Cam hadn’t said anything. She didn’t think he would push. Maybe he even believed she was unaware of his feelings. He must be painfully self-conscious, wrapped in his scars, and he was often quiet with her. Shy. They didn’t need the distraction, this little spark growing between them.
Just by itself, the long walk was too much. The two of them weren’t enough people to watch Newcombe and still look out for bugs and other hazards, watch their maps and compass, ‚nd water, ‚nd food, make camp. They’d had to talk it out with Newcombe and ultimately they’d had to trust him. He didn’t have any great options, either. What could he do? Wrestle with Cam to get his ri†e back, then shoot Cam and keep Ruth as a prisoner, tying her legs to keep her from running?
In this at least she and Cam had the upper hand. In camp they always lay down close together. Two would be harder to overpower than one, but the implications of bedding down side by side were only deepening that particular trouble. In the cool spring nights, Cam was warm. Even wrapped up in his gloves and jacket, he was much softer than the ground. Last night Ruth had burrowed against him, knowing she was wrong to encourage him but unable to forsake the basic comfort of it.
* * * *
Of everyone who’d been a part of her life, Ruth missed her step-brother most of all. Not her parents, not her few close friends. Ari had always been her favorite distraction. They still had yet to resolve their relationship and never would, not with him killed or, less likely, lost among the scattered refugees. He was the perfect memory, good and strong. He was safe. She recognized that. Even the cruel things he’d done were part of the easier world before the plague. He’d hurt her badly, in fact, because he was never quite in reach. Legally they were family and they’d been scared of what people would think. So he’d left her. Twice. A third time, she had been the one to call things off. It was messy. It was intense.
Ruth Ann Goldman had been an only child. Probably that was for the best. Her father was an independent software programmer/analyst, brilliant at his work and in high demand. He had few hours for his daughter and less for his wife. That he could have hired on with one company and settled into a steady nine-to-‚ve, yet chose not to, wasn’t something Ruth understood until much later. She was a loud girl, antic and capering, hungry for approval at home and therefore everywhere else — in school, with her peers.
After the divorce her mother found a better man, not so driven. Her step-father was a lot like her dad, enthusiastic and smart. He was more disciplined in giving of himself, however, more appreciative, having lost his ‚rst wife to cancer.
It wasn’t the Brady Bunch, no matter how many times her mother made that idiotic joke. Ruth shared a bathroom with Susan and Ari, which was both excruciating and thrilling for a thirteen-year-old who had always had a toilet and a shower to herself. The Cohen kids were casual about busting in on each other wearing only underwear or a towel. There were glimpses of skin and slammed doors and apologies, and it was all very dramatic. Both of them were older than Ruth, Susan by four years, Ari by two, and they were always running around getting ready for dates or, in Ari’s case, cleaning up after baseball and basketball. Ruth managed to get in the way often enough.
If love is indeed just chemistry, it shouldn’t have shocked anyone that step-brother and sister ended up together. His dad and her mom made a good ‚t. There was an echo of that attraction in the next generation and they circled each other for years, Ruth pushing him back with sarcasm and drawing him close in a thousand ways, teasing him and herself by asking about his girlfriends, by †aunting around the house in her pajamas, by sitting with him and his math homework — a low-charge erotic tension much like she would develop with Nikola Ulinov nearly two decades later. Alone in the house, they wrestled for possession of the TV remote, and they played dunk wars in the community pool in front of everyone, smooth skin on wet skin.
Ari was popular and athletic. Ruth was more on the outside of the social scene, a brain. She had a decent body and great hair but a face that looked like she’d borrowed an adult’s nose and ears.
They ‚rst kissed when she was seventeen and still a virgin, after she came home unhappy after a bad time at a school dance. The boy she liked hadn’t been interested in her. Maybe Ari took advantage of that. Maybe she let him. He touched her through her clothes and she grabbed him once. But it was awkward the next day. Confusion drove them apart and silence ‚lled their friendship. Fortunately, Ari went off to college. They only saw each other over holiday breaks and the next summer, after which Ruth left home herself for Cincinnati U. Then he had a serious girlfriend. Then she had her ‚rst internship.
Ruth was more experienced when they both came home for Hanukkah the year she was twenty-one. She made eyes at him over dinner and across the living room while the family watched TV. After the house had settled down for the night, she left her light on, pretending to read a book. He rapped quietly on her bedroom door and it was exciting and nice and romantic as hell.
Things went on like that for years, stealing an afternoon or a few nights together. They certainly could have tried harder to make a relationship of it, but Ruth was too busy and Ari never had any trouble talking other women into bed, which †ustered her.
It was that unsettled karma that kept him in her heart.
Most of what Ruth knew and believed about religion, she’d learned from her step-father. She had hardly grown up Orthodox, eating tasty animal by-products on pizza with her friends, her dad banging away on his computer on the Sabbath, but this part of her life underwent a change after her mother remarried. Ari often had games on Saturdays and her step-father happily drove the family to attend, and yet the Cohens disdained pig meat as proscribed. They also made some effort to avoid work and to leave the TV off on the Sabbath. Her step-father’s faith was less a matter of worship than a practiced respect for all things. If pressed, he could boil it down to one cliché not typically perceived as Jewish. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It wasn’t scienti‚c or even particularly logical, given human nature, but it had balance and it appealed to her.
Ruth had been a child at ‚rst with Ari, and later she had been sel‚sh. She couldn’t afford to make that mistake again.
* * * *
The fact of the matter was that Ruth had gone out of her way to grab a box of condoms from a Walgreens while the men were three aisles over in the canned-foods section, wondering what the hell she was going to say if they caught her. Because I have to. Even if she said no, Cam might say yes, and her choices were limited. She’d encouraged him.
She resented him. Sometimes it was no fun being a woman, being smaller, being alone.
As she followed Cam past a dented van, Ruth willed herself not to ask him for a rest. More and more, she was afraid of appearing weak. She reached for the vehicle’s side mirror to balance herself, glancing up to regard Cam’s back. Then she reeled away from the broken skull pressed against the glass, its teeth smashed into an everlasting scream.
Ruth felt her doubt swelling, and new shame. Try not to think about it. Unfortunately her body hurt in too many places to ignore, and where she didn’t hurt she itched. She didn’t understand how Cam could get up and keep moving every day.
Don’t think. That’s the trick. Don’t think.
There were too many decisions to make among the cars. Cam stepped over a skeleton, but she had to walk around. Then he backtracked from several vehicles crammed together into a dead end, whereas Ruth was far enough behind that she could shortcut to his new path.