Chapter 14
Lazlo
Our second home in New Emberwood was larger than the first had been, or the old house on Nova’s homestead. All of the houses around it were destroyed in the attack, and we’d turned the surrounding empty lots of burnt soil into gardens for our family and those who make this town home.
This was our second summer, and all the plants were coming in much better this year. Tending to the garden has become nearly a full-time job. Well, that and caring for our animals, livestock, and of course, our daughter, Sage, who turned six this past February.
My wife Nova was busy rebuilding the town.
Hundreds of people lived here, with many of them returning and others moving for the first time.
We hadn’t set up an election yet, since everyone was still re-settling, but Nova has become the de facto mayor.
Most days, she leaves early in the morning, and I won’t see her again until it’s almost dark.
I spent the morning weeding between the neat rows of carrots and chard while Sage chased chickens and darted between the berry bushes, her laughter adding to the soft haze of summer. The bees were humming, the chickens were clucking, the town faintly bustled.
Despite the revival all around us, a tension lingered beneath the surface. It was one I felt most in the quiet moments, hands deep in the earth, listening for the distant sounds of death groans.
Today, though, it wasn’t death groans but the sound of hoofbeats I heard rapidly approaching.
I lifted my head, and over the leafy greens of the garden, I saw a familiar horse.
He was a gelded quarter that briefly belonged to Nova before she traded him to someone on the Barbarabelle.
The rider, however, had already dismounted by the time I saw the horse.
“Hello?” I straightened up slowly, with my bad knee letting out an anguished complaint.
“Hi, Lazlo,” Stella replied cheerily as she came out from around the horse. She wore her young daughter on her back in a sling, the fabric knotted tight across her chest and shoulders. Fae’s legs wrapped around her ribs with her head peaking curiously over her mother’s shoulder.
Beside Stella, Boden was busy tying down the horse.
The last time I had seen Boden things had very nearly come to blows.
Well, more accurately, he had wanted to punch me, and he very likely would’ve, had Harlow and Stella not been present.
Ever since that very heated conversation, the two of us had been avoiding each other.
Not that I completely misunderstood his anger. That had been back in December, right after Remy had left, and Boden blamed me because I’d given her a mule. Really, though, he was raging at me because I was here, and Remy wasn’t.
“How are you all doing?” I asked as I limped over to greet them. “Is everything okay on the riverboat?”
“We’re all doing well,” Stella said. “The boat’s okay.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said, then looked over to Boden, who’d finished tying up the horse. “To what do I owe the pleasure for your visit? Or were you enjoying the lovely summer afternoon?”
Boden’s reply was direct and gruff: “We’re here to talk about Remy.”
I nodded. “Why don’t we go inside, and the kids can play together?”
I called Sage, and she followed us into the house. In the kitchen, I invited Boden and Stella to have a seat while I poured a few glasses of iced tea.
“Sage has gotten so big,” Stella commented as my daughter took Fae by the hand, leading the toddler into the other room to play. We could see them from where we sat, but the kids were far enough away where they shouldn’t be bothered by the conversation.
“She really has,” I agreed with a warm smile. “And she’s gotten so helpful. She tends to the chickens all on her own, with only minor supervision. And I can’t believe how much Fae has grown! She’s really starting to look like you.”
“You think so?” Stella smiled, both heartened and wistful all at once. “When I look at her I only see Max.”
“I don’t mean to cut the pleasantries short, but we rode a long way to get here, so why don’t we get on with it,” Boden suggested in his curt way.
“Let’s get on with it then.”
“We have someone new staying on the Barbarabelle. Her name is Alphie,” Boden said.
I shook my head. “We have a lot of knew people coming into town, but I don’t think I’ve heard of her.”
“She was staying with the Revvers up in Fort Lately,” Boden elaborated. “She claims that she saw Remy in December, but she didn’t stay with them long.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised and irritated. “I told Remy to stay away from Fort Lately. I’d heard the Revvers were a nuisance around there.”
Boden gave a humorless smirk. “I guess it’s nice to know that she doesn’t listen to you, either.”
“Did they say where she was headed?” I asked, ignoring his attempts to get under my skin.
“Glacier Valley. She’s apparently interested in Cold Shore.” He answered with his eyes locked on me, and they narrowed slightly. “You don’t look surprised by that.”
“I’m not,” I admitted, because there was no point in playing games.
“You son of a bitch.” Boden’s voice came out in an angry growl, and his hand balled into a fist on the table. “She told you where she was going, didn’t she?”
