After (40 page)

She's crying now. “My little boys were four, and thirteen months. Eric and Jason.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah.” She goes on crying for a little while, then smiles. Looks at John. “You're lucky. Having Gareth, now.”

John laughs, soft, almost sad. “I am. Yeah. In a way, it changes everything.”

“You're lucky,” she says again.

“But you...” he starts, then stops.

“No.” Her voice breaks over that one, jagged syllable. “No, I guess not. I'd have been pregnant by now, if I still could. I'm only thirty-four. I don't know why. The dying.

Maybe that had something to do with it.”

“I'm so sorry, Karen.”

John moves like he might put his arms around her, but she tenses and he backs right off. But then she looks at him for a second or two, watching his face, and sinks against him. Wraps her arms around him. Lets him hold her. Strokes her back. Then they go out and join the others by the fire.

When it gets late, Diego and Evan leave with Rick and Joey, with directions from Smith on where to get them settled. After he puts Gareth down for the night, with a distorted version of a remembered fairy tale and a good-night kiss, Riggs fades away into the dark night, too.

“We figured you'd be most comfortable staying here at the house tonight,” Eva tells Karen. “Tomorrow we can figure out where you'd like to stay long-term. For tonight, we can set you up in Avery's—Major Smith's—room. Or, if you'd rather not be alone, your first night in a strange place, you're welcome to sleep with me. Gareth's usually good about sleeping through the night.”

“I'll be fine on my own.”

Eva leads Karen upstairs, to Smith's room. In the hallway they bump into John.

“Are the sleeping arrangements sorted out?”

“Karen's taking Avery's room.”

“All right. Good-night, Karen.” He gives her a smile and slips away into the room he shares with Eva and Gareth.

“There you are,” Smith says as they enter. “I've just put fresh sheets on for you.”

“Thank you. For giving me your bed. For everything,” she says, a little stiff, nervous.

“It's my pleasure. We're all so glad you're here.”

“I hope I'm not putting you out.”

“Please, don't worry about me. I'll be quite comfortable,” he assures Karen with a playful grin.

They all say good-night, and as Smith and Eva go down the hall, Karen pokes her head out, watches them clasp hands, then turn in to join John in the bedroom.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Thick with the scent of them, the air is still. Close. Quiet. Like them, quiet, close and slow-moving. Their lust is not frenetic or urgent, but languid, indulgent, as if they are gods in their heaven, celebrating their act of creation, and all time is theirs. The sun will never rise. They will be together, wrapped up in each other, forever.

Avery draws back, panting, his lips flushed, swollen, and with a touch, coaxes John to Eva's still-parted lips. Down, they sink deep into their kiss, John and Eva, open mouths warm and wet and soft and seeking, Avery nestles into Eva's neck, Eva's hair, cradles them both as they kiss.

The three of them touch and taste, trembling, raising sighs, provoking tremors.

Leaving nipples peaked and wet, making goose flesh rise over teased nerves, drawing forth sighs and groans and laughter.

Thick, languorous hours into their kissing and whispering and touching, John draws Eva across Avery's prone body for a kiss, then lets her go, watches her take Avery in, caresses her hair as she kisses her flaxen hawk, moving over him.

Then Avery stills her. Kisses her hot, damp brow. Asks her, “Would you like to feel us both with you?”

Her eyes go to John. She doesn't ask, “Will you?” He has never denied her anything. Instead, she searches his face, smiles at his small smile, and breathes, “Yes.”

When John is inside her, too, Eva goes still, with parted lips, shut eyes, a fretful brow. She pants out a “No,” when Avery asks her in a whisper,

“Is it too much?”

Then her mouth blooms white and plum in a joyous smile. “It’s perfect. We’re perfect.”

They are one, merged, a single body with three currents, rolling in and out, swelling, rising, crashing, spilling.

After, they are quiet, still, close and warm as cubs in a nest, breathing in the air thick with their union, their damp bodies clinging together.

Kisses, caresses, whispers later, the three of them fall asleep, Eva last of all.

* * * *

When Eva wakes, Smith has gone to check on Joey and Rick, and John is sitting by the window. Gareth is on John’s lap, practicing standing on wobbly legs. For a moment Eva doesn't stir; she just lies there, watching her lover and her son smiling at each other in the morning sun. Later, when she's nursed, Eva takes Gareth down the hall to the room where Karen spent the night.

