Roxie watched Rebekah from the passenger seat, obviously sensing a change in the mood, but uncertain how to make it better. As rain pounded against the roof of the Jeep, the dog pressed her muzzle into Rebekah’s breast. She looked down at Roxie – at the brown flash of her good eye, at the white dressing on the other – and slid an arm round her, bringing her in closer.
Roxie whimpered a little, then settled.
Once they got back to the store, Rebekah managed to get a fire started outside, under a slant of overhanging roof, using some old wooden fence panels and the Zippo lighter she’d found on the first night. And that evening, she and Roxie ate rabbit.
After almost seven weeks of tinned food and candy bars, it tasted amazing, even if it was tough and overcooked. Skinning the rabbit had been horrible, not because it had made Rebekah squeamish, but because it had taken her so long – yet it was worth it. Again, she divided up the meat, trying to make it stretch for as many days as possible, and managed to supplement it with some marked brown apples: she’d found an old orchard not far from the lighthouse, and although all the trees had largely emptied for winter, and what had fallen had turned to mulch or been eaten by worms, there were enough to fill half a bucket.
As Rebekah sliced some, cutting out the bruises, the brown flesh, insects that had lodged in the skin and the core, she knew that if she’d been at home she would have dumped apples this bad straight into the trash. But here, on the island, they tasted sweet as honey. She’d found a bowl of sorts for Roxie – really just a mesh cover for a fishing bucket – and they ate at the back of the store, on the Main Street sidewalk, both wrapped in blankets.
‘Today was shit,’ she said, rubbing Roxie’s belly, still feeling tearful about the helicopter turning back, ‘but at least the food tastes better.’
Roxie was too busy chewing rabbit to reply.
Rebekah stroked her head and her ears. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘there’s a couple of little girls back in the city who’d love to meet you one day.’ Roxie looked at her, blinked, then Rebekah began to feel the drag of that statement.
Roxie nuzzled her leg.
Her bad eye was still covered with gauze, which she kept trying to shake off, but the swelling was down, and in a day, Rebekah would be able to remove it. She’d had a thorn on her lower eyelid, and the skin around it had blown up, but it was healing. As she continued to stroke Roxie, Rebekah let herself return to her daughters, to hold them in her mind.
‘You’d love my girls, Rox,’ she said, her hand resting on the dog’s head now. ‘Kyra’s almost three, and she’s super-smart. I know I’m biased but it’s true. I mean, she’s her mother’s daughter, what can I say?’ She winked at Roxie. ‘Chloe, she’s a little sweetheart, but she’s going to be boisterous. The day before I got here, you could tell by her face that she was already thinking about escaping the bouncer. It was like she was staring at the living room and saying to herself, “I can cross this. You just watch me.”’ Roxie’s fur beneath her fingertips felt warm, comfortable – reassuring somehow – but, still, a sadness weighed on her as she pictured her daughters. ‘You’re the reason I’m still here, Rox, you know that?’
Roxie looked at her.
‘Have you even got the first idea?’
She blinked, her eye searching Rebekah’s face.
‘I don’t know if I’ll go home alive after this is all over,’ she said, running her hand across Roxie’s belly again, feeling its rise and fall. ‘I don’t know if I’ll even survive until this place reopens. I mean, we’ve got to get through – what? – another three and a half months.’ She blew out a breath, a cloud forming in front of her face. ‘Look how cold it is already. You’re going to have to find a hell of a lot more rabbits if we’re not going to starve.’
She smiled at Roxie.
‘But I know something with absolute certainty. There’s still a chance I’ll get home to my girls alive – and that isn’t anything to do with me.’
Rebekah dropped closer to the dog, sliding an arm around her.
In return, Roxie moved her head to Rebekah’s thigh.
‘It’s all because of you.’