12

 

The rain kept coming down. The first night, the sound of rain against canvas was gentle, and it lulled me to sleep. Now, after three days of steady rain, it was just driving me crazy. My mother had rigged a tarp to three trees to make a roof so that we had a place to stand and a place to cook. It was drier, but not dry. As soon as the wind came up it blew spray underneath. Thank goodness there was rain gear in with our camping gear. It didn’t keep you completely dry, but damp was better than wet.

I put my book aside. I’d read it three times. It wasn’t even a good book, but it was the only one I had. I’d noticed a wall of bookshelves at Chris’s cottage. I’d have to ask her if I could borrow a book or two. I was sure she’d lend them to me. After all, she had already given us some cheese, a big container sloshing with goat’s milk, and four big packages of seeds.

My mother had taken advantage of a break in the rain to use our camping shovel to plant the seeds. She’d chosen a spot in the middle of the island, surrounded by bushes but open enough to get sunlight—assuming the sun was ever going to shine again. It was important to plant the seeds in a place where nobody else could see them, since there was no point in growing food that somebody else was going to harvest and eat.

I didn’t expect the seeds to shoot up but I checked on them each day, just because what else was there to do? So far there was nothing to see but tilled black earth. At least it looked like good soil. How long would it take for them to grow? Would we really still be out here by then? Was it possible this—whatever it was—was going to last that long? And what if it lasted longer? It wasn’t like we could live in a tent through the winter…could we? I tried to put that thought out of my mind. Winter was still seven months away, and there was enough to worry about today without worrying about the future.

I crawled out of the tent and found my mother and brother sitting on flat rocks at the edge of the fire. There were a couple of shoes strategically hung above the fire to dry out.

“We’re almost out of dry wood,” my mother noted.

“We’ve used up most of the windfall on the entire island. We’re going to either have to go off the island to gather more or think about breaking or cutting branches,” I said.

“Emma, we’re not cutting much with our little hatchet,” she said.

It was the companion to our camping shovel and it was small. At least it was sharp. Mom had shown us how to sharpen the edge on a rock, and Ethan had been good about doing that.

“Maybe Chris could lend us an ax,” I suggested. “And maybe some books. I’d like some books.”

“I don’t care about books,” Ethan said. “I’d like to be dry. We could get out of the rain there.”

“I was thinking we could drop in for a visit, but not today.”

“So we’re just going to sit here in the rain today?”

“We’re not in the rain. We’re under a tarp,” she said.

I sat down on the third of the rocks that surrounded the little fire. The warmth felt good. As I sat down, Ethan got up. I could understand him wanting a little space. Living in a tent with your mother and sister wasn’t anybody’s idea of fun.

“I think it’s almost stopped raining,” he said. He was standing at the edge of the tarp, his hand out. “Maybe I should go fishing.”

“I’m not sure how we’d be getting along without you,” my mother said. “But be careful.”

“I’m bigger than all the fish I might catch,” he said as he grabbed his rod.

“You know what I mean. Stay alert, and get out of sight and into the bushes if anybody comes.”

He nodded and started off.

“Ethan!” I called out, and he turned around. “You really are making a difference, you know, you’re helping us a lot.”

He smirked. “Now I’m worried. Things must be really bad when you start being nice to me.”

“Then I’ll stop. I hope you fall in the lagoon.”

“That’s better.” He turned and was gone.

I was happy it was just me and my mom for a while. I had things to ask her that I didn’t think I should ask when he was around.

“I’ve been wondering. You asked Sam how much ammunition he has. How much do we have?”

“I have four clips.”

“So you have sixty bullets,” I said.

She looked surprised that I knew that.

“I’m a Marine kid. I know the Beretta M9 holds fifteen bullets per magazine.”

“That’s a lot of bullets,” she said.

Or not nearly enough, I thought but didn’t say.

“Have you given any thought to us going to Ward’s Island? I mean to live there?” I asked.

“I’ve thought about it, but nobody has invited us.”

“We could ask them if we could join. You did help them,” I said.

“Judging from the looks I got from some of those people, they didn’t appreciate my help, or even understand that anything was wrong.”

“How could they not know there was a problem?”

“People have a powerful ability to deny what they don’t want to deal with. Let me give you an example. During one of my last shifts in the ER, a woman came in with her daughter, who was about your age. They told the triage nurse that her daughter had abdominal pain.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, it was pretty clear to everybody that the daughter was pregnant, and the abdominal pain was probably the beginning of labor.”

“But what’s obvious to a nurse may not be to other people. I don’t know if I’d know somebody was in labor,” I said.

“But you would know she was pregnant just by looking at her. Neither the mother or the daughter seemed to know.”

“Come on, they had to know.”

“They claimed they didn’t, and judging from the reaction of the mother when I told her that her daughter was fine and that she was going to be a grandmother, I’m positive she didn’t know,” my mother said. “And strangest of all, that was the third time in my nursing career I’ve had the same thing happen.”

“That’s almost impossible to believe.”

“People don’t see what they don’t want to see. It’s part of human nature.”

“So you’re saying that the people on Ward’s Island don’t know they’re pregnant, right?”

She laughed. “In a roundabout way. I think some of those people will deny that anything might happen because they’re afraid of what could happen.”

“But ignoring or denying it won’t stop it from happening,” I said.

“In fact, it makes it more likely to happen. Have you ever heard that timing is everything?”

“Of course.”

“I think we’re going to have to wait until something happens before we ask them, or they ask us, to be part of things. We just have to hope it isn’t too bad.”

I was going to answer when we heard my brother scream.