When Karen opens the door, she beams at the baby, but evades Eva's eyes.

“Sleep okay?” Eva asks.

“Fine. Thanks.” Karen tugs at the pillowslip, staring down at the bed. “If you tell me where I can get clean linen, or wash these, I'll put fresh sheets on.”

“No, don't worry about it. We'll see about getting you settled into your own room.

You'll have plenty of housekeeping to do, getting yourself settled. Hungry? John and I can take you to the mess hall. Everyone should be there now. We can introduce you and the others to the guys.”

“OK,” Karen says again, still avoiding meeting Eva's gaze.

“Karen?”

“Hmmm?”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

“You sure? Did something happen?” Eva asks, touching Karen's arm, trying to catch her eyes.

“No. I'm fine.”

Eva gives Karen a sympathetic smile, but Karen probably doesn't notice. “I just need to grab a blanket for Gareth, and we can get some breakfast.”

Karen follows Eva toward her room, and lingers in the hall while she gets Gareth bundled up. When she's got the baby snug in his little cocoon, Eva emerges into the hall, and comes to a halt.

“What?” she breathes.

Karen's eyes are fixed on the rumpled bed, her eyes welling with tears. “How?

How can you?” she asks, her voice hitching.

“What?” Eva's voice is gentle. “Last night?”

“You said you were happy.”

“I am. So happy. Especially now that you're here.”

“But I don't understand how, when, last night you had to...”

“Karen,” Eva finally catches her gaze, finally manages to give her a reassuring smile. “Nothing bad happened to me last night. I promise.”

“Don't. You don't have to. I heard.”

“From your room?” Eva asks, a blush tinting her cheeks.

“I came down the hall.”

“Karen. I can imagine what it must have seemed like. But it wasn't...I love them.”

“Both?” Karen asks, her face turned doubtfully aside.

“Yes. Both.”

“Your John is...well, I swear, I've never known a man like him, before the dying or since. How intuitive, careful, gentle he seems to be.”

Eva smiles. Blushes again.

“But the Major...”

“What?”

Karen looks up and down the hall, whispers, “He's so hard. And the way he fixes his eyes on you. It's scary.”

“Avery—Major Smith—is the most stringently moral person I've every known.

He'd let himself be torn apart before he'd let anyone do evil if he had the power to stop it. But that hardness you see, part of it is, he expects the same of everyone else. And it's hard for him, admitting that good and evil aren't absolute, that other people's definitions are different than his. And, yes. I love him. Like a part of myself. Like, if he were gone, I wouldn't know how to live without him. And when it's the three of us, me and Avery and John, that's when I feel safest. Happiest.”

Karen hugs herself and looks away.

“I haven't been through what you've been through,” Eva says, her voice soft. “It must sound strange to you.”

After a long quiet Karen looks up with red eyes and says, “Well, I'm just glad they weren't hurting you.”

* * * *

One afternoon a little more than a week after the arrival of the Guthries, when John comes in at the end of his day of work, Eva gives him a nervous, sheepish glance.

He smiles, presses a warm kiss to her cheek. When he's perched on a chair he's pulled up close to where she's seated on the love seat, Gareth in her arms, sucking eagerly at the yellow-brown nipple of a bottle, he asks her in a soft voice,

“Your milk stop coming in?”

She smiles. Then her eyes go red, and tears spill down her cheeks. One drops from her chin, streaking little Gareth's forehead. She shakes her head.

“Eva,” John says in his softest voice, “what's wrong?”

Really starting to cry, now, Eva says, “I think I'm pregnant.”

“Pregnant?”

“I've been throwing up.”

“Oh. God.” John slips onto the sofa to cradle Eva in his arms, stroking and kissing her hair.

“I feel so stupid. We should have been using something. Fucking breast-feeding as birth control, my ass. I'm not ready to do this again.” She sobs against John's chest for a minute or two, then pulls herself together. “I'm okay. It's just, everything's been so good. I mean, our little family, I feel like it's right in balance, you and me and Avery and Hope and Gareth. And James, even. And we're just getting going, finding others. Now, in a few months I won't even be able to go. And no one, no women will get in a truck with a bunch of strange men. I fucked up, and now they'll be left out there...”

