“I hid. I waited for the weekly courier and slipped the letter in her bag, she didn’t see me; no one saw. I didn’t know if anyone would believe it, with no name on it, but I had to try. I wanted to get caught, but no one was noticing it; everyone was ignoring it.” Her voice cracked to silence.
Enid put a gentle hand on Aren’s shoulder. Then she went to Bert, and whispered, “Watch carefully.”
She didn’t know what would happen, what Frain in particular would do. She drew herself up, drew strength from the uniform she wore, and declaimed.
“I am the villain here,” Enid said. “Understand that. I am happy to be the villain in your world. It’s what I’m here for. Whatever happens, blame me.
“I will take custody of Aren and her child. When the rest of my business is done, I’ll leave with her and she’ll be cared for responsibly. Frain, I question your stewardship of this household and will submit a recommendation that Apricot Hill be dissolved entirely, its resources and credits distributed among its members as warranted, and its members transferred elsewhere throughout the region. I’ll submit my recommendation to the regional committee, which will assist the local committee in carrying out my sentence.”
“No,” Felice hissed. “You can’t do this, you can’t force us out.”
She had expected that line from Frain. She wondered at the deeper dynamic here, but not enough to try to suss it out.
“I can,” she said, with a backward glance at Bert. “But I won’t have to, because you’re all secretly relieved. The household didn’t work, and that’s fine — it happens sometimes — but none of you had the guts to start over, the guts to give up your credits to request a transfer somewhere else. To pay for the change you wanted. To protect your own housemates from each other. But now it’s done, and by someone else, so you can complain all you want and rail to the skies about your new poverty as you work your way out of the holes you’ve dug for yourselves. I’m the villain you can blame. But deep down you’ll know the truth. And that’s fine too, because I don’t really care. Not about you lot.”
No one argued. No one said a word.
“Aren,” Enid said, and the woman flinched again. She might never stop flinching. “You can come with me now, or would you like time to say goodbye?”
She looked around the room, and Enid wasn’t imagining it: The woman’s hands were shaking, though she tried to hide it by pressing them under the roundness of her belly. Enid’s breath caught, because even now it might go either way. Aren had been scared before; she might be too scared to leave. Enid schooled her expression to be still no matter what the answer was.
But Aren stood from the table and said, “I’ll go with you now.”
“Bert will go help you get your things —”
“I don’t have any things. I want to go now.”
“All right. Bert, will you escort Aren outside?”
The door closed behind them, and Enid took one last look around the room.
“That’s it, then,” Frain said.
“Oh no, that’s not it at all,” Enid said. “That’s just it for now. The rest of you should get word of the disposition of the household in a couple of days.” She walked out.
Aren stood outside, hugging herself. Bert was a polite few paces away, being non-threatening, staring at clouds. Enid urged them on, and they walked the path back toward town. Aren seemed to get a bit lighter as they went.
They probably had another day in Southtown before they could leave. Enid would keep Aren close, in the guest rooms, until then. She might have to requisition a solar car. In her condition, Aren probably shouldn’t walk the ten miles to the next way station. And she might want to say goodbye to Jess. Or she might not, and Jess would have his heart broken even more. Poor thing.
Enid requisitioned a solar car from the local committee and was able to take to the Coast Road the next day. The bureaucratic machinery was in motion on all the rest of it. Committeeman Trevor revealed that a couple of the young men from Apricot Hill had preemptively put in household transfer requests. Too little, too late. She’d done her job; it was all in committee hands now.
Bert drove, and Enid sat in the back with Aren, who was bundled in a wool cloak and kept her hands around her belly. They opened windows to the spring sunshine, and the car bumped and swayed over the gravel road. Walking would have been more pleasant, but Aren needed the car. The tension in her shoulders had finally gone away. She looked up, around, and if she didn’t smile, she also didn’t frown. She talked, now, in a voice clear and free of tears.
“I came into the household when I was sixteen, to work prep in the canning house and to help with the garden and grounds and such. They needed the help, and I needed to get started on my life, you know? Frain — he expected more out of me. He expected me to be his.”
She spoke as if being interrogated. Enid hadn’t asked for her story, but listened carefully to the confession. It spilled out like a flood, like the young woman had been waiting.
“How far did it go, Aren?” Enid asked carefully. In the driver’s seat, Bert frowned, like maybe he wanted to go back and have a word with the man.
“He never did more than hit me.”
So straightforward. Enid made a note. The car rocked on for a ways.
“What will happen to her, without a banner?” Aren asked, glancing at her belly. She’d evidently decided the baby was a girl. She probably had a name picked out. Her baby, her savior.
“There are households who need babies to raise who’ll be happy to take her.”
“Her, but not me?”
“It’s a complicated situation,” Enid said. She didn’t want to make Aren any promises until they could line up exactly which households they’d be going to.
Aren was smart. Scared, but smart. She must have thought things through, once she realized she wasn’t going to die. “Will it go better, if I agree to give her up? The baby, I mean.”
Enid said, “It would depend on how you define ‘better.’”
“Better for the baby.”
“There’s a stigma on bannerless babies. Worse some places than others. And somehow people know, however you try to hide it. People will always know what you did and hold it against you. But the baby can get a fresh start on her own.”
“All right. All right, then.”
“You don’t have to decide right now.”
Eventually, they came to the place in the road where the ruins were visible, like a distant mirage, but unmistakable. A haunted place, with as many rumors about it as there were about investigators and what they did.
“Is that it?” Aren said, staring. “The old city? I’ve never seen it before.”
Bert slowed the car, and they stared out for a moment.
“The stories about what it was like are so terrible. I know it’s supposed to be better now, but . . .” The young woman dropped her gaze.
“Better for whom, you’re wondering?” Enid said. “When they built our world, our great-grandparents saved what they could, what they thought was important, what they’d most need. They wanted a world that would let them survive not just longer but better. They aimed for utopia knowing they’d fall short. And for all their work, for all our work, we still find pregnant girls with bruises on their faces who don’t know where to go for help.”
“I don’t regret it,” Aren said. “At least, I don’t think I do.”
“You saved what you could,” Enid said. It was all any of them could do.
The car started again, rolling on. Some miles later on, Aren fell asleep curled in the back seat, her head lolling. Bert gave her a sympathetic glance.
“Heartbreaking all around, isn’t it? Quite the last case for you, though. Memorable.”
“Or not,” Enid said.