“I think we are fine,” Tomasz says. “For now.”
Regine breathes out a long, low sigh, still scanning the fronts of the neighboring houses. “For now,” she echoes quietly.
57
“Hold on,” Regine says at the front door. She pushes it open slightly, removing a small scrap of paper. “To make sure no one’s gone in before us. If this had fallen, we’d have known someone was inside.”
She disappears into the house, motioning them to wait.
“We have blacked out the windows,” Tomasz tells Seth, “to keep from being seen.”
After a moment, a light appears from deep within, as if it’s coming from around more than one corner.
“Okay,” Regine says, appearing again. “Get inside, quick.”
Tomasz waits for Seth to pass before bracing the door shut behind them with a chair stuck underneath the handle. They’re in a generous sitting room with a staircase leading up and a second doorway to a kitchen in the back.
Right in the middle of the front room sits a dusty black coffin, surrounded by the sofas and chairs as if it was a coffee table.
“Come, there is food,” Tomasz says, walking past the coffin and leading Seth to the kitchen. The light shines from there, a lantern tucked into a side cabinet that might have been a pantry. There’s a door heading out the back, its seams stuffed with blankets to keep the light from leaking out.
“We sleep upstairs,” Regine says. “There are three bedrooms, but one’s a storage room now. You can share with Tommy, if you want.”
“I usually sneak in to the floor of her room anyway,” Tomasz says in a stage whisper.
Regine lights another lantern. She calls Tomasz over to the sink to unwrap his hands. Once the blood is washed away, they look less bad than feared. A few deep cuts and some burns – which cause Tomasz to hiss every time Regine runs the water over them – but he can flex them a little.
“You’ll mend,” Regine says. Then she takes some old kitchen towels out of a drawer and wraps them around his hands. “We should scrounge up some antibiotics, though, in case they get infected.”
Tomasz still looks defiant. “I say again, you are welcome for being saved.”
Regine reaches in the cabinets for cans of food. “Nothing fancy, I’m afraid,” she says, lighting the flame on a gas camp stove similar to Seth’s.
Towel-handed Tomasz sets out some bowls while she prepares the meal. Looking for something to do, Seth pours them mugs of water from the bottles they brought back from the supermarket. No one really says much. Seth’s mind is still crammed to overloading, and if he lets it, he can slide off into paralysis, trying to make sense of it all. The effort is constant, difficult, exhausting. He stifles a yawn. Then is too tired to stifle a second.
“Tell me about it,” Regine grumbles, handing him a bowl that’s half creamed corn, half some kind of noodle-filled chili.
“Thanks,” Seth says.
Regine and Tomasz sit on small chairs in the kitchen to eat. Seth sits on the floor. There’s almost no conversation, and Seth looks up once to see Tomasz asleep, his head back against the counter, an empty bowl in his lap.
“I knew it wasn’t lightning,” Regine says, quietly enough not to wake him. “But I had no idea.”
“Me neither,” Seth answers.
“Why would you?” she says crisply.
Seth makes a frustrated sound. “What is your problem with me? I said I was sorry.”
“And I believe you,” she says, setting her own empty bowl on the counter. “Can’t we just leave it at that?”
“Clearly not.”
“And that’s actually kind of it. The way you think you have the right to know everything. That it’s all about you. I mean, even thinking me and Tommy are here to help you somehow. How self-centered is that? You ever think maybe you’re here to help us?”
He scratches his ear. “Sorry. I’ve had less time to get used to here than you.” He looks around at the lantern-lit kitchen and their ancient-can dinner. “My father said with enough time you could get used to anything.”
“My mother said that, too. And she was right.”
Regine says it so bitterly, Seth looks at her, surprised. She sighs. “She was a schoolteacher. Sciences, mostly, but she and my dad were French so she taught that too, sometimes. She was great. Strong and good and funny. And then my dad died and she kind of . . . broke. And got lost somehow.” Regine frowns. “And my stepdad, that son of a bitch, he saw how broken she was and just moved on in. And at first it’s okay, you know, not perfect, but okay, and you get used to it. Then it gets a little worse, and you get used to that, too. Then one day, you wake up and you don’t have the first freakin’ clue how it got that bad.”
“My dad broke,” Seth says gently. “I think my mum broke a little, too.”
“And you.”
“And me. People break, I guess. Everyone.”
“What finally made you break?”
“Now who’s the one who thinks everything is her business?”
She hesitates, but then gives him a look that’s almost friendly.
He yawns, which makes him wonder what memory will come tonight when he finally goes back to sleep. He hopes it’s good, even if painful. Maybe the night he first found out Gudmund felt the same way. Or maybe the time they went camping and Gudmund’s parents were in the next tent over so they couldn’t do much more than talk and it was great, greater than anything, as they planned out a future together, with college and beyond.
“We can have anything,” Gudmund had said. “We can do anything we want once we get out of here. You and me together? No one could think about stopping us.”
And Seth couldn’t even say how thrilling and frightening and true and impossible those words had seemed.
They had talked all night. They had set out the rest of their lives.
It makes his heart hurt to think about it.
“People break,” he says again. “But we got a second chance, the three of us.”
Regine laughs once. “You think this is a second chance? How shitty was your life?” She stands, reaching for Tomasz. “Come on, give me a hand here.”
They get the still half-sleeping Tomasz up to his bed, Regine lighting a candle to show their way. She takes some musty blankets out of a closet. “You’ll have to make do with the floor.”
“That’s okay,” Seth says, piling them up on the carpet.