“Colin, you’re not that bad.”
“Nice of you to say, but I’m trying to apologize, for Christ’s sake. I need to.”
“Well, all right, then. I accept. You bastard.”
He laughed. I did, too. I forgot how achy and hungry and fatigued I was. Laughing with Colin was a new experience, and I liked it. A lot. I stepped in a little closer, and Colin put his arm around me, rested his hand at my waist. My arm went around him too.
And Colin kept talking.
“I want you to know something about me, Brigid. About ten years ago, when my daughter, Rebecca, was nine, something went wrong. We took her to our family doctor and then to the best neurologist around. And then to another neurologist in London. That was where we got an explanation for her headaches and seizures.
“Rebecca had a brain tumor in a very bad place. We were told it was inoperable, but I didn’t accept that. Well, why would I? I loved her, dearly. And I had this genius brain and my very talented hands.”
I nodded, and we kept walking north, our own path between the wall and the road. The streaked sky was like sundown over an ocean, or so I imagined it. The waning sun mirrored the sadness in Colin’s voice.
“I looked at her films,” he said. “I consulted with the cowards who refused to do the operation, then I signed the disclaimers and did the operation myself.”
He said, “Rebecca died on the table. It was horrible. I couldn’t bring her back, and, trust me, I did everything imaginable. After that, my wife divorced me. And from that point on, I divorced myself—from feeling anything.”
And then he stepped away from me, shook his head, wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands.
“No excuse for bad manners, Brigid. But there’s the backstory,” he said.
I was looking for the right words to thank him for trusting me, to tell him that I was sorry for what he’d been through. I was forming some questions, too, but I never got the chance to ask them.
Chapter 11
ONE MINUTE, Colin and I were walking along the wall, toward the village. A moment later, trouble sped out of the dark. Tires squealed, and high beams bounced and flashed over the ground. The sound of whooping male voices and bursts of gunfire got louder as the all-terrain vehicle headed directly toward the gate to our settlement.
Which meant that it would drive right past us.
My feet wouldn’t move. I was utterly frozen in the headlights, but Colin, thank God, had wits enough for us both. He pushed me down and fell on top of me so that we were against the wall, faces to the ground. The deadly chattering of gunfire, the war whoops, and the roar of the motor were too close, and too real.
I didn’t think to pray. I was remembering the stacked bodies outside our gates, and then, while bullets pinged into the wall right above my head, my mind was flooded with vivid images of people I would never see again.
The gunfire amped up and seemed to come from all directions. Shouts turned into screams, and then the racing motor struggled, as though the vehicle was trying to get traction in the dirt. Wheels spun furiously, and then, finally, the wheels grabbed the ground, and the vehicle sped back the way it had come.
There was total silence. My eyes were still covered. I was still pinned by Colin’s body, and now I was aware of his breath on my cheek, his elbows in my back, the whole weight of him.
And then he rolled off me.
“Brigid. Say something. Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
He helped me up, and boys from our camp flowed around us, all of them bright eyed and exhilarated.
The one grabbing at my arms was Andrew.
“Did you see? We stopped them. I shot one of them. I shot out the tires, too.”
“Thank you, young men,” Colin said. “You saved us. You saved our arses.”
I was still panting from adrenaline overload, and blood was hammering against my eardrums. Colin was talking to me, but I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.
I looked into his eyes, and he said it again.
“I’m sorry, Brigid. I’m a damned fool for taking you out here. You should get the hell away from me.”
And then he put his arms around me and held me against him from hip to toe and back up to where my cheek rested against his collarbone.
He said, “I’ve wanted to do this from the moment I first saw you.”
I didn’t say it, but I’d had the same thought since the moment I first saw him.
Chapter 12
THE YOUNG men and boys circled back, jumped up and down around us, laughing, one of them, Nadir, shouting out, “Ba-bam. Ba-bam-bam. I got you. I killed you, dead.”
Nadir was about fourteen, spunky and irrepressible, even in a place as hopeless as this. He had befriended the doctors and often went on supply runs to the village with Colin and Jimmy. Now he volunteered to escort us back to the gates.
“Doctors. Stay close to me. Please pick up your feet and keep up.”