Rebirth Part 7

Cass suspected that this was what determined, more than anything else, who survived and who did not. The ability to live through the moment when you found out you had been wrong once again-that things really could get worse, that suffering came in yet more designs, that survivors' capacity for ruthlessness or Beaters' hunger and cunning exceeded what you thought you knew. You could still be surprised, and you could take it.

People died a thousand different ways-suicide, attacks, poisoning, riots, dehydration, starvation-but Cass came to believe that the real cause of most deaths was giving up. Lose your will and you were likely to leave a shelter door open, or forget to check for blueleaf, or cross paths with marauders-even carelessly cut yourself and die an ignominious death of infection or tetanus. Your body would bloat and rot like any other, and you would never have a gravestone or even a cross to mark the place you fell, but your silent requiem would be a song of despair, of wretchedness.

What made some people keep fighting while others succumbed? Cass didn't know. At first, she'd fought for Ruthie. But when she woke in a haze so profound that she barely remembered who she was, there was some other source of determination so fundamental that it might as well have been her very bones, her DNA. She was a fighter and she would not stop being a fighter, even if the one she'd fought hardest against most of her life was herself.

If anything could make her give up, it would have been losing Smoke-because she had slowly invested him with herself, allowed the protective layer of distrust and anger to crumble until there was a hole wide enough to let him in. She had allowed that to happen, she had slowly accumulated the hundred habits of love, and she had done so foolishly, like a teenager with her first crush.

Well. She'd never been such a girl, so there was her excuse-by the time she was old enough to have a boyfriend, her stepfather had already taken from her that possibility. His hands on her body had done more than destroy some medieval notion of her innocence, they had erased her ability to believe that someone could love her, to trust herself to be part of a couple, to believe that she could be worthy only for herself, for what was true and essential.

But then Smoke had come and everything else was so broken that she'd loved him almost by accident. When every minute felt like a prelude to death and disaster, she'd allowed herself to steal moments of comfort with him. They were to be only that-stolen moments, meaningless moments, episodes she would pretend to forget in the daylight. Only that hadn't happened. He had loved her at noon as much as he did at midnight, and having Ruthie back was so joyous and overwhelming that she forgot to keep resisting. She forgot to keep protecting herself, and she'd allowed him to take up the yoke-to care for her, to nurture her, to hold her. Sometimes their lovemaking felt transcendent, as though climax transported her outside herself for splintered moments of divinity. And sometimes, when Smoke held her afterward, it was confusingly like being held by a parent, or by God Himself, someone who would love her forever.

But Smoke did not love her forever. Not enough to stay, anyway. He chose vengeance-ugly, dark, violent-over her. And that was that. Her one failure, her one fall. She'd built that wall back up in record time, and it was twice-strong, twice-high.

Dor watched her carefully, and she knew he was waiting for her to crack. But she wouldn't give him the satisfaction. She was stronger than that, stronger than he knew.

"Nothing I haven't heard before," she lied.

Dor blinked, looked uncertain. "Still..."

"Still nothing. You were right to leave her the gun, but you know she's just going to use it on herself." Her voice sounded tinny, a cheap and insubstantial version. She made herself face Dor, but she couldn't stand to look in his eyes. They were cinnamon-flecked in the light, a deep, deep brown; but at night, with only the candle for illumination, they were depthless black, and she didn't dare risk being absorbed by that unknowable gaze. Instead she focused on his jaw; on the stubble that had appeared before the morning was done, on the hard lines of his bones.

"Cass..."

"It's all right." She shrugged. "It's better, really. Hopefully she'll do it outside, and that way if some freewalker comes through they won't have to deal with the mess."

Dor reached, hesitantly, to put his hand on her shoulder again. It seemed to be his entire repertoire of comforting gestures, and his touch was awkward, heavy. "You don't have to do this."

"Do what?"

"Act like...like it doesn't affect you. Like it doesn't hurt."

Hot, acid tears instantly welled up in her eyes, and Cass knew that if she blinked they would spill. So she would not blink. She bit down on her lip, hard enough to distract herself. "It doesn't affect me. How could it affect me? I don't know her. She's just some other woman. The difference between her and me is that she got caught. I didn't. I mean, yeah, it was probably thanks to you...do I need to thank you? Is that what this is about? Do I need to give you credit for the save? Okay, Dor, if it wasn't for you, I'd be tied to that bed too and she and I would be getting fucked together, fucked until we were used up and I wasn't anything at all. So, thank you. Seriously."

