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KATE
“I can’t wait to get these pieces moved downstairs. I want to get the seeds planted within the week.”
I glance up from where I lie on the floor, twirling a tiny Allen wrench between my fingers as I disassemble a bed leg. On the opposite side of the bed, Leo and his nephew, Todd, dismantle the other legs.
Leo has drawn up plans to convert several floors of the Laurel dorm building into an indoor garden. Right now we’re dismantling dorm room furniture to convert into growing beds.
“Marge wants to go on a scavenging mission back into downtown Arcata to hit up the hardware store for canning supplies,” I say.
“We don’t have to rush. We won’t have any food to can for eight to twelve weeks,” Leo replies.
“Marge just likes canning,” Todd adds. “She wants to start teaching the kids how to do it.”
Not for the first time, I find myself grateful for the new additions to Creekside. “You know, the indoor garden was only a vague idea before you guys stepped up to spearhead the project.”
“It’s the least we could do. You took me and my people in when we had nothing. After losing so many back at the condo complex, you gave us a fresh start.” Leo glances at me from beneath the mattress. “Was there a Mr. Kate? Before the apocalypse, I mean?”
I sigh. “Yes. But he died a few years before the apocalypse.”
“I had a fiancé. A step-son.” Leo doesn’t look at me as he finishes his side of the bed. “I tried to get to them. When I heard reports of what was going on, I rushed home from work. By the time I got there ... You know the story. It’s not unique.”
“Doesn’t mean it hurts any less.” I recall the day I arrived home to find my husband dead.
“I just mean I’m not special or unique in my pain. We’ve all lost people.”
“I lost both my parents,” Todd puts in. “My sister was off at college in Washington. If she is alive, I’ll never see her again.”
I think of my College Creek kids, all of them stranded in Arcata with their families lost and scattered. “We have to make new families. It’s the way of things.”
“That’s what Christian says. It’s a good way to look at things now,” Todd says.
“Hey, guys.” Eric strolls in. “Kate, I need you to come look at something.”
A distant part of my brain wonders what he’s doing here. Eric is on scavenging duty with Caleb and Ash. The three of them are supposed to be looking for seeds we can plant in the garden.
“You need me right now?” It’s pretty obvious I’m in the middle of something.
“Yeah, now.” Eric shoves his hands into his pockets.
The young man hasn’t asked anything of me since Lila died. Miraculously, he doesn’t even seem to harbor any ill will toward me. He does, unfortunately, smoke more pot than ever before.
“I found something,” he tells me.
I glance over at Leo and Todd with an apologetic shrug.
Leo waves me off. “The furniture will be waiting for you when you get back.” Then, oddly, he winks at Eric.
I’m not sure what that’s all about. Eric is already slinking out of the room, hands in his pockets. I sigh and pad after him. Time is valuable, especially as the days are getting shorter as we head into fall.
I follow Eric out of Fern dorm and back in the direction of Creekside. We pass Margie and the two kids as they return from a trip to the nearby creek to gather water. With them are Reed and Stacy. The adults all lug giant five-gallon buckets. The kids carry gallon jugs, one in each hand. They strain under the weight, but neither of them complains.
“You’re going to make them do fractions?” Reed asks. “With buckets of water?”
“Let me guess,” Margie says dryly. “You weren’t much of a math fan when you were in school.”
“I’m not a math fan out of school.”
“There’s no better way to teach fractions than with water and various container sizes,” Margie says. “It’s the best way to get kids to visualize the concept. Granted, I used to use measuring cups and water from the tap, but buckets and jugs and creek water will function the same.”
Eric and I leave them behind and head into Creekside. Once upstairs, Eric leads me to the dorm room he used to share with Lila.
I pause just inside the door. Lila’s pink-and-yellow flowered blanket has been straightened, the decorator pillows in place.
Eric makes it a point to make the bed every day. It was something Lila did before she died. Seeing the neat blanket tightens my chest.
“Look what I found.” Eric lays a hand on a pile of spiral-bound notebooks spread across the bed.
