PTSD was different for everyone, as Lucy had learned in the Army. She’d already been down that road once before, having dealt with her own bout of it after her discharge from the Army. Even with her coping mechanism, Lucy had had her bad moments in the aftermath of their escape. Sometimes, she would bolt awake, drenched in sweat, the image of the burning mall she and Norah had escaped so vivid, so real, the acrid tang of smoke filled her nostrils.
Norah began spending more time alone, shut up in her room unless she had chores. Her introversion deepened, and she began drifting out of her own life like an old clock winding down. Norah was going through the motions, eating, sleeping, doing her chores. She didn’t complain, she didn’t experience joy. She simply existed.
But she and Jack had been patient and careful. A book about the treatment of PTSD helped her guide Norah out of it. It took time, several months, but eventually, they found Norah underneath that scarred shell. She emerged from it stronger, tougher. It was a little sad, though, because she was no longer the child Lucy had met on the train that fateful May morning, engrossed in a Harry Potter novel. She was not quite an adult either, but she wasn’t the carefree tween she had been. Even the decision to leave the farm behind had not rattled her. She took it in stride and offered her own valuable input as to how the three of them should proceed.
But that said, she was still a teenager, bright, determined, and oh-so-stubborn. Lucy herself had been an obedient child; her father, Kurt Goodwin, an auto mechanic, drank a lot and tended to become belligerent when he’d had too much, so it was easier to toe the line and stay out of his way. Not like Jack, who had waged terrible war against their father. He had the scars to prove it. When their father had drunk himself into his grave before the age of sixty, she was more relieved than anything.
A group of Promise residents was sitting around a blazing fire at the facility’s primary campsite. Kicking back in front of a fire was popular on chilly days. A modern-day equivalent of meeting up with friends for happy hour after work. And the work never stopped–farming, harvesting, weeding, seeding, managing waste, cooking, treating water and collecting, everything that went along with the operation of a society that had unexpectedly found itself in colonial times.
“Luce!” someone called out. “Grab a chair!”
“Thanks, but it’s been a long day,” she replied. “I’m gonna hit the sack. Anyone seen Norah?”
Some murmurs from the group, but no one knew where she was. At sixteen, Norah still attended school four hours each day. The balance of her day was dedicated to working with Kasandra in the wood shop. Norah was a hands-on kind of kid. She enjoyed the attention to detail that woodworking demanded. She spotted a couple of the teens Norah sometimes hung out with, but they did not know where the girl was.
Lucy lit a lantern and entered the lodge. It was still chilly, even with the windows closed; this was the best sleeping weather of the year. Before long, the hot, humid weather would arrive, and many residents would decamp for tents in the shade of the trees. Lucy and Norah normally did so as well, at least through September, right when the leaves started to change color.
The lodge housed twenty-four women and girls. In addition to its six double rooms, they had retrofitted the living space into an additional twelve small cubicles. Lucy poked her head inside Norah’s room, which was next to hers, but surprisingly, it was empty. It was about six-by-six square, just enough for a twin mattress and a small bureau, one that she had built herself. There were no clothes strewn on the ground. She had hung a few pieces of art in cheap frames on the wall.
Lucy continued on to her room, conscious of the fact that it was well past Norah’s curfew and growing simultaneously annoyed and worried. She changed into shorts and a T-shirt and sat on the floor, her back against the wall. Despite her physical exhaustion, she was too amped up to sleep. That morning’s interrogation session combined with Norah’s flouting of the rules had her heart racing. The Stephen King novel she’d been reading lay on the pillow; she set the lantern next to her and began to read. But she was unable to focus as her worry and annoyance grew. There was no point in trying to look for her in the dark. It would be like looking for an invisible needle in an invisible haystack.
Outside, the party continued for another hour before people began making their way to bed, but Norah had not returned. Eventually, silence. And still no Norah. Lucy pulled on a sweatshirt before heading outside, debating the addition of another log to the fire. Although the blaze had largely died down, the embers were still holding enough heat to keep Lucy warm. And still she continued to wait.
The fire pit had finally gone cold when the sound of crunching gravel reached Lucy’s ears. Norah’s silhouette appeared in the darkness, illuminated by the faintest of moonlight reflecting off the clouds. She did not appear to see Lucy as she crept toward the door of the lodge. Lucy briefly considered letting things be for the night and talking it out with her in the morning. But she wanted Norah to know that she knew, that she had caught her red-handed. She was at least two hours late. And Lucy would just stew about it all night if she didn’t address it now. It was an itch that demanded to be scratched.
“Evening,” Lucy said, her voice breaking the night silence like glass.
Norah yelped, nearly jumping out of her skin. She turned toward Lucy, her hand pressed against her chest.
“You scared me!” Norah said.
“I could say the same for you.”
This silenced Norah.
“You’re late,” Lucy said. “Very.”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
“Where were you?”
“Out.”
“I’m aware of that.”
