“I know,” I said softly. The outside sounds flooded in. The boys were running around in the woods, their voices livened by a game of tag. “Caleb mentioned . . .” I looked out the window but he wasn’t there, only darkness.
Leif ran his fingers along the piano, tracing the grain of the wood. “Asher. It’s been so long since I spoke his name,” he said, almost to himself. “Our mother used to play the piano for us. I remember being under the dining room table with him, watching our father’s feet hanging over the couch as he read his books, and my mother pressing on those pedals. We’d take our plastic tanks and trucks and we’d battle with each other as she played.” He pinched the tab of the can, moving it back and forth.
“Do you ever think of that, what it was like before the plague?” he said.
I could barely swallow. I remembered the way my mother and I held hands, wrapping my palm around her pinky finger as she took me through the aisles of the supermarket. How she kissed the soles of my feet, or how I sat in her closet while she changed, hiding among the dresses and pants, which held the lovely smell of her.
“Yes,” I said. “Sometimes.” All the time, I thought. All the time.
Leif pressed his lips together, as if considering what I’d said. His fingers wandered around on the keys, playing the occasional note. “Da dum dum dum,” he sang slowly, tentatively. A few more notes escaped, creating a familiar string of melody. “Do you know that song?” he asked, turning toward me.
“Pachelbel’s Canon,” I said as I pressed down on the first notes. It was still recognizable, even out of tune. “I learned it in School.”
“That’s the song she always played.” He smiled at the wall but it was clear he was looking through it, at a different scene altogether.
I kept playing, leaning forward, letting the song evolve from one melody to the next. I felt the accumulation of the past hours, now a thick melancholy that polluted everything. Watching Caleb come up the shore, the quiet of the room as our lips touched, his heartbeat through his shirt, that dance. Everything was different now, colored in a different light. I wouldn’t be with him. In the dugout or elsewhere. Arden and I would leave soon, maybe tomorrow. It would all come to an end.
What did I get out of it? Teacher Agnes had asked, to no one in particular. What was the point of it all?
Chapter Twenty-one
THE STOREHOUSE WAS QUIET. LIGHT CAME IN THROUGH the windows, casting shadows on the shelves, stacked with old blankets and medical supplies. The containers of fuel filled the room with the sickening stink of gasoline. We had camped out for the night, the boys collapsing in heaps on the downstairs floor. Arden slept in the room next door.
I shifted, turned over, pounded at my makeshift bed of quilts and lumpy pillows, unable to stop thinking about Caleb. Our conversation, his retreat to the porch. After leaving Leif on the piano bench, his hand squeezing mine in thanks, I’d found Arden outside near the pool. As the boys slowed, overcome by the haze of the beer and sugar, Caleb watched me from a distance, never saying anything. When Arden pulled me upstairs, layering the wood planks with pillows and urging me to rest, I couldn’t. Even now.
Hours had passed. Outside, the only sound was the wind in the trees, the occasional snap of a branch. I wondered if I had been wrong. The reaction a reflex, like those physicals at School, my leg jerking out when I felt the doctor’s hammer on my knee. He had said something about my safety. He had said something about him caring. Then I had yelled, pushed him away. What would have happened if he had continued? I was replaying it, imagining his face, when the door opened and a figure appeared behind the wood shelves.
“Eve?”
“Caleb?” I asked, sitting up.
He stumbled and several boxes hit the ground. He crept forward, turning past the corner, kneeling onto the edge of my bed. Then he reached for my hand.
“About before . . .” I started. The silence swelled between us.
His hand squeezed my hand. Then, in a moment, he was right there, his lips against mine. I leaned in but there was no soft give, only urgency. He pushed forward, forcing my head back. I opened my eyes. I could barely make out his face in the moonlight, squeezed in concentration. His palms were rough against my skin. Everything felt strange, terrible—wrong.
I reached up, trying to ease him off when I felt the thick bun nestled at the nape of his neck. “No!” I yelled, pulling my face away. “No!” But Leif pushed forward, settling his body on the floor beside me, the wood groaning under his weight.
His mouth covered my lips. I could taste the bitter rot of alcohol on his tongue. He ran his hands over my shoulders and down my arms. I tried to scream again, but his mouth was over mine. No sound escaped.