Chapter 8
EIGHT
Jack
“Hold it steady and then drive it down,” I said.
Miles nodded, his lip between his teeth as he pushed down on the post digger. “This is hard!” he said.
I nodded. “Nah. You’re just scrawny.”
He chuckled. “I’m not.” He didn’t sound convinced, but the next time he tried, the dirt gave way, and he smiled down at the almost perfect hole.
“Not bad, kid. Not bad.”
“If you say so. I’m gonna have to do a lot better than not bad.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” I slapped him on the shoulder. “What is it?” I asked.
He stared at the hole, but there was a cloudiness in his eyes. I probably should have just let him open up, but Evan always said I didn’t know when to let things lie.
“I’m cool,” he said, though he wouldn’t meet my eye.
I scoffed. “Yeah. Next time, pull the other one.”
The kid let out a breath, his thin shoulders seeming to collapse in on themselves. Then he looked up at me. “Where’d you go to college, Jack?”
“Nowhere.”
He widened his eyes. “But you’re so smart.”
I nodded. “Maybe.”
“Miss Newman always said I could go if I wanted to. Told me I had the ability to do whatever I wanted and become whatever I wanted.”
“She’s right.”
“Yeah, I guess she was,” he said.
“What does that mean?” I grabbed the post digger and dug another hole.
“Means I was gonna start looking in the fall, you know. It was early, I thought, but Miss Newman said you could never start too soon. And I don’t know. It just hit me…” He looked out at the farm. “This is it now. No graduation. No college. I don’t even know how to drive.”
What was I supposed to say to that? What would anybody say to it?
“I don’t have the answers, kid, but you’re still breathing. It’s more than a lot of folks can say. And it also means there’s a chance. As long as you stay breathing, there’s a chance. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?”
He frowned. “I have a pretty good idea. I’m going to tend animals, keep watch, work on this stupid fence.” He kicked a clod of dirt.
“Yeah, you’ll do that, but you never know. Maybe something crazy’ll happen. Maybe the dead’ll start walking.”
He laughed, the sound bubbling out of his chest and lighting his eyes. “Very funny.”
“Yeah. But how about this? I want to take a little trip at some point and see what’s what. Maybe you can come with me. I’ll teach you how to drive.”
“I wouldn’t waste the gas. It’s not smart.”
“Hey, pretend you’re a fifteen-year-old kid for just a minute and say yes.”
He laughed. “Cool. I like that.”
“Good. I’ll talk to Lourdes, then. Now go make yourself useful. You’re shit at digging holes.”
He laughed and then walked off, and I went back to the task.
But even as I worked on the holes, making sure the spacing was even, the depth was the same…
I thought about the conversations I had had with Evan.
The ones I’d looked forward to having. He’d talked about college, too.
But I’d stayed noncommittal. He was a Thorne, so if I got excited, tried to push him, he would have resisted on principle.
But all that was gone now. As empty as our house had been.
Clank.
The metal of the post digger thudded against a rock, and I kneeled down, digging the good-sized rock from the soft soil.
Glad I found it, actually. Gave me something to do besides think about that feeling, that horror as I stood in my empty house, surveying all that was taken, and what had been left behind.
I knew it was Evan. Could see it. He’d taken ammo, food, weapons, warm clothes. Did everything I taught him how to do, mostly because I didn’t know how to teach him anything else.
He left intentionally because I took too long to get to him. I’d stayed a day, then another, hoping that maybe he would come back, knowing he wouldn’t. Which left me with no choice.
I’d racked my brain trying to decide where he would go next. Made it almost to the state line before the reality hit me.
Evan wasn’t dead.
I knew he wasn’t dead.
Wouldn’t believe he was dead until I saw his body.
But I’d never find him. I knew that. Some part of me had known that when I left. I’d been chasing a ghost and even worse, choosing my pride. And she was left unprotected, alone, to fight her way through this fucked up world.
Because I failed her.
Just like I failed Evan.
And even if I found him, it would mean being without her.
How fucked up was that? I grappled with that question for hundreds of miles on the trek back.
Maybe it didn’t matter at all.
Because Evan was gone to me, and now she was, too.