Drown #7.5: welcome home

June 2085 — Stephanie Nova and Justin Kim are 25, Jeremiah Day is 28, Willow is 3, Lily is 2. Keri Riley is 24. Lucy Harris is 19, Violet Deppiesse is 55.

* I am done photoshopping toddlers, but I still need the girls to be part of this story if I'm going to finish it. You'll all just have to imagine that the girls are smaller than they look.

Jeremiah's next call came in the morning. In the daylight now, everything seemed lighter and less scary. The girls were awake and running between rooms in the hallway, singing and laughing. Maybe it was just the dark that made things scarier, all the shadows, all the unknown. Or Jeremiah seemed happier today, at least.

"You thought I was mad at you last night? Not at all. You’re being dramatic, Stephanie. You’re always such a downer, always picking out the worst in everything, mountains out of molehills."

You didn't see what you thought you saw. 

"I don’t do that," Stephanie said.

"Sure you do," he said. "But I’m sorry I called so late, that must have been very disorienting. I just couldn’t wait to hear your voice. I couldn’t wait another minute."

"I understand. It’s okay."

"Here, I’m texting you a photo."

"I won it in a card game, tell Willow I’ll bring it home for her. I’d send it down now, but they’re not even letting mail through."

"That’s nice," Stephanie said. "She’ll love it."

They talked for a while longer, and it wasn't unpleasant.

Stephanie's bedroom door wasn't closed, and finally the girls burst into the room after they'd finished bursting into all of the other rooms and jumping on all of the beds. Lily said, "Hello, hello," seeing the phone in Stephanie’s hand and thinking it was her mother.

Jeremiah asked, "Was that Willow?"

"No, that one was Lily," Stephanie said.

"You're still watching Lily?"

"Yeah, and another little boy. For now, at least. One of my other kids stopped coming once the things got here."

"So Justin must drop her off and pick her up every day?"

"Uh, yeah," Stephanie said, feeling flustered, like she should have seen this conversation turning before it did. It was a lie, Lily didn't get picked up or taken anywhere because she lived here now, and so did Justin. But Stephanie couldn't think straight because the girls were singing a song on both sides of her.

"It’s funny to hear that," Jeremiah said. "You haven't mentioned Justin at all in almost two years."

Stephanie let out a desperate laugh. "What? That can’t be right. I'm sure I have."

"No, Stephanie, you haven’t. Not since November of 2083, right before your birthday. I asked how he and Keri were holding up to the separation, and you said, 'It's been rough.' Since then, not even once."

Every pore in her body started to sweat all at once. "Oh… well… he’s fine, he works a lot. What’s there to mention?"

Jeremiah didn’t say anything back and the silence was prickly and intense.

"You know what," she said, "let me put Willow on. She's saying so much now, you'll be amazed. It was so late when you called last night, you didn’t get to talk to her."

Stephanie passed the phone to Willow and took a moment to gather her senses. How could she keep doing this? She hated lying and she was terrible at it, too. But how could she tell him the truth now, of all times, when everything was so precarious?

After a minute or two, she tuned back into Willow's side of their conversation which, so far, had been little more than, uh huh, no, giggle, uh huh.

"Willow, I know you have more than two words to say to your daddy. Why don’t you tell him about your gymnastics?"

Willow started to talk in actual sentences then. About gymnastics, about toys, a joke about bananas, and then, “Mama went fall down ousside. Uh huh. Uh huh. Me, Papa, Lily, Jussin. Uh huh. Uh huh.”

And then Stephanie realized that she had no idea what Jeremiah was asking her that Willow had been saying "uh huh" to for the last ten minutes.

"Time to say goodbye now, girlie. I bet your daddy has lots of things to get ready for work."

Stephanie took back the phone and sent Willow out of the room to go play.

"She says the weirdest things sometimes," Stephanie said.

"No, she’s brilliant," Jeremiah said. His voice was cool and calm.

"Everything she said was perfect, just what I needed to hear. She’s so smart, Stephanie. Do you think she gets that from you or from me? Me, probably. You were never really the academic type, were you? But I didn’t do so bad in college, honor roll most of the time. I finished college, at least. I’m not a fool, you know. I was never a fool."

"I never thought you were a fool," Stephanie said.

"Good. I'm glad to hear that. You know, I do have some things to get ready, but we'll talk again soon. I'm so happy to be close again, Stephanie. You have no idea how happy."

When Jeremiah hung up, Stephanie sat stunned in her bedroom for a while trying to decide what exactly had just happened.

***

Keri couldn't pay attention to her Europa transcripts right now because everyone was talking about the chaos happening back home on the ground. On the same street as Keri's big, white, empty house, most of the houses had been broken into and burnt down. Justin had already told her that theirs had been broken into already and most of their stuff was ransacked or gone. It was a good thing they'd never really lived in that house.

General Deppiesse was talking about his brother's house which was just down the street and how his brother's whole family had been run out of it to seek shelter at a shopping mall in town.

