We hugged some more. And then she came over to my house and helped me and my family pack away our lives for a hasty exit.
Word spread, as it would in a small colony. Friends came by, mine and my parents’, by themselves and in twos and threes. We hugged and laughed and cried and said our good-byes and tried to part well. As the sun started to set Magdy came by, and he and Gretchen and I took a walk to the Gugino homestead, where I knelt and kissed Enzo’s headstone, and said good-bye to him one last time, even as I carried him still in my heart. We walked home and Magdy said his good-bye then, giving me a hug so fierce that I thought it would crack my ribs. And then he did something he’d never done before: gave me a kiss, on my cheek.
“Good-bye, Zo?,” he said.
“Good-bye, Magdy,” I said. “Take care of Gretchen for me.”
“I’ll try,” Magdy said. “But you know how she is.” I smiled at that. Then he went to Gretchen, gave her a hug and a kiss, and left.
And then it was Gretchen and me, packing and talking and cracking each other up through the rest of the night. Eventually Mom and Dad went to sleep but didn’t seem to mind that Gretchen and I went on through the night and straight on until morning.
A group of friends arrived in a Mennonite horse-drawn wagon to carry our things and us to the Conclave shuttle. We started the short journey laughing but got quiet as we came closer to the shuttle. It wasn’t a sad silence; it was a silence you have when you’ve said everything you need to say to another person.
Our friends lifted what we were taking with us into the shuttle; there was a lot we were leaving behind, too bulky to take, that we had given to friends. One by one all my friends gave me hugs and farewells, and dropped away, and then there was just Gretchen and me again.
“You want to come with me?” I asked.
Gretchen laughed. “Someone has to take care of Magdy,” she said. “And Dad. And Roanoke.”
“You always were the organized one,” I said.
“And you were always you,” Gretchen said.
“Someone had to be,” I said. “And anyone else would have messed it up.”
Gretchen gave me another hug. Then she stood back from me. “No good-byes,” she said. “You’re in my heart. Which means you’re not gone.”
“All right,” I said. “No good-byes. I love you, Gretchen.”
“I love you too,” Gretchen said. And then she turned and she walked away, and didn’t look back, although she did stop to give Babar a hug. He slobbered her thoroughly.
And then he came to me, and I led him into the passenger compartment of the shuttle. In time, everyone else came in. John. Jane. Savitri. Hickory. Dickory.
My family.
I looked out the shuttle window at Roanoke, my world, my home. Our home. But our home no longer. I looked at it and the people in it, some of whom I loved and some of whom I lost. Trying to take it all in, to make it a part of me. To make it a part of my story. My tale. To remember it so I can tell the story of my time here, not straight but true, so that anyone who asked me could feel what I felt about my time, on my world.
I sat, and looked, and remembered in the present time.
And when I was sure I had it, I kissed the window and drew the shade.
The engines on the shuttle came to life.
“Here we go,” Dad said.
I smiled and closed my eyes and counted down the seconds until liftoff.
Five. Four. Three. Two.
One.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
At the end of my book The Last Colony, I mentioned that I was likely to step away from the “Old Man’s War” universe for a while, and in particular that I was going to give the characters of John Perry and Jane Sagan a rest, and let them have their “happily ever after.” So, it can be reasonably asked, what is Zoe’s Tale doing here now?