Chapter 16
The afternoon is long and unpleasant. I go from restless sleep to restless grogginess and neither one is better than the other.
Micah must have moved out of sight, but he’s still close enough to get up anytime I lift my head or make a sound.
He wipes down my hot face until I get annoyed, and after a few hours, he makes me take some ibuprofen.
Eventually it must be evening, but I can’t eat more than a few swallows of another can of soup he prepares.
I hate the taste of it.
I hate the feel of this bed.
I hate everything.
Except Molly, who’s obviously concerned since she comes snuffling over anytime Micah lets her in.
And Micah, who is trying to help and only occasionally driving me crazy.
I’m able to get up to go to the bathroom, but otherwise I have no choice but to stay in bed until the following morning.
I take more Tylenol in the evening, and sometime in the middle of the night something changes.
My arm, my body, and the world starts feeling a little bit better.
I sit up, oddly disoriented.
“What is it, baby?” Micah sounds groggy. He gets up from the second bed where he’s been lying. “Are you okay?”
“I… think so. Can I have water?”
“Of course.” He filled a pitcher earlier, so he pours some into the glass I’ve been using.
I get down the entire glass in several swallows.
After I do, he feels my forehead. His hand is big and warm. “That fuckin’ fever is finally down. Scared the shit out of me.”
I blink at him in confusion. “You were scared?”
“Yes, I was scared. People die from that kind of thing nowadays.” He’s still touching my face, but it’s more like a caress now. “Are you feeling better?”
“Yeah. I think so. Can I have more water? I don’t know why I’m so thirsty.”
“You’re probably dehydrated.” He fills my glass and hands it back to me, watching as I drink this one down too. “Maybe you can sleep some now. You’ll feel a lot better tomorrow if you can sleep for real.”
“I’ll try.” I hand him back the empty glass and shift slightly, trying to determine if I need to go to the bathroom first. I don’t, so I flop back down.
He pulls the covers up over me, and this time I leave them because I actually feel cool.
He leans down to kiss me slightly on the mouth. “Get some sleep, baby. I’ll be right here.”
I touch his beard just to verify that he’s here and he’s him. Then I take a couple of deep breaths and close my eyes. I hear myself murmuring before the world gets dark again, “I’m glad you’re here.”
The next day I do feel better, and the day after that I’m even better still. The fever doesn’t come back, and my injury starts to heal. Eventually the itchiness around the wound troubles me more than anything else.
Micah helps out when I need him to and backs off when I’m irritable and handles all the daily chores and duties without question or instruction.
The only thing he’s pushy about is treating the wound site to make sure it doesn’t get infected.
A week later, I wake up feeling almost like myself again, other than pestering superficial irritation of the healing injury.
Micah is in a good mood. He went hunting early and returned with a wild turkey, and he’s humming as he plucks and prepares the carcass while I wash my hair for the first time since I was shot.
I use the rainwater so that he doesn’t have to stop his work to keep watch by the creek.
After a minute, I recognize the song he’s humming as a popular country song from a few years before Impact.
“You’ve got a good voice,” I tell him, towel drying my hair. It’s warm today, and I’m wearing only my sports bra (Micah washed it twice and got out as much blood as he could) and a pair of shorts.
“You think so?” He glances over his shoulder at me with a relaxed smile, his eyes making a quick detour down my body before they return to my face.
“Yes. Don’t try to sound modest. You obviously know you can sing. Do you know all the words to that one?”
“Sure.”
I’ve started combing out my wet hair, but I pause to give him an impatient look. “Well?”
“Well, what?” He’s hiding a grin.
It’s nice to see him like this again. He was tense in a quiet, restrained way for days because he was worried about my injury but trying not to make a big deal about it for my sake. “You know exactly what. Aren’t you going to sing it for me?”
He looks like he’s going to say one thing but then changes his mind. Instead, he asks softly, “You really want me to?”
“Of course I do. You wanted me to sing for you before, and I did. So why wouldn’t you?”
