The doors, the windows, the dark corners, the closets, under the beds, in the bathrooms, behind the shower curtain, up and down she goes, beyond exhausted but unable to stop until every last corner of the house has been searched.
She lays down and soon the cataloging of her terrors begins anew.
14
Then
The noise made it almost impossible to get much sleep. They were out there and they weren’t quiet. Singing, hooting, calling out names. When they got them right? A head would pop up. A hand would cover a mouth. A sob, a gasp, a groan.
Lana didn’t sleep either, her eyes flying to mine whenever they scored a hit. “I don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to. We get breakfast and go,” she whispered.
“Agree.” The police had been nothing but welcoming to us, making sure we had a spot to sleep, making sure we