Cass was breathing hard, and she suddenly couldn't stand his touch, his tentativeness. She shoved his hand off her arm but she didn't move away from him on the couch; she could see his scar, the one that had slowly faded and disappeared under the hair he no longer cut, tracing across his forehead.

"Look, Cass..." Dor sounded almost alarmed, and that pleased Cass. The ravenous angry part of her trembled with excitement; she'd gotten to him. She'd provoked him. "I know you're upset about Smoke, that you're feeling-"

She hit him before she realized she was going to, flat hand across his cheek, a resounding slap that took him off guard and probably stung like hell. "You have no idea what I'm feeling," she snarled, and then she pulled back to hit him again, astonishing herself. The sprite that was her anger danced in ecstasy, sending her heartbeat wild with excitement. She felt the spittle at the corners of her mouth and the blood rushing to her face and the tingle of the slap in her palm.

He caught her wrist, hurting her, his strength a ridiculous overmatch to hers. He held her arm in the air, glaring at her, and she wondered for a moment if he would throw her to the ground. The sprite chortled within her, urging her on. Make him, it cried-make him do it.

"You don't know who I am-what I have really been," she said. Spittle landed on him and she didn't care.

"I know you've been through a lot," Dor said, the flash of anger quickly receding, his features rigid and careful. "I know you're tired and possibly in a state of post-traumatic stress, and what you need is to-"

"Fuck what I need," Cass said. "Fuck you, you have no idea what I need-" You were there, she wanted to scream. You shot him in the head. You saw that poor wreck of a woman. You saw the rings.

Oh, God...the rings.

They'd taken the rings, slipped them from fingers shrunk from hunger, tokens of times unimaginably long ago, of celebrations and promises. They shot the husbands and the wives in the backyard. They put the rings in a bowl. The bowl sat on the table. They smoked and ashed in that bowl. Down the hall the women cried and wished they were dead.

He was close, so close to her, his silver-streaked dark hair falling in his eyes, his expression shocked and hard, angry. Had she made him hate her? The sprite crowed with satisfaction and victory as Cass struggled to free herself from his grasp and he only held on tighter, hurting her, his fingers tight on her wrist, squeezing. With her free hand she pushed him, put her palm to his face and ground against his mouth, his teeth, and he grabbed that hand too and held it just as hard so they were locked in a silent battle. If he let go, she would claw his eyes out, she would tear his skin. She would draw blood and then he would know that he did not know what she felt, that he could never know what she felt.

She climbed on top of him, hooking one leg over his lap so she was straddling him, making him twist her arms painfully.

"What are you doing," he muttered, but she ignored him, she dug her knees into the sofa on either side of him, she pressed her body against him, ground herself into his lap. "What the hell are you trying to do, Cass-"

She saw the confusion in his eyes and it excited her. She knew that she had provoked him and that meant that she was the stronger one now. She had won. It had been touch-and-go, she had let it go too far-but she'd found his weakness and not given too much of herself.

"Get off of me," Dor ordered her in a strained voice, trying to hold her wrists back as she ground against him. "This isn't right. You know this isn't right."

But instead she bent down to his face and kissed him hard, her fury hot in her throat, her hair falling in his face, getting caught up in their mouths. He twisted his face away and tried to buck her off; she chewed her hair and it tasted of salt, of sweat, of dirt.

He was stronger than she was, stronger by far but she had the advantage, an advantage formed in devastation and honed by the knowledge that she'd never give herself away again. She'd piled everything on the wall, the detritus of every past hurt, every betrayal, until she had made a barrier of thorns and broken glass and funhouse mirrors, and then she'd mortared it with the few good things she'd ever cared about, because they had to go, too; they had to be burned away. Her few friendships, her moments of tenuous faith, a handful of pretty things she'd collected, all crushed and tossed on the pile. She'd made of herself a spiked and impenetrable thing, and then-in only the last three months, oh God, how had she been so careless, how had it come over her so fast-the wall had fallen away like the knotted rags of a desert wanderer, leaving her naked and vulnerable to the sun that could burn her, could kill her.

