My fingers tripped, sending the tune flat. I backed up and started again.
“Hey.”
Nat was standing in the open doorway behind me, barefoot in her filthy clothes. Bear left his empty bowl and ran to her, butting her shins with his forehead.
“She doesn’t have any hamburger, buddy.”
Nat lifted him up, setting his forepaws over her shoulder and cradling his bottom with one hand. Bear nuzzled into her neck as she dropped into the chair beside me. Bear adjusted, dropping off her shoulder and curling into her lap. He rooted around in her hand, opening it up and then licking it thoroughly.
Nat stared out at the shifting trees. She looked exhausted. Her face was drained of color and her eyes were deep and shadowed.
“Who are these people?” she asked.
“They’re from California, I think. Their parents sent them here when the war was heating up. Sounds like they even sent a squad of Feds to look after them.”
“Seriously? Fed soldiers?”
“That’s who found us on the mountain. I guess they’ve got their own barracks out there somewhere.”
Nat’s brow furrowed as she turned to look deep into the trees around us.
“You okay? Sorry, that’s a stupid thing to—”
“No,” she said. “It’s all right.” A tired smile rose on her lips. “When they brought us here, that Reese guy patted my back and said, ‘Just remember — everything happens for a reason.’”
“He’s lucky you weren’t armed.”
A puff of a laugh escaped Nat’s lips. It was welcome, but fleeting. She picked up a plastic lighter from the table and turned it in her fingers.
“I keep thinking about that parade,” she said. “You know? The one they used to have at Thanksgiving?”
“Macy’s,” I said. “My parents took us down to see it one year when we were little.”
“You remember how they had those helium-filled balloons? The big ones?” I nodded. “I feel like one of them. Big and empty and just… floating.”
Nat sparked the lighter once, illuminating her face in flames, then tossed it onto the table.
“Me and James had never been away from our parents before,” I said. “So those first few weeks after we were taken, it didn’t even feel real. We kept thinking we’d just wake up one day and everything would be back to normal. Someone would come for us or…” I looked over at her, ashamed. I was saying everything wrong. “I know it’s not the same—”
“No,” she said. “I know what you mean. Does it get better?”
I wanted so badly to tell her that it did, that all it took was time and patience and then everything was okay again, but I couldn’t lie to her.
“You think about it a little less,” I said. “But it’s always there. Eventually you go a day or two without thinking about it, but then you walk by a particular street or hear something familiar…”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re back where you started. And you hate yourself for ever feeling good, because it’s like you’re the one abandoning them.”
“So what do you do? How do you…”
“I wish I knew.”
Nat’s gaze drifted to the table. Bear thrust his nose into the palm of her hand and Nat leaned down until their foreheads touched. She breathed in deep, shaking. I reached out and gently touched her arm.
“I should go in,” she said. “Get something to eat, then go back to sleep.”
Nat lowered Bear to the ground and rose from her chair. She was halfway to the door when I stopped her.
“They have a plane,” I said. “In a couple days they’re taking it and they’re going to New York.”
Nat stood with her back to me, staring at our reflections in the glass door. Bear went to stand beside her.
“Nat?”
“I’m tired,” she said. “I should…”
“The Army won’t take us. You know that.”
Nat started to go, but I slid out of my chair and took her wrist. Her pulse beat a dull rhythm against my palm.
“Cal.”
“There’s nothing we can do here,” I said. “All we can do is get as far away as possible. Ithaca isn’t — maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s better than being here. I know that.”
I slid my hand down her wrist and opened her hand so her fingers were draped across my palm.
“Just come. Okay?”
We were suspended there for a breathless moment and then Nat leaned in toward me. First there was the warmth of her breath on my cheek and then her lips touched mine, once, gently. Then she pulled back again.
I waited for something more but she turned away, striding across the porch and to the door. Bear and I both watched as she slipped into the dark house and vanished.
20
Diane scooted her chair next to mine when I sat down to breakfast the next morning.
“So Kate told me all about you being taken by the Path,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“I just think it’s soooo interesting,” she said. “My father says the way Hill co-opted progressive ideas about economic justice and then mixed them with this kind of pastoral religious fundamentalism was an absolute masterstroke. And you know I don’t believe any of that propaganda about the Choice and killing all those people. I mean, I don’t want them to win or anything, but all that talk is just total religious bigotry. I mean, agree with them or don’t, but they’re people, not monsters. Right?”
Diane waited for a response, but I pretended to be absorbed in digging my fingernail into the rough grain of the tabletop. I was relieved when the rest of the group filed out of their bedrooms and collapsed into chairs around the table.
Everyone’s eyes were half closed, their hair twisted into sleepy tangles. Christos brought coffee in thick earthenware mugs. Kate was at the end of the table. Her dark hair was bound with a paisley bandanna, her cheeks picking up a reddish glow from her rose pajamas. She glanced up at me over the edge of her mug and then quickly looked away. Diane shook her head and laughed softly. When Kate got up to get more coffee, Diane leaned over to whisper in my ear.
“Our Kate gets a little squirrelly when she decides she likes someone. Prepare for rough seas, sailor.”
“What are you talking about?”
Diane patted my arm gently and went back to her drawing. “Don’t worry, love, you’ll figure it out.”
Alec sauntered in, stretching his arms over his head. A slip of belly hung out under a Superman T-shirt. “Well well well,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Sleep okay?”
“I did. Thanks.”
Alec dropped into his place at the head of the table, and Christos pushed a cup of coffee over to him.
“I had a dream that I stepped out onto the stage at Lincoln Center for my very first performance of Hamlet to find that I was not wearing any pants. It was disturbing for all involved.”
Alec took a deep drink of the coffee and then looked over my shoulder. His eyes brightened.
“Well, this must be the reclusive Natalie! Come, join us. Christos, our lady needs coffee! Oh, and Bear’s here too! Bear!”
Bear dashed across the floor and jumped up onto Alec’s leg. Nat hovered awkwardly in the doorway to the dining room. She had transformed since I saw her the night before. The traces of dirt and blood had been scrubbed clean and her hair was washed. She was dressed in a clean pair of corduroy pants and a black T-shirt. Seeing her filled me with a strange sense of weightlessness. I caught her eye and nodded to an empty seat next to me. Nat quietly folded herself into it.