“Shhh,” John rocks her. “When you can't go, maybe Karen will go.”

“We can't ask her to do that.”

“Eva,” he laughs. “You're not the only brave one. The only selfless one. She wants to. She already told me.”

“Really?”

“I think it'll be good for her. You know, she still feels so guilty. About her sister.”

Eva nods. Then says to John, “Don't say anything to Avery about me crying. It's just the timing. It's not that I don't want the baby.”

“His baby.”

“Yes. Probably.”

* * * *

When she tells Avery, showing all her joy and hiding her regrets, his hazel eyes don't light up, he doesn't beam. In answer to Eva's probing look he pulls her gently to him and whispers, “I'm sorry.”

She pushes him back. “Sorry?”

“I should have been more careful of you. It was selfish of me, counting on you being infertile as long as you were breast feeding.”

“You're not happy?” she asks, her voice breaking over a suppressed sob.

He sighs. “Oh, Eva. Another baby, it's wonderful. I'm just sorry it's happened so soon. For your sake.”

“I thought you'd want...”

“Well, we know now. It's not just us. A big family is still a good idea, but we don't need to turn you into a baby factory.”

“No. But...”

Avery smiles. Touches her lips with his. Lingers there. Then he drifts back, and they lock eyes.

“Eva. Gareth is John's child. Anyone can see that. Well, anyone who isn't James Riggs. And I've always been glad. For whatever reason, John needs to be a father; childless, he's incomplete. So, even though he'd no doubt have loved your child as his own, in any case, it always makes me happy, looking at little Gareth and seeing John's eyes gazing back at me.

“I don't need a child of my own. A biological daughter or son. Gareth is our son.

And this baby will be our child. And John's. And if she has John's eyes, too, don't ever imagine I'm waiting for
my
baby. In this life, all I need is to do some good, and for you and I to love each other.”

* * * *

“Can I talk to you about something?” Eva asks Karen.

“Sure.”

Eva smiles, takes a moment to find her words. “The day we met, when I was telling you what it was like here, remember I told you that I go to the men . . .”

Karen goes stiff and still. “That's where you've been, lately, when you and John have been out in the evenings.”

“Yes.” Karen goes even more rigid, like she's bracing herself. “I know there's some painful history between you and Joey and Rick. But . . .”

Her face goes red, and choking on a rising sob, Karen says, “You said I wouldn't have to do that anymore.”

“You don't Karen.” Eva gives the other woman a reassuring smile. “That's not what I'm asking. I just wanted to make sure it wouldn't be . . . I don't know, hurtful to you, if I . . .”

“What? You're going to go to them, too?”

“If you don't want to, yes.” Karen stares at Eva as if she's some kind of alien life form, unfathomable. Terrifying. “Karen?”

“I don't understand. I don't understand how you can let them touch you. Put their mouths on you. How you can let them climb up on top of you.” Karen's voice wavers and hiccups.

“Well,” Eva says, her gentle voice roughened on the edge of some sharp feeling,

“it would be hard, it would probably fucking kill me, if I were being made to do it. But I'm not. And it's not some awful sacrifice I make. It's good for me. Every time I go to one of them—even the ones who scare me—I prove to myself that they can't hurt me. They don't have any power over me.

“But that's not why I go. I don't go for me. And I don't go for them, really. I go because I want Hope to have a lover, someday, to know how... god, how unbearably wonderful it is to be loved, to be touched and looked at by someone who loves her. To make a life with someone she loves. I want all of us to have that. But no one will, as long as they're all chewing themselves apart, chewing each other and us apart out of sheer terror. And when I go to them, when they get to touch someone, hold someone, tell someone, for once, that they're scared, when they can cry and fuck—all of it—it takes away that terror. And I need to believe that when they're not so scared—when we, all of us—aren't so scared anymore, we can be decent people.”

“Well,” Karen says, shaking, tears streaking her cheeks, “you're braver than I am.”

“Or just luckier,” Eva says, her voice soft again.

When Eva goes to Rick, he doesn't hide his surprise. Or his eagerness. When he'd decided to come with Karen and Joey, he tells her, he'd figured that was it for his sex life. But with Karen leaving Guthrie, that was over, anyway.