"I know where they can go," Keri said.

Everyone looked over, only half surprised that Keri was eavesdropping or that she had an opinion on the matter.

But she had his attention, so she went ahead with it.

"It's my ex-husband and his girlfriend. They take care of people, it's what they do."

Cabe was unsure, which he probably should be. Keri was unsure, too. She hadn't asked Justin at all before she volunteered him and everyone in his household on his behalf, and she also couldn't be sure that she wasn't just doing this to get into General Deppiesse's good graces. But did that mean she shouldn't help these people just because she didn't know where the motive came from? At the end of it all, they needed help and Keri knew who might be able to help them.

"I need to be able to trust them," Cabe said. "How well do you know the parents? How well do you know the girlfriend?"

"I know them. And I know her. She used to be my friend."

Cabe raised an eyebrow. "Used to be?"

"That's my fault," Keri said. "I couldn't deal with it. She would never hurt anyone. She was only ever trying to help."

"You haven't actually asked them yet, have you?"

He was right. So Keri had a phone call to make.

"I need one more favor," Keri said.

"I got everything I could out of the house," Justin said. "Your jewelry was gone."

"Not that. I need you guys to take in some people." Keri corrected herself. "I mean—would you please take in some people? A girl and her mother-in-law, and the girl is pregnant. It’s General Deppiesse’s family and their home got looted and burnt down. They need somewhere to go and not just anywhere. It’s really important that they're safe."

"You're brown-nosing, aren't you?"

"How could you even say that?"

"Because I know you," he said.

"Okay, but they really do need help. They had to split up, because I guess they look kind of odd when they’re all together. Two of them can go stay with cousins in Bluewater, and two more have already gone to Canada because I guess they're draft dodging or something. There's two more that need somewhere to go."

"Why us?"

"Because I know you guys would keep them safe. We can’t trust anyone else. I'll owe you one."

Justin agreed, finally, and Keri felt good about it all. Not because she thought it would get her in anyone's good graces, but just because it felt good to do something nice for somebody.

And she remembered that she still hadn't answered Stephanie's text. It was a short one, just a quick thank you, a couple sentences at most. It was the kind of text that maybe didn't need answering. Keri thought she shouldn't bother, and then changed her mind. Then she figured if she was thinking this hard about it, she should probably send something.

"You're welcome," she wrote.

—

Justin felt bad for even questioning whether they should help these people. He had to pick them up from a group shelter at the shopping mall in town. He drove the two teenage girls out to Bluewater to stay with cousins who had a packed house already, and he took the other two women home with him. There were hundreds of other people there at the shopping mall, some whose houses had burned down and others who couldn't afford to install air filters, but he couldn't take them all even if he wanted to. They already had six people to take care of as it was, and now they would have eight plus one more on the way. At least the mall had food and beds and bathrooms and oxygenated air for the ones that had to be left behind.

And taking in people was not discouraged here. There was safety in numbers. More people meant more guards at the street and more hands working in the gardens. Each family took turns standing guard at the road that led in from the main street. The guard setup was little more sophisticated than an air-conditioned car parked across the only side street that led in, and everyone knew everyone coming in or going out. It did the trick most of the time. People wanting to cause trouble went and caused trouble elsewhere.

"What do we do?" Lucy asked as the guard approached. "Do you know him? Should we smile?"

"Yeah, I know him," Justin said. "We all take turns doing guard duty. That’s Connor, he lives five houses down. You live here now, so just be yourself. Smile if you want to smile."

Justin rolled the window down.

"These women are with us from now on," Justin told Connor.

"Names?"

"Violet Deppiesse and Lucy Harris."

He wrote their names on a clipboard. "Just a quick photo for the roster," Connor said.

Lucy smiled for the photo.

"Nice to meet you both," Connor said.

Then Justin took them home.

It would be a tight squeeze, but it would be better than sleeping on cots at the shopping mall. They put Willow and Lily on inflatable mattresses in the hallway and told them it would be like camping. Then they gave Violet and Lucy the girls' bedroom that still had the old beds Stephanie and her siblings used to sleep on when they were little. They couldn't have a fifty-five year-old woman and a pregnant girl sleeping on inflatable mattresses. 

"Welcome to our home," Stephanie's father said. "We hope you'll be very comfortable here."

"I baked," Stephanie said. "I didn't know if anybody was allergic to nuts, so I just left them out. But I can put some in next time, if you want. You guys can go ahead and have one. I know sometimes I'm shy about taking the first cookie if nobody else is eating, especially in a new place."

"I'll take the first one," Justin said, but it looked like Lucy might beat him to it.

"Thank you so much for taking us in," Violet said.

They sat around the table, eating cookies and getting to know each other.

—

notes: this whole reinforced neighborhood thing is starting to remind me of The Walking Dead, lol! I promise there aren't going to be any zombies in the next chapter. ;)

related outtakes: a very full house