Norah didn’t elaborate, which just served to annoy Lucy further. Lucy took a long, deep breath and released it slowly, a valve releasing the anger and displeasure rising in her chest. She didn’t like getting angry, particularly at Norah, but the child had crossed a line here. And sixteen was still a child, even if Norah was as tall as Lucy now. She had experienced a dramatic growth spurt when she was thirteen, rocketing skyward until she was virtually eye to eye with Lucy. She hadn’t grown much since, maybe half an inch, but it was still disorienting to look her in the eye. Much different from the gangly eleven-year-old she’d been when they first met.
But still a child.
“I’m going to bed,” Norah said.
“Sit down.”
Norah scoffed.
“I don’t feel like hearing a lecture,” she replied. “I’m tired.”
“I’m tired, too,” snapped Lucy. “I should’ve been asleep hours ago, but you decided to break curfew. So where were you?”
“With friends.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Oh, are you checking on me now?”
“Yes, when you’re supposed to be home and you’re not, I check.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“It is to me.”
“Why?” she said. “You’re not my mom.”
Lucy winced. It was a punch in the face. The nuclear weapon in Norah’s limited arsenal, one that she did not deploy often. But when she did, it was devastating; Norah knew how badly it stung Lucy. No, Lucy was not Norah’s biological mother, who had died in a drive-by shooting some years before the Pulse, but she treated the girl like her flesh and blood. She loved Norah deeply and made sure the girl knew it.
Lucy worked very hard to treat Norah as the unique individual she was and not a proxy for her own daughter, Emma, lost to cancer more than a decade ago. But sometimes it was hard to keep the two separate and not wonder what might have been had Emma lived. Hell, if Emma had lived, Lucy’s entire life might be different now. She may not have been on the train at all and, thus, may never have crossed paths with Norah.
Norah’s jaw was tight; her arms were crossed defiantly at her chest. Lucy searched for the right words as her heart throbbed with sadness. Norah did not know about Emma. She had made the decision long ago not to tell her that
once upon a time there had been a beautiful little girl named Emma, a girl who had stolen Lucy’s whole heart. She was going to tell her on Emma’s birthday. She would take Norah out onto the porch, and they would sit together, and she would tell her about her.
“It’s a bad idea,” Jack told her after Lucy had confessed her plans.
Lucy flinched like he had slapped her in the face. She started to argue with him, but Jack had held up a hand.
“Hear me out.”
“Okay.”
“You know I loved that kid more than anything,” Jack said. “I think about her every single day. I’m never gonna get over losing her. And I’m just her uncle. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. I won’t even try to imagine.”
Lucy’s throat tightened as her brother spoke. Jack had indeed adored his niece. They had a special relationship, more like father-daughter than uncle-niece. He took her fishing often, which she loved. They would sit in his canoe for hours, and she would talk and talk. Even after she had gotten sick, on her good days, he would pick her up on Saturday mornings and they would be gone all day. Even when she wasn’t feeling great, she would insist on going, and sometimes Lucy had to step in. Then Emma would be mad all day, even when it was clear she just wasn’t up to a day on the river.
“But Norah is here now,” Jack continued. “And it’s gonna be hard on her. No family, rug pulled out from under her, stuck with strangers. You talk about Emma, you’re gonna give her a ghost to compete with.”
“But--”
“You want her to feel loved, to feel at home, right?”
“Of course,” replied Lucy.
“Then we need to keep Emma here,” he said, gently tapping his heart. “Otherwise, Norah will think you’re comparing her to Emma, even when you’re not. And let’s be honest, you probably will. At least sometimes.”
“I wouldn’t, I swear,” she said, although her words didn’t have much heft to them. Her brother was an astute observer of the human condition. She wanted to tell Norah stories about the sister she would never know. And they were sisters who would never know one another, sisters who would never even know about one another, she was understanding in the harsh light of Jack’s advice.
Jack smiled.
“Give Norah a chance,” he said. “It hurts, I know. A few times, I’ve almost slipped up myself, start to tell her a funny story about Emma, but then I catch myself. It’s better this way. Let Norah know that she’s our number one. And she is.”
Lucy nodded, understanding finally that Emma would have to stay locked away in her heart. Norah would compete with no one. They would help her heal, even if, by not telling, it hurt Jack.
Even if it hurt Lucy.
And here, tonight, Norah still knew nothing about Emma. She did not know that her fiercely devoted guardian had in fact been a mother once upon a time. This was what it meant to be the adult in the room. To jump on the grenade to protect the ones you loved.
“You’re right,” she said to Norah. “I’m not your mother.”
“So stop acting like it,” she said, her voice dripping with contempt. “I don’t need your help.”
It was a heavyweight fight, one that she was losing badly. She couldn’t recall a time Norah had attacked her like this; it was only a matter of time, of course. She was a teenager, after all, and this is what they did. To be honest, Lucy was surprised that it hadn’t already happened.
“I’m going to bed,” Norah said. She stomped off without another word, taking very little care to keep the noise down. A teenager in full.
Lucy sat before the cold fire pit for a long time.
