When I wake up I realize the sun has not risen, but I have no idea what time it is. I go to the couch in the living room, and am surprised to find it empty. If Merick is not here, that can only mean one thing—my father is home.
I tiptoe back down the hallway to the bedroom across from the one I’ve been sleeping in. I turn the doorknob slowly and silently usher it open. My eyes have adjusted enough to the darkness to realize that there is no bodily form lying on the bed. I’m alone.
I am very surprised at this, so much so that I immediately believe that something is wrong. My heartbeats pick up pace and pressure. I turn the generator that rests between the kitchen and living room on and flick on the living room lights. The blanket Merick was using is missing from the couch, but then I see it folded sloppily on the floor. There is a note on the kitchen table. Gone to babysit Crewe. Come over on your lunch break. I wish a name had been signed to it, because I don’t know if this is my dad’s hand or Merick’s.
I decide that I want to run this morning. Out of habit, I put on the same dark gear that I would wear each time I was planning to breach the electric barrier. I pull my snarled hair into a tight ponytail, and secure my long, unruly bangs back with my turquoise headband, the only splash of color against my stealthy shell.
I haven’t gone for a run in almost a week, since the never-ending one from the perimeter of Miles County to the station several miles away after we secured my sister. We put forth so much effort, and now everything we accomplished that night has been lost.
I haven’t been around the homes on this side of Sheridan much yet, but it’s so small that it can’t be difficult to maneuver. I only run a few streets when I decide that I have a destination that I want to run to. If I ever learned where Crewe’s house was, it would be there. Instead, I decide to run to the restaurant to see if my father happens to be there. I want to urge my father along and ask him to take me to Crewe.
I’ve always been able to run hard on my outings, propelled by the thought that someday I might need to be ready to, for Evvie’s sake and mine. That day has come but it hasn’t passed. I’m able to push myself even harder now, knowing exactly what the BOTs of Miles are capable of, and the fact that they have captured my sister.
I arrive at the restaurant in a matter of minutes. The door is open, so I let myself in. I call up the stairs, but there is no answer. Back in Lame Deer, my father told me to check for Crewe in the nearby residences. He didn’t mean for me to simply call for him, but to go in and search. The stubbornness my father knew Crewe would possess then has not changed. If he’s being held here, he won’t answer me.
I have the same uneasy anticipation as I walk up the narrow stairwell that I had as I entered each of the dark and deserted homes in Lame Deer. I expect to see Crewe dejected, head down, and cuffed to one of the tables that he could easily drag carelessly through the doorway, down the stairs, and out of the restaurant. When I look in, my image of Crewe and my father sitting or sleeping nearby is not matched. The room is empty.
Disappointed, I head back down the stairs. I decide that my run is only one-third of the way through, because I’ll need to run back home to gather clothing and a towel so that I can run back here to shower. This showering situation in Sheridan is such an inconvenience, but not one that bothers me this morning. I want to keep running.
After my shower, I stuff my saturated running gear into the backpack that my father used yesterday. The air feels especially chill as I step out of the showering commune with cold, wet hair. I scrub my hair around in the damp towel and shove it into the backpack.
My emotions are taut when I see Lysia, Crewe’s daughter, in the laundromat again today. It’s Saturday, which I suppose is a day off for children in a traditional school. Crewe’s daughter will be here tomorrow too. She’ll become a regular presence in my life here in Sheridan.
I wonder whether Crewe will remain close to me, now that I feel less akin to him after finding out about Lysia. I don’t know anything about dating or being a real parent. Being Evvie’s guardian isn’t quite the same as having your own child. Crewe clearly has experience in realms that I do not. I can’t explain why, but he just feels different to me now. Besides my perception changing, real change has occurred in him after losing his brother. His grief and aloofness will affect him forever, even after the dangerous anger has had time to subside.
Numerous townspeople bring heaps of laundry to us because it’s Saturday. Gwen says Saturdays and Sundays are the most difficult days to keep up with the loads. Aside from them being days off for many of the laborers, I suspect that the delay at the laundromat on the weekends can also be attributed to bouncy little Lysia. She’s more of a hindrance than a help.
I feel bad taking a break for lunch when Gwen doesn’t, but I justify it to her and myself as an order from either Merick or my father, whoever left the note for me this morning. Lysia follows behind my footsteps outside of the building, despite her mother’s order to stay put. Gwen takes her by the arm and pulls her back toward the store.
“I want to see my dad!” she squeals. She follows with, “You’re not even my mom!” I’m sure this has been used on poor Gwen time and again. She seems like a great mother, but she’s had rotten luck with her adoption. I’m sure she loves Lysia for the good in her, but I’m also sure she spends a lot of time forcing herself to remember that.
Gwen’s directions to find Crewe’s home were easy to follow. I walked here very quickly, but have a difficult time taking another step toward the place that shelters him. What am I going to say to him? How can I look him in the eye and see the depths of pain and the anger that torment him? How can I expect to make anything better? I can’t.
I know the door will be open, but I don’t feel right just walking in. I want him to decide whether he’s ready to open the door to me. I knock and take a step back from the door so that he can look through the ornate glass panes on either side of the door to see that it’s me.
Merick opens the door. So he was the one who left the note, not my father.
He closes the door behind him and takes a seat on a bench swing on the porch. There’s a matching chair and a hammock on their front porch as well. I can picture Cy reigning the hammock, mocking an arrogant king in fun-loving way. I bet he slept out here sometimes. He would not let a warm, summer night slip through his grasp without getting the most pleasure out of it.
