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Did you like it?

He barely believed this was actually happening. He spelled out his answer: Lots.

Open your mouth this time.

That was even better. A soft pressure entered his mouth that he realized was her tongue. He followed her lead; now they were kissing for real. He had always imagined the act to be a simple grazing of surfaces, lips upon lips, but kissing was, he now understood, far more complex. It was more a mingling than a touching. They did this for a while, exploring one another’s mouths, then she backed away in a manner that indicated that the kissing was over. Caleb wished it weren’t; he could have done it for a long while more. Then he understood the nature of the interruption. Sara was calling to them from the bottom of the dam.

Pim smiled at him. You’re a good kisser.

And that was all, at least for a time. In due course, they had kissed again, and done different things as well, but it hadn’t amounted to much, and other girls had come along. Yet always those slender minutes on the dam remained in his mind as a singular point in his life. When he joined the Army, at eighteen, his CO said he should find someone back home to write to. He chose Pim. His letters were all cheerful nonsense, complaints about the food and lighthearted stories of his friends, but hers were unlike anything he’d ever read, richly observant and full of life. At times they read like poetry. A single phrase, even describing something trivial—how the sun looked on leaves, a passing remark by an acquaintance, the smell of cooking food—would catch his mind and linger for days. Unlike sign language, with its unequivocal compactness, Pim’s words on the page seemed to overflow with feeling—a richer kind of truth, closer to the heart of her. He wrote to Pim as often as he could, hungering for more of her. It was her voice he was hearing—hearing at last—and it wasn’t long before he began to fall in love with her. When he told her, not in a letter but in person when he returned to Kerrville on a three-day pass, she laughed with her eyes, then signed, When did you finally figure it out?

To these memories, Caleb drifted into sleep. Sometime later he awoke to find her gone. He didn’t worry; Pim was something of a night owl. Theo was still asleep. Caleb slid into his trousers, lit the lantern, got his rifle from its place by the door, and stepped outside. Pim was sitting with her back against the stump he used for splitting.

Everything okay?

Douse the light, she signed. Come sit.

She was wearing only her nightgown, though it was actually quite chilly; her feet were bare. He took his place beside her and extinguished the lantern. In the dark, they had a system. She took his hand and in his palm signed in miniature: Look.

At what?

Everything.

He understood what she was saying, between the lines. This is ours.

I like it here.

I’m glad.

Caleb detected movement in the brush. The sound came again, a grassy rustling to their left. Not a raccoon or possum—something larger.

Pim sensed his sudden alertness. What?

Wait.

He relit the lantern, casting a pool of light on the ground. The rustling was coming from several places now, though generally in the same direction. He positioned the rifle under his arm and clenched it to his side with his elbow. Holding the lantern in one hand, the rifle in the other, he crept forward, toward the heart of the sounds.

The light caught something: a flash of eyes.

It was a young deer. It froze in the light, staring at him. He saw the others, six in all. For a moment nothing moved, man and deer regarding one another with mutual astonishment. Then, as if guided by a common mind, the herd turned as one and burst away.

What could he do? What else could Caleb Jaxon do but laugh?

* * *

26

“Okay, Rand, try it now.”

Michael was lying on his back, wedged into the slender gap between the floor and the base of the compressor. He heard the valve opening; gas began to move through the line.

“What’s it say?”

“Looks like it’s holding.”

Don’t you dare leak, Michael thought. I’ve given you half my morning.

“Nope. Pressure’s dropping.”

“Goddamnit.” He’d checked every seal he could think of. Where the hell was the gas coming from? “The hell with it. Shut it off.”

Michael wriggled free. They were on the lower engineering level. From the catwalk above came the sounds of metal striking metal, the crackling hiss of arc welders, men calling to one another, all of it amplified by the acoustics of the engine compartment. Michael hadn’t seen sunshine for forty-eight hours.

“Any ideas?” he asked Rand.