When we had all had enough to eat, Bankole looked at Marcus and said, "I've been married to your sister for five years. During all that time, we believed that you and the rest of her family were dead."
"I thought she was dead, too," Marcus said.
"Zahra Balter—she was Zahra Moss when you knew her—she said she saw all of you killed," I told him.
He frowned. "Moss? Balter?"
"We didn't know Zahra very well back home. She was married to Richard Moss. He was killed and she married Harry Balter."
"God," he said. "I never thought I'd hear those names again. I do remember Zahra—tiny, beautiful, and tough."
"She's still all three. She and Harry are here. They've got two kids."
"I want to see them!"
"Okay."
"Who else is here?"
"A lot of people who've been through hard times. No one else from home, though. This community is called Acorn."
"There was a little girl... Robin. Robin Balter?"
"Harry's little sister. She didn't make it."
"You thought I didn't."
"I... saw Robin's body, Marc. She didn't make it."
He sighed and stared at his hands resting in his lap. "I did die back in '27.1 died. There's nothing left."
"There's family," I said. "There's me, Bankole, the niece or nephew who'll be born next year. You're free now. You can stay here and make a life for yourself in Acorn. I hope you will. But you're free to do what you want. No one here wears a collar."
"Have you ever worn one?'" he asked.
"No. Some of us have been slaves, but I never was. And I believe you're the first of us who's worn a collar. I hope you'll talk or write about what happened to you since the old neighborhood was destroyed."
He seemed to think about that for a while. "No," he said. "No."
Too soon. "Okay," I said, "but... do you think any of the others could have survived? Cory or Ben or Greg? Is it possible ... ?"
"No," he repeated. "No, they're dead. I got out. They didn't."
Sometime later, as we got up from the table, two men arrived by truck from the little coastal town of Halstead. Like Acorn, Halstead is well off the main highway. In fact, Halstead must be the most remote, isolated town in our area with the Pacific Ocean on three sides of it and low mountains behind it.
In spite of all that, Halstead has a major problem. Halstead used to have a beach and above the beach was a palisade where the town began. Along the palisade, some of the biggest, nicest houses sat, overlooking the ocean. On one side of the peninsula were the old houses, large, well-built wood frame structures. On the other side were newer houses built on land that was once a seaside golf course. All of these are ... were lined up along the palisade. I don't know why people would build their homes on the edge of a cliff like that, but they did. Now, whenever we have heavy rains, when there's an earthquake, or when the level of the sea rises enough to saturate more land, great blocks of the palisades drop into the sea, and the houses sitting on them break apart and fall. Sometimes half a house falls into the sea. Sometimes it's several houses. Last night it was three of them. The people of Halstead were still fishing victims out of the sea. Worse, the community doctor had been delivering a baby in one of the lost houses. That's why the community was turning to Bankole for help. Bankole had been on good terms with their doctor. The people of Halstead trusted Bankole because their doctor had trusted him.
"What are you people thinking?" Bankole demanded of the weary, desperate Halstead men as he and I snatched up things he would need. He was adding to his medical bag. I was packing an overnight case for him. Marcus had looked from one of us to the other, then moved off to one side, out of the way.
"Why do you still have people living on the cliffs?" Bankole demanded. He sounded angry. Unnecessary pain and death still made him angry. "How many times does this kind of thing have to happen before you get the idea?" he asked. He shut his bag and grabbed the overnight case that I handed him. "Move the damned houses inland, for heaven's sake. Make it a long-term community effort."
"We're doing what we can," a big red-haired man said, moving toward the door. He pushed his hair out of his face with a dirty, abraded hand. "We've moved some. Others refuse to have their houses moved. They think they'll be okay. We can't force mem."
Bankole shook his head, then kissed me. "This could take two or three days," he said. "Don't worry, and don't do anything foolish. Behave yourself!" And he went.
I sighed, and began to clear away the breakfast things.
"So he really is a doctor," Marcus said.
I paused and looked at him. "Yes, and he and I really are married," I said. "And I'm really pregnant. Did you think we were telling you lies?"
"... no. I don't know." He paused. "You can't change everything in your life all at once. You just can't"
"You can," I said. "We both have. It hurts. It's terrible. But you can do it"
He reached for the plate I was about to take, and scavenged a few crumbs of Acorn bread from it "It tastes like Mama's," he said, and he looked up at me. "I didn't believe it was you at first Yesterday in that godforsaken shanty-town, I saw you, and I thought I had finally lost my mind. I remember, I thought, 'Good. Now I'm crazy. Now nothing matters. Maybe I'll see Mama, too. Maybe I'm dead' But I could still feel the weight of the collar around my neck, so I knew I wasn't dead. Just crazy."
"Then you knew me," I said. "And you looked away before Cougar could see that you knew me. I saw you."
He swallowed. Nodded. A long time later, he shut his eyes and leaned his face into his hand. "If you still want me to," he said, "I'll tell you what happened."
I managed not to sigh with relief. "Thank you."
"I mean, you've got to tell me things, too. Like how you wound up here. And how you wound up married to a man older than Dad."
"He's a year younger than Dad. And when we had both lost almost everything else and everyone else, we found each other. Laugh if you want to, but we were damned lucky."
"I'm not laughing. I found good people too, at first. Or rather, they found me."
I sat down opposite him, and waited. For a time, he stared at the wall, at nothing, at the past
"Everything was burning on that last night," he said. His voice was low and even. "There was so much shooting………Hordes of bald, painted people, mostly kids, had rammed their damned truck through our gate. They were everywhere. And they had their fun with Ben and Greg and Mama and me. In all the confusion, Lauren, we didn't even know you were gone until we had almost reached the gate. Then a blue-painted guy grabbed Ben—-just snatched him and tried to run off with him. I was too small to do any good fighting him one-on-one, but I was fast. I ran after him and tackled him. I might not have been able to bring him down by myself, but Mama jumped on him too. We dragged him down, and when he fell, he hit his head on the concrete and he dropped Ben. Mama grabbed Ben and I grabbed Greg. Greg had hurt his foot—stepped on a rock and twisted it—while we were running.
"This time, we made it out through the wrecked gate. I didn't know where we were going. I was just following Mama, and we were both looking around for you." He paused. "What happened to you?"
"I saw someone get shot," I said, remembering, shuddering with the memory. "I shared the pain of the gunshot, got caught up in the death. Then when I could get up, I found a gun. I took it from the hand of someone who was dead. That was good because a moment later, one of the paints grabbed me, and I had to shoot him. I shared his death, and in the confusion of that, I lost track of you guys and of time. When I could, I ran out of the gate and spent the rest of the night a few blocks north of our neighborhood huddling in someone's half-burned garage. The next day I came back looking for you. That's when I found Harry and Zahra. We were all pretty beaten up. Zahra told me you guys were dead."