28 REGRET
IT WAS TOO COLD TO put her feet in the water, but she sat on a familiar boulder and stared out over the ocean. She didn’t protest when Stefani sat down next to her and put an arm around her. They had been here before, years ago, and she was happy to have her friend with her again.
“I’m sorry . . .” Carlee said when the moon passed behind some clouds, ruining the view.
“For what?” Stefani asked.
“For not telling you about the armies coming, for not telling you about the Apostle chasing us for the last few months until everyone else found out. I wanted to tell you, but Jane wouldn’t allow it.”
“You told me enough. I’m still alive.”
“No, it was wrong of me not to tell you, not to let you know what you were getting yourself into.”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything. I would have stayed with you.”
Stefani’s response sent Carlee into another round of emotion that she couldn’t keep down. She stopped fighting it after a minute and just let it out. Stefani had always been there for her even if she didn’t deserve her loyalty.
“Never again,” Carlee said. “We’ll make decisions together. I won’t hide anything from you.”
“You shouldn’t be worrying about this right now. How about we just grieve for our friends for now, and we worry about other stuff later.”
“I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how not to worry about everything.” It was true—Jane had shielded her from so much thought, decision making, and responsibility over the years, but she was gone now. And Carlee didn’t have a way to let her mind relax.
“You just need to practice.”
“Not now. There’s too much. I just need to . . . I don’t know . . . I need to do something.”
“I’ve never been good at consoling you.”
“I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“That’s one thing you’ll never have to worry about,” Stefani said. “I promise you.”
“You shouldn’t say that. Not after this. It happened again. I promised myself that it never would, but it happened. I had my chance to end it, to not let it happen. I let it happen with Bobby, and I let it happen with Jane. I believed in them so much, it blinded me. I let them down.”
Bobby had been the leader of the vagrants. He was strong, smart, and passionate like no one she had ever met. When he had pressed in an orchid on that day six years ago, she hadn’t realized how dangerous it had been. He’d risked drawing an Apostle down on them simply to make her smile. And smile she had.
It didn’t take much convincing for her to go with him. Her parents were aging, but they lived in a relatively peaceful co-op. There hadn’t been anything for her there. Sure, she had lied to them about who Bobby, Stefani, Yachi, and the rest of the vagrants were, but they had been excited for her to have a chance at a better life. They were old enough to remember how things had once been and knew how awful things had become.
And for a while things had been better. It seemed like a dream now, almost as if there wasn’t a way that life, if even for a short while, had been sweet.
“We all believed in them,” Stefani said. “It happens. We all slip up eventually.”
“The worst part is that it should have been me who stayed behind to help those people. Jane always put our survival first, and I fought her time and again to take risks to help more people. In the end, she stayed to save lives, and I ran. I ran as fast as I could. I didn’t even look back. I flew by the rendezvous point, took one look, and kept running, and I didn’t stop until I hit the coast.”
“And you were right to do it. There was nothing there for us but death.”
“You went back, though. You saved Jeff. And even that was my fault. I shouldn’t have pressed while teaching Jeff. That was so dumb . . .”
“Carl, I love you. You know that. Grieve for the vagrants we lost. Take your time, and mourn them tonight, but if I hear you trying to blame yourself for anything else, I’m going to go back to camp, get my gun, and put you out of your misery. You know I will.”
Carlee didn’t know what to say; however, the tears stopped, and she rested her head on Stefani’s shoulder. It hurt just as much as before, but she was calm enough now to open herself to glimpses. She let her mind wander in other time lines where things were different until she found what she was looking for.
29 ANOTHER LESSON
THE BOAT SENT SPRAYS OF ocean water thirty feet into the air as it buzzed by the coast. It was fast enough that it peeked out in front of the spray, displaying its two huge rail guns. Along the side of the ship, anti-aircraft artillery spun around on swivels, constantly searching for a target. The ship had enough firepower to level an entire city.
Once the sight of the leech would have sent him running, but now he almost dared for the leech to find them. He hadn’t made any progress on pressing. In fact, it had been an extremely frustrating week, but Carlee and Stefani were with him, and he knew it would take more than one leech to kill them.
“It doesn’t see us,” Stefani said from behind her gun. “Probably just patrolling the area.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Jeff said. “If the Apostles are at war again, it would make sense if they were on high alert.”
“Bud has always been paranoid,” Carlee said. “At least since its first temurim brain got crushed.”
“Makes sense when you put it like that,” Jeff said.
“I’m going to go scout a little. See if there’s anything more going on,” Stefani said. She put the gun on her back and trotted off toward camp, where her flight gear rested. “Don’t have any fun without me.”
The leech passed out of sight, leaving tremendous waves washing up on the shore. Carlee leaned back and sighed. For the first few days after being reunited, she had been quite gloomy, but she was finally starting to pick herself up. He was sure that the lessons gave her something else to focus on instead of the past.
“OK, try again,” Carlee said.
“Isn’t the leech still too close?”
“I’m willing to risk it.”
Jeff closed his eyes and started to visualize a blanket where a pile of rocks was stacked not far from him. Carlee liked to spend time by the ocean, so they had settled there for the fruitless lessons of the past week. After a few minutes of concentration, he squinted to see if he had been successful even though he knew his brain would have hurt more if he had pressed.
“What else helped you accomplish it the first time? Perhaps we are missing something key that allows you to press. It’s not uncommon for there to be a personal trick to it.”
“Do you have one?” Jeff asked, opening his eyes.
“I do.” She paused as if deciding whether it was a story she wanted to share. Jeff waited patiently for her decision. “There is a particular reality—or a tree of them, more likely—that I spend a lot of time thinking about. Almost everything that I press comes from there.”
“It’s where Bobby is still alive.”
“Yes, it is,” Carlee whispered.
Jeff inched closer to her.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a spouse.”
Carlee looked away toward the ocean as he spoke.
“He was a good man, and I miss him every minute of every day.”
“I believe it . . . but I’m sure he would be proud of you.”
“I hope he is. But he had different ideas about what we should be doing. He had such a powerful sense of faith, in me, in the future, in everything. I’ve never met anyone like him.”
Jeff suppressed his doubts and slowly moved his arm over her shoulder and rested it around her. He’d never been good at comforting people, and he’d always been worse at trying to woo women.
“If there’s ever anything that I can do—”
Carlee looked down to his hand and then over to him. Her eyes went wide as realization spread over her face.