Bemoaning introducing Teddy to the idea of the crabwalk, Darla shifted her body backward. “Mom is getting too old for this,” she huffed and then collapsed, sloughing the beanbag to the floor. Ethan smiled; it was a rote parental complaint—Darla was lithe and in shape, and her continual exploration of the surrounding neighborhoods was a daily activity.
Teddy crawled over and gave his mother an impromptu kiss.
“What was that for, Buddy?” Darla asked, smoothing his hair across his forehead.
The child wrapped himself up into Darla’s lap, silent, and contemplative. Then he looked at her with watery eyes. “I miss Mama,” Teddy said. “I want to go to heaven too.”
“Don’t say that!” Darla snapped at her son and Teddy recoiled, his eyes wide. She then self-corrected and spun Teddy to face her, and she cupped his chin in her hands. “Mommy needs you here, with her. Mommy misses Mama too.” She rocked him and kissed him. “Mommy misses Mama every day. But Mommy needs you, Teddy. We are a team now, okay?”
Darla hadn’t talked about the death of her wife—a moment that Ethan had been present for at the Portland airport, amidst the chaos and pain of Release day. For either Teddy’s benefit or her own, she didn’t continually dredge up the loss. Ethan was impressed by her strength and resilience and he envied her.
Ethan glanced away from the mother and son, to give the duo a bit of privacy, and his eyes locked with Ainsley who was standing in the doorway, shifting uncomfortably as if waiting for an invitation to come in. He motioned for her and she hesitated and then entered, shuffling her feet as she walked over to his dad’s desk—she palmed a baseball on a stand, a souvenir from a Giants’ game down in San Francisco. Scott King had caught a foul ball. The scientist juggled and almost dropped the trophy, but emerged victorious. In the eyes of his young sons, Scott was the hero of the day—saving the bored Kings from the doldrums of their own vacation.
Whenever the family wasn’t sure if a day could improve, Scott would say, a smile on his face, “You have to wait. It’ll get better. I haven’t caught the ball yet.”
Out of loyalty and deference to the memory, Ethan wanted Ainsley to stop touching that prized possession. It belonged to his dad; it meant something. It wasn’t just a trinket for everyone to play with.
“Hey,” Darla said, looking up to Ethan, and tears stained her cheeks. “Ted-bear and I are gonna go have some time together. You mind?”
“Why would I mind?” Ethan asked and he shifted on the couch. The stump of his leg was exposed; he’d grown tired of the blankets.
Darla sniffed and stood up—like an octopus, Teddy wrapped his arms and legs around his mother’s body as she walked out. The two were melded together, like one person. And once they were out of sight, Ethan turned to Ainsley and tried to smile.
“Hey, Ainsley,” he started in that familiar tone that indicated he wanted her attention. “I’m sorry…for the other day.”
The girl shrugged and deposited the baseball back on its stand. He relaxed as he watched her hand release it.
“No,” Ethan continued, determined. “I had no right to kick you out. You were just doing what you had been asked to do. It was stupid. I was wallowing.”
“Of course you were,” Ainsley said matter-of-factly, and she walked out from behind the desk and took a step toward Ethan. One arm hung at her side and she grabbed it with her other arm, scratching her fingernails into the flesh around her shoulder. “I know I’m not…” she paused and gnawed on the inside of her cheek, “always the best communicator.”
“Well—” Ethan tried to think of something kind to say, but Ainsley was right.
“No, I take a long time to warm up to people in general. It’s not you.” She tried to smile, but it was forced and looked more like a grimace. “I’m just bad at…life.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Ethan pointed to the couch. “You don’t have to just stand there. You can sit.”
She shook her head violently. Then she shifted on her feet.
“I don’t bite, Jeez.” Ethan tried to laugh.
“I’m just awkwardly swaying like a crazy person, huh? Look, this is going to sound insane…but I’m better in large groups. One on one, I get batty. Like there’s this magnifying glass on me. If there’s some God out there, he or she has some sick sense of humor. Hey, Ainsley Krause can’t function in small clusters of people…let’s force her to live in a small cluster of strangers for the rest of her life.”
Ethan’s mouth dropped open and then he smiled. “That was a whole paragraph. You just put like whole sentences together…”
“Yes, this is perfect. Let’s keep doing this. I’ll warm up to you much faster if it’s just nothing but witty repartee.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“Indeed, my entire modus operandi of any relationship is just to exhaust you until you don’t have any will power left to tell me to get lost.”
“Does that work?”
Ainsley took a step toward the couch and then a step away; then she took four quick steps and plopped herself down at the far end. She waved. And Ethan waved back, amused.
“I just want to start over. I want to go back to the place where I’m not the crazy doctor’s kid who gave you a sponge bath,” she said.
“I don’t remember a sponge bath,” Ethan replied. “Baby wipe bath?”
“It sounded really wrong in my head to say it accurately,” Ainsley said with a shrug. “But as you wish. The crazy girl who cleaned you off with baby wipes.”
“You are right. Much worse.” He laughed and then stuck his hand out across his body, trying with everything inside of him not to grimace or show that it pained him to reach toward his leg. “I’m Ethan.”
“Ainsley.”
Their hands met. His was warm and clammy. Hers was cold and dry.
“I’m an amputee. By way of a car accident caused by the apocalypse. And the oldest of six.”
Ainsley sniffed. “The Northwest’s only nurse. Premiere yo-yo enthusiast. And the youngest of three.” Then she sighed. “Although now…I guess I’m an only child.”
“I don’t know what to think about you, Ainsley,” Ethan replied and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Everything about this is weird. But this must be even worse for you?”
The question gave Ainsley pause and she lowered her eyes and looked around at the items littering the side of the couch. “I don’t know,” she finally answered. “I’m in shock. This isn’t real life. I don’t care how many weeks pass. Sometimes I wish Spencer had just let me die.”
“What?” Ethan paused and looked at her. He remembered Darla saying something vague about the Krause’s being forced to help him, but no one had ever told him the whole story.
“Spencer stuck me with the needle…to vaccinate me…to force my mother to also take the vaccine. I think he was afraid that Darla would kill him if he didn’t deliver the product, but that’s how he saw us. Commodity.” Ainsley tried to run her fingers through her hair, but she didn’t get very far. She gave up and flopped her hands into her lap. “My mom and dad discussed it and said, no thank you. We will not divide our family. And then he took that choice away. He used me, to get to her.”
“I’m sorry,” Ethan said.
“Why? You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said back.
But Ethan hated when people responded to empathy with that comeback. He frowned. “I’m not sorry because I personally caused your pain. I’m sorry because I understand it is an awful situation.”
Ainsley nodded, and then she looked right at Ethan. While bringing her curly hair into a ponytail, she said, “But your father did cause it. So. That’s the elephant in the room.” Immediately after saying that, Ainsley shrunk backward on the couch and covered her face with her hands. She splayed out her fingers and looked at him through the web of digits. “Bad Ainsley,” she mumbled. “Normal people would find a way to build that into natural conversation. It’s just been on everyone’s mind. The subject of conversation, actually. Oh, I have to stop. I’m stopping.”