Page 137

The water will protect you, Anthony.

He started. Who was speaking to him? The voice seemed to come from everywhere: from the air he breathed, the water sloshing at his feet, the metal of the ship. It enfolded him like a blanket of perfect softness.

He cannot find you here. Abide here in safety, and she will come to you.

That was when he felt her: Amy. Not dark, like the others; her soul was made of light. A great sob racked his body. His loneliness was leaving him. It lifted from his spirit like a veil, and what lay behind it was a sorrow of a different kind—a beautiful, holy kind of sorrow for the world and all its woes. He was holding the wheel. Slowly it turned under his hands. Outside, beyond the walls of the ship, the wind was howling again. The rain lashed, the sky rolled, the seas tore through the streets of the drowned city.

Come inside, Anthony.

The door opened; Carter stepped through. His body was in the ship, the Chevron Mariner, but Carter was in that place no more. He was falling and falling and falling, and when the falling stopped he knew just where he was, even before he opened his eyes, because he could smell the flowers.

—

Carter realized he’d finished his tea. Amy was done with the cosmos and was tidying up the beds. Carter thought to tell her to rest a spell, he’d get to the weeds directly, but he knew that she’d refuse; when there was work to do, she did it.

The waiting was hard for her. Not just because of the things she’d have to face, but for what she’d given up. She never said a word about it, that wasn’t Amy’s way, but Carter could tell. He knew what it was like to love a person and lose them in this life.

Because Zero would come calling. That was a fact. Carter knew that man, knew he wouldn’t rest until the whole world was a mirror to his grief. Thing was, Carter couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him. Carter had been in that station himself. Weren’t the question the man had wrong, it was his way of asking it.

Carter got up from his chair, put on his hat, and went to where Amy was kneeling in the dirt.

“Have a good nap?” she asked, looking up.

“Was I sleeping?”

She tossed a weed onto the pile. “You should have heard yourself snoring.”

Now, that was news to Carter. Although, come to think of it, he might have rested his eyes there for a second.

Amy rocked back on her heels and held her arms wide over the newly planted beds. “What do you think?”

He stepped back to look. Everything was neat as a pin. “Those cosmos is pretty. Mrs. Wood will like ’em. Miss Haley, too.”

“They’ll need water.”

“I’ll see to it. You should get out of the sun for a bit. Tea’s still there you want it.”

He was hooking the hose to the spigot near the gate when he heard the soft pressure of tires on asphalt and saw the Denali coming down the street. It halted at the corner, then crept forward. Carter could just make out the shape of Mrs. Wood’s face through the darkly tinted windows. The car cruised slowly by the house, barely moving but never stopping either, the way a ghost might do, then accelerated and sped away.

Amy appeared beside him. “I heard the girls playing earlier.” She, too, was looking down the street, though the Denali was long gone. “I brought you this.”

Amy was holding a wand. For a second Carter was unable to connect the idea of it to anything else. But it was for the cosmos, of course.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Carter responded with a shrug. He threaded the wand to the end of the hose and opened the spigot. Amy returned to the patio while Carter dragged the hose to the beds and began to water them down. It hardly mattered, he knew; autumn would be here soon. The leaves would pale and fall, the garden fade, the wind grow raw. Frost would wick the tips of the grass, and the body of Mrs. Wood would rise. All things found their ends. But still Carter went on with it, passing his wand over the flowers, back and forth, back and forth, his heart always believing that even the smallest things could make a difference.

* * *

44

All day long the rain poured down. Everyone was antsy, trapped in the house. Caleb could tell that Pim’s patience with her sister was wearing thin, and he felt a row coming. A few days ago, he might have welcomed such a development, if only to get it over with.

Dusk was near when the clouds broke. A radiant sun streamed low across the fields, everything sopping and glinting in the light. Caleb scanned the ground around the house for ants; finding none, he declared that they could go out to enjoy the last of the day. All that remained of the mounds were ovals of depressed mud barely distinguishable from the surrounding earth. Relax, he told himself. You’re letting the isolation get to you, that’s all.