Chapter 34 - Luna #2
She and Briar took one of the smaller trailers in the second row, which surprised absolutely everybody after Kara had made her opinion of the younger girl known.
I guess she’s doing better at building bridges than the rest of us.
The door is propped open, and inside they're working through that mountain of Louis Vuitton that nearly killed Torrin's suspension on the way out of town.
"You packed an evening gown?" Briar is holding it by the hanger over her head because it’s floor length and a deep scarlet red. "For a mine? Very practical, Kara. You'll be the best dressed corpse in the apocalypse."
I brace for impact, because I've watched Kara Channing take apart grown men in eleven words or less. Instead of that, she laughs. An actual amused laugh, and she takes the gown out of Briar's hands.
"This is Valentino, you feral little goblin, and it's coming with me to my grave." She hangs it in the tiny closet with real care. "You'll be wanting to borrow it in a few years, so show some respect."
Briar drops backward onto the bed looking extremely pleased with herself.
Kara catches me in the doorway with my eyebrows somewhere in my hairline and shrugs one shoulder.
"She's growing on me," she tells me. "She's a smaller version of me with none of the soft parts."
"You have soft parts?"
"Two. Extremely well hidden." She points a finger at me. "If you tell anyone, I'll deny it and then I'll ruin you."
Briar snorts into the pillow behind her. I stay long enough to get roped into an opinion about where the shoes should go as they both suggest a second camper just to be used as their closet, and then I head back out into the bay feeling a bit lighter than I've felt all day.
Torrin comes around the end of the row at a jog, sees me and changes course without breaking stride.
He catches me around the waist and swings me right off my feet in a full circle.
The laugh gets startled out of me before I even know what's happening.
Then he kisses me, quick and thorough, sets me back down on the concrete and carries right on going.
"Sorry, love." He calls it over his shoulder, already ten feet away. "Needed that."
I stand there for a few moments with my fingers against my mouth and a smile I can feel all the way up to my ears thinking about how amazing it is that a quick laugh, a quick kiss, or even just a quick hello from the right person can make you feel better about almost anything.
I’m still a bit lost in thought when I start walking around a stack of pallets right into Marlene.
That bible of hers is clutched tight in both hands, the one she carries everywhere, her thumb wedged into it about a third of the way through.
Up close she's shorter than I am. Her hair is set in careful grey waves and her glasses need cleaning.
There's a red rim around her eyes that shows she’s been crying recently.
"Sorry." I catch my balance. "I didn't see you."
"No," her voice has a bit of a shrill tone to it when she says, "you wouldn't."
Every part of me goes still and alert as I take a slow step back.
"I watched you go into that supply room with the dark-haired one last evening.
" She tips her head and narrows her eyes.
"And I watched you come back out of it all mussed up. Now this one throws you around in front of the whole building for everybody to see. How many is boys are you dallying around with, dear? I’ve lost count, and it may be that you have too. "
Heat rushes up my face so fast it stings. "That…that's not any of your business."
"It became my business the moment you put it on display where young people could see.
" She says it almost kindly, which is so much worse.
"Whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding.
He that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.
That's not me talking, that's Proverbs, and it was written down long before you decided the rules didn't apply to you.
" Her thumb shifts in the pages. "My mother had a word for a girl who carries on with multiple men at once. I was raised not to say it in mixed company but the way you’re behaving, well, I've just about run out of reasons not to. "
My hands have curled into fists. There are nine things I want to say and every last one of them is something cutting and ugly.
Not one of them makes it out of my mouth.
She's a sixty-something year old lady, and my mother spent my whole childhood teaching me how a person should speak to her elders. Those lessons don’t switch off just because the elder in question is horrible.
The whole long list of what I want to say jams up in my throat and sits there as I try and stay polite.
"Ms. Sorensen." My voice shakes on her name. "I think you should walk away."
"And that isn't the worst of it." She isn't anywhere near finished with me I guess.
Her eyes cut past me down the bay toward the racks where Anders is still working as her voice goes lower.
"What that old man was doing with his hands this morning and the blonde one does to water, and that young man who tears up the ground? Well, it’s written plainly.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. There were people in this world who understood that once. "
Cold runs right through me at what she’s implying.
"That is an abomination in His sight and it is the devil’s work in mine.
" She's close to spitting at me in her conviction.
Her eyes are wet and they never once leave my face.
"Eleven days ago, I had a town. I had a church and two nephews who cut my grass every second Saturday without being asked.
Then a crack opens up in the sky, everything I love goes into it, and what comes back out the other side is things like you, tossing around dark, evil deeds and laughing about it. "
"I didn't do that." My voice cracks in denial. "I didn’t break the moon or ask for any of this. I didn't..."
"The Lord knows exactly what you are." Marlene tightens her grip on her bible and steps around me. "One of these days the rest of them will get around to knowing it too." She takes a few steps away, but I can still hear her last words like she’s whispered them in my ear. "Witch whore."
She walks off toward the visitor centre stairs with her chin high as I stand alone in the aisle listening to my own heart slam against my ribs. The work continues on at both ends of the building, and not one single person notices anything happened.
My eyes have started to burn so I press the heels of my hands into them hard and refuse, absolutely refuse, to cry in the middle of an equipment bay over a woman that is having some kind of mental break down.
It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.
No-one could really believe the nonsense she just spewed all over me… could they?
When I can breathe properly again, I go and start making dinner to keep busy and try and shake her words off.
What I really want is my mom. God, I miss her.
She would know exactly what to say or do about what just happened.
She would sit me down with a cup of hot chocolate and know the right words to say to me to make me feel better.
Since I can't have her here, I go into the motorhome storage and dig through the freeze-dried bins until I find the bags of her burgers, the ones she made every single summer of my life that I can remember.
Atlas named them Luna burgers when I was six, after I ate four of them at the lake when no-one was looking and then threw up in the car on the way home.
I drag the tips of my fingers over her handwriting on the bags and try to feel her here with me.
I run water into a baking pan and set the burgers in it to rehydrate, and I stand there with my hands on the counter watching them as they swell and come back to life, pretending she’s here beside me telling me what comes next.
The little travel barbecue is still strapped in the storage compartment under the motorhome where Dad stored it. It takes me twenty minutes to wrestle it out, find the propane, and set it up on the matt Gigi put down in front of the motorhome like it’s her own little yard.
The patties go on in batches. Grease hits the grill and the smell of every summer I ever had with my family starts wafting up from it.
People start drifting over before the first batch is even flipped, asking if they can have one.
Gigi appears at my elbow, takes one look at the burgers, and rubs her hand up and down my back without saying anything at all.
I flip burgers and hand them out as everybody talks around me while I think about what to do.
By the time the last batch comes off, my apron is grease splattered, my feet ache, and I've changed my mind completely.
Tomorrow I'm going to find Anders and tell him to go have that word with Clayton after all.
I love you, Mom. I wish you were here.