“Boden. The kids,” Stella chastised him in a harsh whisper.
Boden lowered his voice, but the anger and venom remained as he glared across the table at me. “You stood in this room and you fu-… you lied to my face. I asked where she was, and you said you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t know for sure,” I corrected him carefully. “She asked some questions about Cold Shore, but her main thing was that she needed to get away and be on her own for a while.”
“But you had an idea, and you didn’t tell me,” Boden persisted.
“Because I knew you would go after her, and she didn’t want that,” I reasoned.
“She was my wife, dammit,” Boden said in a low snarl. He leaned forward and pointed to the south. “We went back to the Lakehouse. Stella left Fae behind for over a month, because we were looking for Remy. And you knew we were looking in the wrong direction, and you didn’t say shit.”
I glanced over at Stella’s daughter playing with Sage in the other room, and guilt tightened around my chest. When I looked back at Boden, all I could say was, “You didn’t ask me before you went.”
“Because I don’t talk to you, but Harlow does,” Boden argued. “You knew we were going, and you didn’t have Harlow tell us? While we were gone, there was an attack on the boat. Did you know that? Fae could’ve been killed while Stella and I were gone, because you didn’t bother to tell us the truth!”
He was nearly shouting by the end, but this time Stella didn’t admonish him. She ] sat beside him, staring down at her glass of iced tea looking sad and a little sick.
“I’m sorry about that,” I told them both as emphatically as I could. “I heard about the outbreak on the boat from a pigeon telegram. I obviously never meant for anything like that to happen. I just – ”
“You just thought we’d waste a month of our lives chasing our shadows?” Boden cut me off. “That was the best-case scenario.”
I exhaled roughly and shook my head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking. It probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but I am truly sorry. I… I wasn’t trying to hurt you or your family at all. I was only trying to protect Remy and do what I thought she’d want me to do.”
“It’s not your job to protect Remy,” Boden snapped.
“It’s everybody’s job to protect everybody else.
That’s the only way we’re ever going to survive,” Stella said matter-of-factly, and then she turned her pale gray eyes onto me.
“And for what it’s worth, I believe you, Lazlo, and I accept your apology.
But please, don’t ever tell me another lie that separates me from my daughter. ”
“Understood, and I appreciate that.”
“So you ready to be straight with us then? About everything?” Boden pressed.
“Yes,” I said, and I meant it.
“What does Remy want with Cold Shore?” he asked.
“She…” I took a deep breath. I’d kept her secret for so long, and it felt strange to be spilling it now, even to the people who loved her the most in the world. “She wants to find a cure.”
Boden frowned. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
“Too many people have died, and she knows that the answer might be in her veins. So…” I shrugged helplessly, because we both knew what that meant for Remy. “She wanted to try.”
“No.” Boden leaned back in his chair and shook his head adamantly. “There’s no way. She’d never let anyone experiment on her ever again.”
“This is the Cold Shore Global Contingency, so it’s not affiliated with any one government, and she’s going in with her eyes wide open,” I said, relaying what she’d told me all those months ago when she first came to me hoping to escape.
Boden was still incredulous, but I couldn’t tell if it was because he thought I was still lying, or that he couldn’t believe that Remy would do this.
“The last time they tried to use her to find a cure, they cut her up and took every part of her that they could,” Boden insisted. “They almost killed her. You know that, right?”
“I do,” I admitted thickly. “But… if she can save the world… how can I tell her not to?”
“She can’t. No one can,” Boden said. “All you did was hand a loaded gun to a suicidal person.”
“No, that’s not fair.” I shook my head. “I gave a map to someone who was hellbent on escaping.”
“If you gave her a map, can you give us the same one?” Stella asked.
I went over to an apothecary chest on the far wall of the kitchen. In the top left drawer, I found the same letter I had shown Remy before she left. It explained what I knew about Cold Shore, and on the back of it, I’d written out a map that Remy had copied for herself.
“I first heard about Cold Shore from Nova’s sister, Sage,” I explained as I set the letter on the table between Stella and Boden.
“Our daughter was named after her. The elder Sage was a doctor in Vancouver when Cold Shore tried recruiting her. She declined them, but she explains why in this letter. This copy she didn’t send, because the ink is smudged. ”
Stella reached into her pack and hurriedly pulled out a journal, so she could begin copying the map.
“You should’ve given this to me when I came here months ago.” Boden glared up at me.
“I know. I’m sorry. But I’m giving it to you now. That’s the best I can do.”