7
Lucy was dreaming a lovely dream when Jack shook her awake the next morning. It had been about Emma. They had been at the park having a picnic, but she kept hearing a voice in her head. Even in the dream, she had begun to fear that it was in fact a dream. This happened often, as though her subconscious would never stop reminding her that all this, sitting with Emma under this picture-perfect blue sky, so blue it hurt your eyes to look at it, was in fact too good to be true. She desperately tried ignoring the voice because if it was a dream, that meant she wasn’t here at all, and neither was Emma.
But the voice persisted, and soon reality shattered the dome of the dream; it cracked and splintered like a film reel coming apart. Then she was awake in her bed, and the memory of the dream began to fade as well. First, the vivid details dissolved and then even the hazy edges shimmered into nothingness. To make matters worse, she hadn’t been asleep long, her fight with Norah keeping her awake for hours. She blinked the sleep away and blew out a noisy sigh. Her eyes felt gritty and heavy.
“He got out,” Jack was saying.
“What?” she asked blearily, even as she grasped the import of his words.
“He got out,” Jack repeated.
Now she was awake and fully aware. Jack didn’t need to elaborate. Their captive had escaped.
“How?”
“Don’t know,” he said. His voice was low and raspy. His eyes looked heavy and sunken. “Ernesto’s dead.”
“Oh, shit. When?”
“Not sure,” he said.
She needed to examine the body to ascertain an approximate time of death. It would give them an idea of how big a head start the man had gotten.
“Let me get dressed.”
Jack left, leaving her alone. She bolted out of bed, threw on a pair of pants, and pulled on her trail running shoes while conducting a damage assessment. If he made it back to his camp, it would be difficult for him to find his way back, but it would not be impossible. They needed to find him. She grabbed a small medical kit she kept in her bottom drawer and followed Jack outside.
Together they sprinted toward the administration building. It was early morning, a little after dawn. Danny was waiting for them at the top of the basement steps, holding a cigarette with trembling hands. There was a large bloody welt over his left eye. So much for the man’s size and strength.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, Luce,” Danny said. “He got the drop on me. I didn’t hear him coming.”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “He knocked me out cold. I just woke up a few minutes ago.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t kill you. How the hell did he get out?”
“Ernesto had the key downstairs.”
She sighed.
“Danny,” she said, exasperated.
That was a huge violation of their security protocol. The cell door key was to remain with the perimeter guard, not the cell guard, for this very reason. When they switched off, the key stayed with the perimeter guard.
“I know, I know,” he said dejectedly.
She wanted to scream, tear him a new one. But that would be pointless. The man was gone. As she collected herself, two of the Council members, Carol and Jon, arrived on the scene.
“I need to look at the body.”
The others nodded.
Taking a lantern from Carol, Lucy went downstairs first, Jack close behind. The quiet struck her first, the absence of life. She approached the cell, its door ajar, with the lantern held high. Orange light spilled across the barren cell. Even knowing the prisoner was gone, it was still a gut punch. They’d had him. They’d had this valuable asset here, and now he was gone.
Ernesto’s body lay just beyond the cell door, up against the wall. His head was twisted at a grotesque angle. She knelt down and held the light over his head; the skin was purplish black. It didn’t take a genius to deduce what had happened. For whatever reason, Ernesto had gotten too close to the cell, and the inmate had choked the life out of him. The sight was ghastly and depressing. It must have been a terrible way to die, feeling the life choked out of you. Ernesto was nice, kind-hearted. Maybe the inmate had faked a medical emergency, tricked Ernesto into drawing within arm’s length, even though they had specifically instructed the guards to get help for any claims of medical distress. If the inma
te had been convincing enough, that might have tipped the scales. So sad. She pressed a hand to the back of Ernesto’s neck; the skin had cooled some.
“Help me get his pants down,” she said.
“What?” Jack asked in disbelief.
“I need to take his temperature,” she said, already working to loosen his belt. “The body loses about one-point-five degrees in temp each hour after death. Come on!”
His sister’s admonishment spurred him into action. It took a couple minutes, but they finally wrenched his pants down far enough to give Lucy the unfortunate access she needed. She inserted the thermometer and waited. Two minutes later, she removed the instrument.
“Hold the lantern up,” she said. “Not too closely.”
She held the thermometer against the backdrop of yellow light. Ninety-seven degrees. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“He’s been dead an hour, give or take,” she said. “We may still be able to find him. Can you track him?”
“Maybe.”
They went back outside, and Jack began studying the ground. While he searched for the killer’s trail, she directed Danny to get help in removing the body from the scene. They would have a burial for him later.
“Anything?” she asked after Danny had skulked off, his tail between his legs.
“Partial footprint here,” he said, pointing at the muddy ground. They had removed his shoes so he couldn’t hang himself. Lucy could just make out the impression in the soft ground. More prints lay ahead, spaced out about three yards apart. The alternating footsteps of a man on the run.
“He’s probably still on foot,” Lucy said. “These lead away from the stables.”
“Good point,” Jack said. They made it to the stables, saddled up, and were on the move within minutes.
American Midnight | Book 2 | Nightfall Page 6
