They all contemplated that.
After lunch, Avery brought her dishes to the bunkhouse kitchen as usual. Gabe and Elizabeth were there ahead of her.
“You’re supposed to scrape your plates into the compost bucket,” Gabe was saying when she entered the room. “How long have you been here? Have you been leaving your plates and bowls like that for other people to take care of?”
“I’ve got other things on my mind than compost.”
“Oh, right, sorry. You’re too busy saving the world to scrape your plate. Let the rest of us underlings take care of the details.”
“Can’t you give me a break?”
“Can’t you—” Gabe realized Avery was there and bit back whatever he meant to say. “Avery. Here, let me deal with your dishes.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
Elizabeth laughed flatly. “Let him. There’s nothing he likes better than to help.”
“Seems like a good quality,” Avery retorted. “Why does that make you so mad?”
“Sometimes people want to do things their way.”
“Sometimes people want to do things a stupid way. Sometimes people make other people wonder what it is they really want,” Gabe said. “Because if it’s walking right into a trap—” He set the dishes down on the counter with a clatter and walked out of the kitchen.
“Everyone’s so damn jumpy,” Elizabeth said after a long moment. “It’s that intruder. He’s getting to all of us.”
“Some more than others,” Avery observed. What was that all about? She knew Elizabeth and Gabe rubbed each other wrong, but Gabe was really upset. And what did he mean about a trap? Was he talking about the danger here at Base Camp or something to do with their work? Several times in the last few days she’d caught the two of them discussing climate change. She was pretty sure they both believed in it, and both were working on ways to mitigate its effects. She had yet to discover the point of contention between them.
“You know how researchers are.” Elizabeth waved the problem away and left the room, her dirty dishes untouched on the counter. Avery sighed and got to work scraping them. Later that night she was still wondering about what she’d seen when she should have been asleep. In the interest of everyone getting some real rest, Boone had finally broken the twenty-four people into groups of six or so, spreading three of the groups into the nearest tiny houses, the rest of them remaining in the bunkhouse.
Byron and Leslie were tangled up like puppies together in one corner of the room. The rest of them were spread out. Still, Avery found the room stifling. She never got to be alone these days, and while she’d always thought of herself as a social being, now she’d give anything for a few hours by herself.
Even a minute or two would suffice.
She lay listening to the rustling and breathing of the other people in the room, long past when they drifted off to sleep. When she was sure she was the only one awake, she gave up, slipped out of her bedroll and tiptoed to the kitchen. She knew she shouldn’t open the side door, but she thought she would lose her mind if she couldn’t get a breath of fresh air. She carefully unlocked it and cracked it open just enough to slip outside, keeping her hand on the knob as if that would save her from any danger.
The stars winked overhead, soothing her a little, reminding her that despite her petty worries, the universe was a big place and all was well.
She nearly shrieked when she heard a soft noise behind her. She whirled around, sending the door flying wide open, and let out her breath when she saw it was only Walker crossing the kitchen toward her.
“Shouldn’t be out there,” he said.
“I know. I wasn’t going anywhere. Just wanted a minute alone.”
“A minute was all it took and Nora was gone.”
Did he still blame himself for that? Walker had been with Nora at the grocery store in town when her stalker snatched her. Sue had distracted him, coming at him because she was furious—
Furious that Walker was falling for her, Avery reminded herself. So in a way, Nora’s kidnapping was her fault, too.
“I’ll go back to bed now.”
“Wait.”
Avery held her breath when he touched her arm. Waited for him to marshal his thoughts.
“I was seventeen when I promised to marry Elizabeth,” he began. “I never thought she’d follow through with it. Never thought she’d want to. Thought I was safe saying it.”
Avery’s thoughts spun as she tried to process what she was hearing. The last thing she’d anticipated when she’d come outside was that Walker would follow her—or that he’d finally confess his life story. “Safe? What do you mean?”
She sensed his frustration. Walker wasn’t one for explanations or for talking in general, for that matter. It was hard to get him going, especially when the topic was himself. In the long hours they’d spent together doing chores this past year, he’d opened up only a few times.
“Elizabeth’s grandmother, Netta Blaine, was Sue’s best friend—always,” he finally said. “There was trouble between our families, but it never touched them.”
Trouble. What kind of trouble? That word could encompass so much—and so little.
“Netta meant everything to Sue. She’d lost everyone else. My grandfather. My father. Netta was all she had left.”
“Except you,” Avery pointed out. He talked so little about his family. She had no idea what had happened to his parents except that they were dead.
He nodded. “I was a kid.”
“What happened to Netta?” It seemed the safest question and a good place to start untangling this knot. It felt intimate standing in the darkness so close to Walker. She wished she could touch him and let him know how much she appreciated him talking to her like this.
“She was
