“I’ll go out into the garden again. I promise.”
His brow creases at her words, as if he senses the panic behind them. “Only if you want to, Miranda. I’m not trying to force you to do it.”
“No, no. Of course, you aren’t. You’re right. I’ll go out into the garden again and I won’t stay in the basement so much. I hadn’t realized.”
Tom still seems uneasy with her words. She can read it there on his face, which is as open and honest as always. For a moment, Miranda thinks he’s going to address it directly. She doesn’t want that at all. How can she put into words this fear she feels that he’ll leave her because she’s grown too weak-willed to leave a basement? And if he hasn’t been thinking that, then her saying it will put it into his brain. Then he’ll really see it.
To avoid it, she smiles brightly and says, “Shall I make us some tea?”
His confused expression isn’t entirely erased by the smile he returns. “That would be nice.”
Miranda rises to get things ready, doing her best to look purposeful and at ease. Her evasion of the sliver of light around the seam in the window covering is so natural that it barely registers. She simply steps around it.
As soon as she sets the kettle on the stove, Tom says, “I’ve got services this evening, but I’ll be home before dark. Will you be alright if I go?”
Inwardly, Miranda cringes, but she turns around and leans against the counter to face him, smiling brightly and doing her best not to show how she feels. “Of course. Dinner before or after?”
“Hmm,” he hums, glancing at the old refrigerator for a moment. “Do we have anything that needs to be eaten?”
Shaking her head, she says, “No. I’ve got everything well in hand.”
While it’s true that Miranda almost can’t bear to hear about anything happening beyond the house, inside these walls she’s become remarkably productive. Her basement gardens produce more than they could ever eat. She’s the one in charge of saving that food.
Her mother had been—and perhaps still is if she survived—a country girl. Miranda felt out of place in that world from the moment she’d had the emotional maturity to understand the concept of being out of place. At eighteen, she’d gone off to college and never returned for more than brief visits. She barely knows her younger sister, who was born during her junior year in college. Most of their interactions have been via phone call, and in recent years, video calls.
Miranda’s preferences have always been travel, dinners out, and hard-nosed business dealings smoothed over through the delicate application of excellent vintages. She is as different from her mother and younger sister as could be imagined.
That’s not to say she doesn’t know how to be a country girl when she has to. Her mother wouldn’t have let her grow up without helping. She knows how to can foods, which Tom calls bottling. She knows how to prune a vegetable plant to achieve maximum production or maximum flavor. She knows how to dehydrate and preserve what she doesn’t bottle up into jars. The vast shelves in the basement are a colorful array of jewel-like tones, each one bursting with the smell of summer when opened.
They’re eating well. So well, in fact, that Tom has been sharing out some of their extras with the few people left in the village. Several nearby villages have started something like an exchange, with everyone bringing what they have and trading for things they need.
This is also where Tom found a small group of men who hold impromptu services. It had surprised Miranda when he first mentioned it. He’d never before spoken of religion. He never even asked her about it. Since this new group started local services, Tom has been attending every single one.
Then again, Miranda supposes a lot of people would have either turned to or entirely away from religion after The Dying. Looking for explanations to the inexplicable seems quite normal to her.
Miranda opens the fridge and quickly scans the contents. “I could make pasta before you go.”
Tom shakes his head and says, “Shall we see what I trade for? We might get some meat.”
“Oh, that would be nice. Yes, let’s wait and see. I don’t mind eating late. We’ll have a little something with our tea to tide us over.”
*****
As promised, Tom’s little car pulls into the long drive just as the sun starts to sink behind the distant trees and hills. He’s never late. Miranda waits in the shadow of the large staircase for him to enter. She does her best not to pull her feet away from the long rectangle of golden light that spreads across the entry hall floor when he opens the door.
Behind him, an old-fashioned market cart bumps over the threshold. She’d giggled when he dragged it home the first time. These little wheeled carts were almost exclusive to little old ladies doing their marketing before The Dying. Tom had only laughed and said there were so many left behind that it seemed a shame to waste them. His has a plastic insert printed in vivid pictures of improbable looking cats.
Gritting her teeth and trying to look unconcerned about the two slivers of light leaking in around the door after he closes it, Miranda approaches and smiles up at him. “The mighty hunter returns with his cart!”
With a laugh, Tom gives her a courtly bow. “And in that cart, the knight brings his lady some lamb. It’s not early lamb, but still lamb.”
Miranda claps her hands in delight. “What a treat! And we’ve got new potatoes to go with it. Now, I’m really hungry.”
The cart clatters after them as they retreat to the kitchen, bantering back and forth over what to cook with the lamb. It’s almost as if their afternoon discussion hadn’t happened and they’re back to being normal again. The last of the sun’s rays will soon disappear, so it’s