Smoke had been that sun and she'd lain under his shine, turned her face to it and drunk it in greedily even as his heat and light beat down on the last of her defenses, the ones that guarded her very soul, leaving them withered and sere. She'd made love to him a hundred times and every time she'd given him everything, from the very first time to their last morning together, the morning of the day he betrayed her. She'd opened every cell of her being and sealed herself to him with her body, with her cries and her garbled love words, made him part of her, and now she had to shed him and it was going to be hard, hard, hard.

But she would start now.

She spat out the strands of her hair and drove her body against Dor, feeling him grow stiff underneath her. His fingers weakened around her wrists and she yanked them away, too fast for him, too devious. She put her hands on his shoulders and dug in with her fingers, knowing she was hurting him and not caring.

He cursed and swore low in his throat, the sound of an animal, ferocious in its need, insatiable, reverberating through her body into her spine.

His hands closed on her ass and pulled her hard against him, pushing himself up against her. He dug his fingers into her waistband and yanked, the tight-woven fabric unyielding, the zipper scratching against the tender skin of her belly. "Get these off," he ordered her. "Do it now."

The anger in his voice was a spark to the tinder of her crazed greed for him. She rolled off, clumsy, knees knocking, not caring. Zipper down with fingers slick with sweat. Panties already sodden as she peeled them away. Dor kicking off his pants, pulling his T-shirt over his head, throwing it to the floor. In the flicker of the candle Cass saw his body reflected in burnished night-glow and for a half a second the sight almost stopped her-he was that beautiful, his chest muscular and smooth and dark, his sternum rent from chest to navel by a pair of scars, pebbled pocked fissures in his smooth skin, and her fingers fluttered with the need to touch him there, and then the flicker-thought was gone as he leaned naked and uncaring and grabbed her wrists again, pulling her back to him. He seized the placket of her shirt and yanked and the buttons spun through the air and the fabric tore and his hands on her back were rough as rocks, hot as embers.

He pulled her against him and his mouth on her neck was hard and his teeth grazed her skin as he lifted her like she was nothing. He found her nipple and bit. She cried out in pain even as sensation rocked her, from his hot wet mouth along her nerves to her core and out to the edges of her, the place where she ended and the rest of the universe began, that place that was lost because she was just the spiral of fury and hurt and need that Smoke had made of her when he left.

Dor lifted her hips, his hands holding her and moving her against him. She felt his cock brush against her, slick and sliding against her furrow and she threw her head back and grabbed his shoulders again and thrust against him but he held her away. God, he was just so strong, he held her as though she was a sack of feathers, a sack of dried and crumbling leaves. As though she were nothing at all. "This is wrong," he said through gritted teeth, the quivering head of him hot against her, and she dug her fingers in to brace herself and struggled against him, bucking and begging with her body, and still he held her off, his fingers bruising-hard in the soft flesh of her ass. Cass's breath turned into a cry, a wail, a pleading keening and finally, finally oh God finally he relented and jammed her down on him with a cutoff cry of his own.

She was ready, so ready, liquid in her need and still he split her as an adze splits bark already taken from a felled tree. She felt herself cleave clean around him, he was so hard so demanding and still she wanted more of him, she wrenched and englutted and he grunted and forced his way ever deeper until there was nowhere else to go. Her keening wail turned into something else, an excited, hungry clamor that matched him thrust for thrust, urging him on, making him go faster, harder.

Dor's eyes were shut tight and he grimaced as though he were in excruciating pain, sweat beading along his brow, slicking his chest hot even as the night grew deeper and the room grew ever colder, this abandoned remote place of death and devastation, forgotten by everyone.

Cass saw how he fought himself and it excited her and she kissed him with her mouth open and tasted bitter, knew she would hate herself for it later but she drank the bitter deep, slammed herself against him and seized the energy that ebbed from him. The bitter taste was triumph, and she couldn't get enough, could never get enough.

"I didn't-want-this," he managed to get out with difficulty. Cass found his nipples with her fingers and twisted; she grazed her teeth along his jaw, nipped his flesh and laved him with her tongue. "I don't-want you."

