“I came myself, you should know, once or twice. The boys thought your momma was gone, but I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t want to wander too close and find myself in her crosshairs, with no love for me in her heart. Couple nights I stood out by the pond, wondering whether you were inside, hurting or grieving, whether you’d take any comfort from my hand if I came to you.”
“That it?” Lynn asked, her eyes cool behind the barrel. “That’s what you were thinking out there by my pond? Or were you waiting to smell me rotting before you came any closer?”
He ignored her question. “I kept the boys from you too. Roger woulda liked to done more than fire a warning shot at you over that downed tree.”
“Roger’s got bigger worries now.”
“You kill him?”
“Partway.”
His eyes slid shut again, and he stifled a laugh that brought a froth of blood to his lips. “Damn, you’re a cold bitch. Nothin’ but contempt for your own flesh and blood, but you’ll overnight a cripple and snot-nosed kid in the house I made safe for you.”
“It’s mine. Make no mistake.”
“Nothing’s nobody’s out here, little girl. Those that can, take. And there ain’t no justice or higher power to appeal to.”
“’Til now,” she said softly.
His eyes opened, what blood there was left in his body burning in their heat. His lips twisted when he spoke next, the words slurred with angry memories. “And your momma, she set up a lemonade stand after I left, huh? That what she did? Offer comfort and a drink to every poor soul that wandered your way?”
“No, but we never did any taking, either, or hurting for the fun of it.”
One eyebrow twitched in response, but he had nothing to say to that. He rested his eyes for a moment. Fresh blood seeped out between his fingers, dripping from his elbow to the floor, where a small pool had begun to form between his feet.
“You’ve done some low deeds, Father.”
“All’s fair in love and war, my girl. What I had with your mother amounted to about the same thing. Guess it’s down to you and me now, so which is it gonna be?”
“You hoarded water when people were dying of thirst, stole things you didn’t need when you were surrounded by want.”
A slow laugh rumbled through his chest and he opened his eyes to stare her down across the table. “I don’t know that your momma would approve of your soft ways.”
“Maybe not,” Lynn admitted, “but she’d like this next part just fine.”
She shot him neatly in the forehead, leaving behind a black hole that was still smoking when she shut the door behind her.
The frozen ground at the little cemetery beside the stream was stubborn, but Lynn had adrenaline on her side as she hacked out a grave beside Neva. She worked relentlessly, ignoring the steady climb and descent of the sun, focused only on the task at hand. Blisters formed and burst on her hands, pus, followed by blood, flowed down her fingers. She ignored the pain, intent on her digging.
Stebbs had wrapped Eli in a blanket while she was inside with her father, sparing her the sight of his cracked, blackened skin. She lifted the body from the bed of the truck, disgusted by how light it was. She laid him tenderly into the hole in the ground and returned to work, throwing shovelfuls of frozen dirt on top of his body, though she could not get the charred smell out of her nostrils long after he was covered. She toppled the stones she’d stolen from the dam site out of the truck and rolled them over the grave, resting her hand lightly on the last one.
“I’m sorry to be doing this last one alone,” she said. “I’m sorry it’s yours.”
Lynn collapsed onto Neva’s log, staring at the little cemetery while the billowing smoke rose to the south, the ashes of material things and men mixing with a light powdering of snow that dusted her shoulders as she wept.
Epilogue
Lynn climbed the antennae to the roof and stepped over Lucy’s long legs to stand beside her as she surveyed the horizon to the east. “What do you see?”
“Not much going on tonight,” Lucy answered. “Looks like Brad’s cow got out again.”
“Emma’ll give him hell.”
“And he’ll love it,” Lucy added, smiling. She set the binoculars beside her on the shingles. “The new family that came in over to the south—what’s their name?”
“Robinson.”
“Yeah. The Robinsons got a fire going, so the chimney must not’ve been blocked in that old house she picked.”
Lynn picked up the binoculars and looked at the thin column of smoke. “They’re burning dry wood at least. Didn’t figure him for an idiot, being’s as he kept them alive wandering in the winter.”
Lucy shivered against the chill that permeated the air, even though crocuses had begun blooming on the west bank of the stream, over her mother’s grave. “Not sure how he managed, with three children and all.”
“From what we’re hearing, things are bad in the city,” Lynn answered, her mouth tightening. “Man takes it on himself to wander into the wilderness with his family, tells me it’s true.”
“Cholera?”
“Your grandma says it seems so, by the sounds of it. That girl Audra that wandered in last fall? She had stories to tell Vera that made her hair curl.”