Not a Drop to Drink (16 page)

“She dressed well?”

“Well enough,” Eli said, and Lynn didn’t miss the shiver that went through him. She guessed that Neva was dressed better than Eli, and that he’d given the better coat to her. The idea of being in the small shelter alone with Eli caused a different kind of heat to flush through her. She clamped down on it, the need to know more about the satellites outweighing her nerves.

The little house was warm. She put the pack from Stebbs down next to the stove and stripped off her coat, wet with snow and smeared with deer blood. She hung it over the back of one of the mismatched chairs to dry. “Stebbs got you set up nice,” she said as she sat at the little table that was pushed into the corner. She kept her gaze firmly on its top, not allowing her eyes to wander to the loft where Neva and Eli slept together. Not after what Stebbs had told her.

“I got that myself,” Eli said as he sat down across from her. “One afternoon when he was over I went out, found it along with the chairs. Of course, every piece came from a different house, so they don’t match.”

Lynn felt her lips flicker into a smile without meaning to. “You’re used to things like matching furniture?”

“Oh, yes, a coordinated dining room,” Eli said, fake wistfulness creeping into his tone as he ran his fingers over the tabletop. “I miss it more than tap water.”

“Shut it, you do not,” Lynn said, a real smile pushing through. “Now tell me about the satellites before I break one of these ugly chairs over your head. Lucy told me you were aiming for my house?”

“Yeah.” Eli nodded, all traces of teasing gone from his face. “Bradley said it was big enough for us to survive, not big enough for anyone from the city to bother with.”

“Unless the city went south?”

“What’s that?”

“Went south,” Lynn explained. “It’s a country way of saying when something goes bad.”

“That was the idea, yeah,” Eli agreed. “Basically, the people that my brother and some of the other soldiers hired themselves out to for information had the money to get it, and the foresight to know that the water in the city couldn’t last forever. Bradley took their money, then their plan for his own once they knew Neva was pregnant again.”

“It’d be a decent plan if you knew the first thing about surviving.”

“That was supposed to be on Bradley,” Eli said, his eyes not meeting hers anymore. “He knew all kinds of stuff from his training. Berries you could eat, roots even. To eat bugs if you got in a bad enough situation.”

Lynn thought of Lucy chasing grasshoppers, her tiny palms smacking against the dry bodies in desperation. “He taught you what he knew then?”

“He tried, back in the city. But I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have. He was supposed to be with us, you know? The whole way. I’m good with my hands, but I always learned better actually doing something, so I figured once we were outside I could learn from him as we went a lot easier than trying to remember everything he told me over a table. We couldn’t keep anything we wrote down, so I had to memorize it all. I focused on remembering the maps, thought there’d be more time for everything else later.”

His voice trailed off, and Lynn thought about how Eli had watched his brother bleed out in the city while people who were able to help had done nothing. Her own desperation beside Mother’s body shot through her memory and she had an unexpected rush of anger at the crowd that had let Eli’s brother die in front of them. She cleared her throat.

“In that case, remind me to show you what poison ivy looks like, come spring.”

Eli glanced up at her, a teasing smile back on his face. “That’s a date.”

Lynn’s brow furrowed. “It’s a season.”

“No, I mean . . .” Eli sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “We’re going to have to find a shared vocabulary before I can flirt.”

“Flirt?”

“Yeah, it’s how a boy shows a girl that he likes her. Or vice versa,” he said pointedly.

“Sounds like a waste of time,” Lynn said carefully, trying to keep the skip in her pulse out of her voice. “Seems like it’d be a lot easier to just say so.”

“Easier maybe,” Eli said, the smile that came so effortlessly to him spreading again. “But less fun.”

“Fun,” Lynn grunted.

“Yeah, it’s what—”

“I know what fun is,” she shot back.

Eli’s hands went up in the air. “I’m only teasing.”

“Is that part of flirting?”

“A very important part,” Eli said with mock seriousness. “Looks like maybe there’s a thing or two I can teach you after all.”

Lynn rolled her eyes. “Yes, flirting. A necessary part of survival.”

“Well, technically—”

“Shut it,” Lynn said, and Eli snapped his jaw shut. “Is this what you city kids do all day? Sit around and let each other know how much fun you were having?”

