Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(29)

This is what he’s been waiting for. This is what he needs. It’s been a long road, and he wants to lie down, but can’t. Not until he sees her again.

(I never wanted a boy. I only wanted you from the first day. Don’t ever change. I love my little girl. I’m so proud of my little girl.)

His throat hurts. It’s hard to breathe. He wipes his eyes and turns from The Book, from the window, where he can see the last of the Annes and the Dianas and the Gilberts coming home.

He makes his way slowly down the stairs. The kitchen is crowded. Now, instead of raucous noise, he sees only a fullness he is fond of, something that makes him feel less alone. He watches, unobtrusive, as the tumble of boys and girls move about the space – all elbows, all feet – crashing into each other when they don’t mean to and whenever they can.

He pays particular attention to the Annes. For all he knows, one of them could be her.

“Cordelia?” he whispers, whenever one passes close, a whirlwind, orbiting him briefly for half a turn before spinning away again.

None of them answer. The first test failed. He leaves out a dress with puffy sleeves most nights, but none of them gravitate toward it. He watches for the way they do or do not braid their hair.

“Are you okay?” A hand touches his arm.

He looks up, realizing he’s leaning against the wall, sliding down it really, while his breath wheezes. He wipes his eyes – they are rheumy these days, always weepy whether he’s sad or not.

“Fine.” He straightens, trying to see the young woman in front of him. Is she a Diana or an Anne?

“Are you sure? Maybe you better sit down.” She pulls a chair for him. In a moment, she brings him tea.

It tastes like salt. Who knows how it was brewed. He doesn’t ask, only wraps his fingers around the cup, breathes and swallows deep.

She continues to watch him, concerned, chewing her bottom lip. She’s quieter than most. Is that right? Sometimes the memories get muddled and some days he can’t remember what Anne – his Anne – should be.

Amidst the bustle of the kitchen, the flurry of who knows what cooking on the overworked stove in the too-small space, she pulls up another chair beside him and takes his hand. Her fingers squeeze his. They are cold. Or perhaps it is his skin that is cold, the chill transferred to her. She glances around, looking to see whether the others are listening, then whispers conspiratorially to him – her words the only thing he can hear in the din despite their hush.

“You know, I can almost remember the world before the Change,” she says. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you, the things you’ve seen.”

She squeezes his fingers again, flicker-bright. And oh, his heart aches.

“I can almost remember my parents. Cindy and Marlene Bransford. Maybe you knew them?” She pauses a beat, eyes full of hope. He can only swallow around the thickness in his throat. Only shake his head, overwhelmed by… Overwhelmed.

“No, I didn’t think so. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I just wanted to say thank you.” She grips his hand hard now, and he can’t bear to look up to see that she’s sincere. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have had a home if you hadn’t taken me in.”

He doesn’t feel her leave, whirl away in a new orbit, swept away by a fresh tide. When he looks up again, he can’t find her. She’s fallen into the mass of Dianas and Annes and Gilberts, and to him they all look the same.

Shouldn’t he recognize her? Shouldn’t he know her anywhere, no matter what her face or name? They’re kindred spirits after all. Why has she waited so long to take him home?

( The little girl struggles to breathe. Her freckles are so dark against her skin, which has gone so pale, her red hair bright as fire in the sun. He cradles her head, trying to hold it up, as if holding her head above the tide. It killed them, but not by drowning. In slow, insidious ways, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. He’s only a simple farmer, here on vacation. Now he’s trapped, the bridge collapsed under the weight of evacuees – or bombed by the military some say. There are no ferries running from the island to the mainland, not anymore. Private boats all gone already or scuttled, trying to contain a thing that can’t be contained. There’s nowhere to go.

The supplies promised, the medical helicopters come to resupply struggling hospitals or evacuate survivors, he knows they’ll never come. But he can’t tell her this, the girl dying in his arms. She can’t be more than 16. And she reminds him of someone he knew once, a daughter or a niece, he can’t remember, won’t remember, because they’re gone and it hurts too much. He can’t think of anything to say to the girl, anything to comfort her as she gasps for breath, as her lungs collapse, as her body goes into shock, fighting against the sickness in its blood. So he says the first thing that comes to mind, a story he used to read to his niece or his daughter, the girl he can’t bear to remember, when she was a child: Ms. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place…)

One of the Gilberts brings him something to drink. It is like the tea, but thicker, and smells far worse.

“It’s for your joints,” the Gilbert says. “So they’ll hurt less. You shouldn’t push yourself so hard, walking to the shore every day. You know there are enough of us to take care of the food and there hasn’t been a raid in months. You’ve done so much for us, let us take care of you.”