Page 93 of Ash Fall

"Let's not go telling anyone yet." He's still grinning at his own hands. "I'd like to find out first whether it costs me anything. Gage says those walls he built out of the ground didn't tire him out one bit and Kara can barely make an ice cube some days, so it seems to run different in every person who has it."

I'm still laughing when I turn, and that's when I see her.

Marlene stands three rows over with a flat of onions set against her hip. She isn't doing anything, just watching us, and the look on her face is the exact one I caught the morning the ash came. The one I told myself I'd misread. Her mouth is a hard flat line, and her eyes go from Anders's hands to my face and stay there.

My laugh dies in my throat.

Anders notices her as well when he follows where I'm looking. He takes her in for a second and turns back to me with a question all over his face.

"I don't think that lady likes me very much," I tell him quietly.

"Ignore her." There's no anger in it but a slight edge of impatience. "Some people get so full up of bitter and angry they can't hold it anymore, and then they go looking for a place to pour it out. That's got nothing to do with you." He glances back down the row. "I can have a word with her brother, though. Clayton seems reasonable enough. If she's making you uncomfortable, that's worth somebody putting an end to it."

"No." It comes out of me fast. "No, please don't."

"Luna."

"There's already this divide between our groups. You can see it from right here." I tip my head at all that empty floor between us. "Everybody sticks to their own end and pretends not to notice. If we start taking complaints about each other to the leaders, that becomes permanent. We're supposed to be turning into one community, aren't we? That's the whole reason we brought them." I let go of his arm. "Let it go, please? At least for now. We need to build a bridge with them, not make the gap wider."

He studies me for a long moment, and I can see him not agreeing with a single word I just said.

"For you," he agrees anyway. "This time."

By the time I look again Marlene has her back to us, bent over her onion sets, working away as if she never stopped.

We stay at it most of the day. Anders and I get the whole third rack seeded, then start transplanting the sulky pepper starters into bigger pots. He keeps his hands to himself the entire time and grows nothing where anyone can see him but every so often I catch him flexing his fingers and looking at them with a bemused smile.

Late in the afternoon I go find Kara. Mostly I want to know what she's been doing with herself all day, and partly my back has had it with planting for the day.

She and Briar took one of the smaller trailers in the second row, which surprised absolutely everybody after Kara had made her opinion of the younger girl known. I guess she’s doing better at building bridges than the rest of us. The door is propped open, and inside they're working through that mountain of Louis Vuitton that nearly killed Torrin's suspension on the way out of town.

"You packed an evening gown?" Briar is holding it by the hanger over her head because it’s floor length and a deep scarlet red. "For a mine? Very practical, Kara. You'll be the best dressed corpse in the apocalypse."

I brace for impact, because I've watched Kara Channing take apart grown men in eleven words or less. Instead of that, she laughs. An actual amused laugh, and she takes the gown out of Briar's hands.

"This is Valentino, you feral little goblin, and it's coming with me to my grave." She hangs it in the tiny closet with real care. "You'll be wanting to borrow it in a few years, so show some respect."

Briar drops backward onto the bed looking extremely pleased with herself.

Kara catches me in the doorway with my eyebrows somewhere in my hairline and shrugs one shoulder.

"She's growing on me," she tells me. "She's a smaller version of me with none of the soft parts."

"You have soft parts?"

"Two. Extremely well hidden." She points a finger at me. "If you tell anyone, I'll deny it and then I'll ruin you."

Briar snorts into the pillow behind her. I stay long enough to get roped into an opinion about where the shoes should go as they both suggest a second camper just to be used as their closet, and then I head back out into the bay feeling a bit lighter than I've felt all day.

Torrin comes around the end of the row at a jog, sees me and changes course without breaking stride. He catches me around the waist and swings me right off my feet in a full circle. The laugh gets startled out of me before I even know what's happening. Then he kisses me, quick and thorough, sets me back down on the concrete and carries right on going.

"Sorry, love." He calls it over his shoulder, already ten feet away. "Needed that."

I stand there for a few moments with my fingers against my mouth and a smile I can feel all the way up to my ears thinking about how amazing it is that a quick laugh, a quick kiss, or even just a quick hello from the right person can make you feel better about almost anything. I’m still a bit lost in thought when I start walking around a stack of pallets right into Marlene.

That bible of hers is clutched tight in both hands, the one she carries everywhere, her thumb wedged into it about a third of the way through. Up close she's shorter than I am. Her hair is set in careful grey waves and her glasses need cleaning. There's a red rim around her eyes that shows she’s been crying recently.

"Sorry." I catch my balance. "I didn't see you."