“He could have gotten in the back door. He has the keys. He left the door open, left us—”
“I’m going to look for him.” Paisley got out of her sleeping bag, tears already falling. “I can’t believe you didn’t wake me up. We need to look for him.” She pulled on her boots, yanking her arm free when I tried to stop her.
“We can’t. It’s a blizzard out there. And we did go out to look for him.” Not far, but we had. “It was too bad. Visibility is about zero.”
“I’m looking.” She yanked on her coat, her gloves, and wrapped a scarf around her head until all I could see of her was her eyes.
“Paisley, remember what you told me? That you weren’t going to risk your life for him anymore?”
“This is different. He’s been different. He told me sorry. He said he wouldn’t do that to me again. Okay? I’m not letting him die out there alone.”
“There won’t be anything you can do. He was out there all night. If he didn’t find a place to hole up, he’s probably—”
“What? Dead? No! Stop giving up on him. You don’t know that.” She shoved past me and then knelt to undo the rope, cursing and crying when she couldn’t get it free. I didn’t help her; there was no reason for her to go out there and risk herself over Isaac. He’d made his choice. “I can’t get this! Why won’t you help me?”
“Because you don’t need to go out there.”
“Let her,” Dan said. His voice was grim. “Let her go. Let her kill herself for that boy who cares for nothing but himself.”
“Dan,” I started, but he cut me off.
“No. Let her go.” He got up, his hair wild, his mouth set. He unfastened the tow rope and shoved the door, shoved it again when it wouldn’t open because of the snow. “There. Go. Go find the asshole who has been trying to kill himself this whole time. Go on.”
She glared at him, at me, and then she shoved past him and into the snow.
The snow gobbled her up in seconds. Without looking at him, I said, “You shouldn’t have let her go.”
“Why not? She clearly wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Why not let her go running after her little boyfriend?”
I shook my head, then went back to the table where I slipped on an extra pair of socks, my boots, coat, gloves, hat, yadda yadda. I ignored him as I pushed my way outside into the white nightmare. I could barely make out the truck and I couldn’t see Paisley at all. Wherever she’d gone, she’d gone fast. “Paisley! Isaac?” Whatever sound I made the wind stole and after a bit, I gave up and went back inside. Snow swirled in behind me and it took me several tries before I got the door completely shut. I retied the rope, then stripped down, rubbing my hands together and blowing on them. I ignored Dan and he ignored me.
We spent fifteen days trapped in that damned gas station, and in those fifteen days, we said maybe twelve words to each other, neither of us wanting to be the first to talk about our two missing companions.
Dan was pissed. So was I, but I was also sad. They were just kids, after all. Young things in their twenties. They hadn’t asked for any of this. None of us had.
I remembered the way Isaac’s body had trembled when I hugged him. I’d thought he was feeling better too, thought he’d made his peace with losing his brother, but apparently, he’d been making a different kind of peace. I should have seen it. I should have suspected at least. I’d worked with enough suicidal kids to know when one of them had made the decision to end their life.
I should have known, should have kept watch instead.
That was the guilt I lived with long after those fifteen days. I had no idea how Dan felt. After the fifth day, he’d stopped talking at all.
I went out several times after the storm stopped, calling their names, looking for any sign they might be alive, might be holed up somewhere. It was as if they both vanished off the face of the earth.
When the roads finally cleared, I let Dan drive so I could look for them.
I looked for them, but they were gone. They were gone and we went on, because what else could we do?
42
Now
Alex doesn’t get the same good news. There’s a lot of blood on the sidewalk in front of her brother’s house and inside? Inside it’s bad. Alex hangs tight to Dee’s hand as they enter, and when they walk into the main bedroom, they see what happened. Her nieces have plastic bags over their heads. Her sister-in-law too. Her brother spent his last moments probably crying over his family, and then he put a gun under his chin and pulled the trigger. Dried blood is spattered on the wall in the shape of a fan.
Alex stares and stares, then turns from the doorway and stumbles back down the hall.
Dee studies them a moment longer, feeling guilty that she is glad she didn’t see her boys, her parents, this same way. When she follows Alex back down, she finds her bent over in the yard throwing up.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, wishing she were Lana, wishing she could offer something to make it better, but that was crazy, wasn’t it? Ridiculous. In this world of broken, dead things, there is no consolation. There is nothing but despair and death and darkness. Hope is mixed in there to keep them going but it’s all a big joke, isn’t it? A big, cosmic joke on the few remaining survivors in a land of the dead. “You can stay with me,” she says. “I will be your family.”
She doesn’t know where the words come from and she isn’t sure
