Her shoulders began to shake and Wallis moved to the couch next to her. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, unsure what else to do. She folded herself into his shoulder and Wallis hated himself for noticing the scent of rosemary wafting up from her skin and hair even as he soothed her and murmured that it would be okay.
The funeral came and went and, at last, Wallis and Grace were alone at the graveside while the farmer finished patting the dirt over Graham’s form. His expert fingers poked divots in the soil, seeds were dropped in and the soil smoothed once more. Bees buzzed the whole area, their flights looking somehow lazy and indolent to Wallis. The farmer took a sprinkling hose and went over the area.
Once he spooled the hose away there was nothing more than a small raised lump to note that a body lay there. Wallis knew that the farmers kept track of these things, who was planted where and when it happened, but he didn’t know their method of doing so and as he gently tugged Grace away from the grave, he was extra careful where he placed his feet.
Back in his room, Grace took the same place on the couch she had taken when she broke down before the funeral and Wallis tensed, wondering if it was going to happen again. Though he had been married a long time, he had also been widowed a long time and he felt as rusty as an old bolt when dealing with emotional outpourings.
His wife had not been so demonstrative, not even when she lost pregnancy after pregnancy. He often considered the possibility that her ability to hold in her feelings might be the very reason she had jumped. Wallis knew it was no accidental fall. People don’t accidentally take off their boots and line them up at the rail, tie their wedding ring to the laces and then accidentally fall over the side.
But had it been her inability to show, and thereby share, her grief that had been what took her to that point? He would never know for sure so he didn’t mind Grace’s grief coming out. He was just unsure if he was responding to it correctly.
But he needn’t have worried, it seemed. She sniffled a little and wiped her eyes, but no more than that. He made them tea and sweetened it well with honey. She accepted the battered cup gratefully and with a wan smile that didn’t diminish her fine features at all.
Wallis copied her actions when she breathed in the steam wafting up from the cup, her deep breaths flaring the nostrils of her thin nose. It seemed to soothe her and he was a little surprised to find that it did ease at least some of the tension in his body when he did the same. As he eased back into his chair, she leaned back into the couch and they were silent awhile, each deep in their own thoughts and wrapped in a grief almost too difficult to talk about.
Grace broke the silence first and said, “The tea is good. Thank you. I almost never get to just enjoy a cup anymore.”
“Why’s that?” Wallis asked and wondered if there was some shortage he didn’t know about.
She responded by fluttering a hand near her neck and gave him a pained smile.
“Oh,” he responded. “Do you need something else?” He didn’t know what else to say.
“No. I’m good.” She sipped again and sighed. “Since it started…well…getting bigger, it’s been hard to eat. I mostly drink this concoction made of vegetable juices strained really fine so it will go down. I have to drink so much that I practically slosh when I walk. No room for extra fluids.”
Wallis barked out a laugh that held very little real humor and only after it came out realized how inappropriate it was considering the conversation.
“What?” she asked. She gave him a look like she also thought his laughter inappropriate.
“Graham told me that he avoided getting dosed when he traveled by either bringing water or by drinking vegetable juice.” She looked a bit confused so he explained that farm water wasn’t dosed since it interfered with plant growth.
She nodded then and said, “That must be why he said he was surprised at how sharp I was. Until he told me about the dosing, I thought he was insulting me as a wrench turner or something.”
Wallis shook his head at that. It was typical of Graham to just assume people would understand his good intentions. He never quite understood that not everyone thought like he did.
Grace changed the subject and asked, “What do we do now? We don’t have a lot of time before those others notice he’s gone, do we? I mean the ones that were going to destroy our silo.”
Wallis sighed wearily and replied, “No, I don’t think we do. But I spoke to the people in Silo 40 when I got back last night and they are going to help us figure it out. They’re still there and they are monitoring the situation. So far they haven’t recorded a signal for the remote destruct in their silo coming through the lines they cut, so they are stepping up their game to higher levels to try to get it done. I can’t believe they are willing to risk all this for us.”
He saw the lines in her brow lighten and smooth a little, as if a load were being lifted from her, and her eyes met his with a little less weariness. She said nothing though, just nodded and waited.
“We’ll have to go and shut down the cameras soon. Are you up for that?” he asked her. “The man over in 40, the one who was helping Graham, said that we have to do that as soon as possible. He told me we had to throw something called a smoke down into some hole in IT before we do it. Apparently, we can get it from security in IT and that is what the key is for.”
She raised an eyebrow at that and considered his words before answering. “Maybe to make them think we got terminated by accident or something? Or that we did it ourselves?”
Wallis wasn’t at all sure what the intention was, but that John fellow had seemed sure of himself and Wallis was willing to take direction from any informed source right now. He shrugged and said nothing.
“Tomorrow or today? I’m not really up for another trip down below. It was a fun ride up, considering the circumstances, but whether I take the stairs or the lifts, I don’t think I could do it again today,” Grace said. She sounded almost ashamed, as if it were some weakness.
“Tomorrow. The first thing I’d like to do is go through Graham’s stuff, in all his rooms, and then figure out a way to carry on. I know he had some notion about how to fix our water, at least to some extent, and maybe get the cancers to stop afflicting so many in the future. He said there’s nothing to be done about what’s already happened but that we can help fix the future. Other stuff like that,” Wallis said.
Grace’s hand moved to her neck, to the hard little bulge under the skin and she looked away from him before saying, “That would be good.” She gave a little shake of her head, as if driving away her own concerns, and continued, “We should just go do it. Get it over with. It’s going to be hard for you to do no matter how long you wait.”
Wallis looked down into his murky tea and nodded. He felt so much grief that he was almost numb and he wondered at that. He hadn’t felt this way when his son and then his wife had died. Maybe because he had known it was coming with his son and the blow had come in stages. And maybe because his wife had begun drifting away in her own silent cloud of grief the moment their son was diagnosed, her death had cut less deeply too.
Graham’s death had been so unexpected and on the very edge of new rails that might lead to a whole new life for the silo. Losing Graham had been the last thing he expected and maybe that is why it hurt so very badly. Whatever it was, he supposed Grace was right about how hard it would be. It might be better just to get it over with while he was still partially numb.
He set his cup down on a small table already cluttered with the debris of his increasingly disordered life. It clattered loudly in the silence and Grace looked up at him. He nodded once more and said, “Let’s do this. Let’s see what he left us.”