“That you, Sean? It is, isn’t it?” she said, wincing. “You shot me.”
“Lilly,” he said. His neighbor from down the road. Sean and Elise had never gotten to know the older couple. He wasn’t sure why. They seemed friendly, but life always got in the way.
“You’re still alive,” she said.
He swiped his hand against his lips.
“Was it you who shot me?”
“I thought you were trying to get into my house.”
“Well, we were. Me and Tom,” she said, motioning to the dead body.
His throat filled with phlegm. He killed Tom. Old Man Tom. “The hell were you doing out here?”
“What everyone’s trying to do,” she said as if it were a dumb question. “We ran out of food two weeks ago. We thought we would forage around.”
“You ran out of food?”
“It runs out, eventually. Tom didn’t have much longer. His lungs—” Her voice grew tight. A tear froze on the corner of her eyes. “I’m actually glad he’s not suffering anymore.” She coughed. “We had two options: stay and die or try to find some food people may have left behind. Didn’t think we’d see the chimney smoking at your house.”
“We prepared well.”
“So did we,” she said with a weak smile, “but it’s almost April, Sean. April. This winter isn’t going to stop any time soon, and we’ll still need food.” She chuckled, but it sank into a round of awful, painful-sounding coughs. He looked away. She said, “Nothing’s right anymore. I never thought anyone’d shoot Tom. How’d we get to that?”
He opened his mouth and closed it.
Pointing at his weapon, she said, “Can you point that away from me?”
“When did you know you wouldn’t be able to make it anymore? In your home?”
She looked down the barrel then back to him. “It’s simple math. We rationed first, eating less than we needed, but enough to keep us alive. But it caught up to us.” She winced and reached out her hand. “I’m tired, Sean. Help me up.”
He kept the barrel trained on her. She exerted herself to extend her hand an extra inch. “Sean, come on. I can’t move on my own.” He stepped back. She rested her shoulders back against the snowbank. “Sean.”
“I’m sorry, Lilly.”
She put her hands up, fingers splayed. “No. Please. Come on. I know you have food in there. Just one meal.”
He took another step back. She yelled, “Please, don’t. Please. Just let me warm up in front of your fire. Just for a few minutes.”
“Look at your leg.”
“We can patch it up.”
“Look at it, Lilly.”
“Sean, I just want to get warm. One more time, okay?”
He raised his rifle. “We can’t help you.”
“Sean, stop.”
He hesitated.
“You killed my husband, all right? You owe me. You owe me.”
“I’m sorry, Lilly.”
“Sean, no. Please. Sean, for the love of God just stop—”
He squeezed the trigger and shot her in the chest. Her life was over just like that. He stared for a minute at the dead woman before him, her mouth twisted, eyes rolled back into her head, eyelids frozen in a wide expression of terror, her chest wound oozing out the last warmth from her body. He moved his finger off the trigger guard. When he thought about it, it almost seemed easy; he relieved her suffering. Most people had to keep going, without hope of anything better. With no relief.
Chapter 26
HE JUMPED WHEN he heard the shot. The scene in his imagination played out: the woman shouting at Sean, scared, her contorted face begging before being blown to hell.
Sean shouldn’t have shot the woman in the first place. Bad people had invaded their home. It didn’t mean everyone else would try the same thing. Just because one group of men had reverted to the blackest depths of human nature, it didn’t mean everyone would be the same way. He had to believe that.
He wished he believed that.
The door to the garage creaked, and Sean walked in. He set his rifle down. Elise, who had been biting her nails since Sean had gone outside, stood up from her chair in front of him. She was about to say something when Sean pulled down his mask below his chin. “Let’s not talk about it.”
“She shouted your name.”
“She’s dead.”
“Who was it, Sean?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Her face scrunched. “Was it someone we knew?”
“What difference does it make now?” He sighed. “I’m going to chop wood,” he said and turned back toward the garage door, slamming it behind him.
Elise turned around, staring past Michael. She shook her head and passed him without saying a word. “Elise,” he said to stop her, but she didn’t listen.
She disappeared into the living room. He put his hands on his hips. Michael just wanted to hear Sean’s thoughts, to be assured that he wasn’t sharing the home with a budding psychopath who would snap one day. That assurance shouldn’t have to be bargained for. It shouldn’t have to be discussed.
He sat down in the dining room, put his head into his hands, and pressed his thumbs against his eyes until his eyelids splashed with color. The image he had concocted of the woman dying outside popped into his mind. He opened his eyes. He watched Elise rub Aidan’s back as he threw seasonings into the cast iron pot over the fire. Aidan smiled at her, and she smiled back. It even looked genuine.
He lowered his head and didn’t raise it until someone sat next to him. Molly adjusted herself. “Uncle Mike.”
He bowed his head, whispered, “I overheard you with your dad.”
“Uncle Mike—”
“What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe he would be okay with it.”
He said, “Now can’t be the time. With everything happening.”
“Andrew said the same thing.”
“Because he’s not going to be okay with this. He just won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Trust me. I don’t have any doubt he loves you. That isn’t what we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about whether he’ll love you no matter what. But we’re talking about a man who’s not in a stable place right now.”
“I know.”
Michael waved his hand and nudged his chair closer to her. “You don’t. Molly, it’s easy to see the people we love as better than they are. Do you know how many people I saw in my work—parents who could not conceive that their children could do wrong? I had one mom sit and listen to the details of how her son had driven drunk and plowed into a church van filled with kids—killed all of them—and still refused to acknowledge that it was her son that did it. That he was a little shit.”
“I know my dad’s not perfect.”
“Maybe. But you aren’t seeing the whole picture. You don’t see what’s behind his actions. Trust me. Your dad needs to be let down easily or he will go off.”
The sound of the garage door latching. Sean coming back inside. Michael took his niece’s hands. “One day, your father will be so happy to hear he’s going to be a grandfather.”
She smiled, and a tear sank down her cheek.
“You just need to wait for the right moment,” he said.
A loud voice shouted from behind them, “You’re pregnant?”
Kelly. His gut lurched. Elise froze. Her eyes widened and rose to meet Michael’s. He hadn’t seen Kelly behind them. He hadn’t known she would hear.