Her hair had fallen between them again and she mashed her face against it, the strands gritty against her skin. And she laughed. It started deep inside her, a rumbling, unstoppable reaction to the bitterness she'd swallowed, and Dor pushed her off of him only to prop her ungently with her face against the back of the couch, her hands finding purchase on the scratchy synthetic fabric, as he took her that way, his hands on her thighs as though he would hold on through a storm, a hurricane, the wrath of God Himself-and her laughter grew and rang through the room until it finally turned into something else and there was no way to know whose cries burned the cursed and frigid air.

16.

IN THE MORNING HIS EYES FELT LIKE THEY WERE full of fine grit, and he lay on the hard carpeted floor under the twisted blankets and thought of the shale cliffs along the Iowa riverbanks of the summers of his youth. He spent them with his Neary cousins from his father's side of the family-the Irish side-skinny redheaded farm boys reckless and restless, throwing themselves off the cliffs in banshee-screaming cannonballs into the brackish pools below. Afterward they lay on the sandbars steaming in the sun, good-naturedly insulting each other and speculating about every girl within thirty miles. Dor, younger by three years than the youngest Neary, listened while he baked deep brown, having inherited his Afghani mother's complexion. Dor couldn't keep up with any of them and so of course hadn't yet realized that in time he would be able to beat the shit out of any of them without breaking a sweat. They raced each other through the fields late in the afternoons, kicking up dust, getting it in their eyes.

Dor didn't know what had happened to any of his cousins, his good-natured doughy aunts, or his portly stoic uncles. A couple of them had sent Christmas cards last year. Dor kept them in a file folder, pushed far back in a cabinet at the office he would never return to.

Of course, they were on the other side of the Rockies. Maybe they had a chance.

Dor rubbed at his eyes, pushed himself up and leaned back against the sofa. The same sofa where, deep in the night, he'd...Jesus. No. The memories came back sharp and whole, and he gave up struggling against them. How the hell had it happened? She'd fought him hard, all lean strong limbs and teeth and that hair of hers, wild like a pale discordant halo around her face.

He remembered the way Cass looked when she first came to the Box. She'd been timid then, beat-down. He hadn't known about Ruthie at first, hadn't known what drove her, what haunted her, but they were all like that, every traveler who found their way to the Box. Loss and hunger, a mix he'd come to know well, a calculation he had a particular genius for; he could take its measure and instantly know what a person needed, and what it was worth to them. But not with Cass. Even then, there had been something elusive about her. She was scared and she was a thin line away from frantic, but you could also see her checking around for escape routes, even if she didn't know she was doing it-she was a hedger of bets, a hoarder of backup plans pinched in her fingers like a cornered fox.

Her hair had been short then, soft and brown like a boy's...ragged...as if it was torn. Her first day in the Box she'd had the barber do something to it, bleached the ends, made it stick straight up and askew. It should have been ugly. Since she'd moved in with Smoke she hadn't cut it, but she'd kept it dyed a blond so pale it was nearly white, and it had grown fast, jagged pieces down past her chin already, down to her shoulder blades, one of the strange things that made her seem so otherworldly at times. Probably another outlier trait. He saw her working in the gardens on steel-cloud fall days, her pale head unmistakable among the glossy leaves of her citrus seedlings, the carefully pruned branches of her prized fig. She wasn't a talker. He didn't know if she had ever been.

When he first did talk to Cass, she gazed straight into his eyes, a challenge, a dare, a provocation. He felt himself shut down, and he sent her away as soon as he could, unsettled and not in the mood to be. He didn't expect her to last. Later, after she and Smoke settled in, they kept their distance from each other. He knew Cass resented him for recruiting Smoke to head his security team. How to explain his choice? It was no more or less than instinct-but he owed her no explanation. He owed her nothing. She didn't work for him. She worked for no one but herself, and she gave away her herbs and roots and flowers just as often as she traded for them. Sometimes it almost seemed as though she did this to provoke him, giving away the things of most value and cherishing bits of worthless trash: broken bottles in pretty colors, soiled silk scarves and books with missing covers. Of course, it was easy to be generous when you had more than enough-Smoke earned more than they could use up. Dor rewarded Smoke well and with care because he had been right about him and did not wish to lose him: Smoke was that rarest of men, a born leader who did not want to lead. And Dor's security force-renegades, thieves, adrenaline junkies and soldiers all-could only be led by such a man. Even now Dor marveled that he was the only one who ever understood that dynamic, but he supposed that had always been his gift, understanding people's natures better than they understood themselves.

