“Why’d you leave?” Fletcher encouraged her.
“Polio,” she said simply, he throat closing entirely over the word and summoning images of Maddy’s contorted body, the haunted look in Carter’s eyes.
“Escaping a sickness, that’s a common story. You leave any behind?”
“Her grandmother and an older man,” Lynn answered. “They had been on vacation from it.”
Lucy’s felt a laugh chasing the tears, and she quickly explained to Fletcher. “Vaccination, she means. Vera and Stebbs were vaccinated against polio.”
Fletcher nodded. “Well, that’s very similar to being on vacation from it, I suppose,” he said, and Lucy giggled, which forced a tear to drop.
Lynn’s eyebrows came together. “What’d I say?”
Fletcher skipped her question to ask another of his own. “Why did you come so far? You’re a long way from home.”
Lynn nodded to Lucy. Whether her reservations about Fletcher were disappearing or she assumed he would finagle the truth out of them eventually, she didn’t know. “We decided to head for California,” she said, the word tripping off her tongue as if the speaking of it could bring it closer.
“California’s a big place. Can you be any more specific?”
“We heard it’s normal there, the kind of normal from before.”
Fletcher shook his head. “Sorry, ladies, but there’s nothing normal about California.”
Panic flared through Lucy’s system and she looked to Lynn, who had fixed Fletcher with a cold stare. “We heard there were some places where they had desalinization plants.” She pronounced the word carefully. “Seems you can get the salt out of seawater if you got the right tools.”
“How determined are you to find such a place?” Fletcher’s tone was suddenly as careful as Lynn’s.
“Very,” Lynn said.
“Enough to leave behind a good site in Nebraska,” Lucy added. “Enough to come this far.”
Fletcher was silent a long while. Lucy was very aware of the horses nickering to one another, the sound of the water tripping over the rocks. When he raised his eyes, he looked to Lynn. “Do you trust me?”
“Not yet.”
“And if I said I knew of someplace for you to go, a safe location with water and good people, what would you say?”
“I’d say I need to sleep on it.”
Hope chased the panic through her body, making Lucy dizzy. “What do you mean?”
Fletcher looked at both of them before answering, studying their faces. “There’s a place similar to what you mentioned—desal plants, safety, a variation of normal.”
“This place, it in California?” Lynn asked.
Fletcher leaned in closer to the two of them and dropped his voice. “It’s called Sand City. They had a desal plant way before the Shortage and a small enough population to take care of themselves. You have to understand the majority of people didn’t think the water situation would prove to be as dire as the predictions, but those with foresight moved to places like Sand City. Out here in the west, water isn’t as easy to come across as it might’ve been for you in Ohio. The few decent people that are left tend to band together for protection.”
“You come across these groups of nice people often?” Lynn sounded skeptical.
“Less and less. But last time I was in Sand City, they were doing fine.”
“You’ve been there?” Lucy was filled with the urge to leap up and touch Fletcher just to be nearer to the idea of California.
“A few times,” Fletcher said. “If you use my name to vouch for you, it’ll gain you a spot there. I’d lead you right up to the gate myself if I could, but I’m headed north after we cross the mountains.”
“We?” Lynn said, though Lucy thought she sounded more amused at Fletcher’s assumptions than annoyed.
“Indeed,” he said. “We’re headed in the same direction. And even though I may not be the most imposing figure, even one man in your group will make the two of you a less desirable target.”
“And you gain what exactly?”
“A good deed done,” he said. “And the full benefit of your whimsical conversation, of course.”
Lynn ignored the joke and looked at Lucy. “What do you think?”
“I like having a name to put to it, a place to go,” Lucy said. “It feels more real, like we’re actually heading for something.”
“And him?”
Lucy looked at Fletcher in the white light of the moon, the easy way he’d propped himself against the saddle on the ground, the innocent look of the pale curls his hat had hidden. But his hands were big, and there was no question he was stronger than both of them together. The road had sculpted him into hard muscle, the lines easily seen beneath the worn fabric of his shirt. Placing their trust in him would be a gamble, and she knew it went against Lynn’s better judgment.
But Lucy had grown up safe and sheltered, and she believed people were good. “I trust him,” she said, holding his gaze.
What she didn’t add was that she’d hold the devil’s hand if he offered to help her over the mountains.
Twenty