Chapter Thirteen
Sela was still mentally worrying at the puzzle of Lawrence Dietrich and where she’d either met him or heard his name when
she left the store. Mike waved and headed off, and she turned to lock the door—not that there was anything to steal inside,
but she still didn’t want the building vandalized by kids, strangers passing through, or . . . or anyone. People were people,
they did crappy things, and the times were stressful.
She hadn’t gone ten steps before a hefty woman with blond hair and three-inch-long dark roots charged up to her and snapped,
“So you’ve been sitting on this gasoline for two months when people could have used it?”
What?
She didn’t know the woman; she took a step back because the blonde looked ready to swing and she didn’t want to get into a
brawl, especially since she was pretty sure this woman could kick her butt. “I thought it would be more useful now, when the
weather is getting cold,” she said as evenly as possible, trying to hide how alarmed she was. And, yes, getting angry, too.
“Who gave you the right to decide what people need?”
Sela felt her fingertips begin to throb, and the skin of her face felt tight. Slowly she took the pen out of her pocket, opened
up her notebook. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Carlette Broward,” the woman answered, suspicion mixing with the aggression in her expression as she looked at the notebook.
“Why?”
Sela made a show of flipping back through the notebook, though she already knew for certain she’d never seen the name before.
Nope, no mention of Carlette Broward, or indeed any Broward, anywhere in the book. She went back to the original page and
wrote Carlette’s name down. “Just checking.”
“Checking on what? And what does that have to do with you hogging the gas?”
Other people were looking their way, edging closer. Sela would have been humiliated, if she hadn’t been fed up. Fed. Up. And
she was. To the gills. “I was looking to see if you were on any of the lists of volunteers.”
Her jibe hit its target and the woman flushed. “I got two little kids,” she said resentfully. “I can’t just walk away and
leave them alone, to do good deeds.”
“You could bring them with you. Or send word of something you could do.”
“I got all I can handle, you snide bitch, and what does that have to do with the gasoline? Answer me that!”
A hot surge of anger left her almost breathless. She was so seldom angry that she didn’t know what to do but her brain kind
of disconnected and her body reacted. Sela took a step forward, erasing the distance she’d put between them, and lowered her
chin to stare at the woman. “You mean my gasoline, the gasoline I paid for, and you haven’t? That gasoline? The gasoline I could have sold when we got the warning
about the solar storm, but didn’t because I thought the people in this valley would need it to help survive the winter?”
Someone in the crowd muttered, “You go, girl.”
Sela didn’t think she had a choice about going on, because she’d never felt this angry, this outraged. Surrendering to the
moment she stepped even closer, so close she could smell the sourness of the woman’s skin, the stench of dirty clothes. Every
muscle in her body was trembling, but it wasn’t from fear, or stress, it was from the effort of holding herself in check.
She wanted to shriek at the woman. She wanted to punch her in the face, she, who had never struck another person in her life. “Are you planning on being in line tomorrow morning to get my gas, after insulting me today?”
To her surprise, Carlette Broward stepped back. “I deserve it as much as anyone else,” she muttered resentfully.
“Really?” Sela moved forward again, all but spitting the words out. “Do you deserve it as much as the people who’ve been working
their asses off cutting wood for others? Staying awake at night, patrolling, trying to keep everyone safe? Feeding old people who don’t
have enough food? What have you contributed to the community? Anything? Bitching doesn’t count.”
A couple of snorts of laughter made Carlette turn red. “I don’t have to take this shit,” she snarled, taking two steps back
this time.
“That’s right, you don’t. You don’t have to take my gasoline, either. Feel free to leave at any time.”
“Don’t think I’ll forget this, you snotty bitch!” Carlette threw over her shoulder as she stomped away.
“Thanks for the warning!” Breathing hard, Sela stared after her, then growled a bit and said, “Shit!” under her breath. Before
Carlette got out of hearing she called out, “Carlette!”
The woman whirled. “Fuck you!”
Sela ground her teeth together again, reaching for her thin store of patience. “Bring your car tomorrow. And bring your kids.
I won’t stop you from getting gas.” Not if she did have two little kids, that is. No kids, no gas.
Carlette paused, still looking violently resentful and sulky. Then she said, “What about filling a gas can?”
“That, too, if you have one.”
With a jerky nod, the woman walked away.
“Oh, jear Desus,” Sela said, and closed her eyes. She was trembling and breathing hard and for some reason felt torn between
wanting to cry and wanting to hop up and down and scream as loud as she could. She didn’t do confrontations, didn’t know how
to fight, but she’d been ready to get into a face-slapping, hair-pulling battle with a woman who outweighed her by a good
forty or fifty pounds.