Except for Cass. It should have been easy: recovering addict, driven by loss and guilt-they were a dime a dozen, a currency so devalued they practically flooded the Box these days. A huge number ended up killing themselves one way or another. But this one had a couple of additional facets. Fiercely protective mother. Passionate lover. Survivor. Cass had become a wild card.

Dor winced. He'd seen Cass and Smoke together; it sometimes seemed as though the more he tried to avoid them, the more frequently he ran into them. After they'd put Ruthie down to sleep for the evening, it was their habit to walk the aisles and corridors of the camp, holding hands, exchanging greetings with nearly everyone, but declining offers to share a meal or play cards. Sometimes they'd be in the back of a crowd gathered to listen to someone playing the guitar or reading-Cass encircled in Smoke's arms, leaning against him with her eyes closed and a dreamy half smile on her face. They pitched in together; when they helped put up tents or mend the fence or serve meals they shared a wordless efficiency, passing each other objects with secret, intimate smiles. Later, their expressions often seemed to promise, later we'll be alone.

And it had irritated him. Dor, who was alone even when he was with others. Who chose solitude because he had never learned anything else. Whose marriages had both ended when his wives finally despaired of ever reaching him-and God knows they'd tried, the good women who'd loved him. Even his daughter, even Sammi-he'd loved her so much he had to leave her behind, because she got to him, got too close, made him feel too much.

Feeling too much was dangerous. It drained him, took away his focus, his power.

But what of Cass and Smoke? When he looked at them it was like looking through a cursed glass at his inverse. Neither was especially gregarious, but when they were together, they were unguarded, two people who seemed to be completely open to each other. Who made expression of emotion seem effortless. Who shared themselves without hesitation. How did they do it?

Still, Dor knew a secret about Smoke. He thought the two of them had shared everything, but now he realized that Smoke hadn't told Cass his one great mistake, his shame, the thing that made him leave and would always now compel him toward the abyss.

It was this secret that weighed on Dor's mind as he got painfully to his feet and folded the blankets, replacing them with care on the couch that might never again be used by anyone. Cass thought she knew everything about her lover, but there was one thing that would shock her to the core. If she knew that one thing, she would understand why her man had left. If she knew it, she might not have come to him last night, might not have thrown herself at him like her life depended on having him.

He was disgusted with himself for letting her. He should have told her Smoke's secret instead. But now it was all fucked up. One of them owed the other something-but he wasn't sure who and he wasn't sure what it was. He had a feeling that they were a combination that could never be stable, that as long as they were together they would just keep cutting and devastating each other. He should never have let her come. She hadn't given him any choice. He ought to part ways with her as soon as Colima was in view. Give her the car, the guns, the stores, everything, and tell her to take Ruthie back where they would be safe. He'd started over with nothing more times than he could count-and didn't he always come back stronger?

Only this time he wasn't sure. This time, he had the unsettling feeling that he had lost control of what came next.

17.

CASS WOKE WITH RUTHIE SNUGGLED INTO HER arms, her daughter's sweet, even breaths tickling her bare shoulder.

She lay still for a moment and took stock. She'd managed to get her clothes back on last night, grabbing them up off the floor and bolting from the room, leaving Dor standing awkwardly to the side with his own clothes bunched in his big hands in front of him. It might have been funny, the way he was almost shielding his nakedness from her, after what they'd just done-except she couldn't actually see that humor in the moment.

And it didn't seem any better this morning after a restless night. Her shirt had no buttons; they'd tumbled to the floor when Dor tore it open. Cass shuddered, remembering his fury. At the time it had provoked her, stirred that part of her that couldn't back down, the hurt and angry part that had split off from the rest of her when her stepfather whispered his lies and threats. She had carried this other self with her for years, and while sobriety helped and having Ruthie helped and running helped, it never truly disappeared. It had receded, with Smoke, until it was only a distant shadow, a presence that tempered her best moments and deepened the worst.

