My expression must give away my shock because he pushes on with the conversation.
“Toni can’t have children. If you’re thinking I’m stupid or that I don’t remember.”
“Oh, I just…” I can’t seem to find the words to finish my sentence.
“She could have really made the rounds in our group. Imagine that. Imagine Eli telling Toni she can’t do what she wants?” He whistles through his teeth like he’s actually picturing it, and enjoying the thought at that.
My blood boils at the idea of Toni with our group. Toni with Cade.
Ky raises one eyebrow. “You’ve seen the way she dotes on Cade. It’s not his sparkling personality she’s interested in. He’s hardly said five words since you got here.”
“But Cade would never,” I counter.
“You know that for sure?” he asks. “You don’t think that away from the group—with no consequences—he wouldn’t be tempted?”
I don’t know the answer to that, and I don’t want to either. I’m pulling the roots from the ground with so much fervor that I lose my balance and plop back onto the ground.
“Easy there,” says Ky, taking a seat beside me. He brushes the dirt from his hands as his eyes travel the length of my face. Reaching up he brushes a long strand of wild red hair from my cheek.
“You’re not the way I remember you.”
“Neither are you,” I reply, thinking of the angry version of him that turned his back on our group. Ky leans forward resting his forearms on his bent knees.
“I couldn’t take it then. Things were hard enough after Anita died. A vote that outlawed men and women being together was too much. Too in my face.”
“It’s not that we can’t partner, it’s just the other...” I argue, even as I say it, it rings hollow. I have never agreed with that particular rule, yet away from the group I have a hard time admitting that they are wrong about something.
“Is that enough for you?” asks Ky. “Now that you’re a woman? You don’t look at Cade like you would be content with chaste kisses to the forehead and a partnership.”
I can feel my cheeks filling with blood, giving me away, so that even if I wanted to I can’t lie.
“I’m not like Toni though.”
“No,” says Ky. “You’re not.”
The air seems to grow thicker around us, and when I look back over at him I’m taken by a sudden desire to place my hand on the curved line of his jaw and pull his lips to meet my own, just to know what it feels like.
His eyes are fixed on mine, and I can’t read whatever is behind them, but I get the feeling that if I did it he wouldn’t pull back, certainly wouldn’t scold me for wanting to in the first place. For the first time, I think of myself as capable of desiring someone other than Cade.
Twelve
Back at camp Toni and Cade are cleaning a pile of fish. It is more than I have ever been able to catch at one time. Even with Christa helping. Even when the water is low and the lighting is right. It’s one more way that Toni has a leg up on me, and I don’t like it.
I think about the fact that she can’t have children and it strikes me that if we weren’t where we were, her inability to get pregnant would be a detriment not an asset. Cade and Ky wouldn’t want a woman who couldn’t one day bear their children, right? But here, with no medical and limited supplies to feed limited people, to be barren is a kind of superpower. There are no consequences to being with her, and I selfishly hope that Cade doesn’t know that. The idea of him with someone else fizzles and pops in my brain till I feel capable of terrible things.
Toni is constantly touching him though, a hand on the base of his spine, a leg pressed up against his by the fire, there is no distance with her. If it is still a secret I don’t get the impression she’s going to keep it. We need to get what we came for and leave, which means digging around in Toni’s past. Exactly what Ky warned me not to do.
I’ve been thinking all day about how I can get Toni or Ky to tell us where Toni came from and why she has access to so many more things than our group. The best I have come up with is to use their own vices against them. Ky cautioned that moonshine loosens lips and I am counting on it.
I plaster a smile to my face and reach into the bucket of crabs at Cade’s feet. With a practiced hand I snap the long legs from the body of the crab and begin to pop them open, pulling the meatiest part out in one long piece.
“I’ve been thinking, when our group had a successful hunting day there would be a celebration. I’d call this successful wouldn’t you?”
Cade nods and offers up a half smile.
“Celebration with your group? Did y’all sing hymnals afterwards?” teases Toni, throwing on a convincing southern accent that gets a laugh from Ky. I do remember our celebrations though, and I don’t think Toni would have made fun of them had she been there.
Ky is turning fish over the fire with his back is to me, but I am certain he is remembering one such celebration. I can still picture him and Anita dancing with their feet in the water under a warm night sky. We had a little band back then with a trumpet and flute from the overhead compartment of the plane and a guitar made with strings repurposed from the waterlogged acoustic guitar that Tanner drug from the rubble. He was convinced he could make it work again. He never could get it to sound right again, but he swiped the strings and made his own.
A homesick feeling hits me deep in the chest, thinking of nights like those, when it wasn’t so bad to be stranded.
I push the feeling down and focus on my plan.
“Maybe they were a little dull, but with a little moonshine and the right company we could have a real party, couldn’t we?”
Toni eyes me wearily for a second, but when Cade shrugs his shoulders and says, “could be fun,” she loosens up.
“I’ll share my stash with you, but only if I get to be in charge of the games.”
I have no idea what she means by games, but I don’t care because what Toni wants, Toni gets—for tonight anyway.
When the sun sets, the four of us sit down to a feast unlike anything I’ve had since we arrived here. It’s not the meat that is different, it’s the flavor combinations, the way that Ky has added herbs we gathered today to the skin of the fish and rubbed the seeds from a white blossom I’d never thought to use before until they are as fine as pepper and taste of it too.
Full for the first time in as long as I can remember I feel like this night is close to happy. I am so content that I almost forget the purpose until Toni pulls out the moonshine and a silver box that begins to hum with the first bars of music, real music, not a fireside band of wannabe musicians. I must be staring at the device like it is straight from another planet because Ky pretends to pop my jaw back into place before explaining that it is solar powered and not the only thing they have that is.
Now seems like an excellent time to slip in a question. So I grab my cup from beside Toni and pour myself and her a glass.
“That doesn’t look like you MacGyvered it. How’d you get the little solar windows on the top?”
“I brought it with me,” says Toni, taking the glass from my hand but keeping her answer short and clipped.