I had a chance here, a chance I hadn’t had before. I had a chance to really say goodbye to one parent where I had not had the chance before. But what could I say? What could I say to a mother that I spent so much of my life resenting and was only beginning to know?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the dirt in front of me. “I’m sorry that we didn’t have more time. I’m sorry that I could not protect you. I wanted so badly to protect you. We were just beginning to know each other again and…and…” I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “I love you, Mom. I love you so much. Say hi to Dad for me, okay? Tell him he owes me some pizza.”
I wasn’t sure how long I stayed there. It could have been five minutes, or it could have been five hours. I just sat there, staring at the grave in front of me, wondering how it was possible that I was now an orphan.
Ash came out, dressed in a dark blue hoodie and jeans with a pair of Caspar’s boots laced tight on his feet. He had a backpack hoisted on one shoulder and his gun strapped to his waist. He was carrying a second backpack in his hands. “I have your stuff. I was sure you would want to change though.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking down at my sweatpants. I didn’t remember putting these on. I raised my eyebrow at Ash. “Did you change me?”
Ash raised his own eyebrows in response as we made our way back to the house. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I shook my head, a small smile at the corner of my lips. We made our way back into my room. I started pulling clothes out of the drawers, reaching for the hem of my shirt. “Turn around,” I told him.
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” he said, a small smirk on his face.
It felt wrong to smile, so incredibly wrong, but sometimes I couldn’t help but smile around him. He made me smile. “Turn around, Ash,” I repeated.
I reached for the hem of my shirt and tossed it across the room. I pulled a white t-shirt out of the pile and wrinkled my nose. It would be dirty in a day. I settled on an olive green shirt instead and yanked it over my head. I grabbed a sturdy pair of dark jeans and slipped them on. I looked around for my boots and found them under the bed. My hair was a tangled mess and I dragged a hairbrush through it before pulling it into my standard ponytail. I looked at myself in the mirror and felt like Katniss for a moment.
Ash came over to sit on the bed, setting my backpack aside. “Where do you want to go?”
I bit my lip, hesitating before turning around to face him. “I was thinking…I was thinking Sanctuary.”
He looked at me for a moment before a smile spread across his lips. “You’re joking, right?” I didn’t answer. “Z, we don’t even know if that’s real.”
I sighed, sitting on the bed next to him. “I know. God, I know. But how can so many believe in this if it didn’t have even an ounce of truth to it?”
“Z,” he said, sounding a little frustrated. “Tons of people think Area 51 is real, right?”
“We don’t know that it isn’t real,” I said weakly.
He sighed, his arm coming out to snag me around the waist. I squeaked but didn’t protest. “I just…I don’t know about this. We’re going off what we heard from Memphis, Julia and Liam.” He said Liam like it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“You just don’t like Liam,” I said, looking up at him.
He avoided my eye contact. “I don’t like anyone who flirts with a girl just days after his fiancé died from a nuclear bomb. And who thinks that this magical place exists.”
“I’m not saying a magical place exists, Ash,” I said, impatient. I brought my knees up to my chest. “But what if a bunch of people are there? What if people went to Colorado to find this place and stayed? What if there’s…something safe out there? It may not be Sanctuary, but it’s something.”
He looked down at me, his blue eyes bright, and ran a hand over my head, his fingers brushing the strands of my ponytail. “You really want to go?” he asked.
I nodded. “I just think…where else do we have to go? What else can we possibly lose? We should try.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” I asked.
He smiled, his lips pressing against my forehead. I felt a shock go through me, and I bit my lip. I was having a hard time adjusting to this new Ash. “Yeah, okay. We’ll go.”
I nodded, leaning into him.
We stayed like this, comfortable in our close proximity for a few moments longer before we both sat up and made our way downstairs. I glanced out the window and thought of something. “Hey, Ash?”
“Yeah?” he said, peeking out of the kitchen.
“We should take the jeep,” I said. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? I walked into the kitchen with him, grabbing the keys off the hook where they had hung for months. I rifled through the junk drawers, looking for the maps my mom kept in there. I found one and took it to the dining room table, unfolding it, tracing the route from Constance to Mesa Verde. “It would take us about 12, maybe 13 hours. Walking…it would take a week, probably more.”
“The jeep,” he repeated. “God, why didn’t I think of it?”