What she could see was from starlight and from smell. She sniffed and found Glen’s bag with their bedding. Their scent was all over it. She laid it out on the ground some distance from the fire. She heard a crunch behind her and tensed for a moment before she felt Glen’s hands on her shoulders, kneading them.
“Tough day,” he murmured near her neck. She could tell he felt bad about ignoring her at the fire.
“You would have cut the rope, right?”
“Of course.” She felt his cheeks lift to a smile as he put a small kiss to her temple.
“But . . . ?”
“I might have waited just a tad longer.”
“Well, fuck, Glen. Did I just murder Caroline?”
“Oh no, no, no,” he said patiently, pulling her down to their bedding. “Caroline was dead the second that log attacked her.”
“Then what does the timing matter?”
Glen shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t. But if she was already dead, then what was the rush?”
“But Juan.”
Glen waved his hand. “Juan was always going to be fine.”
She stamped her foot, and Glen put his hands back on her shoulders. “Look, Juan was fine. Caroline was lost. But that rope wasn’t. Not until you cut it. People just need a minute.” He paused, then shrugged. “It was a really good rope.”
Agnes slunk up at that moment as Bea and Glen went silent naturally at the end of their conversation. But Agnes took it personally. “You don’t have to stop talking,” she lisped angrily. “I know a lot. I’m mature.”
Glen grabbed Agnes around the waist and flipped her. “We were already done talking,” he sang, dangling her an inch above the ground until her huffs and puffs became reluctant laughs, then shrieks of glee. Glen eased her down to the bed, and she arranged herself, as she always did, at their feet.
Glen and Bea nestled down, and in the ensuing silence Bea’s mind drifted to the sky that had shone white-hot above her when she had Madeline and she was grateful for the distraction when Agnes, from the bottom of the bed, cooed, “I’m sad about Caroline.”
“You are?” Bea couldn’t keep her surprise in, and she could tell from Agnes’s sharp breath that she was surprised by her mother’s surprise.
“Yeah,” Agnes said, though now she phrased it more as a question.
“Well,” Bea said, “Caroline was always nice to you.” If Bea were being completely honest, she thought Caroline was more aloof than Thomas and really hadn’t liked her at all. It wasn’t that she was glad she was dead. She just wasn’t that bothered to have lost her and felt uncomfortable about the level of mourning happening. It was bad enough to be blamed about the rope without everyone moping about Caroline too. She rolled her eyes in the dark. She was never sure what was better parenting—modeling compassion or just being honest. Agnes was so nice to everyone, even if she wasn’t always very nice to her mother. So she kept her feelings about Caroline, once again, to herself. “She was a lot of fun,” she said with a nod into the darkness.
“It’s just,” Agnes ventured, “I really wish we could have saved her.”
Even her daughter thought she’d cut the rope too fast. “You too?” Bea barked. “I suppose you really miss the rope as well?”
“Okay, okay,” Glen said, putting an arm around Bea and ruffling Agnes’s hair. “We need to get to sleep.” Bea saw Agnes’s teeth in the dim dark smiling up at Glen and Bea, realized she was being toyed with. Of course Agnes had heard enough of their conversation to know, or want to know, how that comment would sound to Bea. It was something Agnes was playing with lately—pointed comments, knowing looks. Testing boundaries like she had as a toddler, but now with a sharpness, a tartness to her. Agnes was playing at a lot of things lately, and Bea felt she could hardly keep up.
Agnes scrunched down under the skins, and her hand clasped around Bea’s ankle like it did every night. Bea fought the urge to pull it away. Bea tried to fit herself into Glen’s arms, but her blood was revving and she felt tied by them instead of embraced.
Agnes fell immediately into an unworried sleep, her breaths sounding like heavy drapes shuffling against the floor. Of course she had heard, Bea thought. Agnes was always listening. And she was right. She did seem to know everything. And she did seem older, more mature, than she was. Bea had fully lost sight of the baby Agnes had been. Found it hard to believe she’d ever been anything but this complicated person at her feet. She was short but she was solid, as though already fully formed. Much more solid than the other children. Glen always gave her more meat than he gave himself. As if on cue, Glen joined Agnes with his own sleep sounds. Bea stared wide-eyed into the dark night.
* * *
In the morning, a truck raced toward them, spewing dust. Far behind it the sun glinted against the roof of Middle Post. As the truck pulled to a stop, they saw it was Ranger Gabe. He was the son of someone very high up in the Administration, he had told them once, as though it were a threat. He was not well liked.
Some Rangers enjoyed being outdoors and conversing with the Community. But not Ranger Gabe. He seemed skeptical of them and of the dirt he walked upon. His uniform was always crisp and spotless, and he moved carefully, as though he hated to get it dirty.
He shut off his truck, sat a moment, then leaned long on the horn. The birds previously hidden in bushes dispersed in a cloud. The horn’s bleat echoed back to them from a faraway butte.
The Community, packed and ready to leave, gathered around his truck.
“You’ve got new Manual pages at Lower Post.”
“But we’ve almost reached Middle Post,” Bea explained. “That’s where we were told there were pages.”
“And mail,” Debra said. She’d been very vocal about not having received a letter from her aged mother for a long while. She was unsure what it meant that she’d heard nothing.
“Well,” he drawled, his heel pumping the sideboard, “I don’t know what to tell you. All I know is there’s nothing for you at Middle. Nothing. You’ve got to go to Lower.” He squinted at the horizon like an explorer.
“But Middle Post is right there,” Bea said, pointing to the roof roasting under the sun.
“There’s nothing there for you.”
“But—”
“You’ve got to head to Lower. And you know where I mean, right? Even though it’s Lower, it’s not just lower.”
They looked at him blankly.
He scowled and pulled out a roughly drawn map of all the Post locations. Pointed to where he meant, an X at the very bottom of the map.
Carl growled, “Lower Middle? Why all the way down there?”
“Not Lower Middle. Lower.”
“But it’s right in the middle here”—Carl pointed—“and it’s lower.”
“Look, this one’s called Lower Post. And you’ve got to go there. That’s all that matters.”
“But why?”
“Why?” Ranger Gabe mockingly scratched his head. “Why? Because you left your last camp a total shithole, that’s why.”
“No, we didn’t,” said Bea. They did their micro trash sweeps. They’d found as much micro trash as they found after any time they spent anywhere.