“Sometimes. We go to school, some of us played sports or took music lessons. Read in our spare time. Just normal life, you know?” Eli shook his head. “No, I guess you probably don’t know. What I used to do with my day probably seems silly to you.”

“No,” Lynn said slowly, thinking over every word as she spoke. “It seems like it’d be kind of nice not spending every minute living working against dying.”

Eli watched her for a second in the quiet that fell between them. “When we found your place, when I saw you and your mom living there, I didn’t even consider taking it from you. I’d lost everything I had. I didn’t have the heart to take from someone else.”

“Plus I would’ve sniped your ass.”

“That too.”

“I guess maybe I’m glad I didn’t,” Lynn admitted.

“I’ll take that as flirting, country girl.”

Lynn kicked him under the table before standing. “We’re done for today, I need time to get back to the house in the light.”

Eli got up quickly. “Could you talk to Neva, before you go?”

Lynn’s mouth fell into the flat line that made her resemble Mother. “I’ll talk to her, but I can’t promise anything.”

The little grave was around a bend in the stream, not far from their new house, but out of sight because of the meandering path of the water. Lynn could make out the hunched form of Neva, perched on the dead trunk of a tree, keeping her vigil. Lynn purposely stepped on a twig, which snapped under boot like a gunshot. Neva did not move.

“Hey,” Lynn called out, suddenly anxious. “You all right?”

There was a small shrug underneath the pile of blankets that Eli had bunched around her, but Neva did not turn her head. Lynn pushed her way through the snow to stand by her side. The ground around the small pile of rocks had been cleared of fresh snow, swept clean of branches and debris.

“That’ll be pointless in about two days.”

“Then I’ll clear it again.”

Lynn sighed and sat down uninvited. Neva had changed too, since Lynn had met her, but for the worse. Despite the many layers of blankets and clothing, it was easy to see there was little left of her but bone and skin. A flash of pale showed between her coat cuff and mittens, and Lynn could see that her wrists were tiny, almost as small as Lucy’s. Her dark eyes were sunken, the circles underneath them lending to the thought that they might recede entirely into her skull. Even so, she was still alarmingly beautiful.

“So what now? We sit here trying to stop the snow from hitting the ground?”

“You don’t have any children, do you?” Neva didn’t turn when she spoke to Lynn but kept her eyes riveted on the grave.

“No.”

“That man that comes here, the cripple. Is he your family?”

“No, just a friend.”

“Do you have any family?”

“No. Mother was killed this past fall.” Lynn answered evenly, trusting her voice to stay strong. “She was all I had. I was injured and it was too difficult to put her in the ground by myself. I had to burn her.”

Neva was silent for a while, eyes focused on the ground at her feet. “I’m sorry for that,” she eventually said. “And I never thanked you for helping bury my son.”

Lynn had no response. They stared at the pile of stones together in silence.

“You’ve still got family left,” Lynn ventured. “Your Lucy, she loves you. Eli wants to take care of you.”

“My Lucy,” Neva repeated, her hollow voice cracking with emotion. “My poor little Lucy. We never should have tried to leave.”

“She’s all right here. Doing fine, really. She’s gaining weight, likes to play in the snow, her feet healed up real nice.”

“Her feet?”

“She was a mess when I took . . . when Eli gave her to me to take back to the house for a bit. The shoes she was wearing were way too small.”

A bitter smile cracked Neva’s dry lips apart. “See? That’s what kind of mother I am. My little girl was hobbling around the countryside starving.”

“She’s all right now, though.”

“Because she’s with you.”

“I do the best I can—but I’m no mother.”

Neva didn’t answer. Lynn wanted to reach out and shake her, but she was afraid it might cause real damage to the frail body. “She’s worried about you.”

Neva grimaced. “We’re out in the wild and she’s the one worried about me. She’s all I have left and I am completely incapable of taking care of her out here.”

It was Lynn’s turn to be silent and stare at the ground.

“She’s much better off with you,” Neva added.

“A little while longer,” Lynn said. “I’ll keep her a little while longer, but I want you to try. She’s your daughter, not mine.”

