But Marjorie moved to the other side of the room, swinging open the doors of a pantry. She pulled off can after can of food, finally removing the middle shelf. “Actually,” she said, pushing a cobweb aside, “here.”
She lit a lantern and shone it into the secret room. Two sets of bunk beds lined the walls and a metal sink sat in the corner. The walls were unfinished dirt, the earth floor covered with a thin gray mat. It reminded me of the mudrooms in the boy’s dugout. “It’s better, in case the troops surprise us in the night. Around the corner, about a hundred yards back, there’s a trapdoor leading into the backyard. There are towels in there, a few changes of clothes, and some shoes as well,” she said, glancing down at our bare, dirty feet.
Arden climbed through the pantry, throwing herself on one of the bottom bunks. “It’s actually pretty big,” she said, as Lark followed her inside.
Lark traded her ripped jumper for a fresh nightgown before collapsing into the mattress, pulling the thin quilt over her legs. She rested her head on the flattened pillow, for the first time seeming calm, her expression softening as she readied for sleep.
My stomach was full from the berries and my heartbeat had slowed into a steady rhythm. We were still on the run, still in danger, but I didn’t feel the same terror in my chest. I looked into Marjorie’s kind, weathered face.
“Go on.” She gestured again to the pantry. The smell of fire clung to her clothes, its scent comforting in its familiarity. “You’ll be safe here—I promise.”
I couldn’t help it any longer. I hugged her, relaxing into the warmth of her body. The Teachers had never touched us, with the exception of a quick hand on the back as they led us to dinner, or a firm tap on the shoulder when our gaze had drifted outside the window during class. I had begged Teacher Agnes once—that first year I was at School—to untangle my hair. I had shrieked, kicked, my tiny arms flailing as I banged the brush on the porcelain sink. She had stood there for over an hour, hands in her pockets, not moving until I worked at the knot myself.
Gradually Marjorie’s arms left her sides and she wrapped them around me, too. My hands pressed against the hard bones in her back, feeling how tiny she was beneath her loose linen shirt. “Thank you,” I said, repeating the phrase over and over, the words growing fainter each time. “Thank you, thank you.”
Chapter Twenty-six
WE AWOKE TO THE SMELL OF BAKED BREAD. “WE HAVE fresh eggs for you girls,” Otis said, pulling out the chairs around the dining room table. I looked at the spread before us, the steaming scrambled eggs, the wild boar meat salted and dried into thin strips, the soft bread on the heated stone of Marjorie’s oven. I smiled, my throat choked again with emotion.
“This looks delicious,” I said. Lark sat down and piled a heaping spoonful onto her plate. She hadn’t bothered changing out of her nightgown.
Arden looked around the room, taking in the front windows, the side windows, and the doors that faced the backyard. The curtains were all drawn tightly shut. “Are they vampires?” she whispered.
Marjorie moved around her kitchen, chopping tomatoes and throwing them into the bowl. I thought again of the chase through the woods, of Fletcher, and the wound that opened in his chest when she shot him.
“Is he still outside?” I asked, keeping my eyes on her.
Marjorie stopped chopping. Then she gestured to the front window with her knife. “Bill and Liza are taking care of him.”
Arden stared at the plate of red meat. “Who are Bill and Liza?”
“Our cats,” Marjorie said. She set the tomatoes down in front of Otis, her hand on his neck.
Lark swallowed, her eyes jumping from Marjorie to Otis and back. “Your cats are taking care of Fletcher?”
Otis nodded, then took another bite of his meat.
I pulled at the curtain on the front window, letting in a thin stream of white light that exposed the dust in the air. A hundred yards off, two mountain lions were tearing at Fletcher’s carcass, their jaws plunging into his bloody flesh. One of the beasts held a hand in its mouth, the gray fingers sticking out between its teeth.
“Best not to go near the window, dear,” Marjorie said, summoning me back to the table. “There’s always the chance the troops are watching.”
Lark chewed on a strip of boar. She eyed Marjorie, then Otis, warily. “So you’re . . . married?”
Marjorie ran her fingers over Otis’s, her eyes dancing in amusement. “I met Otis long before the plague. I was living in New York at the time—”