“I always do,” he said, patting the gun’s stock.
Violet was struck first by the barnyard smell of the storage shed’s interior. The five remaining hostages looked up and just as quickly looked away, as if her face were a cause of shame in them. Except for the very pretty one, the one who’d caught the knapsack Violet dropped the day they had taken the OLE campers hostage. This one looked at Violet, then the food, then at Violet again. “Need help?” she asked, careful not to leap to a sudden stand as Cedric had done. He was standing in the doorway now, gun pointed into the room.
“You can clear a space on the table there,” Violet said. “I’ve got to see how you’re doing on water.”
“Less than a few liters left,” the tall, muscular one said dully.
She looked herself just to be sure. There were maybe a couple of centimeters of liquid at the bottom of the insulated jug. “I’ll send Vic over here,” she said—more to Cedric than to the hostages. She unpacked the crate—biscuits, a chipped set of dishes and mismatched forks, the ceramic crock, its glass lid beaded with condensation—and loaded the dirty bowls and spoons from breakfast. “The bread’s all you get today. Save some if you think you’ll want it with supper.”
Only the pretty one—Edie—seemed to be listening to her. The others were lining up at the table, using their forks to transfer, slowly and awkwardly, beans and potatoes to their plates. This wasn’t the staring Violet had become so accustomed to over the course of her life, though. It was curious, and frank, but the curiosity penetrated her scars. And then Violet realized a strange thing. Edie wondered about her. Her motives. Most people turned not just their eyes away from Violet but their minds; their curiosity only extended as far as, How did that happen to her? This deeper consideration was new, uncomfortable, inconvenient. It was also such a relief that she wanted to cry.
This was the one. If Violet were to go through with this, Edie was the one.
At the door, she said to Cedric, “If you see Vic before I do, tell her I’ll deliver dinner tonight, too.”
“Got it,” Cedric said. He squeezed the padlock closed, barred the door, and removed the paperback from his pocket. “See you then.”
—
Roz was outside with the princes when Violet approached the house. She had a hank of rope that the dogs took turns tugging, both of them growling softly with excitement, and Roz barked laughter, transferred the grip end to Tauntaun, and let them wrestle each other. “Vi,” she said. She beckoned roughly with her now-free hand and drew Violet into a fast hug, pounding her twice on the back, firmly, and smacking the side of her head with a kiss. “You’ll make your mother’s day.”
“I can’t stay long,” Violet said awkwardly.
“Oh, sure. We understand. Just do what you can do.”
She hadn’t grown up in this house—Violet was in her teens by the time June and their small group had settled what would become Ruby City, and the house was built another year after that—but it was as close to a home as she’d ever known. It was small, plain, but cozy: the front door faced a staircase that went up to a half floor; this is where Violet used to sleep. A door to the right of the entry went to June and Roz’s bedroom; and the great front room, as they always called it, with its fireplace and three south-facing windows, was to the left. The kitchen took up the house’s back half, and a porch off the back of the kitchen faced Piney Gap Branch, which made a pretty racket after a good rainfall. Violet, when she was sixteen or seventeen, had dragged a fallen tree over to traverse the branch, and she’d spent more hours than she cared to count now sitting on it, legs straddling a knot that was shaped a bit like a saddle horn, letting her bare toes graze the water’s surface and dreaming hopeless dreams about love and romance, the miracle surgery that would fix her face, or the boy who’d want her exactly how she was, and she’d thought about sex, felt the same confused stirrings as the procession of oversexed kids in the bunkhouse felt but no way to satisfy them. Or not the ways she wanted.
June, through all of this, was a force—a strong and tireless leader, selfless to a fault, visionary, brilliant, intense; when she loved, she loved fiercely, and only Violet and Roz lived behind the protective barrier of June’s devotion, and that barrier sometimes felt more like a holding cell. For Violet, at least. How did you thwart the will of the person who had gathered you up from where you had been abandoned to die and accepted you as her own, in a world of people who regarded you as monstrous, disposable? How did you rebel against that person? How could you bring yourself to disappoint her? The answer, most of the time, was that you didn’t. Violet had chosen two battles: moving out of this house and down to the bunkhouse was one. The other, sixteen years ago, was when she ran away back to Flat Rock for two weeks to kill Fat Daddy and Big Mama.
Violet found June in the great front room. She had been dozing in the rocking chair and startled when Roz let the door bang shut. “Oh,” she gasped, sitting up straight and widening her eyes, then rubbing her face briskly. “You scared me half to death.”
“It’s lunchtime,” Violet said, taking a seat on the big old sofa with its tattered upholstery and blown springs. She remembered the day it had come in on a scavenging trip. I’ll take it if no one else’s interested, June had quickly said, and of course no one had expressed their interest after that. “What are you doing sleeping?”
“The usual. Up late worrying. And my sciatica’s been bothering me.”
“She don’t do her exercises like she’s supposed to,” Roz said. She’d gone to the kitchen, and she came back with the teakettle in hand. “You going to want some, Vi?”
“No,” Violet said. “Thanks,” she remembered to add.
“Lunch? We’re having cheese sandwiches.”
Violet thought about it. “Just the bread. And some water.”
“Ask her if she wants one of the cookies Loti made,” June said.
Roz threw June an exasperated but amused look and turned her head pointedly at Violet. “Do you want one of the cookies Loti made?”
“Sure,” Violet said. “Two of them.”
“And the bread, too?”
“Yes,” Violet said.
June was rocking now and kneading her palm into her hip. “What a lunch. Bread and cookies. I hope you still brush your teeth morning and night, Violet. The last thing you need on top of everything else is an infection in your mouth.”
“I know,” Violet said. “You’ve said that before.”
“I’ve said it a million times. It’s still true.”
Violet shrugged and scraped her thumbnails against each other.
“I don’t know how you’re supposed to get over a nutritional deficiency when you just eat bread and cookies for lunch.”
“The cookies were your idea,” Violet said.
“I guess it’s better than nothing.” June stopped rocking and peered at Violet. “Are you sick?”