Episodul 265 · The Night Before

Bram kept his hand on the counter while Soles explained why they wanted to return to the mill. Krista stood beside Soles with the drawing open. Outside the shop, traffic was moving again after the evacuation van had crossed the bridge.

— Last time you were looking, Bram said.

— This time we mean to close it. We still don’t know whether we can do that safely.

Soles told him about the strands, and about needing Varren’s blade to see them. He said Varren had refused to hand it over. If they fought over it, the people holding the way out could be caught in that too.

Bram took his hand off the counter and wiped it on his apron.

— You want me on the other end of the rope.

— If you’re willing. You can leave if it stops being safe.

— Will you tell me when that is?

Soles thought of the stone ticking above them, just before Tesa’s hand had been crushed, and of the rope running through his palms below it.

— I’ll tell you what I notice. I can’t promise I’ll notice in time.

Bram read the drawing for a long time. His finger followed the line through the mill floor.

— I’ll hold it from the hatch. That’s what I’m agreeing to.

— That’s what I’m asking.

— And if I tell somebody afterward?

The terms on their kitchen wall had an answer for that. Soles could remember agreeing to them.

— You decide what you tell them.

— You can’t promise that for the men across the road.

— No. I can tell them you helped after I told you what could happen. If they want an account, they can have mine as well.

Bram considered that. Soles had wanted to give him something better. The papers across the road already described one version of what had happened at the mill. Adding his name to another would mean staying to answer for it.

— Put your own rope through first, Bram said. I’ll check it before anybody follows.

Krista closed the drawing. Bram came round the counter to help them choose another lamp.

❦

By the following Monday evening, there was a one on their door.

Soles came home from the center carrying the woman’s empty medicine bag. Her husband had stayed. Other people had accepted a ride, looked at the beds and asked to be taken back. The surveyor had reached the van twice and returned to Halloran’s table both times.

They had spent the days carrying what people could not carry, checking who had arrived, going back for those who hadn’t. Meanwhile the warm street had spread toward the bridge. Every morning the man in gray had asked about Varren.

Tomorrow the evacuation period ended. The chief had confirmed the operation; the warning in their report had changed none of its terms. They would go to the mill before the entry teams.

Maxim and Tesa were checking the ropes in the kitchen. Krista waited for Soles upstairs. She had put his clean shirt on the bed beside hers, with the sleeves turned the right way out.

He set the bag by the door.

— He asked whether we could bring his chair tomorrow.

— We can take it with the next load.

The woman had offered to keep the dogs beside their beds while the cohort was at the mill. Maxim would take them over first thing, with the chair. Soles had written Mina’s feeding instructions on the back of the center’s address, then crossed them out and started again.

— She’ll know what to do, Krista said. You’ve told her twice.

— Mina hides the tablets.

— So do you.

He almost smiled. Krista took the bag from beside the door and put the instructions inside it.

Soles sat on the bed. For days he had been moving toward this evening. Now he wanted another load, another trip across the bridge. A fault he knew how to put right.

Krista sat beside him.

— Have you found a way to take it?

He shook his head.

— If he brings it near mine, we can see. That’s the part I can ask him for without lying.

— And if he takes it away again?

— Then I have to decide whether to try.

She pulled the clean shirt closer and smoothed a crease out of it.

— If it becomes a fight, I need you to remember we’re down there too.

— I will.

She looked at him until he stopped treating it as a promise he could make easily.

He remembered the order for a man in a cabin, and how much simpler the world had become when he had decided to finish it. He had done the thing between him and home. Tomorrow he could call it something better and still do the same thing.

— I might see him in the way, Soles said. Instead of seeing you.

Krista’s hand stopped on the shirt.

— Yes. That’s what I’m asking you to watch for.

He wanted her to say she could stop him. She had stopped him before, and knowing she would be there had become another thing he counted on. He could hear what was wrong with that before he asked.

— You shouldn’t have to keep pulling me out, he said.

— Sometimes I will. Sometimes you’ll pull me. I need you to help when I do.

— How?

— Let go when I ask. Before you need another reason.

Soles thought of her notebook waiting while he decided what to tell the detachment. She had left the page open for the answer. She was doing it again now, giving him time to choose instead of choosing for him.

He nodded, and she took his hand.

He reached for her. She came close enough for him to rest his forehead against hers, and stayed there while the first hurried breaths passed.

Downstairs, Tesa asked Maxim whether he intended to put the whole shop on his belt. Something metal landed on the table.

Krista laughed once against Soles’s cheek.

He kissed her, then held her with both arms. She fitted herself against him and pulled his shirt free where it had twisted beneath her hand.

For a while they stayed on the bed with their boots on. When Mina scratched at the door, Soles got up to let her in.

Krista moved the clean clothes before the dog could claim them.