The very few times she and Smoke argued-when she begged him to stay instead of going to train with Joe or taking an extra shift or visiting Dor's trailer-the shadow came closer, close enough to remind her of its dormant power. She coped by shutting down, by refusing to engage, by letting Smoke win every time. She pressed her lips together and didn't speak. She walked the well-worn path around the Box, lap after lap, until she was able to convince herself that it didn't really matter. So she awoke alone more mornings than not-wasn't it better to let it go than to risk her anger coming back and rupturing the peace they'd built together?

She and Dor had no peace. From the first time they met, the day she and Smoke arrived in the Box, he had seemed hard and distant. Of course, she'd begun their relationship by asking something from him. Dor did not part with things easily. As she came to learn, he exacted a fair price for everything he traded, plus his cut. No exceptions. He'd helped her get into the stadium to find Ruthie, but only after Smoke traded their most valuable possessions for the privilege. Dor paid Smoke handsomely, but she had noticed that he never traded with her, never asked for anything from her garden. It was as though he would not allow himself to, though she didn't understand why-the herbs and vegetables she grew were the only ones that most people had had for months; people had already offered fantastic trades for the tiny green oranges on her trees, once they matured.

But Dor acted as though he didn't see the garden, didn't see her. It was as though he reviled not just her but everything she touched.

Ruthie shifted in her arms, sighing and snuggling closer. Cass stroked her soft cheek and kissed her shiny hair, but she felt her face color with shame, remembering the way Dor had fought her last night. And the way she had fought harder.

He could have stopped her at any moment. He was powerful. Strong. He'd battled himself more than he'd battled her, Cass understood that. She even understood why he'd done...what they'd done; she had given him little choice. There had been some hard volatile kernel there, some imbalance between attraction and repulsion, an unstable compound which she'd deliberately ignited.

Her mortification deepened and she pulled gently away from Ruthie, tucking the blankets carefully around her daughter's small shoulders, adjusting the pillow, before sitting on the edge of the bed doubled over, her arms wrapped around her knees, her nails digging into the soft skin of her thighs, trying to make it hurt enough.

She'd seduced Dor and she'd fucked him. He may have thought he'd been culpable, that he was willing when he turned her over, took her hard, slammed home all his disgust and resentment, but he'd only done it because she gave him no choice. There was a point past which anyone could be made to lose control, and Cass was an expert at that fine line, a stellar student of lust and urgency. She had seen a thousand variations-some rolled their eyes back and others' breath came short and still others muttered and hummed-but in the end it was the same, a place where the conscious mind gave itself over to instinct. That's all it had been-not just last night but on hundreds of nights before, starting at the age of sixteen, when she'd merely been looking for an escape from Byrn's midnight advances, for a substitute for her real father who'd left them to seek his fortunes as a guitarist in a band up and down the California coast. She'd gone looking hungrily. She'd worked her way through all the boys and then moved on to men-five years, ten years, twenty years older than her, in so many bars and parking lots and cheap apartments as she taught herself a few more tricks for forgetting.

Dor didn't know that. Even Smoke didn't know all of it, though she'd told him plenty-another mistake, another thing she'd given away. No more giving away. Anger colored Cass's thoughts, clouding her remorse, giving her a strained and bitter kind of strength. She forced herself to relax her grip, to stop hurting herself; she slowly sat up, breathing deep and ragged breaths.

Okay. All right. She had lost control last night, but at least she hadn't given anything away. She hadn't given any more pieces of herself away. She had been the strong one. She'd made Dor do what she wanted him to do, and so she'd won. She had to win, every time, because now it was just her and Ruthie again. Smoke was gone, and that was that, and it was up to her to make sure no one took anything from them. She would be smart, and she would be careful. And as long as she stayed strong, it would be all right. This world demanded strength.

By the time Cass went outside with Ruthie in her arms, Dor had built a fire in the back patio barbecue pit. There was split wood stacked against the shed in the backyard, and he'd laid it out neatly, a tidy flame flickering from an economical arrangement of tinder and wood. A kitchen pot simmered on top of the grate. He didn't hear her coming, and for a moment she and Ruthie watched him warm his hands high above the orange flames, turning them one way and then the other. He was wearing a shirt she didn't recognize-a plaid overshirt lined with fleece, black and gray with bits of blue-and she wondered if he'd found it in the house somewhere. If so, it had come from the blocked-off room, the room of unknown horrors that he had taken pains to shield her from.