“Where is my dad?” I ask Merick.
“He’s not in Sheridan,” Merick answers simply. Merick looks out at the street and sways back and forth on the bench swing. I get the feeling he hasn’t embarked on his mission to rescue Evvie.
I ask the obvious question. “Where is he?”
“He’s tied up doing captain business in Braves. The leader of Idaho is traveling up to Braves tonight. They’re going to meet tomorrow to discuss forming a joint task force for a major assault on Miles. I guess Crewe brought up some valid points that have convinced Braves of a need for greater action than we’ve planned. Miles is the only county that has ever hunted down a refugee and come onto our territory to take one back. The leaders believe that we need to respond in a way that will deter other counties in Region Two from repeating the same action.”
“What about Evvie?” I ask. I don’t care what the other leaders believe or what their plans for the future are. I care about doing something to get my sister back so that she can’t be used as bait. “He was supposed to be inside already, trying to get her out! They’re wasting time talking—something needs to be done.”
“Sydney, I know this is an impossible thing for you to hear, but it can’t all be about your sister. She is the center of your world, but not Sheridan’s, and certainly not the other towns’. You have to understand that.”
This conversation and now Merick himself are intolerable. “Fine! Then I’ll go. We’ve already decided that I’m allowed—I’m family.”
“Your father doesn’t want that.”
“I don’t care what he wants,
” I fire back. It’s true. He may be my father but he has no power over me. I’ve been in charge of my life and Evvie’s forever and that’s not going to change.
“You don’t even know where to find her,” Merick says, trying to reason with me.
“Then tell me,” I argue.
“I won’t. I’m not going to encourage one, untrained girl going up against scores of BOTs.”
“Well, I’m going regardless, Merick. I’m not going to sit around and wait for them to kill my little sister. So you ought to tell me so that I have half a chance of finding her.”
“It’s suicide,” he says.
“No, if I die trying part of the responsibility is yours. Yours and my father’s since you’re doing nothing and not providing me the information that could help me bring her back.”
“It’ll never happen that way, Sydney. I’m sorry, but we won’t get her back. I wish I could say differently, but I’m telling you the truth.”
“So she’s as good as dead then? You’ve considered her a ticking time bomb all along?” I accuse. “You never believed she could be brought back here.”
“I wanted to, Sydney!” Merick’s raised voice fills me with a cold, halting feeling. “I wanted to believe in the last mission, but I couldn’t, and I couldn’t stop your father, or Cy, any of them! Look what happened, Sydney. Open your eyes! We have no power against them. What we should do is let her go so that they don’t try to use her against us. We can hope for her to be assimilated back into county society and live.”
I know better than to believe that they’ll let her live peacefully. They want to spark something, and they’re going to harm her to get the reaction they seek.
I’m too furious with Merick to say anything. Instead, I open the door into Crewe’s home and slam it behind me.
I call for Crewe but he doesn’t answer. I burst through the first open doorway, still filled with rage. My heart is twisted, softened, and saddened when I come into the first bedroom. It’s Cy’s. It looks so lived in, filled with his belongings scattered about, but it lacks him.
I walk into the next room more calmly. The first thing I notice is Crewe’s strong, tanned back, hunched over on the edge of the bed facing the window. The second thing I notice is the foul smell that seeps from the small trashcan between his feet. Crewe’s body has been trying to eradicate the pain and sorrow he’s feeling, but it can’t.
I’m reduced to tears immediately at the sight of him. I knew this would be difficult, but I had no idea of the caliber of heartbreak that sits in front of me. I found more life in the previous room than I find in this one. Crewe is defeated and deadened.
“Crewe?” I say his name as softly and cautiously as I can. The silence is stiffening. I force my feet to take careful steps around to the other side of the bed. I say his name again, but he only lowers his head. I kneel down on the floor beside the trashcan underneath him. “I’m so sorry,” I say, salty tears tickling my quivering lips.
My heart has never ached like it does now, not even when I begged my grandmother not to leave my sister and me. It was different then, because her time had come, and I always knew it would. Even volunteering to be a seeksmen or member of the militia in Sheridan doesn’t prepare one for death like this. The threat was never real until Evvie and I arrived.
I raise my fidgeting hand from my lap and ease my trembling fingers toward Crewe’s hand which doesn’t cover his face. I barely graze his doleful fingers, hanging limply between his knees, when he swiftly pulls his hand back, forms a fist, and punches the wall in front of him.
“Merick’s right! We never should have gone. I should have known better,” he expels from between his gritted teeth. He looks ahead at nothing, his hands now trembling too.
“It’s not your fault,” I begin to tell him.
“Yes it is! I chose you over my own damn brother and now he’s dead! Oh God, he’s dead,” he sobs. His anger transforms to sorrow and he wilts in front of me. It hurts so much to see him this way that I want to leave. I can’t possibly console him because I’ve done this to him. It wasn’t his fault. None of this is his fault. It’s all mine.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I promised Cy that I would look after Crewe. I am responsible for pulling him back together. With less guard, I place my hand on his warm, muscular back.
He swallows hard and pulls himself together in an instant, but not to see me. Not to let me in to grieve with him.
“Just go,” he says coldly. I pull my shaky hand off his back. “Leave.”
I make no movement to do so until his tense jaw turns toward me for the first time. His eyes glower at me they way they did when he was sure that I was a spy, a traitor. The tables have been turned. Crewe Davids hates me—only he has reason to mean it.