Page 25 of Say We've Found Forever
“No, I mean yeah, but it’s not for getting clean. It sorta bubbles, like water on a stove. Hot enough that you can use it outside in winter.”
She slides him a sideways glance as if he’s fucking with her. “You boiled yourself on purpose?”
“Sure did. It was amazing.”
“I might like to see these mountain cabins one day. Aside from the third-degree burns, they sound relaxing.”
“It wasn’t that hot. I still got all my skin, don’t I?” He pauses, kicking leaves off the path, hoping for tracks. “The elevation makes it ten to twenty degrees colder up in the mountains. It’s not a place we’d wanna be when winter really hits. All this flat land down here in Bumfuck Kansas, is the best shot we’ve got now.”
We.
His stomach does a little flip at that word, and he doesn’t know why.
“I know what you’re doing,” she says.
“What am I doing?”
“Getting me to talk so I don’t drown in the silence of my own thoughts.”
“Oh, that. Little bit. Is it working?”
“Little bit.” She grabs a leaf off a branch, ripping it up into tiny pieces. “Let’s say we’ll go there in the summer? Me and you and…and Emma. I know we won’t. I know it’s not practical. I won’t hold you to it, but I need something to look forward to, even if it’s fake. Humor me.”
He pauses, watching her try to keep it together as her eyes water all over again. “We’ll go there. All of us. Even the apple. She’s gonna be out by then, right?”
“Even the apple,” Addison huffs, resting her hand over her belly. “Emma always had so much curiosity for what lay beyondthe fences. If I had gone before the virus hit…if I left like I used to think of doing, maybe she wouldn’t be—”
“You can’t do that to yourself. All these what-ifs.”
“It’s all I have now.”
“That ain’t true. We’ll find her. Understand?”
He’s sharper than he wants to be, but if she keeps going down this path, it won’t help anything. What-ifs will ruin a person’s spirit given the chance.
A child-sized footprint in front of a vintage-style gas station brings them both to a sudden halt.
She gasps, eyes wide and hope renewed in a flash. “It’s fresh. Emma? Emma!”
“Whoa, whoa. Careful.” He hisses as they rush toward the gas station.
They sneak up to the door and give a few hearty knocks in case it’s filled with rotters. It isn’t.
A search inside, through overturned shelves and broken glass, offers no sign of the kid.
“It’s okay,” she says. “It means she was here. We came the right way. With all the rain this week, that footprint would be gone by now if it wasn’t recent, right?”
“Right. Gotta be within the last day or so.”
“That’s progress. It’s something.”
“More than we had this morning,” he agrees.
They found a clue, and he hasn’t seen her smile like this since…well, since ever. Decides right then and there that he needs to figure out how to make that happen more often. If he thought she was pretty before, that brilliant grin takes things up a hundred notches.
He isn’t allowed much time to enjoy the sight, though. All their yelling for Emma alerted passersby to their location. Instead of carrying on in search of her, they’re about to waste precious time hiding.
“Look,” he whispers, pointing toward the window as they duck behind the counter.