Cass thought about that, watching Dor. He was turned away from her, his gaze fixed at some distant point down valley-the direction of the Rebuilder headquarters, maybe. He had shaved; the rough shadow of a beard that had abraded her skin last night was gone. His hair was damp, the ends curving against his collar. His expression was hard to read, but he wasn't happy.

Cass kicked a stone, and as it skittered across the brick patio and disappeared into a flower bed choked with dead kaysev, Dor turned toward her. She saw him take in her own shirt-something she'd found in the closet of the room where she and Ruthie slept, an older woman's shirt, cotton broadcloth in begonia pink with embroidery on the yoke-and knew that he too was remembering the night before, the ripping of her buttons.

And everything else. Everything.

She shifted Ruthie in her arms and stared at the ground. Kaysev had rooted in the cracks between the brick pavers. Even a month ago the plant would have been lush and green. Cass had the stray thought that now, while it was dormant, would be the time to weed it from between the pavers so that the roots wouldn't work their way underneath and unseat them. It had been a nice patio, with outdoor furniture still covered in plastic except for a couple chairs whose covers had blown off in some storm. It could be a nice space again, especially in the spring when the kaysev came back, and the fields would be a deep emerald-green as far as the eye could see.

When the kaysev leaves had started to brown a few weeks ago, when they withered and shrank at the ends of the stems, when the stalks themselves turned brown and woody, some people panicked. They thought it had died. Some thought it an act of God, or a second apocalypse caused by some unknowable malevolent force. Cass reassured anyone who would listen that the plant was merely dormant. She snapped off roots to show that beneath their tough brown exterior they were still creamy yellow, dense with retained moisture, even fatter than usual. She explained that they could take ninety percent of the root for food and still leave a viable plant. But it was only after she put a dormant plant into her makeshift greenhouse, a small tent Smoke rigged from scrap canvas and plastic and poles for that purpose, and tricked it into rebirth that people believed her.

They believed. But then quickly they all wanted to know exactly when the plants would spring back to life, something Cass couldn't tell them. She was keeping a detailed, daily diary of the plants' habits, and a year from now she would be able to tell them all sorts of things. Assuming she was still alive then. Assuming anyone was around to listen.

"There's water," Dor muttered, interrupting her thoughts. "Enough to wash. And I made coffee and oatmeal." He pointed to the picnic table where a flowered mug was covered with a saucer, and a bowl was steaming in the cold air. Next to it was a smaller, second bowl and a plastic tumbler.

"I found some Crystal Light inside. Think she'll drink it? I mean, if you don't mind her having it."

"That's fine."

"Then...I'll be inside. When you're ready."

He walked back into the house without looking at her. Cass set Ruthie down gently in front of the oatmeal and tested it with the knuckle of her little finger. "Wait a minute. It's still too hot."

Ruthie picked up her teaspoon and stirred the oatmeal. Cass had traded for oatmeal for Ruthie a few times before as a treat, the individual-serving kind that was flavored with apples or cinnamon. This was the real stuff, the slow-cooked steel-cut kind, and Cass's stomach growled in anticipation. "I wish we had some sugar."

Ruthie put her finger to her own puckered mouth, touching her lips as though hushing herself. Then she scrambled down from the table and ran for the house. Cass started to go after her but Dor was standing at the sliding glass doors. He opened them for Ruthie and she slipped inside and he crouched down next to her, as she pointed and gestured. If Cass went now it would look as though she didn't trust him. Not that she did. But...not that she didn't.

Dor had been gentle with Ruthie, but he was such a tall man, several inches over six feet, and strong and solid-Cass worried he would frighten Ruthie. There were the tattoos, the earrings, the fact that he never smiled-all of that. But Ruthie followed him into the house, out of view, never looking back-and Cass sat down on the bench and tried not to look concerned. She stirred her oatmeal. She took a sip of coffee. It was instant, not very good, but not terrible.

After a while the door opened again and Ruthie came back, holding a china bowl with both hands, taking tiny steps, concentrating on not spilling. She held it up to show Cass and she saw that it was a sugar bowl, a plump white china one with a bee painted on the side and nearly full of sugar.

Chapter end