He shrugs, looking oddly self-conscious for such a laid-back, confident man. He works on cleaning the turkey for a few minutes in silence before he starts singing.
It’s a song about lost love. Nothing particularly striking or profound. But his voice is better than good. It’s warm, deep, rich and perfectly pitched. It conveys an emotion he’s always reticent to convey in any other way.
It touches me. So deeply my throat is tight by the second verse.
I stop combing my hair and just stand there and listen, no doubt gaping at him. He’s not looking at me though. He’s focused down on his hands as they move.
When he finishes the song, both of us are motionless for longer than is normal.
Finally he glances over at me with a hesitant look that’s not like him.
“That was beautiful,” I manage to say, sounding hoarse.
He clears his throat. “You’re a better singer than me. You don’t need to exaggerate to soothe my ego.”
“I never exaggerate. I never soothe any man’s ego.”
“Well, that much is true, I guess.” His mouth lifts in a smile that fills my chest with an entirely unexpected warmth. “Thanks. I haven’t sung in a long time. Not since…”
Not since he lost Burgundy.
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but I know how it ends.
Feeling weird and emotional and uncomfortable, I manage to say, “Thank you for singing for me.” Then, to save both of us from the moment, I add in a different tone, “Do you need help with that turkey?”
“No! I’ve got it just fine. You need to finish primping.”
“Primping!” My reaction is instinctive. Only afterward do I notice his teasing expression. “Asshole.”
“Always.”
I’m not back to full strength yet, but I’m a lot closer. I’m able to stay out of bed for the entire day, with a rest in the lawn chair during the afternoon, and I’m even able to do some fishing and help roast the turkey for dinner.
It’s not a huge one, but there’s enough for a big meal tonight along with plenty of leftovers.
We do a good job cooking it, and it’s the best thing I’ve had to eat for a long, long time.
Micah and I sit around the firepit after we’re finished, and I enjoy the sense of finally feeling better and having a full belly.
I glance over at Micah and catch him gazing at me.
“What?” I ask.
“You seem better.”
“I am.” I glance away, suddenly embarrassed. “Thanks for helping out. And for… for taking care of me.”
“I was happy to,” he says lightly. “Only fair, after the way you took care of me.”
“I guess that’s right. Will you sing me another song?”
His eyebrows go up. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. You’re really good, and it’s been a long time since I’ve heard any music except my own singing.”
“I’d do better if I had my guitar.”
“Well, you don’t. But I think you do just fine without it.”
“What song do you want?” It feels like he’s stalling, and I don’t know why.
“I don’t care. Just pick one of your favorites. Anything.”
He makes a face at me, but I give him a stern look in response, one that makes him cave.
He hems and haws and fiddles with the fire until he finally starts to sing.
It’s an old, upbeat country song about drowning one’s sorrows with beer. It makes me giggle and laugh, and my response causes him to ham it up. I enjoy it immensely and applaud when he’s done.
“That was my dad’s favorite,” he says. “He always asked me to sing it when he wasn’t totally drunk, and he got a kick out of it every time.”
“I can just imagine. What was your mom’s favorite song for you to sing?”
He thinks for a minute and then starts singing a cheesy pop ballad. He hams this one up in a different way, making his voice romantic and swoony until I’m spilling over with giggles. I join in on the chorus, and we sound incredibly good together.
We’re both smiling at each other as he finishes.
Needing another distraction, I say, “Do one more. Then I’ll stop nagging you for tonight.”
He’s silent, staring at the fire. His face sobers in the flickering, orange light. So much so that my chest is already tightening when he starts to sing.
“Peace in the Valley.”
He tries to play it up the way he did the other two, giving the first verse some Elvis trills, but the poignancy of the words and music drag him away from the lighter mood pretty quick.
The world stills to complete silence. Even Molly, lying beside me and cleaning her paws, lifts her head and stares at him. My eyes are burning, and I can barely breathe around the lump in my throat as he gets toward the end.