“What are those?” I move to the foot of the bed, taking in the many monoblocks of color.
“They’re Lila’s notebooks. All of them. She never threw anything away. Here, sit down.” He drags a desk chair up for me and closes the door.
I don’t want to sit. I want to get back to dismantling beds with Todd and Leo. I suppress an impatient sigh. If Eric needs my attention, I’ll give it to him. I sit.
“These are all her recipes for her cannabis salves and tinctures.” He pushes one of the notebooks into my hand. “Take a look.”
I flip it open. Lila’s neat handwriting marches across page after page.
Emotion blooms in my chest. I remember seeing Lila with these, bent over the kitchen counter as she meticulously measured, mixed, pounded, and stirred her ingredients. There are notes with all her recipes. Many of them are crossed out and rewritten with slightly different measurements of the various ingredients.
I miss her. I miss her scared eyes and her acerbic tongue.
“Lila.” I close the notebook and press it to my chest.
When I look at Eric, I see the same emotion in his eyes. They’re misty with sadness, though a tender smile pulls at the corners of his mouth.
“All her work and experiments of the past few years.” Eric picks up another notebook, flipping through it. “We can recreate her medications and salves.”
Before the world ended, Lila had a dream of starting her own medicinal cannabis company. Everyone liked to poke fun at her, mostly when she, Reed, and Eric quarreled over the dwindling supply of buds.
“Her muscle salve worked.” I rub absently at the ankle I rolled on my journey to Arcata, thinking about how well her salve had helped me heal.
“Johnny and Carter have both been using it. Now we can make more.” Eyes brightening, Eric pulls open a drawer and pulls out a Zip Lock with two buds. “Look at this. It’s shitty bud full of seeds.”
From my time spent with the kids, I’ve gathered that shitty weed has seeds. The more expensive, premium buds don’t have seeds.
“Now that we have seeds,” Eric says, “Do you think Leo and Todd could get them to grow?”
My eyes narrow. “You want to use our indoor garden to grow marijuana?”
“Pharmacies are going to dry up. We’ve looted our fair share, but the supply is going to run out. It’s in our best interest to develop other medicinals.”
If his face wasn’t so earnest, I’d think this was a ploy to restock his pot supply. Eric spends more time stoned than not, but at the moment, there is no hint of fuzz in his eyes. He’s stone sober and he means every word he says.
“I have to think on it,” I say. “Let me go over Leo’s plan for the garden and see if there’s a corner we can set aside for a plant or two. Your job is to go through these books and make a compilation of all the final recipes. Make a combined list of all the ingredients. There’s no use to put in a pot plant to make medicinals if we don’t have any of the other components.”
“Okay.” Eric takes the notebook back from me and returns it to the stack, spending more time than necessary straightening the already neat pile. “You’re really going to consider it?”
“Yeah.” I put an arm around his shoulders and squeeze. “We owe it to Lila, don’t you think?”
He nods, sniffing once. “Yeah.”
As I head to the door, Eric says, “Wait—Kate. I—uh, want to talk to you about something else.”
“What is it, Eric?”
“I was—uh—thinking about the cemetery.” He shifts, not quite meeting my eye.
“We don’t have a cemetery.”
“The rubble where we buried Lila and Jesus,” he amends. “We need to mark it. Set it apart from everything else. Maybe find some fencing to put around it.”
It’s not a bad idea. The problem is that it would take half our people and at least two days to find fencing and transport it to the site. It’s not the best use of our resources. I don’t say any of this to Eric, though.
“Just think about it? Please?” Eric asks.
“Okay. I’ll think about it.”
“Wait. Kate?”
Once again, he stops me when I try to leave. “Yes, Eric?”
“Thanks. For being here. For all of us, I mean. You hold us together.”
I give his shoulder a last squeeze. Before he can delay me any longer, I push out the door and into the hall—
—and right into a sitting room decorated with streamers and a big, homemade banner with the words Happy Birthday Kate written in big bubble letters. Every member of Creekside is there, big smiles filling the room.
“Surprise!”