Sophie Littlefield - Rebirth

There were other ways, and Cass knew she hadn’t seen them all. Perhaps Dor had seen more. Perhaps he’d seen enough that the horror in the bedroom didn’t bother him, but she doubted it.

“DON’T GO PAST THE CHAIR,” SHE SAID GENTLY to Ruthie, and Ruthie nodded solemnly, never letting go of Cass’s hand. “We’ll see what this room is like, okay?” The guest room was blessedly unexceptional. They were not the first to squat here; the linens had been stripped from the bed, though a few pillows and a puffy comforter had been left behind. The mattress was fairly clean and Cass spread out a few towels she found in the bathroom. The closet had been gone through, as well; anything useful, like coats and synthetic tops and pants had been taken, leaving wool skirts and ruffled blouses and tailored jackets, the off-season wardrobe of a churchgoing woman in her sixties. On the shelf above the clothing were photo boxes with neat labels: Family Christmas 2010-2013. Caymans Summer ’14. Jeanelle, Grades 1-5. The lady of the house had been old-fashioned, still printing copies of photos on reacetate; Cass hoped her memories brought the woman some comfort at the end, long after most people had lost all their photos with the blink of computers turning off for the last time.

They ate by the light of a candle that Dor found in one of the drawers and afterward Cass read to Ruthie from an old issue of Redbook she found in the den. Ruthie loved recipes with their pictures of dishes that could never again be prepared, and Cass had built a small collection of cookbooks back in their tent in the Box. She turned the pages to an article about berry desserts and read about the strawberry shortcakes and blueberry pie and raspberry-peach cobbler, and Ruthie traced her fingertip over the glossy mounds of whipped cream and the buttery crumbs in wonder.

“Do you remember Mim’s pies?” Cass asked, a lump in her throat catching her off guard. The one thing Mim did better than anyone else, a thrilling exception to her indifference to housekeeping and even the general inadequacy of her mothering, was pies. Her pastry crust was the flakiest and most tender anywhere. Cass’s favorite had been her key lime, and once a year on Cass’s birthday Mim would grate the limes and squeeze them by hand and separate the eggs and flute the edges of the crust and set the pies out on the counter to cool and every year they were the most delicious thing Cass had ever tasted, right up until the year Byrn moved in and Mim forgot Cass’s birthday entirely.

But Ruthie only nodded solemnly. It wasn’t Cass’s habit to ask her daughter about the time she spent with Mim and Byrn, who had convinced the state people to forcibly remove Ruthie from Cass’s trailer when she relapsed. Those were days of shame and agony as she fought her way back to sobriety again, the hardest thing she had ever done.

“Did you like the apples?” Cass asked, forcing a smile, trying to cover up the tremor in her voice and hating that the old memories could still hurt so much. “With cinnamon and nutmeg?”

More nodding. After a few more recipe images, Cass gathered Ruthie into a hug and set the magazine aside and carried her to bed, tucking her under the puffy comforter. Ruthie held on to her hand tightly, but it wasn’t more than a couple of minutes before she was asleep, and Cass kissed her forehead and went back out into the living room.

Dor had cleared the remains of their meal and was stretched out on the sofa reading an old issue of Forbes, his long legs crossed in front of him, a pair of reading glasses on his nose. The sight made her smile-this was a different man, a far more vulnerable man, from the one who brooded in the solitary apartment as the sun set on the Box. But Dor caught her looking, and yanked off his glasses and stuffed them in a pocket.

“I put water out back,” he said. “Your toothbrush and stuff’s there, too.”

Cass took her time, skimping on the toothpaste to make it last and brushing out her hair, slathering the lanolin on her lips as well as she could and rubbing it into her hands. The smell wasn’t great but the California winter was dry and her skin was thirsty. She shivered in the cold, dampening a rag with the water Dor had left for her and rubbing it all over her face, feeling the grit from the open-air journey digging into her skin. She squatted around the corner to urinate, scanning the black road for movement, even in the silence of night unable to shake the feeling that things were lurking out in the fields, on the road. Waiting. She knew this was why they’d put the Jeep in the garage and drawn the drapes before lighting the candle: anyone-Beater or citizen-who passed by here would see nothing out of the ordinary. There wasn’t another building for half a mile; the odds of Beaters or squatters anywhere near were practically nonexistent.

Inside Dor wrinkled his nose. “You smell like a sheep shearer.”

Cass smiled. “You should be so lucky-that would mean there were sheep left, and we could make them into mutton burgers.”

“I never liked mutton.”

“Bet you would now.”

“I suppose I would.” Dor nodded. “Nice big slab with American cheese melted all over it, one of those sesame seed buns, some iceberg lettuce and a big slice of tomato.”

“Stop it. That’s obscene,” Cass said. “But maybe some fries-”

“Fresh cut, with the skin still on ’em.”

“I like the ones that get stuck in the fry basket and go through twice-you know, extra crispy, almost burned?”

“Nice. Here, come sit where I’ve got it warmed up.”

Cass hesitated. The sofa was a short one, almost a love seat, and there was barely room for her to sit next to Dor without touching. He’d unfolded the afghans and spread them over his lap, and he held up the ends, and it looked warm and inviting.

“I was just going to go to bed with Ruthie. You don’t mind…?”

“The couch? No. I mean, I don’t fit on the couch but the floor’s fine. I’ve slept on worse. But seriously, come sit a minute-I’m not tired yet.”

Cass went to sit beside him.

She’d seen the interior of his trailer. It was crammed full, his desk and a couple of chairs sharing the space with file cabinets and a printer stand, power cords snaking out the window. There was too much furniture even before Dor moved his cot in: bookshelves and an old-fashioned wooden coat rack and a basin with a china sink that was rigged to drain through a pipe in the floor onto the gravel yard below. There was a space heater, but Cass didn’t think Dor ever used it. A shaving mirror hung on a nail.

Dor also had a tent, one as large as the one she shared with Smoke, and she knew from interrogating Smoke that it was there that Dor kept his clothes and even more books and his tools and collection of sports equipment: two sets of golf clubs, lacrosse sticks, and a couple of soccer balls. He changed clothes in his tent and showered in the communal showers. But at some point during the summer, he had begun sleeping in the trailer, and Cass didn’t know why. The cot wasn’t even one of the nice ones; it was FEMA surplus, like the ones near the front of the Box, the ones reserved for drunks and people who had nothing left to trade.

It was a lot to leave behind-but Cass knew that possessions meant little to Dor. He might spend his days overseeing a center of commerce, but in the end it was the trading, not what was traded, that mattered to him. And with Sammi in danger, even that ceased to hold him. He’d left the Box behind with barely a thought, and deep down Cass knew he would not return there. If they survived this adventure, his restless spirit would propel him to the next new thing, another empire, another lonely world for him to oversee.