Nancy Meador, one of her neighbors, came and put an arm around her. “You did good, hon,” she said, giving Sela a hug and a
smile. “Gave me a smile today.”
Sela was astonished. “You like seeing fights?” Violence had always made her a little sick to her stomach.
“Well, the TV’s out, so we have to do something for entertainment,” Nancy said, throwing back her head on a laugh. Several
other people around them laughed and nodded.
“Besides, you have to stand up to bullies or they just get worse.” Nancy squeezed her shoulders. “You should go take a nap,
you look worn out. I bet you stayed up with Carol last night, didn’t you?”
Sela nodded. “And I need to get back to check on her. Not that Barb and Olivia aren’t there, but—”
“I know. Carol can be a handful. Tell you what—I’ll come stay with her tonight, let you get some rest. How does that sound?”
She opened her mouth to tell Nancy she could handle it, then paused. Neighbors helped neighbors, and truth to tell she could
use more sleep than she’d gotten the night before, or she wouldn’t be any use to Carol or anyone else. “That sounds wonderful,”
she said truthfully.
“Good deal. I’ll come over tonight after I get the supper dishes washed and everything squared away. See you then.”
Other people wanted to give her encouraging words or pats and she worked her way through them, wanting nothing more than to
be alone so she could scream, or cry, or jump up and down in a hissy fit. She didn’t know which. Maybe all three. “I’m not
good at this crap,” she muttered under her breath as she walked home. “I’m so not good at this crap.”
She walked past Carol’s house, though she knew they’d be waiting to hear the details of everything that had happened; she
didn’t feel like rehashing it all, and more than anything she wanted to go to bed, pull the covers over her head, and take
a long nap. She wouldn’t do that, but she desperately needed to be alone and get her emotional bearings again.
Dead leaves crunched under her feet as she walked. Now that there was no vehicular traffic to blow them off, leaves accumulated
on the roads, and had almost completely covered the paved surfaces in her neighborhood. When the CME hit, civilization had
slipped backward about two hundred years; she had coped, she had thought and planned and tried to organize, and though she’d
accomplished some things at the end of the day she was acutely aware of how much she fell short.
Mike Kilgore was a rock, but he wasn’t a leader. He would back her up any way she needed, when what she needed was someone
who could help her decide which way to go. Same with Trey Foster: capable, but not a leader. Carol had taken the job, but
she didn’t want it any more than Sela did, and now she was injured and couldn’t help.
She let herself into her house, put some wood on the low-burning fire, then wrapped herself in a quilt and plopped down on
the sofa, her tired mind spinning.
The house was chilly and quiet; she’d gotten accustomed to the silence and the darkness of night, but even though the sun
was shining outside she felt as if the dark and the quiet had isolated her as if she was deep in a cave.
What had happened at the Livingstons wouldn’t be an isolated case. More outsiders would be coming through; some would be friendly,
some not—and it was the “not” that scared her to death. She’d been naive to think she could handle this, even temporarily.
Actually she hadn’t thought it at all; Carol had. And Carol likely wouldn’t know what to do, either, because this was as far
outside her experience as it was Sela’s. She couldn’t even ask her aunt about this new development, not now. Carol needed
to rest, to recover, not to mention that any advice she gave while she was taking pain pills might not be well thought out.
Carol. Jim Livingston. Ted’s hostility. Being accosted by Carlette Broward. It was too much, too much all at once.
In all her life, she’d never asked for help, at least not in anything big. Never. Maybe she was too quiet, maybe she was painfully
shy, but she took care of her own problems. Adam. The business. Even Carol didn’t know that early on Sela had had to take
out a loan, after a few bad months at the store. She’d paid the loan back, had scraped and done without until she’d managed
to pay it off early. There hadn’t been any financial troubles since then, but no one else knew how she’d initially struggled.
No one else realized how deeply the divorce had hurt her. No one saw how she continued to carry that pain. Given the chance,
she wouldn’t take Adam back—no way, that ship had most definitely sailed—but that didn’t change the fact that failing at her
marriage had hurt. It had hurt that she hadn’t been enough for Adam, that he’d seen her as weak, as less.
She’d never gone for counseling, never poured out her heart to Carol or to her friends. She’d borne her hurts, her fears,
in silence, rather than burden others with what she considered her failings.
But this was something she couldn’t handle, and others would suffer if she did it wrong. This time, she had to ask for help.
And she knew only one person who had the experience to help her with the outside threat that had come to the valley.