He touched her cheek. “I know you didn’t. It’s all right.”
“You don’t blame me?”
“No. If that was her decision, she would’ve found a way eventually.”
Lynn squeezed his hand, then started the truck, a weight sliding from her shoulders with the idea that Neva’s face wasn’t among those she should feel guilty for. “I don’t know how far to go. Vera seemed to think those men cleared out a lot of the houses around here. They picked her up to the west, and their camp is somewhere to the south. We’ll go east for about half an hour and start checking houses.”
Eli watched as the fields and woods flashed by. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”
“Not while I’m driving.”
“You know what I mean. I was standing there when you threatened them.”
“I will kill them, Eli. Now’s not the time, but I will do it.”
“It won’t bring Neva back.”
“I’m not trying to bring her back. They walked into my place and took something from me, and I let them. They’ll do it again and again, for as long as I have something they want. Leaving them alone guarantees my own destruction.”
“Vera said you don’t have anything they want.”
“Today they wanted Neva. Now she’s gone. They could come back for me or decide they want Vera back. And if they knew Stebbs and Lucy could witch—”
“But they don’t.”
“They’ve tried to take the house before, when Mother was still alive. They want it; they just wanted Neva more. The stream won’t flow well forever, and if their whole purpose is to gather things other people need, they’ll come for my pond eventually.”
“So what are you going to do against a camp full of men? You don’t even know how many there are or where they’re at.”
“Vera will know.”
Eli was quiet for a while as he stared outside at the darkness. “Stebbs won’t like it.”
“Stebbs doesn’t run me. Sounds like you’re the one who doesn’t like it.”
“Damn it, Lynn what do you want me to say? Yes, please attack a bunch of angry men who outnumber you and won’t kill you fast?”
“You say what you like,” Lynn said. “I’m trying this one.” She braked and pulled into a driveway on the left, even though they hadn’t been moving for thirty minutes. She didn’t want to fight with Eli, but she wasn’t caving either.
Lynn hailed the house before walking in. “I don’t want to be shot for a burglar after living this long,” she told Eli. There was no answer and they went through the front door. It was obvious the second that they walked in the men had beat them there. The sofa cushions were tossed on the floor; the stuffed furniture had been slashed.
“Why’d they do that?”
“Looking for valuables people would’ve hidden, I guess,” Eli said.
“Anything truly valuable is in the kitchen.”
“Well, it’s empty,” Eli’s voice echoed off the walls in the next room. Lynn followed him to see cupboard doors hanging open. The drawers had been pulled out and dumped onto the floor. The utensils were gone. A few plastic straws rolled on the floor in the wake of her steps.
“Bathroom,” Lynn said, but it was equally bare, except for a toothbrush in the sink whose bristles were splayed and permanently hardened.
“Shit,” Eli said, looking into a cupboard by the shower. “They took everything. There’s not even a washcloth in here.”
The next house was the same, and the one after that. Lynn’s resolve hardened and their conversation stopped entirely as the night wore on. They were nearly two hours from her house when they found a modest Cape Cod tucked behind a copse of trees that had not been rifled.
“Well,” Eli said when they walked into an immaculate living room. “It makes me feel bad to say this about someone who kept such a clean house, but I hope they had an infectious disease and a well-stocked medicine cabinet.”
They skipped the kitchen and went straight to the bathroom.
“Jackpot,” Eli said when he opened a drawer under the sink. Lynn bent down to see rows of orange prescription bottles lined up carefully, with days of the week marked on the white lids.
“Any antibiotics?”
“I only know the names of a few,” he said, holding a handful of bottles in the beam of Lynn’s flashlight. “Here’s one at least—amoxicillin. The others I can only guess at.”
Lynn dumped her empty backpack at his feet. “We’ll take them all, Vera will know what’s what.” They stripped the drawer bare, and checked the rest of the bathroom. They found Band-Aids, gauze, bandages, plus a first aid kit with sample packages of painkillers inside.
The kitchen yielded plenty of canned food, and Lynn took a new pot, a skillet, two plates, and some utensils as well. “Usually I wouldn’t take so much,” she said, somewhat sheepishly. “But I could use a new pan and I keep expecting Lucy to break one of my plates.”