“Hello, Sara.”
Michael sat up on his bunk as his sister stepped inside. She was carrying a small leather bag. A guard moved in behind her, holding a baton.
“Goddamnit, Michael.” She was standing apart from him.
“I know.” An absurd remark: What did it mean? I know I hurt you? I know how this must look? I know I’m the worst brother in the world?
“I am so … angry at you.”
“You have a right.”
An eyebrow lifted. “That’s all you have to say?”
“How about, I’m sorry.”
“Are you kidding me? You’re sorry?”
“You look well, Sara. I’ve missed you.”
“Don’t even try. And you look like hell.”
“Oh, this is one of my better days.”
“Michael, what are you doing here? I thought I’d never see you again.”
He searched her face. Did she know? “What did Peter tell you?”
“Just that you’d been arrested and you had a gash in your head.” She lifted the bag a little. “I’m here to sew you up.”
“So he didn’t say anything else.”
She made a face of disbelief. “Like what, Michael? That they’ll probably hang you? He didn’t have to.”
“Don’t worry. Nobody’s getting hanged.”
“Twenty-one years, Michael.” Her right hand, the one not holding the bag, was clenched into a fist, as if she might strike him. “Twenty-one years without a message, a letter, nothing. Help me understand this.”
“I can’t explain right now. But you have to know there was a reason.”
“Do you know what I had to do? Do you? Ten years ago, I said, That’s it, he’s never coming back. He might as well be dead. I buried you, Michael. I put you in the ground and forgot about you.”
“I did some awful things, Sara.”
At last the tears came. “I took care of you. I raised you. Did you ever think of that?”
He rose from the bunk. Sara let the bag drop to the floor, raised her fists, and began to pummel his chest. She was crying in earnest now.
“You asshole,” she said.
He pulled her into a tight embrace. She struggled in his arms, then let him hold her. The guard was watching them warily; Michael shot him a look: Back off.
“How could you do this to me?” she sobbed.
“I never wanted to hurt you, Sara.”
“You left me, just like they did. You’re no better than they were.”
“I know.”
“Damn you, Michael, damn you.”
He held her that way for a long time.
“That’s quite a story.”
It was late morning; Peter had cleared the office. He and Apgar were seated at the conference table, waiting for Chase. A short retirement for the man, thought Peter.
“I know it is,” Peter answered.
“Do you believe him?”
“Do you?”
“You’re the one who knows the man.”
“That was twenty years ago.”
Chase appeared in the door. “Peter, what’s going on? Where is everybody? This place is a tomb.” He was dressed in the jeans, work shirt, and heavy boots of the cattleman he had announced his intention to become.
“Have a seat, Ford,” Peter said.
“Will this take long? Olivia’s waiting for me. We’re meeting some people at the bank.”
Peter wondered how many of these conversations he was going to have to have. It was like leading people to the edge of a cliff, showing them the view, and then shoving them off.
“I’m afraid so,” he said.
Alicia saw the first mounds just outside of Fredericksburg—three domes of earth, each the length of a man, bulging from the ground in the shade of pecan tree. Riding on, she came to the outermost farmstead. She dismounted in the packed-dirt yard. No sounds of life reached her from the house. She stepped inside. Furniture overturned, objects strewn about, a rifle on the floor, beds unmade. The inhabitants had been infected as they’d slept; now they slept in the earth, beneath the pecan tree.