Chapter Sixty-Three Patrick
It was decided that they would leave at first light, after the flooding in the streets had subsided and emptied some.
After Tess had had time to rest and eat.
The journey to Scurry had wearied her, and she coughed soundly until she was bent double.
It hurt to look at her—she had deteriorated so much in the time he’d spent away.
How long? he thought. How long could she hang on before that gray fever returned and stole what was left of her?
Nina moved like she was made of engine parts, collecting blankets and making a pallet for his mother on the kitchen floor. She brewed tea and passed each of them a cup, found bread for sandwiches, and did what she could. They took her offerings without a word, the shell shock of loss still ringing.
The men would go back to the boat docked in the river and sleep in its cabin. It was more comfortable than the floor of the Harrow house. They left with leaden limbs. Gunner and Donny looked at Patrick as they passed as though they wished to say something but couldn’t find the words.
If they had any, Patrick couldn’t bear to hear them.
There was only a handful of hours left in the night. Not enough to find sleep, not enough to piece together the wreckage of the day in his mind. Dawn would soon hunt him down. A million new problems for which he had no solution.
He’d failed his family. Kenton Hill. The Union.
He sat at the kitchen table and kept so still, he might have been turning to stone. He could hardly find it within him to lift a hand. To lift his eyes from the half-eaten sandwich on its cracked plate.
“Patrick?” Nina said to him in that melodic way. He couldn’t bring himself to rise even to this.
“I have to bury the Seam,” she said. “We could go now and take whatever we can carry first.”
Patrick nodded. He could feel his failure crowding in from every corner, threatening to suffocate him. Best to retreat before he made any more mistakes.
He’d been fooled countless times. By Shop. By his own damn father.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered quietly, and he leaned forward, head hanging. “I’ve fucked it all up, Scurry girl.”
“Look at me,” she said. And when he couldn’t, she went to the floor between his legs, placed her hands on his thighs. “Not you,” she said. “Them.”
He pushed the hair away from her lovely face. A face that didn’t belong in a place like this, in a life like this one. “I promised you I’d fix it all,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, cradled his hand to her face. Tears were falling. “I think you and I… we’re meant to carry on as we are. Broken parts and all.”
“What do we do now?”
She shrugged as though he were asking her to hold his hand in a courtyard, to come home with him on a train to Kenton. “We keep going,” she said.
“I could put you on a ship out of Hoaklin,” he told her, and it sounded offhanded, but the offer was real. “If you asked.”
She tsked. “I’ve got a miner in the north,” she said. “He’d be forlorn if I left.”
Patrick placed his other hand against her cheek, whispered his fingertips across her soft skin. “Pretty girl like you? With a miner? Such a waste.”
She grinned sadly, then kissed him.
And he melted against her, wondering if there was a place inside her where he could stay and never resurface.