Page 2

“You, too, Remy. Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah. You, too.” I forced a smile at him, and then I turned away.

My hand had just touched the doorknob when he said, “Wait.”

His hand was suddenly on my back, and when I faced him, he pulled me into his arms. His mouth crashed against mine, and I held him to me. Our lips never parted, and it wasn’t a kiss of passion or romance, but something else. Something like friendship, like love, like need.

And then we parted, both of us breathing roughly, and I didn’t brave looking in his eyes.

“Goodbye, Lazlo,” I said, and when I reached for the door this time, he didn’t stop me.

And that was how our planned visits had begun. We had seen each other a handful of times since, and there was never any other physical contact. It wasn’t about that. We were old friends connecting again.

Ripley and I were finally close enough that I could see the roof of the old farmhouse through the branches filled with bright green buds of early spring. It was in a clearing, but the grass around it was already growing high.

Lazlo usually arrived first, since he travelled on a mule, so I was often greeted by the smell of a fire and something cooking. Today, there was no fire, but Ripley raced on ahead.

We hadn’t been there since the fall, but when the lion ran at the front door, it opened easily. I followed her, and the house was in slightly worse disarray than how we had left it.

I liked keeping Ripley in the house with the door shut, because Lazlo and I usually kept my lion and his mule apart. They got on well when they interacted, like the lion sensed that he was a friend and not food, but I had also seen her take down a full-grown elkbefore, so I wasn’t about to push my luck.

I set about doing all the things that Lazlo usually did before I arrived. First was gathering up wood for the woodburning stove, so the outdoor chores were finished before nightfall. Next I swept up the dust and debris that made its way into the house over the winter. I aired out the few belongings we kept stored here in the small closet: blankets, a pot to cook in, several candles, a cribbage board with cards, and a few tools. Some of it we had brought from our respective homes, and others we had found in the old farmhouse and cleaned them up.

By the time it was dark, I realized that Lazlo wouldn’t make it here today. He would be bedding down for the night, so the very earliest he would arrive would be tomorrow.

That’s what I told myself when I lay on my bedroll and stared up at the water damaged ceiling as the lion snored beside me.

After a night of fitful sleeping, Lazlo and his mule didn’t arrive in the morning. Or the afternoon. Or the evening. In fact, I saw no sign of either of them over the next two days.

Ordinarily, I would only stay at the farmhouse for three nights. With the roundtrip, I would be gone for a total of ten days, and it was difficult packing and carrying enough provisions to last me that long for a ninety-kilometer hike.

On the fourth night, I ate the jerky I had brought to trade for Lazlo’s raspberry preserves and hazelnuts, and I played solitaire until I passed out.

In the morning, Ripley and I ventured just slightly to the east, checking to be sure Lazlo wasn’t stuck somewhere nearby with a broken leg. Ripley kept sniffing around, but she never pursued anything, and eventually, we had to go turn and head west, back toward the lakehouse.

Before I left the old farmhouse, I tacked a note up onto the closet door, telling Lazlo that I would be back in two months’ time, and that I hoped all was well with him.

There was nothing more to say, nothing more to be done, and so I turned and headed on the long journey back home with Ripley by myside.

2

Stella

The biggest tree at the edge of the lake was my favorite place to spend warm afternoons. According toThe Big Book of Arboryin the library of our lakehouse, it was a weeping willow(Salix babylonica). They were non-native to our land, but it seemed to be thriving anyway. The long, drooping branches were covered in verdant leaves, and the trunk grew thicker with each year.

The lake behind our house didn’t have a name, at least not one that we could ever find. According to the old photobooks and papers we’d found, the house had belonged to a family called the Tremblays. A mom and dad, a boy and girl. Erin the nurse who loved birdwatching and kayaking, Mitchell the dentist was an avid hunter with a thirst for knowledge, Ryder a boy of ten with an affinity for fishing and games, and Avalyn a girl of eight who had so many stuffed animals and books of pressed flowers. They were outdoorsy folk, at least here at their vacation home on the lake they affectionately referred to as “Tremblay Lake” in their scrapbooks.

The house was immaculate and fully stocked when we found it eight years ago, so I don’t think the family had been here since B.Z. – Before Zombies. I liked to believe they found somewhere else safe, somewhere too far away to ever get back here. But safe and together, growing up and finding their way inthe world. Ryder would be almost twenty now, and Avalyn would be sixteen, the same as Max.

When we had first moved into this house, and I had taken over Avalyn’s pastel infused bedroom, I had worried about the Tremblays coming back and kicking us out, like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I would wake up in the night, after nightmares of a zombie Avalyn chasing me out of her room, and I would run across the hall to sleep in Max’s bed with him.

Eventually, I realized that the Tremblays were never coming back. And even if they did, we had a guard-lion, so we would be fine.

After that, I became fascinated by Ryder and Avalyn, trying to learn everything about their picturesque lives and happy family from the belongings they had left behind. It wasn’t much, but I’d never known any kids, outside of Max.

Truthfully, I didn’t remember much about my life before Max. I told him I was seven when we met, and I had to have spent those earlier years doingsomething. I must have had parents and a family of some kind.

But the only family I ever knew was Max, Ripley, Boden, Remy, and Serg. And to a certain extent, I suppose I considered Ryder and Avalyn to be family too. I slept in their beds and made my dresses quilted from remnants of their too small clothes and curtains. I played with their toys, and I read their books. I lived the lives they would’ve if they had been here.