He’s not meeting my eyes. He’s gazing into the dark, dying forest as he sings the vision of a world without violence or conflict, a world where everything bad and broken has been transformed.
It’s eerie. Haunting. Encapsulates a truth I’ve been ignoring in order to survive.
So much that was good and beautiful in the world has been lost. Forever lost—not only because of the devastation of the planet but from all the violence and chaos that followed.
And the life that’s left for us who survived this long is so much harder and uglier and emptier.
What’s good that still remains is like the flickering light of the fire, flaming out only briefly before it withdraws. Glancing and reshaping itself each moment so it’s nearly impossible to capture.
And Micah’s song—his beautiful, aching voice—has become the symbol for all that we’ve lost. That and the small, bittersweet hope that this brokenness won’t last forever.
It hangs in the air for only a moment. Lovely. Heartbreaking. Ephemeral. Then fades into silence.
And the song is lost. As lost as the hope it embodied.
There are tears in my eyes when he finishes, and I have to pretend to scratch my face in order to surreptitiously wipe them away.
Micah doesn’t look at me.
“Okay,” I say when the heaviness of the silence gets to me. “Thank you for singing for me. Why don’t we get things ready for the night. I’m tired.”
“Yeah,” he says thickly. “Me too.”
We go through the evening routines without conversation, and soon we’re in bed.
I’m tired and emotional and my arm is both sore and itching. But none of that matters nearly as much as what I’m sensing in Micah.
He’s stiff and wordless in a way he never is. Something’s wrong, but he’s pretending that it’s not.
I can feel it in the air. Sense it in his presence on the other side of the camper. I don’t say anything because I have no idea what to say, but I want to comfort him somehow.
I’ve never been good at that. I’ve never been a soft, reassuring person. I’ve never been good with emotion the way a lot of women I knew always were.
I’ve always wanted to hide from it. Pretend it wasn’t happening.
But this is happening. It’s happening to Micah. He’s lying on his side with his back toward me, but his posture is oddly defensive. Like he’s trying to curl in on himself to protect what’s wounded inside him.
After a long time—I have no idea how long—I hear something from his side. A shaky, breathless sound.
I make a choked exclamation and get up. I can’t stand this. I simply can’t stand it.
I can’t leave him over there hurting all by himself.
Without a word, I climb into bed with him and curl around his tense form, trying to spoon him.
“No, no, baby,” he says rough and stretched. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
“No, I won’t. I’m fine.” I’m lying on my right side so I wrap my left around him. “I’m fine. And I can’t stand it anymore.”
He doesn’t ask what I mean. He knows. It must move him because he suddenly starts to shake in the dark.
I tighten my embrace and he cries silently. I’m close to tears myself, but it’s not for me. It’s for him. An empathy I didn’t believe myself capable of anymore.
He reaches up to take my hand, and he grips it tightly as he shakes and jerks. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t easy. It’s not a natural outpouring of pent-up emotion. It’s rough. Unwilling. As if the sobs are forced out of him against his will.
“I lost her, Kat,” he finally rasps. “How did I let it happen?”
“You didn’t.” I try to hug him from behind. His body is a lot bigger than mine, and it’s warm and real and human. Just on the edge of broken. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“It feels like it was. I’m her big brother. She’s my responsibility.”
I wonder if he’s ever let himself cry about Burgundy before. It feels like this is the very first time.
“Sometimes we lose people, and it’s no one’s fault. Sometimes the world just does it to us. It’s not your fault. You can’t take that on. Losing her is hard enough. You can’t blame yourself for it.”
“There’s no one else to blame.”
“I know.” I kiss his shoulder. Then the back of his neck. Then I lift myself up enough to kiss his hair, his cheek, his jaw. “But that doesn’t mean you have to blame yourself. It happened. It’s horrible. Unfair and wrong in every way. But it just happened.”
He doesn’t reply, but he shakes and gasps for a long time until his body finally softens.
I don’t say anything else. Neither does he.
But we eventually fall asleep together.