Lynn got to her feet. “C’mon, that’s enough of this. Eli’s been making himself crazy thinking about you out here freezing by yourself.”

“I’m sure he has. He’s always been chivalrous.”

“I don’t know what that means. Now, am I going to have to move you, or are you going to move yourself?”

For the first time, Neva turned her head and looked at Lynn. “I’ll move myself, thank you,” she said. Her knees nearly buckled when she stood, but she waved Lynn away and steadied herself. They walked toward the little house together, Lynn pacing herself slowly so that Neva could keep up.

“I know about what those men did to you,” she said hesitantly. “It was wrong.”

“Yes, it was.”

“I brought you something, in case anyone tries that again.”

Lynn reached into her coat and brought out a small derringer that she had taken from the gun trunk, which fit neatly into the palm of her hand.

“It’s a single shot, but it would do the trick at a short distance. I figured my shotgun would knock you on your ass, and the rifle takes some skill to fire. Even most of the handguns I have got a kick to ’em. But this one will take a man down, if he’s close, or at least scare him off.”

Neva considered the little pearl-handled gun. “Thank you,” she said, reaching for it.

“I’ll show you how to fire it.”

“Thank you,” Neva said again.

“Mother always called that one the whorehouse gun.”

“Charming.”

Eli shot Lynn a grateful glance as Neva walked past him into their home and shut the door behind her.

“How’d you manage that?”

“I really don’t know,” Lynn admitted. “I tried to say what I thought was the right things to her, but it just seemed to make her more angry.”

Eli laughed a little and shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, welcome to life with Neva.”

“Well, when I finally said something on purpose to make her angry, that’s when she did what I wanted her to. So, now you know.”

“Guess I’ll have to try that.” Eli wasn’t wearing a coat. His shoulders were hunched reflexively against the chill breeze, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans.

“I better go,” Lynn said. “Let you get inside.”

“No really, it’s okay,” Eli said, although his teeth chattered around the words.

“You have Stebbs’ pack? I’m supposed to take it back to him.”

“Yeah sure, hold on.” Eli disappeared inside the house. He came back wearing a coat and hat, carrying Stebbs’ empty backpack. “I’ll walk with you a bit.”

“Neva won’t care?”

“She doesn’t mind being alone. I almost think she prefers it. It’s being away from the water that scares her. She’s used to having water come out of a faucet.”

“Lucy said you have to pay for it?”

“It’s expensive, yeah. We are—we
were
well enough off that we could afford the clean water, a nicer apartment building. People that have less money, their water isn’t as purified—that means clean.”

“Oh, does it?”

“Sorry,” Eli said immediately. “I should know by now that you and Stebbs aren’t exactly stupid. Any girl who can quote Yeats probably knows what ‘purified’ means.”

They walked without talking a few moments more, while Lynn critically assessed Eli’s progress through the bracken. She was torn between wanting to keep him away from the snug sleeping quarters with Neva and wanting to keep herself from being shot in the dark.

“Could you make more of a racket?”

“Sorry,” he said again. “I’m just trying to make a path for you.”

“I’ve been walking in the dark a long time, city boy,” Lynn said. “You best head back home before full dark. Wouldn’t do anybody any good if you get lost out here.” She hated the words even as they slipped past her teeth, sending him back to Neva was much harder than she thought it would be.

“Right, okay.” Eli blew the air out of his cheeks and turned back the way they’d come. “I’ll do my city best to find the only structure out here.”

“Good luck with that,” she called out after him.

His crashing stopped for a moment, but she couldn’t pick out his form in the dying light. “Is that teasing?”

“I thought it was called flirting?”

“You’re a quick learner.” She could hear the smile on his face even if she couldn’t see it.

“Get out of here,” she called into the darkness. “Stop encouraging me to yell so much out in the middle of nowhere.”

A laugh was the only answer, leaving Lynn to wonder what she’d done that was so funny and reflecting on the fact that he was so noisy she could pick him off at a hundred yards on a moonless night.

She turned toward home and realized that she hadn’t missed it. For the first time in her life, she’d been away from the pond and not been rushing to get back. Worries had fallen away while she talked with Eli, and water hadn’t filled every waking moment.